Brad talks with journalist Tom Lobianco about his new book, "Piety and Power: Mike Pence and the Taking of the White House". They discuss his road to politics, his faith, and his tumultuous ride as Trump's VP.
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Axis Mundy Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi.
I am Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Skidmore College, and I am incredibly, incredibly happy to be joined today by Tom LoBianco.
He's had an incredibly busy week, helping with coverage of the impeachment hearings.
But he's here with us now, and we're going to talk today about the piety and what I would call the impiety of Mike Pence.
Tom is a longtime reporter who's covered Mike Pence from the Statehouse to the White House.
He's done that for the Associated Press, CNN, Indianapolis Star.
He's a regular analyst on national television and radio, including CNN, Fox, MSNBC, NPR, and more.
And most importantly for today, he has a brand new book out.
The book is Piety and Power, Mike Pence and the Taking of the White House.
So Tom, thanks so much for joining me.
Brad, thank you.
Very happy to be here.
I can't think, honestly, of a better person to talk to this week about Mike Pence.
I mean, really, any week.
You've been with him for a long time, and I want to get to kind of what his exposure slash involvement slash concern might be with what's happened with impeachment.
But I want to start going back to his days as a congressman and then governor in Indiana.
Many people, I think, are confounded by him.
He's an outspoken evangelical, and yet he signed up to be the vice president for, you know, a very, these are my words, vicious, foul-mouthed, money-driven president, and I could say much more.
What are some things that, you know, the casual political observer should know about Pence's faith and his early day in politics?
I mean, can his origin story help us kind of understand what seems like the paradox at the heart of who he is?
I guess I'll start reverse chronologically here, because I think that this is something that really helped me understand him and his relationship with Donald Trump.
And sort of, and especially for the, what I would call the politicized evangelical world, which is certainly not representative of the entire body of evangelicals writ large.
There are two Old Testament anecdotes that two stories that, that Pence's advisors used to explain his relationship with Trump.
The first one is the story of Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar.
And, of course, Daniel, the Jewish slave, hearing the orders from God, stay faithful, and keep by the mad tyrant to protect his people.
There's another version of this story, which is Joseph and the Pharaoh.
Similar dynamic, and again, God working through Joseph.
in this case.
It's not hard to figure out who is who in this allegory.
I will tell you that it also, you know, for the secular explanation, and this is, I mean, look, this is, it's kind of a similar way of saying the same thing that we hear from the punditocracy, right?
Which is that, oh, there are adults in the room, right?
If you recall that anonymous op-ed from the New York Times a little while ago, where they talked about the quote, resistance inside the administration, keeping everything on track.
So it's kind of a similar argument to that.
You know, and this is and this is really interesting, though, and sometimes I would hear people mention to me they they thought, you know, if we're talking about Daniel, you know, who's Trump?
Is Trump Nebuchadnezzar or is he Cyrus?
And since we are on the on your podcast, I mean, as I suspect your listeners know a fair amount of the background on this.
Those take you in two very different directions, and that's something I, raised as a Catholic and not very steeped in the Bible myself, they don't let us do that.
Be careful, don't touch it!
A lot of this was very new for me, and I spent a lot of time talking with some good folks to understand this.
I'll mention John Fea at Messiah College, who I'm sure you're probably familiar with.
He helped me understand a lot of this.
This also helps you understand where Mike Pence is not a Christian right theocrat.
Once you start to understand his style of practice, you get a better sense that he's not in this Jerry Falwell world, but he's just catering to them.
And what do I mean by that?
The other version is the Cyrus allegory.
And this is where you get the Paula Whites of the world.
I saw Jimmy and, I think, is Tammy Faced with him again?
Baker are selling end-of-the-world rations again, buckets of corn mush, you know, on QVC telecast or whatever.
I mean, it's wild, man.
And that's the Cyrus prophecy.
And, you know, you hear them talk about it.
You even hear Pence talk about it periodically when he'll – He'll talk with groups like John Hagee's Christians United for Israel, that's sort of the Christian Zionist group.
He'll flick at that stuff, and that Cyrus prophecy of returning, the end of the world prophecy, right?
You know, return all, repopulate Jerusalem with only Jewish people, hastening the return of Jesus in the flesh.
Very different, and when you understand that that's not what Pence's people use to refer to him, they talk about Daniel and Joseph and Nebuchadnezzar and the Pharaoh, but not Cyrus.
That's really important in understanding his own faith and also how his faith plays into his politics.
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