Vice President JD Vance said in a podcast released Tuesday that he would have questioned whether a conspiracy was involved if the July 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, had killed Donald Trump, and that he might not have accepted the legitimacy of even another Republican succeeding him.

Speaking with Christian podcaster Bryce Crawford, Vance said Trump’s survival prevented “real civil strife” from which the country might never have recovered. Had the bullet that nicked Trump’s ear instead proved fatal, Vance said, many supporters, including himself, would have assumed “very dark forces had taken out Donald Trump right as he was about to come back into the White House.”

“There would have just been an illegitimacy to our entire political system,” Vance said. He added that such thoughts would have lingered “in the back of my mind.”

Much of the 70-minute discussion focused on faith. Vance, who recently published a book about his conversion to Catholicism, recounted his Easter 2025 meeting with Pope Francis the day before the pontiff’s death. He described sensing “spiritual darkness” in certain meetings with world leaders and at the Gettysburg battlefield.

On the subject of end times, Vance said his interest peaked in the late 1990s and that he tries not to dwell on it now, though certain developments give him pause. He pointed to technology companies and the growing use of artificial intelligence as a substitute for human relationships. When Crawford described one acquaintance’s use of AI as a marriage counselor as “kind of satanic,” Vance agreed that completely divorcing the human element from relationships designed by God is “very bad.”

Crawford also asked about Trump’s earlier social-media post of an AI-generated image showing the president as Jesus, which drew criticism even from some supporters. Vance defended the post, saying Trump did not intend to mock or mimic God. “He’s a bit of a ballbuster… and he just likes to have a good time,” Vance said. “He’s not trying to offend people; he’s trying to keep things light.”