Why this battle, and why now?
It’s a fatal weakness among American pundits: Every one of us is guilty at one point or another of overthinking the actions of Donald Trump, ascribing “4-D chess” motives to his crazy verbal gyrations. And I’m no different. Because here I am pondering my own Grand Master technique, and wondering if Trump is trying to distract America’s attention from the stalemate of the Iran war by getting into a pointless fight with the pope. Quoth Trump on Sunday night:
Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy. He talks about “fear” of the Trump Administration, but doesn’t mention the FEAR that the Catholic Church, and all other Christian Organizations, had during COVID when they were arresting priests, ministers, and everybody else, for holding Church Services, even when going outside, and being ten and even twenty feet apart. I like his brother Louis much better than I like him, because Louis is all MAGA. He gets it, and Leo doesn’t! I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s terrible that America attacked Venezuela, a Country that was sending massive amounts of Drugs into the United States and, even worse, emptying their prisons, including murderers, drug dealers, and killers, into our Country. And I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History. Leo should be thankful because, as everyone knows, he was a shocking surprise. He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican. Unfortunately, Leo’s Weak on Crime, Weak on Nuclear Weapons, does not sit well with me, nor does the fact that he meets with Obama Sympathizers like David Axelrod, a LOSER from the Left, who is one of those who wanted churchgoers and clerics to be arrested. Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician. It’s hurting him very badly and, more importantly, it’s hurting the Catholic Church! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Of the many observations that could be made about this outburst, I start with the most relevant one: The president’s inability to edit himself is really hurting his comedy. Truth Social was a mistake; the old “240-character limit” Trump would never have buried the line about the pope’s MAGA brother Lou being preferable to the Supreme Pontiff. And Trump, to give him his due, does score some solid points: I too confess my dismay to learn that Pope Leo is “Weak on Nuclear Weapons,” after having been assured by most serious theologians that he was secretly a Curtis LeMay type.
Later, when asked on the tarmac of Air Force One whether he had truly intended to declare a MAGA fatwa on the Pope, Trump doubled down:
I don’t think he’s doing a very good job. He likes crime, I guess. [. . .] So we don’t like it, we don’t like a pope that’s gonna say that it’s okay to have a nuclear weapon. We don’t want a pope that says crime is okay in our cities. I don’t like it, I’m not a big fan of Pope Leo. He’s a very liberal person, and he’s a man that doesn’t believe in stopping crime. He’s a man who thinks that we should be going with a country that wants a nuclear weapon so they can blow up the world. I’m not a fan of Pope Leo.
The president then concluded the day’s events by tweeting out an AI-drawn picture of himself standing in the place of Jesus Christ, healing America with holy power. Trump is a known fan of symbolism, and subtlety has never been his strong suit. Wonder what message he was trying to send here?
Trump finally deleted the blasphemous image on Monday afternoon after fielding criticism from all corners of American Christendom (except presumably Paula White), but the unexpected and world-historically hilarious question has now suddenly arisen: What happens when the president of the United States decides to go to rhetorical war with the pope? To be fair, history records many far worse examples of conflict with the papacy — but it certainly seems like a bold public relations fight to pick right now, as Trump is embroiled in several other global messes. Why this battle, and why now?
I think the answer is less complicated than it seems. Yes, there are the immediate political factors: The Iran war is at a politically toxic standstill and Trump is desperate to change the subject; Trump also desperately wants the first American pope to lend his international prestige to the U.S. (and to him as well) for the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration, yet the Vatican has pointedly demurred. Add to that the inevitable theologically based disagreements about immigration and the Iran war.
But Trump doesn’t think in terms of theology. The sacred has no meaning to him, only the semiotics of authority. (This is why he was completely oblivious to the howling blasphemy of casting himself as Jesus Christ — that just seems like normal, healthy self-confidence to him.) I think he merely regards Pope Leo as another earthly rival to his power, and treats him as such — and in Trump’s cosmology, there can be only one.