JD Vance did his 40 days and nights of fasting, but he’s still lost in the desert. Currently on the outs with Donald Trump for making the mistake of thinking he was serious about that whole “no new wars” thing, the Vice President has two people whispering into his ear offering guidance: the Pope, the most important earth-bound figure in his deeply held faith, and Peter Thiel, the billionaire who made him relevant. Unfortunately for Vance, the two are diametrically opposed forces. In one corner is Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope with a decidedly pro-human agenda in the era of artificial intelligence; a pope who should have some real appeal to a politician actively marketing a book about his adult conversion to Catholicism. In the other corner is Thiel, a billionaire weirdo who has been giving lectures on the Antichrist and reportedly accused the pope of being in league with the figure empowered by Satan to bring about the downfall of the global order—an oligarch who seems more invested in AI than in humanity’s survival Seems like it should be a pretty easy choice, but one guy promises a kingdom in the afterlife, and the other promises it in this life, and Vance seems torn as to which he values more.