Reality has laid siege to Trump’s fortress:
- After a month and a half of war with Iran, the American leader’s burning priority has come to be only the restoration of the pre-war situation in the Strait of Hormuz. And it is not at all clear that and when it will succeed.
- After a month and a half of war, regional US allies are weakened, and deeply concerned about the future. Instead of having their investment in the relationship with the US and especially in their relationship with the Trump family confirmed, the Gulf states understand they are being played and they can’t see an end in sight.
- After a month and a half of war, Trump has irreversibly weakened his position in the upcoming meeting with Xi Jinping – a meeting already postponed from April to May, which the American leader will go to almost empty-handed, if he goes at all.
- About three months before the US’ 250th anniversary celebrations, questions about the U.S. president’s mental health are gaining momentum.
- Despite the massive interventions in the Hungarian elections for Viktor Orban who also benefitted from Moscow’s previous interference, Trump and Putin were soundly defeated by Hungarians who were hungry to throw Orban, the pirate of Budapest’s illiberalism overboard.
- Finally, after a month and a half of armed confrontation with Iran, in which the Trump administration lost control of the basic narrative for the reasons for the war, the White House is rapidly losing ground on the information front, with the rhetorical artillery exchanged between Trump, and Pope Leo XIV, himself also an American.
Given the exceptional nature of the public exchange of messages between the White House and the Vatican, it is worth briefly pausing on this topic.
With a solid legal training behind him (he has a doctorate in canon law), the current Pontiff has signaled since he became Pope that he will unequivocally place a value on law, justice, international law.
Given Donald Trump’s adventurism on this level, it was obvious from the beginning that it would be difficult to find a common denominator between the new Pope and the US president.
Donald Trump has made it clear to the whole world that international law does not exist, and is at best a whim for him.
Through his anti-Maduro operation in Venezuela, the US president has clarified how things stand, and with his even crazier operation in Iran he has demonstrated that he is a lost cause.
The failures on the Iranian front have also made Donald Trump mad enough to go on the offensive making downright offensive statements against the Pope who is loath to slavishly kiss the hand of the “king” in the White House.
The insistence and full-throated attack on the Pontiff is matched only by the tenacity and eloquence with which Pope Leo sent the American president for a walk.
Given his small intellect and heart, which have become famous in his relationship with a raft of other international leaders, Donald Trump dangerously misses sight of the essential and the exceptional:
- The bottom line: that his heated “dialogue” with Pope Leo XIV is not limited to the Pontiff, but affects Catholics of all stripes, including Americans.
- The exceptional: that, unlike conventional political leaders (heads of state, government or global institutions), papal leadership means a completely different type of relationship with the “electorate” of the Catholic universe. It generally confers on the Pope, and in this case on Leo, an infinitely more substantial moral and political dominion over the faithful than is usually the case in conventional relations between a political leader and the electorate.
Donald Trump is modest intellectually, strident, uncultivated, and appears incapable of understanding finesse.
This is the point from which he launched his verbal lobs on Pope Leo XIV, in coarse language and why he showed an AI-generated image of him as Jesus.
This image will inevitably produce a shock wave not just among tens of millions of American Catholics, and also raises questions for psychology and psychiatry specialists.
The only thing that would have tempered Donald Trump’s confrontation with the Vatican would be the painful political cost. But this would require one of his close aides explaining it to him.
But who would do him such a service? There are certainly individuals around him who understand more about the issue than he does, but, as the New York Times revelations show how the war in Iran started, his close collaborators lack the courage to pull their conceited boss by the sleeve.
To the best of my humble knowledge, Trump’s current defiance of the Pope has only one precedent in history: Stalin’s defiance of the Vatican.
Eighty years ago, the bloody Soviet dictator asked his yesmen how many divisions the Pope had. The answer would come four decades later, under the pontificate of John Paul II.
Then, the Pole who was enthroned in the Vatican, in the middle of the Cold War, defied the communists telling the Poles not to be afraid.
The Poles were not afraid, they had patience and strength for almost a decade, and finally demolished the communism.
History has come a full circle and a politician who has ascended to the US presidency and is determined to establish authoritarianism in the US and export it everywhere, while the Pope is American and is courageous and capable of standing up to the US president.
Pope Leo XIV could be to Trump and Trumpism what Pope John Paul II was to communist leaders and to communism.
The signs and the coincidences of history are there and continue.
- PS: I’m curious to find out how JD Vance, the US vice president relates to Catholicism.
- How does he deal with Trump’s morally embarrassing and politically costly war with the Vatican?
- How does JD Vance feel about his boss’s new bout of excess? After a humiliating week, in which he kissed Viktor Orban, the latter lost the election. After he took part in negotiations with the Iranians, only to announce there was no hope of a peace agreement?
- And for the Catholic in Vance, and for the aspirant in him for the office of president of the United States, everything must have turned overnight into Hell on earth.
