Trump v. Catholics

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- now including a war in the Middle East.

Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling at TNR:

 Relations between the U.S. and the Catholic Church have not been the same since January, when senior U.S. defense officials shared an abrasive message with a Vatican official.

Days after Pope Leo XIV delivered his State of the World speech, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, to a closed-door Pentagon meeting for a bitter lecture.

“The United States,” Colby said, according to a blistering new report by The Free Press, “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.”

One U.S. official present at the meeting brought up the Avignon papacy, a period in the 14th century in which the French monarchy bent the Catholic Church into submission, ordering an attack on Pope Boniface VIII that led to his downfall and subsequent death and forcing the papacy to relocate from Rome to Avignon, a region inside France.

The Trump administration had taken issue with the pope’s critique of its militaristic proclivities. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top Pentagon officials were particularly aggrieved by portions of Leo’s January 9 speech in which the pope argued that “a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force,” and that “war is back in vogue, and a zeal for war is spreading.”

The pope’s address was dissected line by line and interpreted as a hostile message toward the administration, reported Letters from Leo Substack writer Christopher Hale.

It was difficult not to interpret Leo’s comments as an immediate commentary on Donald Trump’s second administration, which had at that point bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, kidnapped Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, fiercely advocated for the dissolution of NATO, and threatened America’s allies, including claiming that the U.S. would seize control of Canada and Greenland.

But the blatant intimidation tactic is the first of its kind ever made by American officials to the Catholic Church. There are no public records of any previous meetings between Vatican and U.S. officials at the Pentagon, let alone an instance in which the world power suggested that it could force the Bishop of Rome into captivity.

The Vatican was so alarmed by the Pentagon’s warning that Pope Leo cancelled his plans to visit the U.S. later in the year, reported Hale, who noted that “many in the Vatican saw the Pentagon’s reference to an Avignon papacy as a threat to use military force against the Holy See.”

Pope Leo calls Trump’s ‘whole civilization’ Iran threat ‘truly unacceptable’https://t.co/5IYt7BhsMb

— The Hill (@thehill) April 8, 2026

Apocalypse Now

  Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- now including a war in the Middle East.

Trump's threats to destroy Iranian civilization are a gift to the regime. They will alienate even its fiercest opponents, who believe the Islamic Republic has spent decades erasing 2500 years of Iranian civilization. It's malpractice for the U.S. president to threaten the same. https://t.co/BkANT7T08Q

— Karim Sadjadpour (@ksadjadpour) April 7, 2026

Trump Endorses Hilton, Thereby Helping Democrats

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

Seema Mehta at LAT:

President Trump endorsed conservative commentator Steve Hilton for California governor late Sunday night.

The endorsement could have a major impact on a race that remains up for grabs, with recent opinion polls showing Hilton and his top Republican rival, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, as top contenders in the 2026 contest.

“He is a truly fine man, one who has watched as this once great State has gone to Hell,” Trump posted on Truth Social, adding that he has known Hilton for many years.
...
Despite California’s solidly Democratic electorate, a recent poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by the Times found Hilton and Bianco leading the crowded field of candidates just months before the June 2 primary — leading to the possibility of Democrats being shut out of a November election that will determine California’s next governor. The crowded field of Democrats in the race has splintered their party’s voters, providing an opening for the Republicans, the poll showed.

Under the state’s top-two primary system, the top two candidates advance to the general election, regardless of their party affiliation.

If Trump’s endorsement leads to California Republican voters coalescing behind Hilton, severely damaging Bianco’s campaign, that likely would reduce the odds of two GOP candidates finishing in first and second place in the primary.

In California’s 2018 governor’s race, Trump’s endorsement of Republican businessman John Cox helped cement him as the GOP frontrunner and led to his second place finish in the primary election. That propelled Cox to the general election, where he was trounced by Newsom.

Trump's Easter Messages

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- now including a war in the Middle East.

On Easter morning, the president of the United States just posted the following:

Joyann Jeffrey at People:

President Donald Trump elicited laughter at a White House Easter lunch when he seemingly compared himself to Jesus Christ.

At the annual event on Wednesday, April 1, Trump spoke about Palm Sunday and said he could relate to one of the monikers that people use when referring to Jesus.

"On Palm Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem as crowds welcomed him with praise honoring him as king," he said in footage that has since been deleted from the White House website.

"They call me king now. Can you believe it?" he added with a smile.

Trump called God bringing the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt “an amazing period of time” and compared it to the United States under his presidency. pic.twitter.com/IjJ3BcXjJl

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) April 4, 2026

The Trump Budget: Coming to a Democratic Attack Ad Near You

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- now including a war in the Middle East.

In early February, a YouGov poll found majorities of Americans supported increasing government spending on veterans (74%), Social Security (69%), Medicare (67%), aid to the poor (64%), Medicaid (59%), and the environment (52%).   Only 34% wanted to increase defense spending --and that was before the Iran war, which is unpopular.  Last week, Pew found 61% disapproved of Trump's handling of the war, and 59% said that the US made the wrong decision to use military force in Iran.

 

Trump: "Don't send any money for daycare because the U.S. can't take care of daycare…It's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can't do it on a federal." pic.twitter.com/TTZqVVSKKj

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) April 1, 2026

Morgan Phillips at Fox:

The White House on Friday proposed a sweeping fiscal year 2027 budget that would dramatically increase military spending to roughly $1.5 trillion while cutting billions from domestic programs, marking a sharp shift in federal priorities toward national security and border enforcement.

...

Several major agencies would see significant reductions under the plan, including: NASA, cut by about $5.6 billion, or 23%, State Department and international programs, down roughly $15.5 billion, or 30%, Environmental Protection Agency, cut by more than half, Department of Labor, reduced by about $3.5 billion and Department of Housing and Urban Development, down $10.7 billion.

False Claims

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- now including a war in the Middle East.

Aaron Blake at CNN:

An Iran war that was already proving quite unpopular with the American people has entered a new, more problematic phase. That comes with the news that a US fighter jet was shot down over Iran.

There remains a lot we don’t know, including the status of the two crew members. While CNN has reported one of them has been rescued and is receiving medical treatment, we don’t know the fate of the other. 

And that was followed by news that Iran hit a second US combat aircraft on Friday. The pilot was able to navigate the plane out of Iranian territory before ejecting from the aircraft and was subsequently rescued, a US official told CNN.

...

President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have suggested the United States and Israel had something amounting to free rein to fly over Iran. They cast Tehran as having no ability to counteract that.

At a March 4 briefing — nearly a full month ago — Hegseth said that such dominance was just around the corner.

“Starting last night, and to be completed in a few days in under a week, the two most powerful air forces in the world will have complete control of Iranian skies,” Hegseth said. He called it “uncontested airspace.”

“And Iran will be able to do nothing about it,” he added.

Trump has also played up this air dominance over the past two weeks.

“And we literally have planes flying over Tehran and other parts of their country; they can’t do a thing about it,” he said on March 24. He added that the United States could strike a power plant, and “they can’t do a thing about it.”

The president has said for weeks that Iran had “no navy,” “no military,” “no air force” and “no anti-aircraft systems.” In a White House address Wednesday night, he said he could hit Iran’s oil facilities, “and there’s not a thing they could do about it.

“They have no anti-aircraft equipment. Their radar is 100% annihilated,” Trump said. “We are unstoppable as a military force.”

Iranamok: Two from Tom Nichols

  Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- now including a war in the Middle East.

Tom Nichols on the Defense Department in wartime:

The United States is in the middle of a major war, but that didn’t stop Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Thursday from firing General Randy George, America’s most senior Army officer. George was the Army’s chief of staff, and he was cashiered along with another four-star general, David Hodne, and Major General William Green Jr., the top Army chaplain, in what has been a rolling purge by Hegseth of senior officers—particularly those close to the secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll.

Why were these men fired while U.S. forces are fighting overseas? The Defense Department has given no official reason for their dismissals, but likely they are the latest victims of Hegseth’s vindictive struggles with the Army, which he feels treated him poorly—the service “spit me out,” he said in his 2024 book—as he struggles in a job for which he remains singularly unqualified.

Hegseth began his tenure by acting against what he sees as a Pentagon infested with DEI hires. He pushed for the removal of the then–chairman of the Joint Chiefs, C. Q. Brown, who is Black, and he fired a raft of female military leaders, replacing them all with men. But dumping the Army chief of staff in the middle of a war, without explanation, is a reckless move even by Hegseth’s standards. George is a decorated combat veteran who was slated to stay in his job until 2027, and he has never publicly feuded with Hegseth—despite having good reason to do so.\

On Trump's bad address to the nation:

A speech that should have been a clear explanation of why the United States is fighting a nation of 92 million people began instead in shambolic style. He discussed the operation that captured the president of Venezuela, perhaps hoping to make listeners believe that the Iran war will be a similarly short operation. He then said that Iran has taken losses never seen “in the history of warfare”—as if the destruction of, say, the Axis in World War II had never happened.

Trump offered little that was new, instead repeating the same lines from a short video presentation the night that he ordered attacks on the Islamic Republic, more than one month ago. He listed—rightly and correctly—the various offenses that the fanatical Iranian regime has perpetrated against the United States and other countries for nearly a half century. But he couldn’t help himself: He patted himself on the back for killing the Iranian terror mastermind Qassem Soleimani in his first term, and for canceling the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by Barack Obama. (“Barack Hussein Obama,” of course.) The United States, Trump claimed in a strange moment, had emptied out all the banks in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia as part of that deal—“all the cash they had”—to send that “green, green” currency to Iran.