JD Vance Trots Out Violent ‘Pulp Fiction’ Story to Explain His Own Religious Experience In Wild Rant

JD Vance again resurrected a violent Pulp Fiction scene to detail his own experience with the “touch of God” while speaking with Matthew Knowles. Vance has previously referenced the scene in which Samuel L.  Jackson and John Travolta shoot a man several times–after the man’s own attempt to shoot them fails.

The vice president was inspired after Knowles asked if he’s ever experienced what Lutheran theologian Rudolf Otto called the numinous—feelings of rapture that can be likened to an awareness of the existence of a supernatural force. Knowles attributed the concept to author C.S. Lewis, who often referenced the concept.

Vance said he’s never seen a ghost, and added that his “prayer muscle atrophied” during the years he wasn’t religious. “It’s come back,” he continued. “I don’t know that it’s come back all the way. But one of the things, again, I really liked about the ancient Christian canon was all of these prayers that were just, you say the prayer, right? Of course, the most important is the Lord’s Prayer.”

For Vance, communicating with a higher power reconnected him to the process of experiencing faith. “It has to be something that you practice and it has to be something that you feel. And that was very much again something that that was that was part of my own faith journey. I write about in the book,” he said.

“But the interesting thing, so this is a quote from Paul Fiction, I keep returning to, which I’m gonna butcher a little bit, but it’s right after Samuel Jackson and John Travolta, these gangsters, just murder a few people and then they miss one guy and that guy’s hiding in the bathroom and pops out and he shoots at point-blank range. Samuel Jackson is totally fine, right?” he explained. “Despite the fact that multiple bullets should have hit him. He kind of looks around, kills the guy who tried to shoot him and then he has this religious sort of epiphany and that’s really, the entire movie from his perspective, is this ongoing religious journey.”

“Now, what’s fascinating about it is he he talks about miracles and there’s this debate between him and John Travolta about whether this counts as a miracle and he says, ‘Look, what matters is not whether this is an ‘According to Hoyle’ miracle, what matters is that I felt the touch of God.'”

Vance previously referenced the movie at an evangelical breakfast event in 2024, where he referred to Jackson’s character as a “violent gangster” despite the scene also featuring Travolta. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth quoted a fake Bible verse from the film earlier this year during a prayer service at the Pentagon.

Watch the above via The Michael Knowles Show.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!