493: JD Vance—Communion

**Mike Rowe** (0:04)
Hello, friends, it's Mike Rowe. This is The Way I Heard It. Today's guest is the Vice President of the United States, JD Vance.

**JD Vance** (0:12)
Yeah, the Vice President of the United States, I mean, the sitting Vice President of the United States. He holds the office right now. That's crazy to me.

**Mike Rowe** (0:20)
You know what's crazy? He showed up with 100 of his closest friends. Let me tell you, man, I had a week.

**JD Vance** (0:26)
I had a week preparing for this. I got a pocket full of challenge coins and shook a ton of hands.

**Mike Rowe** (0:32)
Obviously, there's going to be security. There's going to be secret service. There's an advanced team. There's a communications team. Alternative forms of communications need to be set up in case something should happen that would require immediate attention and so forth and so on. But what an enjoyable conversation for me. Super nice guy. Super nice guy. He's written a book called Communion, which I'm nearly finished, which is really good. It's a very personal book about his faith journey and how he lost it, and then how he got it back. And it's not a political book by any stretch. And the conversation you're about to hear is not a political conversation by any stretch. I'm pretty sure I'll get some grief.
Probably. Here and there, of course, I don't care about that. In fact, we had a really, I think, my favorite exchange, he had to cut it a little short because Bill Maher is waiting. Right.
And he asked me, should I know anything? What can you tell me about Bill Maher? And I told him the true story of the week I went on Bill Maher and Glenn Beck at the same basic time, and how all hell broke loose, and how, in my mind anyway, that's the beginning of the divide that we've been living in. You know, that was the first time I noticed that, you know, something it's, the country's more concerned with, you know, who's sitting next to whom as opposed to what's actually being said. And, you know, the vice president and I have crossed paths a lot, but never actually met. And it's because his book Hillbilly Elegy became very big at the same time that Bernie Jobs was still crushing it.

**JD Vance** (2:21)
Yeah.

**Mike Rowe** (2:22)
And the parallels have always been interesting. And I've always wanted to talk to him about that. And we do. He's super forthcoming.
Did you learn anything, Chuck?

**JD Vance** (2:31)
Yeah. I mean, I learned about his grandparents more than I already knew. I haven't read the book.

**Mike Rowe** (2:35)
I did see the movie.

**JD Vance** (2:36)
I loved the movie. I thought it was really interesting. And I don't know, man, there's something just likable about him that, like he comes from good stock. You can, you know, his story is, you know, he grew up very, very blue collar. You know, obviously he went to Yale, which changed things a bit, I'm sure.

**Mike Rowe** (2:54)
But he's lived in so many different worlds. I mean, so true abject poverty, Appalachia, the military, the Marines, Yale, the Ivy League and Silicon Valley. Right. Investor.

**JD Vance** (3:09)
Yep.

**Mike Rowe** (3:09)
And now, geez, you know, I guess he's the second most powerful man in the world. You think of it like that?

**JD Vance** (3:17)
I think so, too.

**Mike Rowe** (3:18)
Yeah, he has an agenda. He's written a book and he wants you to buy it. And I have an agenda, too. A couple of days ago in the Pentagon, the Department of War gave the MicroWorks Foundation 10 million dollars to help reinvigorate the skilled trade specifically in the defense industrial base. We're super excited to announce that.
Other companies have stepped up. We're going to raise a lot of money for scholarships this year. And we are going to be all over the place. We're going to start just in three states, but the campaign is called Build Freedom. And this is the same campaign, really, I pitched 15 years ago in Congress, and it's finally come around. So I wanted to tell him about that. And of course, he'd been read in. He's familiar with it.
For me, it was just a real kick to be able to explain to the vice president that MicroWorks is still on the case and gratifying. So I think he enjoyed himself. It was really fun to meet all those law enforcement men and women. They're awfully buttoned up, dude.

**JD Vance** (4:23)
Over a hundred here. Well, you didn't see them for the whole week. I mean, they've been here just about every single day since Sunday.