Trump vs. The Pope

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History is filled with examples of world leaders measuring their own power and glory against the vaulting heights of eternity. The Roman emperor Augustus claimed divine descent from the goddess Venus. King Henry VIII split the English church away from Rome rather than submit to the idea that a Pope could tell a monarch what to do in his own marriage. King Philip IV of France, in an act of historic petulance, moved the seat of the papacy to Avignon — with predictably explosive results.

Donald Trump on Monday took his own stab at humbling the Bishop of Rome by doubling down on his recent verbal attacks on Pope Leo XIV’s antiwar position — a view Trump sees as an explicit personal criticism. He isn’t wrong: Leo has been a vocal opponent of Trump’s war in Iran, and his pointed Easter message was clearly directed at the White House. Leo signaled this week that he has no interest in backing down, telling reporters that he would “continue to speak out loudly against war.” 

Trump’s insatiable ego was always going to find a way to fight God. In this week’s Truth About, we’re diving into how Trump’s war against the Pope is fracturing his religious base and undermining Republicans’ midterm election hopes. Deus vult!

— Max Burns

Trump has always played fast and loose with Christianity in service to his political ambitions. When asked about his favorite book of the Bible in 2016, Trump famously praised “Two Corinthians,” a mistake one would expect from someone who has never actually read a word of Paul’s second letter to the people of Corinth. He often appeared deeply uncomfortable among the Republican Party’s Evangelical religious base, shocking Christian audiences with his dismissive attitude towards core tenets of the faith. 

Still, Trump seemed to possess a supernatural appeal to the growing ranks of white Christian nationalists who are increasingly pushing out the GOP’s more mainline faithful. Surveys consistently show about 40% of Republicans believe Trump is a semi-divine figure ‘anointed by God’ to restore American greatness and conquer the demonic liberal left. All that praise clearly went to his head: At a campaign event in October 2024, Trump sold himself to voters as a leader empowered by a “supernatural hand” to carry out his political will.  

Trump’s total lack of morals and love of revenge were always going to conflict with Christian teachings, but most Republicans were willing to set aside their reservations and support the party nominee. That’s become less true in Trump’s second term. In November 2025, the overt brutality and cruelty of his mass deportation policies led to a rare public rebuke from the usually conservative U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Trump’s popularity among all faith groups has plunged amid the near-daily examples of ICE violence that blanket our television screens and social media. 

The exodus of disgusted mainline Christians from the Republican Party has coincided with Trump’s increasing embrace of extremist white Christian nationalists and fringe figures who view him as a promised Messiah. When Trump posted (and later deleted) an image depicting himself as Jesus earlier this week, he was reflecting a view shared by a growing number of his faith advisors and enablers. The image sparked outrage even among Trump’s MAGA supporters, many of whom accused the president of blasphemy and disrespecting Christianity’s holiest figure. The scandal seemed to take Trump entirely by surprise. As a man who doesn’t care at all about faith, it must have shocked him to find that so many of his supporters actually do.

One day after seemingly acknowledging that the post was a disaster — Trump claimed he thought the image portrayed him as a ‘doctor’ — he doubled down with another bizarre image of Jesus embracing him. Despite the blowback, Trump simply can’t comprehend why anyone would take any of this faith stuff seriously. It’s a moral and emotional disconnect that will likely cost Republicans dearly in this year’s upcoming midterms.

Trump was in trouble with American Catholics even before he decided to portray himself as Jesus while picking a fight with a popular Pope. A recent poll by Republican pollster Shaw & Co Research found Trump’s support among Catholics falling below 50% for the first time in his presidency. The war in Iran is one big reason. Only 40% of Catholic voters approve of Trump’s handling of the conflict, while an eye-popping 60% disapprove. Those voters apparently defer to Pope Leo’s stern warning that “God does not bless any conflict.”

Things might be easier for Trump if he possessed the capacity to apologize for anything he’s ever done, but his hubris has become a major sticking point for Catholic voters — and religious voters more broadly. For conservative Christians, Trump’s embrace of extreme Christian nationalist leaders has proven a bridge too far, especially when those leaders tout a version of Christianity that seems outright blasphemous to true believers.

“At the White House during Holy Week, Trump’s pastor gave a prayer saying, ‘Whatever you do, God will bless you.’ Well that’s obviously a very dangerous thing to say,” conservative Catholic organizer John Yep told the Times of London. “Then on Easter morning — the most sacred day for Christians around the world — he went on that vulgar rant attacking Iran. I think it’s only healthy that Catholics react to that.”

By picking a fight with a popular Pope, Trump is forcing Catholic voters to choose between a leader they broadly admire and one they support for the sake of political convenience. That’s reflected in an NBC News poll published last month, which found Pope Leo with a healthy +34 approval rating among voting-age Americans, compared to a dismal -12 for Trump. It’s apparently lost on the president that Leo’s non-Trumpiness is one of the things that makes him so popular with a public exhausted by Trump’s constant stream of toxicity and self-involvement.

Republicans are (once again) in crisis mode as they race to limit the damage of Trump’s unnecessary and self-declared war on Pope Leo. The party can’t afford to lose any more religious voters than it already has, especially not with Trump losing an average of one point a week in national popularity. 

If Catholic voters decide to sit out this year’s midterms — or worse, cast their ballots for Democrats — pollsters predict the result would be a historic defeat for the GOP. Yet Trump still can’t shut his mouth and accept that might doesn’t always make right. As America’s religious voters once again check their consciences ahead of a pivotal election, more and more of them are realizing they have made a terrible moral mistake. Unlike Trump, those voters possess the ability to reflect on their mistakes and correct them in the future. They seem poised to do just that when they head to the polls in November.

It’s easy to forget America’s struggling small farmers. Donald Trump sure has. Rural communities are among the most reliably Republican strongholds in the country; some haven’t voted for a Democrat in over half a century.

The GOP has grown so comfortable taking rural voters for granted that they’ve all but stopped providing any actual support for the small farms that feed our country and fuel American agricultural exports. But Trump’s disastrous tariff policies and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have pushed many of America’s small farmers to the financial and emotional breaking point, and there’s no help on the way from the Republicans who promised to return the nation’s rural communities to a bygone golden age.

Trump promised to save America’s small farmers. He may end up being the man responsible for their extinction. Read the first in our series on the Costs of Trumpism here.