Originally published at The Crux
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Vice President JD Vance said in a podcast released Tuesday that if a 2024 assassination attempt had killed Donald Trump, he would have always wondered if it was part of a conspiracy and might not have accepted even another Republican as the next president.
Vance made the statement during a conversation with Christian podcaster Bryce Crawford. The vice president, who recently released a book detailing his own journey to Catholicism, also defended President Trump for posting an image of himself as Jesus and mused about whether artificial intelligence was a sign of the end times.
The conversation kicked off with a discussion of faith and the rush to scientifically explain away events that may be divinely touched. Vance cited the July 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, during which a bullet nicked Trump’s ear and a supporter was killed.
Trump has long talked about his survival as divinely guided, a theme Vance took up. The vice president said that if the bullet had killed Trump, “we would have had real civil strife in a way that I don’t know that the country could have ever come back from.”
Vance said many Trump supporters would have assumed a conspiracy had robbed them of their chosen president,
