“The pope would rather talk about the fact that it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon," Donald Trump said last week. "I don’t think that’s very good. I think he’s endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people. But I guess if it’s up to the pope, he thinks it’s just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” A month before, in the course of a social media rant, Trump called Pope Leo "WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy."
There's a lot that is puzzling about these remarks. "WEAK on crime" is the sort of thing Trump says about a mayor he dislikes. "Terrible for foreign policy" sounds like a mechanical attack on a congressional committee chair. One thing we can be sure of: Leo has never said it's okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
In April, Trump posted a picture of himself enrobed and healing someone, or maybe raising the dead. People seemed to think he was depicting himself as Christ, but he looked more like a pope, really.
And then again, down in Florida, "Protestant" "pastors" are bowing before a golden statue of Trump at Mar-a-Lago, continuing down the road of a providential interpretation of the man, obviously endorsed by Himself. Former Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who seems to have the job of ambassador to the Holy See as well as Secretary of State and National Security advisor, was detailed (perhaps on his own initiative, or perhaps by JD Vance) to try to placate the pope. I can't imagine what he could say, besides "Yeah, I wish he'd stop saying that shit." It might be hard to cuss in the pope's presence, though, so maybe Rubio just tried to smile, as Leo smiled back with clenched teeth.
This has gotten really intense and weird, religiously speaking, and one might try to speculate as to why. I've got a notion: Trump's dumbfounding attacks on the pope and his astounding yet somehow amusing blasphemies are aimed largely at the Catholics in his administration. These include the two men most often described as his possible immediate successors: Vance and Rubio. And the intellectual atmosphere around Trump, his movement's ideology insofar as it has one, is provided by the "postliberal" Catholicism of figures such as Patrick Deneen and Adrian Vermeule.
Even the very idea that Trump is going to have successors, or that his own followers are clutching ideologies that he doesn’t control or even particularly understand, might rankle the man. In his heart, he might want to take all these people down a peg. And in his heart, he might harbor anti-Catholic sentiments.
Trump's childhood pastor was the "power of positive thinking" guy Norman Vincent Peale, one of the most famous people in America in the 1950s and a pastor in the "Reformed Church of America." In the 1960 election, conducted when Trump was 13 and 14, Peale opposed John F. Kennedy's election on the grounds that Kennedy's Catholicism made him subject to split loyalties. Would he follow the US Constitution, Peale asked, or the Pope's instructions? This outraged many Catholics and it was among the most contentious electoral issues that year. Kennedy gave a speech in Houston directly and skillfully responding to Peale, saying his religious views were private and he would always uphold his oath of office. Without that speech, he likely would’ve lost to Nixon.
The religious views of JD Vance, however, are anything but private, and Trump, who seems to have no particular beliefs or commitments on religious matters, might in his heart find Vance's, about which he just published a book, ludicrous and annoying. He might think that Vance is loyal to things that are not Trump. He might want to test that again tonight on social media, even as Rubio kneels by his bed to say a prayer designed to heal the rift. He might be trying to get them and Karoline Leavitt, RFK Jr., Linda McMahon, Erika Kirk, even Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito to choose, once and for all: president or pope?
Well, Lord knows how RFK thinks about his Kennedy Catholicism, but one complicating factor is that Catholicism in the style of Vance and Deneen is often extremely critical of the Vatican. Perhaps they have some sympathy with conservative Catholic splinter groups such as the Society of Saint Pius X, which urges the church to return to the Latin mass and to put aside its various "progressive" stances, including some of its anti-war and anti-anti-immigration positions. Vance might be more spiritually attuned to the belief system of Mel Gibson than that of Leo.
Nevertheless, he's unlikely to launch on the Catholic Church in the way Trump seems more and more routinely to do. I think in his heart Vance probably feels considerable division and consternation. I think he probably had misgivings about the Iran war that aren’t completely different than Leo's. He may find that golden statue tasteless. I think he probably feels a little shelved and offended by Trump at the moment.
My speculation is that shelving and offending JD Vance is one of Trump's basic goals right now.
—Follow Crispin Sartwell on X: @CrispinSartwell