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In June, just after my conversation with Heilbrunn, Vance visited the Richard M. Nixon Library and spoke favorably of the disgraced ex-president. In today\u2019s social media world, Vance said, the Watergate scandal<\/a> wouldn\u2019t last more than 12 hours. In fact, the two politicians share other traits: their anger toward elites and their belief in a so-called deep state. And one other thing: Nixon believed in conspiracies. As a California senator, an ally of the virulently anti-communist senator Joseph McCarthy, Nixon had peddled the myth that the US government was riddled with Soviet spies.<\/p>\n Vance, for his part, is a self-avowed conspiracy theorist. This was evident on September 10, 2025, when the Trump White House got word that Charlie Kirk,<\/a> the head of Turning Point USA, had been assassinated<\/a> as he spoke at Utah Valley University. Vance and a few of his team had been texting with Kirk, the VP\u2019s close friend, just before the shots were fired. \u201cI walked into Susie [Wiles]\u2019s office and she was crying,\u201d Vance had told me last year. \u201cUsha happened to be there. And I can\u2019t even remember why. You know, normally, she doesn\u2019t hang out in the West Wing a whole lot.\u201d (Usha had an office in the nearby Eisenhower Executive Office Building.)<\/p>\n A suspect in the shooting was quickly arrested. But Vance thought there might be more to it. \u201cI\u2019ve had many, many questions,\u201d he claimed. \u201cI don\u2019t know how he was radicalized\u2014or if there were people in his network egging [him] on, encouraging [him] to do it, maybe even financing.\u201d Publicly, Vance spoke ominously of \u201ca leftist infrastructure\u201d fomenting violence against conservatives. \u201cMy view,\u201d he said, \u201cis it reveals something that\u2019s sort of gone pretty dark in a particular corner of the far left in this country.\u201d Yet the evidence suggests that what it actually revealed was the twisted mind of a lone individual. Kirk\u2019s alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, has yet to enter a formal plea.<\/p>\n It was Kirk\u2019s widow, Erika, Vance writes in Communion,<\/em> who convinced him and Usha to have another baby; she had told them that she\u2019d regretted not having more children. This July, Usha gave birth to a boy, Alec. They have two other boys, Ewan, 9, and Vivek, 6, and a girl, Mirabel, 4.<\/p>\n In 2018 Vance and Usha were traveling in France. During a stroll through a cathedral, he writes in Communion,<\/em> he underwent a kind of epiphany; in mid-August of the next year, he was baptized as a Catholic in a private ceremony. Usha, who is Hindu, had no intention of converting, but believed that her husband\u2019s move was \u201cgood\u201d for him. Vance says his new faith helped him develop patience. Moreover, he writes, \u201cI needed grace.\u201d But Vance has displayed little grace in his public exchanges with his religious superiors. In 2025 he clashed with Pope Francis<\/a> on the plight of migrants. Last April, after Pope Leo XIV criticized Trump\u2019s policies on immigration and the Iran war, Vance chided him<\/a> as though scolding a wayward student: \u201cI think it\u2019s very, very important for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.\u201d In Communion,<\/em> rather than apologizing, Vance doubles down on his remarks, accusing Vatican officials of offering platitudes instead of specific critiques of Trump\u2019s immigration policy. What is it about the phrase \u201chumane treatment\u201d\u2014for which the Vatican was advocating\u2014that the vice president doesn\u2019t understand?<\/p>\n In Communion,<\/em> Vance\u2019s defense of Trumpism is facile, shallow\u2014and brief. He devotes a total of three pages to the period from his election to the Senate to Trump\u2019s second inauguration. Explaining his adoption of the MAGA cause, the vice president writes, for instance, that Trump \u201chad proved me wrong by being an effective president.\u201d Maybe\u2014if you consider governmental paralysis, futile attempts to repeal health care, a botched response to a lethal pandemic (Trump at first denied its existence and then minimized its severity), massive job losses (more than any president since Herbert Hoover), two impeachments, and an attempted insurrection to be effective. No wonder Usha was so much better at moot court.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n