Pretentious Pretender v. Pontiff

 First of all, the president of the United States had some horrible things to say about the head of the Catholic Church. This is particularly disheartening, since some church leaders in this country ignore Trump's irreligiosity on a regular basis.

“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 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.

He is very weak on crime and other things. He is catering to the Radical Left, and that is not what the Catholic Church should be about. He wants to talk about peace and tell the United States how to handle Foreign Policy, but he is wrong on Iran, wrong on nuclear weapons, wrong on Venezuela, and wrong to interfere in politics. He should be focusing on being Pope, not acting like a politician. Leo should get his act together as Pope. Focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.

I like his brother Louis much better than I like him, because Louis is all MAGA. He gets it, and Leo doesn’t. Leo 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, although I'm presenting this as a quote, we can't be sure exactly what he said, because news sources no longer bother to print the exact text of what he said or posted. This summary had to be stitched together from several different sources.

I need to point out a few things, starting with the soft-on-crime line. Trump and MAGA have a habit of putting things out there in the ether and offering nothing to support them other than the fact that Trump made the accusation. It can, however, be supported that Trump is soft on crime.

Since returning to office, he has mass-pardoned roughly 1,500 January 6 defendants, including people convicted of assaulting police officers and extremist-group figures; pardoned Ross Ulbricht; pushed DOJ to drop the corruption case against Eric Adams, with a judge saying the rationale “smacks of a bargain”; paused enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; and handed out mercy to a parade of fraudsters, bribery defendants, tax cheats, crypto offenders, and even a convicted former Honduran president tied to cocaine trafficking. Trump is not tough on crime. He is selective on crime. He is plenty forgiving when the criminal is useful, loyal, rich, famous, or politically convenient.

Next, what’s this: “I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President…”?

That line only makes sense if you assume the Pope’s job includes being agreeable to a specific political leader, in this case the U.S. president. It doesn’t.

The core contradiction:

The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church, a global institution with over a billion members.

The President is the head of one country, even if it’s the United States.

Expecting the Pope to tailor his views to avoid criticizing a U.S. president flips that hierarchy upside down.

It basically says:

The Pope’s role is subordinate to American politics.

This part is a little bit off topic, but you went there, so I’m going to have to as well...

You did not win in a landslide. You won by roughly 1.47 percentage points (and we know you cheated, but that’s the subject for a different article). 2 million votes out of 150 million is only impressive if you ignore how many votes were cast and then pretend that 2 million is an outrageous number.

Then comes the most ridiculous part of all: Trump’s insistence that Leo was chosen because he was American and because the Church thought that would be the best way to deal with Trump. And then the kicker: “If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.” If a bullfrog had wings, he wouldn’t keep bumping his ass on the ground. Why is everything always about him? The papal conclave was not about Donald Trump. If it had been, they would have asked him to take part. Leo is pope because the cardinals elected him, not because Trump imagines himself the center of both Washington and Rome.

And why, on that same day, did Trump cap off this whole spectacle of stupidity by posting an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus healing the sick, then later claiming he thought it was a picture of himself as a doctor “because he has healed a lot of people”? Wait, what? Since when do doctors dress in tunics and robes and glow like stained-glass windows? No one with a functioning brain looks at that image and thinks “medical professional.” It was an obvious Jesus-style vanity post, followed by an obvious lie once people started reacting to it.

So in summary, Trump attacked the Pontiff for speaking morally about war and peace, then called him soft on crime while personally extending mercy to rioters, fraudsters, bribery defendants, and traffickers, bragged about a “landslide” that was not, and then tried to pass off a Jesus-style vanity image as a medical portrait. Strip away the noise, and what remains is a man who cannot stand criticism from any authority he cannot dominate, not the press, not the courts, not even the head of the Catholic Church.

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