"Oooooh, He Shouldn't Have Said That!"

The brouhaha over Trump's Truth Social post criticizing Pope Leo seems to be settling into a pattern that's established itself since Trump entered presidential politics: Trump says something blunt and on the face of it wildly out of line. Several days of hysteria follow, until other voices provide a reluctant acknowledgement that however clumsily he may have expressed it, Trump has a point. For instance. in July 2019, he told far-left members of congress in "the squad" to "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came," which led the House of Representatives to formally censure him for "racist comments".

Nevertheless, this led to an overall reassessment of their role, and two of them, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, lost their seats in the 2024 primary cycle. In January 2018, he trolled North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, saying his own "Nuclear Button" was "much bigger & more powerful" and that it actually "works!". Despite initial rage from North Korea, the two appear to have developed a good interpersonal relationship at a summit that June. In 2021, The New York Times published The Complete List of Trump's Twitter Insults (2015-2021), apparently on the assumption that having left office and now banned by Twitter, Trump woold issue no more of them.

Instead, as we've seen over just the past couple of weeks, Trump the international troll is back as strong as ever, and trolling continues to be an important part of his toolkit. And true to the pattern, calmer voices are predictably saying, "I wish he hadn't put it just that way, but he does have a point. . ." A good example is the Prayerful Posse podcast embedded above that's hosted by Raymond Arroyo, a Catholic commentator and Fox contributor and host of the EWTN news program The World Over. At 4:36, he says,

I want to frame this for the audience, because the media is depicting this as a war of words between the president and the pope. But there's another player here that has been ignored. The inciting incident was really CBS's 60 Minutes, which Trump was watching on April 12th. Norah O'Donnell, the correspondent there, featured three influential cardinals, that's how they were billed, Cupich, Tobin, and McElroy, all of whom were appointed by Pope Francis, and clearly men of the political left.

These three cardinals were paired with comments from the pope to create a kind of 15-minute critique of Trump policies. As I've said elsewhere, you've heard of rope-a-doping? Well, O'Donnell was pope-a-doping Trump, and it worked. They were trying to get Trump to overreact, and he did. But I want you to listen to a bit of what these cardinals said. . .

He cuts to Cardinal Tobin saying that ICE agents "hide their identities to terrify people". Arroyo then turns to guest Robert Royal:

ARROYO: Bob, Tobin is not the USCCB president, neither are the other cardinals who were featured in this piece, Cupich and McElroy, but they seem to have taken it upon themselves to represent the US Church. Is this appropriate?

ROYAL: Well, it's either that, or CBS wanted to use them as kind of stalking horses in their attack on the president. And you're right to say, I mean, the three of them are billed as so-called influential, but none of then hold offices in the US Bishops' Conference and have never been elected to it. They're kind of outliers. I mean, with all due respect to them, they're sort of like the Squad is in our secular politics, they're a very definite and pretty left-wing group of just three. . .

ARROYO: Father [Gerald Murray], a number of bishops I spoke to were not happy that these three cardinals were speaking for all of them, because as Bob said, they weren't elected to anything, and they felt, and I spoke to about five different bishops, they felt that this was not reflective of the body of bishops or where they are at this moment.

MURRAY: Yes. Well, CBS isn't, you know, they're the ones that picked these men to be part of their panel, how that came about, you know, we don't know, but they picked three cardinals who are on the political left, obviouslly. . .

When Fr Murray says, "how that came about, you know, we don't know", this is a significant we-don't-know -- what he doesn't mention is Pope Leo's audience with David Axelrod just the Thursday before the 60 Minutes segment. On Tuesday, I linked to a piece by Monica Showalter, Hand of Axelrod? 60 Minutes gives a platform for the Catholic Church's most leftist cardinals that ties the cardinals' appearance directly to the Axelrod audience. Arroyo and his panelists, we must assume, are too circumspect to address this issue directly -- but that's not Donald Trump.

In his Sunday night post on Truth Social, made at 6:00 PM before the 60 Minutes broadcast, although he was almost certainly aware of what its content would be, Trump raised an intriguing question:

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.

We can read this in two ways. One way, that a great many people will do, is to see this as just another narcissistic blurt from an unbalanced mind who wants to believe he's the center of everything, including the last papal conclave. Another way, which I lean toward, is that unbalanced narcissists don't escape multiple state and federal indictments and go on to win reelection to the US presidency. There isn't just method, but exceptional stability, insight, and strength of character, to this madness, like the guy or not. (He's also lucky.) I can't think of too many similar historical figures, but Winston Churchill and Andrew Jackson come to mind for me lately.

But if this is the case, he knows a hawk from a handsaw, and as a US president, we must assume he has access to highly privileged intelligence, even that surrounding a papal conclave. According to AI, "Every person involved -- including the cardinal electors and all support staff (such as doctors, cooks, drivers, and cleaning personnel) -- must take a formal oath to maintain 'absolute and perpetual secrecy' regarding everything that concerns the election process."

Somehow, something reached his ear from the conclave, and one thing he's doing here, if my read is correct, is signaling to Leo and others in the Vatican that he's got this information. And we're hearing disconcerting speculation now from other quarters, for instance:

The Vatican announced this week that Pope Leo XIV will convene his second extraordinary consistory of cardinals on June 26-27, but are these meetings being organized with genuine openness, or are they structured to steer toward a predetermined outcome?

. . . Traditionally, they follow a structured format centered on a single theme. Typically, they open with a substantive presentation by a distinguished theologian or canonist, providing the basis for an extensive general debate among the cardinals, with the pope presiding. Tailored to the purpose of a consistory, this classical format let the pope hear the cardinals—and the cardinals hear one another—directly and unfiltered.

. . . What is not widely known is that Pope Leo XIV’s first extraordinary consistory was initially planned to follow the classical format. But it was later reconfigured under somewhat mysterious circumstances, with no official explanation as to why the format changed, who was involved in the decision, or who ultimately organized the meeting.

. . . The timeline suggests that the shift occurred sometime between December 19 and January 5—over the Christmas holidays. Vatican sources point to the possibility, or even likelihood, that one or more Cardinals met with Pope Leo XIV during that period, proposing a format more in line with the “synodal Church” envisioned by Pope Francis.

. . . Given the nature of an extraordinary consistory as articulated in the Code of Canon Law, its format ought to enable the Pope to listen to the Cardinals unfiltered.

Whether that principle will, in fact, be borne out in practice remains to be seen.

Elsewhere,

Pope Leo XIV's recent visit to the Mosque of Algiers--where he removed his shoes, stood in silent reflection before the mihrab, and expressed gratitude for being in "a place that represents the space proper to God"--is not a harmless gesture of goodwill. It is a deeply consequential moment that raises serious questions about how the highest office in the Catholic Church is choosing to represent Christian truth in the public square.

. . . Standing in silent reflection in a mosque, directly before the mihrab--the directional focal point of Islamic worship--is not a neutral act. It is not the same as visiting a historical site or engaging in dialogue in a conference room. It is entering a space defined by a specific act of worship to God as understood in Islamic theology, and participating in its atmosphere of devotion without any accompanying doctrinal clarification.

When the Pope then describes the mosque as "a space proper to God," the problem intensifies. Proper to which understanding of God? Christianity and Islam do not simply differ in language; they differ in the most foundational claims about who God is, how He is known, and how He has revealed Himself. To speak in generic terms of shared divine space is not bridge-building--it is theological flattening.

. . . The danger in the Pope's actions is not that he visited a mosque. It is how he did it, what was said, and what was left unsaid. In a world already drowning in relativism, religious leaders do not have the luxury of ambiguity. Their words and gestures define how millions understand God.

And when those gestures begin to suggest that Christianity is simply one language among many ways of reaching the divine, the result is not harmony--it is the erosion of Christian identity itself.

When Trump blurts things out, other things inevitably happen, although not right away, and not necessarily the things we would expect -- but they happen. It's odd how Pope Leo expressed things on Monday:

"I have no fear of neither [sic] the Trump administration nor of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel. And that’s what I believe I am called to do and what the Church is called to do."

At the same time, he clearly misrepresented scripture over the past several days, and it's not clear if, as in Algeria, he's speaking the Gospel as clearly as he might.

UPDATE:

Exactly.

By raising the issue, it makes people look at what Pope Leo is saying and what Pope Leo is saying is leftist nonsense. https://t.co/1ZB9qbwOCc

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) April 16, 2026