JD Vance Ignores Pope Leo's Plea for Politicians to Stop Being Ass*holes Online

War crimes, gas chamber “jokes” and online outrage collide with Pope Leo XIV’s plea: log off and love harder.

In the Trump-era swirl of online rage, few figures embrace the chaos quite like JD Vance.

The Republican vice president has turned social media into his personal battleground — cheering on extrajudicial violence one day and downplaying Holocaust “jokes” the next.

Just weeks ago, Vance openly defended a deadly U.S. airstrike on a Venezuelan boat suspected of drug smuggling, bragging that “killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.”

When critics (including legal experts) pointed out the strike likely violated international law, Vance snarled that he “doesn’t give a sh*t” if they call it a war crime.

These are not anonymous internet trolls talking — this is the sitting vice president of the United States, gleefully dismissing the laws of war in 280 characters or less.

Vance’s online brazenness doesn’t stop at endorsing violence.

When a trove of Young Republican group chat messages leaked — replete with racist language, jokes about rape, and flippant commentary on gas chambers — the public across the aisle was aghast.

Yet Vance’s reaction was to mock the outrage as “pearl clutching.” He pointed to offensive commentary from a Virginia Democrat to argue the offensive chat was no big deal, insisting “this is far worse than anything said in a college group chat… I refuse to join the pearl clutching.”

In Vance’s view, “a very offensive, stupid joke” by “a bunch of young people” shouldn’t ruin anyone’s life.

He even advised his own kids not about morality but about optics: don’t post things online because “some scumbag is going to leak it.”

In short, Vance has made it clear he’ll excuse hateful antics as youthful shenanigans — the real crime, in his mind, is calling them out.

Now, contrast this with Pope Leo XIV’s approach to the digital age. Leo — the American-born pontiff — has been practically begging people to step back from the brink of online vitriol.

Our generation won’t find meaning in the infinite scroll — it only leaves us with tired minds and empty hearts, the pope warns in a recent message.

Instead of rage-posting, Leo urges young people to put down the phone, look up, and become the peacemakers God calls you to be.”

He’s not naïve about the internet’s temptations: this summer Leo bluntly told Catholic influencers to stop weaponizing faith in online fights and start “spreading compassion online.”

Leo asked for a radical shift in online culture — from division and outrage to dialogue and compassion. In other words, the internet shouldn’t be a battlefield.

Catholic convert JD Vance didn’t get the memo.

It’s not the first time Pope Leo and J.D. Vance have sparred in the public square.

As has been clear from their first awkward encounter after Leo’s May election, these two don’t jibe.

Back in February — before he was pope — then-Cardinal Robert Prevost took to social media to rebuke Vance’s worldview. “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others,” Leo tweeted pointedly after Vance claimed Christians should prioritize love of family and fellow citizens above strangers.

That theological smackdown foreshadowed the broader clash we see now.

Vance’s online persona is all about us-vs-them, winning the Twitter war-of-the-day at any cost.

Pope Leo, by contrast, beckons everyone — left, right, whatever — to log off and live out something nobler.

As Leo frames it, friendship with Christ should be evident in how you treat others — online and off, with faith never twisted into a weapon.

The divergence could not be starker. JD Vance is treating the internet like a cage fight, where owning the libs (or laughing off genocide jokes) is all just part of the show.

Pope Leo XIV is pleading for a ceasefire in this digital civil war.

He’s effectively telling us that being a jerk online is still being a jerk — and that our clicks and posts should build communion rather than tear others down.

In an age when outrage equals influence, Leo dares to say the opposite: step back, seek peace, maybe even hit the power button,

It’s hard to imagine two public figures more diametrically opposed in how they think we should behave on the internet. One stokes the fire; the other says log off and love harder.

Only one of those paths, Pope Leo would argue, leads to anything resembling peace.

We’re choosing that path — the pathway of peace. That’s exactly what we’re building here at Letters from Leo, a new newsletter that’s already surpassed 10,000 subscribers in under four months. I hope you’ll join us for the journey.

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