signorile michael A N
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an 6 26
New book exposes JD Vance as a fraud
U.S. Vice President JD Vance delivers remarks during an event at Gold Coast Studios on June 17, 2026 in Bethpage, New York. Vance's visit comes after the Justice Department filed a lawsuit this week against New York state officials over alleged Medicaid fraud related to the state’s $10 billion home-care program. Spencer Platt/Pool via REUTERS
:{Michael Signorile, The Signorile Report June 23, 2026
When JD Vance hasn’t been failing in peace talks to end the Iran war, he’s been spending his time going on talk shows to promote his book, “Communion,” all about his conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism.
How he has time to write a book as vice president—and how appropriate that is, considering vice presidents have rarely done so—is another story. This is a book that, like all aspiring presidential candidates, is about setting Vance up to win the highest office in the land, a pretty scary prospect.
On the book itself, I leave it to the scholar Anthea Butler, a professor of religious studies and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania, who teaches about religion and theology and notes, “Vance’s new book ranks among the worst things I’ve read.”
As has been reported, there’s a United Methodist Church on the cover of this book about converting to Catholicism, and that choice of illustration serves as a metaphor for the ignorance and inauthenticity found within…
Vance appears to be bringing some of his evangelical upbringing and theology to his Catholic faith…That’s why, despite his conversion to Catholicism, Vance still comes across like an evangelical. His willingness to argue Catholic theology, despite his limited knowledge, speaks to his Protestant upbringing..
What I’m going to address more specifically is Vance’s discussion about the book with Ross Douthat, the right-wing New York Times opinion columnist. Douthat, like Vance, converted to Catholicism from Protestantism and has similarly criticized the pope and Vatican teaching. So these are two odd peas in a precarious pod.
Douthat, to his credit, does sometimes ask Vance about contradictions in his writing and thinking when it comes to his conversion to Catholicism. But he too easily lets Vance off the hook when the vice president offers a completely unacceptable answer.
A duplicity on ‘culture wars’
Vance claims in the book, and to Douthat in the interview, for example, that the seeds of his conversion to Catholicism began as he saw conservative Christians focused on the Terri Schiavo case, the woman who, in 1990, was in a vegetative state after cardiac arrest and whose parents battled her husband against taking his wife off of a feeding tube. It was a non-stop media story and a battle between Christian nationalists (including evangelicals and conservative Catholics) and the rest of us.
Vance said this overblown “culture war” issue, like others that are often used by religious fundamentalists to gin up the base and raise money, didn’t speak to him and his life experience as a young man who enlisted in the Marines straight out of high school and was a combat correspondent, a military journalist:
I was about to leave for Iraq. My entire family was terrified that something bad was going to happen to me. My mom was struggling with the worst throes of her addiction problem. My grandmother had just died.
Our economic situation in our family had been bad for a long time. Now it seemed to somehow get worse. And I’m sending money back home to my family and thinking to myself: This Christianity has nothing to say about the struggles in my life.
Vance goes on to say that “it’s important for Christian churches to recognize that there are a lot of kids—whether they’re at college or they’re in the workforce—they’re living the normal struggles of life,” adding that they’re “dealing with heartbreak, they’re dealing with addiction in their family, maybe they’re struggling to find a job.”
Where to begin with this?
First off, why didn’t Douthat ask him why, then, do he and Trump and the religious conservatives of the MAGA base focus obsessively on transgender issues, for example, another “culture war” issue that is completely divorced from the experience of most Americans—including young men struggling with addiction or going into the military—who really couldn’t give a damn about the issue that gins up the religious right base and raised funds for it?
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AN 12 25
On my Sirius XM program, I discussed the almost comical hearing this month in which a top FBI official, flanked by dog-killing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, claimed antifa — short for anti-fascist — was the “number one terrorist” threat in the United States. Yet he couldn’t answer repeated questions from Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) about where the group’s headquarters are, or how many people are actually in the group:
Michael Glasheen, operations director of the FBI’s National Security Branch, said antifa was the agency’s “primary concern” and “the most immediate violent threat that we’re facing.”Glasheen did not answer a question from the top Democrat at the hearing, U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson, about the group’s location. When asked about the number of members, Glasheen said it was “very fluid” and that “investigations are active.”
“Sir, you wouldn’t come to this committee to say something that you can’t prove,” Thompson said to Glasheen. “I know you wouldn’t do that. But you did.”
Later, Glasheen was asked if the Proud Boys were still on the FBI’s list of domestic extremist organizations — after they were added in 2018, under Trump’s first term — but he didn’t answer, just saying, “We’re in the process right now of changing our categories for domestic terrorism.”
After I played the clips of the exchanges and commented on the ludicrousness of this — and the dangers — Steven from Los Angeles, clearly a MAGA supporter, called the program to disagree with me, claiming antifa is a terror threat he has witnessed firsthand.
Antifa of course doesn’t exist as any organized nationwide group. Some people engaging in protest call themselves ant-fascist, and often take on the name antifa — even carrying banners and other identifiers — but they mostly act independently of others who might use the term to to identify themselves.
The majority of those who call themselves antifa are opposed to violence, per the Department of Homeland Security under the Biden administration. Even if some people have called themselves antifa and have engaged in or inspired violent actions in one place or another during protests (which has happened), that doesn’t mean there’s an organized group engaged in actual organized terror plots.
:{But Steven didn’t get that,
Steven:Okay, so I, um, I disagree with you, uh, living on the West Coast. Whether it’s antifa, whether you want to call it, whatever organization it is. But, I mean, they’ve ruined the streets of Los Angeles. San Francisco is a dump. Um, uh, Oregon is a dump. Uh, Seattle, Washington.MS:Who who did this? Who ruined the streets? What did they do?
Steven: It was. Well, whatever organization you want to call it. Uh, the people that were protesting on the streets.
MS:You said antifa.
Steven: Well, that's who they're supposed to be, right?
After I pressed him on what they’re doing he said that in Portland and other places, “These people are on the streets every day. They're yelling at cars. The traffic is stopped.”
Yelling at cars? Yes, that’s what he said.
MS: Okay, Steven, that's not terrorism.Steven: What is that? Terrorism. The stores are all closed.
MS: No, Stephen, that's not terrorism. You could tell me about vandalism. You could tell me about protests. You could even tell me about rioting, if you want, which we haven't seen.
But a terrorist and a terrorist organization are highly coordinated groups of people with plots and plans to take down the government or send a message to a group of people, and they engage in mass violence, bombings, mass shootings, kidnappings.
Why is our government spending all this money on this? You're telling me about what? Graffiti in Los Angeles?
He went on about how yelling at protests and throwing things — not explaining more — was terrorism.
But then when I brought up actual terrorism — January 6, police officers bludgeoned, the Proud Boys making threats, and the Oath Keepers, per law enforcement, stockpiling weapons at a hotel in Virginia, with a plan to bring them up the Potomac to take the Capitol — he had a very different answer.
Steven: You know what? I don't think we'll ever know the truth of that whole situation.
Oh yeah, it got a little hot from there before I ended the call! Listen in and let me know your thoughts!
*Michelangelo Signorile writes The Signorile Report, a free and reader-supported Substack. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism.
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an 5 25
A really bizarre aspect of the second Trump administration and its extreme actions is its choice of the face of its immigration policies—and now other policies too.
That face is Stephen Miller’s, a man who offers loud, hateful bromides to the media, all of which you expect to end with, “Heil Hitler!” This guy is pure evil, salivating over “deporting” brown-skinned 4-year-old American citizens with stage-four cancer.
And now they’re putting him out front on tariffs too, and government funding. It makes no sense—but I’m here for it!
This morning he turned up for a White House press briefing, a wannabe Joseph Goebbels, commanding, “"Children will be taught to love America. Children will be taught to be patriots. Children will be taught civic values.”
Here we have Trump collapsing in the polls, with the worst approval numbers of any president in history in his first 100 days. And as I wrote, it’s a perfect opportunity for Democrats to kick him while he’s down. For the GOP, it’s a potential political wipeout in the making, as Americans are waking up to what is happening.
A poll conducted by the widely respected Public Religion Research Institute found that a majority of Americans now believe Trump is a “dangerous dictator.”
Seriously. When asked if they agree Trump is "a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy," 52% said yes.
But even more startling,17% of Republicans agree with it.
That means a bunch of people who voted for Trump now think he’s a dangerous dictator who should be stopped, which, even if only partially accurate, is a five-alarm fire for Republicans in Congress going into the mid-terms.
Most of those who backed Trump say it was because of the economy and immigration, which were Trump’s strengths. But the tariffs and the brutal deportations of people who committed no crimes, sent to a torture prison overseas or elsewhere, have sent Trump’s numbers into a nosedive.
Faced with the polling plummeting on those issues and the majority believing Trump is a dictator, you’d think they’d turn to the many smiling, robotic blonde women they have as officials—though, admittedly, Pam Bondi is pretty scary. But they’re putting the grating and horror-movie-ready Miller—a guy who looks like a defendant at the Nuremberg trials—out to defend a president now believed to be a dictator by most Americans.
And, at least on immigration, when it’s not Miller it’s the really creepy-looking Tom Homan, the so-called border czar, who talks like he has marbles in his mouth and looks like he gives off the scent of three-day-old clothes and cheap bourbon.
Sure, Trump’s economic adviser Peter Navarro and RFK Jr. are no day at the beach, off the rails and batty as all hell in their beliefs, as are many others in the administration. But you literally cannot understand what Tom Homan is saying half of the time as he gobbles up his own words and slurs on national television.
And the half you do understand is his saying that he and Trump will defy judges and court orders and round up whoever they decide is a “terrorist”—which appears to be every undocumented immigrant and even some American citizens—based on absolutely no solid proof and with no due process.
Between Homan and Miller, the Trump administration is only reinforcing that on immigration they are engaging in violent, lawless actions against people, clearly intending to traumatize the targets and terrorize everyone.
It shows how much power Miller has amassed—because you know there are those in the administration who must loathe him—and how out of touch Trump is to make them the face of policies he’s cratering on. But hey, bring it on.
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Michael Signorile, The Signorile Report
December 13, 2024
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an 12 24
Trump came out full force after the election, naming most of his Cabinet—including a bunch of sexual assaulters (Hegseth, Gaetz), crackpots (RFK), QAnon promoters (Kash Patel), and Putin apologists (Tulsi Gabbard)—and Democrats have mostly watched some of it implode.
Gaetz collapsed, and others are struggling. And sure, many Democrats have been loudly speaking out against them.
But we keep hearing, at least in the media, that the strategy among Democrats and the larger progressive base is not “resistance,” as in 2016, but something more strategic.
I get that. People are not in a mode to take to the streets and protest en masse—though that is happening in some places—and instead want to learn from the successes (and mistakes) of the last four-year term of Trump.
So what is the strategy?
Well, as I said, we’ve certainly seen many Democrats speaking out forcefully against Trump’s nominees. And there was outrage in regard to his first interview, with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press, in which he called for jailing the January 6th Committee and ending birthright citizenship.
At the same time, literally in the same weekend, influential South Carolina Democratic House member James Clyburn, who served in the Democratic leadership for years until 2023, called on Biden to pardon Trump if he’s going to also engage in preemptive pardons of Trump targets. And we see other Democrats making the mistake of 2016 that some made in thinking they can work with Trump.
The Washington Post published an editorial this week headlined, “Trump tries a softer tone—and a hard one too.” The editorial board notes that Trump, in his first interview since being elected, on “Meet the Press” with Kristen Welker, seemed “conciliatory” on some things—like trying to “find a way” to stop Dreamers, those in the DACA program, from being deported, and claiming he wanted to keep medication abortion legal—while he also seemed harsh on other issues. Their takeaway at the end: “In short, as Mr. Trump approaches his second term, prepare for the worst—but do not assume it at every turn.”
I would say, keep the first part of that sentence and forget the last. We’ve heard Trump be conciliatory before—including on abortion and the Dreamers. In many ways the “Meet the Press” interview was like his first interview after the 2016 election, when he spoke with “60 Minutes.”
“We have to do something about the Dreamers because these are people that have been brought here at a very young age,” Trump said on Sunday to Welker. “And many of these are middle-aged people now. They don’t even speak the language of their country.”
Trump in fact said the same thing in 2016, that he wanted to do something about Dreamers—those young people who came to this country as children, often with parents, and grew up as every other American. Even into 2017 he was saying he wanted to protect the Dreamers.
“As president, my highest duty is to defend the American people and the Constitution of the United States of America,” he said in September 2017. “At the same time, I do not favor punishing children, most of whom are now adults, for the actions of their parents. But we must also recognize that we are a nation of opportunity because we are a nation of laws.”
But instead, Trump actually tried to kill the DACA program. Trump was led on by those neo-Nazi advisers, like Stephen Miller, and hardline right-wingers in Congress. There not only wasn’t a deal in Congress as Democrats pushed for one, but Trump took it out on the Dreamers when he claimed the Democrats stymied on other things, tweeting out, ‘NO DACA DEAL!”
Trump was stopped by the Supreme Court from killing DACA but still tried to kill the program again after that.
And we all know what Trump did on abortion, putting radicals on the Supreme Court and overturning Roe, even as he said early on he was not looking to do that.
So anyone who thinks that his “conciliatory gestures” now are openings is a bit delusional. And that seems to be the case with the Democrats who will work with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy on the Department of Government Efficiency they created. Reps. Jared Moskowitz and Ro Khanna and Senators Bernie Sanders and Chris said they’re open to or are going to work with the two billionaires as they believe spending can be cut (and obviously these Democrats support cuts to places like, say, the military, rather than social programs).
But these billionaires and the Trump administration are only looking to cut regulations so they can make more money for themselves, while cutting programs for other Americans. And as I’ve written, Republicans are already focusing on Social Security cuts.
It’s very naive of any Democrat to think anything good will come out of this. And beyond that, there should be no working with this fascistic administration. As for Congressman Clyburn’s suggestion that Joe Biden pardon Trump to “clean the slate”—while Trump is threatening to jail the January 6th Committee—with all due respect, he needs to just shut up, full stop. That is not the place most Democrats—including Biden—are right now.
A lot of people have short memories, and I suspect some of this is some Democrats trying to position themselves as having tried to reach out, so they can say that after Trump bites them. We’ll know more as Trump’s nominees have their confirmation hearings, where Democrats in the Senate will have an opportunity to put on a show and expose their and Trump’s extremism.
Whatever the case, Democrats haven’t really seemed to have settled on a cohesive strategy. But I think once Trump is in office and doing insane things, that will change. The reality of his fascistic impulses—and the Project 2025 agenda—will come into view, and nobody will be able to pretend otherwise.
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