Even for JD Vance, it was a weird moment. Over the weekend, the vice president appeared on the podcast of Benny Johnson, a sycophantic MAGA media figure tied to the conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA. The two discussed the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown, Medicaid fraud and the SAVE Act, which would undermine Americans’ freedom to vote, and Vance even accused Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., of immigration fraud. But in a blatant attempt to snag the attention former president Barack Obama received for discussing aliens during a recent podcast appearance, the conversation turned to the extraterrestrial and UFOs, which the Yale-educated Vance argued are actually demons.
The vice president pretended to pivot from “a longer discussion” of the subject, but then he immediately started pontificating about the culture’s “desire” to classify “celestial beings who fly around “as aliens.” The Christian interpretation, he argued, should be demons, because “one of the devil’s great tricks is to convince people he never existed.”
The clip is worth watching, and not just to marvel yet again at Vance’s ability to make idiotic statements in the self-assured tone of the smartest boy in the room. The entire exchange feels rehearsed, even though it’s clear Vance is hoping to channel some of that off-the-cuff energy that made Obama’s chat with podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen so entertaining. Vance, though, is clearly incapable of such a spontaneous response. (His disgust upon hearing on MAGA influencer Katie Miller’s podcast that her husband, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, loves mayonnaise was a rare moment of authenticity.)
No wonder it came off as contrived. On Tuesday it was announced that Vance would be releasing “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” a memoir about his conversion to Catholicism. (As my Salon colleague Kelly McClure pointed out, “Communion” is also the title of a popular 80s book about alien encounters.) Talking up demons on a MAGA podcast offered a good way to frame his faith not as part of the high-minded Catholicism of the American-born Pope Leo XIV, who is much-loathed by Donald Trump for all that peace-and-charity talk. It signals that Vance is more into an evangelical-flavored Catholicism that’s popular with MAGA and is centered far more on Satan and hellfire than all that “love thy neighbor” chatter.
But there also may be more to it. After all, Vance had really just wanted to highlight religion, it would have made a little more sense to portray mysterious flying objects as angels, not demons. But angels aren’t very popular right now. Demons, on the other hand, are a big trend in pop culture in recent years.
Witches, demons and Satanism — anything occult — is white-hot lately. The surprise hit movie of 2025 was “KPop Demon Hunters,” which is streaming on Netflix and set a record for having four songs in Billboard’s Hot 100 Top 10 list. Occult-themed films have been big hits for years now. “The Conjuring” series, “Ready Or Not,” “Weapons,” “Longlegs” and “Bring Her Back” are all about witches, devils or Satan-worshippers. In music, we’ve seen chart toppers from artists such as Sabrina Carpenter, Lil Nas X, and Sam Smith and Kim Petras play with occult imagery.
Social media is awash in content about the arcane: how-tos for spellcasting, psychics claiming to foretell the future and endless posts about casting out demons. Even though humans created the near-miraculous technology of the internet, there are those in some quarters who still long to believe in magic, and they like it to have that edgy, dark side. These topics draw a lot of attention for another reason — they’re highly controversial. It’s not just entrepreneurial witches selling spells on Etsy. Young Christians attract a lot of engagement with TikToks warning about the alleged dangers of New Age practices, and they rack up views by scaring people into believing crystals and tarot cards are gateways to demonic possession.
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Vance is tapping into a long, productive history of Christian-right activists and politicians getting attention by tapping into pop culture trends. Sometimes these efforts attempt to be positive; contemporary Christian music has long attempted to imitate secular chart success, but with a “Jesus loves you” message. That has tended to be less effective, though, as much of the music is perceived as corny to those who aren’t living in a Christian fundamentalist environment.
Parasitical campaigns, where evangelicals attach themselves to the hot new cultural thing by condemning it, have proven more successful. Whether it’s the 1980s attacks on heavy metal and role-playing games, or more modern claims of seeing Satan lurking at Beyoncé concerts or, well, in “KPop Demon Hunters,” the Christian right has been able to find the devil everywhere.
Because there’s an element of titillation that causes even people who might otherwise not care too much about religion to engage with the stories, fear-mongering accusations of demonic influence in pop culture often spread like urban legends. I remember being a kid and playing Queen tapes backwards with my friends to see if we could hear the voice of Satan instructing us to do drugs, a silly tale that trickled down from evangelical leaders to the playgrounds in the 1980s. Similarly, young people on social media are drawn to tales of demon possession, even if they might not align with the politics of the people who are making this stuff up.
Christian conservatives tap into the same love of spookiness that draws people to horror films, and for the same reason: to get attention, and often money, especially from younger audiences. It’s notable that Vance saved this nugget about demons for Johnson, who works with TPUSA, which bills itself as a youth outreach organization. As I argued last week, a key part of the vice president’s outreach strategy as he gears up for a presidential run in 2028 evidently depends heavily on youth outreach via the “bro” podcasts, which have cultivated a young male audience while aspiring to comedy — and a whole lot of sexism. Vance has been faltering in those efforts, though, because he can’t maintain his already-fragile alpha image while capping for Trump on the Iran war.
By claiming to believe in demons, the vice president is leeching onto another youth trend, and probably getting a hefty boost in social media algorithms for it. The good news is probably won’t work for him, since Satan himself couldn’t grant Vance more charisma.
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