JD Vance poses with TV host who called for violence against LGBTQ people

Steve Deace, the host of an eponymous show on the rightwing platform Blaze Media, has built a brand around his brash and provocative personality. Deace has entertained his 52,000 YouTube viewers and 274,000 X followers by calling for violence against drag queens and LGBTQ people and ranting that the Democratic party is controlled by Satan. Those comments fit right in with those of the some of the guests his show hosts, who regularly dabble in antisemitism and argue that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

But just this week, Deace’s track record of extremist rhetoric and guests did not stop Vice President JD Vance from posing for a photo with him. The circumstances of the picture were unclear; Deace posted it on X with the comment, “Had to make a quick stop by the West Wing this morning.”

The extremism watchdog group Right Wing Watch has helpfully rounded up some of Deace’s most colorful and violent statements from his last decade-plus of broadcasting. In February, he announced his intention to “punch Pride Month right in the balls. Hard.” In 2023, he called for the execution of drag queens, saying “pedo-groomers should be executed, by the way. After a fair trial, of course.” In 2022, he called the Democratic Party “a demonic construct, a satanically-influenced entity, and a death cult” and asserted that Democrats were “voting for dudes teabagging their hairy sacks on children at public libraries and public schools.” In 2020, he said, “I want to see antifa members hanging from gallows in Trump ties. That’s what I would like to see.”

Deace’s regular guests include the TheoBros, members of a network of mostly millennial, ultra-conservative men, many of whom proudly call themselves Christian nationalists. Among the tenets of their tributary of Reformed Protestant Christianity is the idea that the United States should be subject to biblical law. Joel Webbon, a Texas TheoBro pastor who believes the 19th amendment should be repealed and regularly posts about his conviction that Judaism is evil, has appeared on Deace’s show several times. In a March episode, Webbon explained that his antisemitic statements were justified because the Bible called for “hating the enemies of God.” He added, “I do not hate Jews, I wish them a very pleasant conversion to Christianity.” In an August 2024 episode, Webbon told Deace that he was an abortion “abolitionist,” which is to say that abortion should be penalized as murder.

Another regular guest is Doug Wilson, a Moscow, Idaho, pastor and the patriarch of the TheoBro movement. In the past, Wilson has argued that the master-slave dynamic was “a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence” and called male dominance over women “an erotic necessity.” On a Deace episode last July, Wilson mourned the loss of unapologetically Christian nations, including the United States. In January, Wilson told Deace he believed that senators questioning US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth were putting him in the “longhouse,” a reference to a rightwing internet meme about how modern social norms emasculate men. “The only thing worse than the patriarchy will be the matriarchy, I can promise you that!” quipped Deace. Wilson giggled appreciatively. (Hegseth, too, has strong ties to the TheoBros world.)

The photo with Deace isn’t the first time Vance has dipped a toe into the world of the TheoBros. As I wrote last year:

Bucks County Beacon reporter Jennifer Cohn revealed venture capitalist Chris Buskirk was listed as the editor and publisher of TheoBro online magazine American Reformer. (The publication’s cofounder, Nate Fischer, later clarified to Mother Jones that Buskirk’s listing in the filing had been a clerical error, and that he was actually a board member of American Reformer.) In 2022, Buskirk co-founded the Rockbridge Network, a collection of powerful Trump donors including Catholic judicial kingmaker Leonard Leo and Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel. Another co-founder of the Rockbridge Network? None other than JD Vance.

Cohn also surfaced this photo of Vance posing with a bunch of TheoBros in 2023.

Vance isn’t the only politician hobnobbing with Deace. Last month, Deace devoted an entire episode of his show to an interview with TheoBro and Republican Oklahoma State Senator Dusty Deevers, who has said he believes America should be a Christian nation and wants to end no-fault divorce.

Deevers told Deace that he hoped more Christians would soon be in public office, explaining that politicians “can actually be strong convictional Christians,” Deevers went on, who “lead according to the scriptures, and not be in violation of God’s word, and actually stand before him on Judgment Day and [have] him still say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’”