The hits just keep on coming for JD Vance. Having left Islamabad after 20 undoubtedly gruelling hours of conversation with the Iranians that left the US delegation thwarted; having appeared last week at a rally for Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán in Budapest only to see his re-election campaign after 16 years of rule go down in such spectacular flames that Vance’s star-guest turn was touted as a cause of failure; having recently announced his summer book detailing his conversion to Catholicism, the US vice-president returned to Washington to discover his president had picked another fight. With the pope.
Any hopes for a reflective Monday in the seclusion of the Naval Observatory, and maybe a cheat-night hour in front of the box with a spoon and a big tub of Tillamook, went astray. Instead, not for the first time, the Veep found himself suited up and under the camera lights as he stepped up to bat for his president.
The president’s social media activity is hyper at the best of times but his weekend tirade, opening with the opinion that “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” marked a new chapter in the uneasy relationship between church and state in America. A little later, Trump posted an AI image that circumnavigated the cybersphere – or at least its Catholic strongholds – with the same stunning impact as Artemis II had gone around the moon. It appeared to depict the US president in the image – and garb – of Christ. On Monday afternoon, Trump rejected that idea, telling reporters as he stood receiving a McDonald’s delivery at the White House door (it was for staff, and was to promote the success of the administration’s no-tax-on-tips policy) that the image was a tribute to medicine.
“I did post it and I thought it was me as a doctor,” said the president. “And it had to do with the Red Cross – there’s a Red Cross worker there which we support and only the fake news media could come up with that one.”
(The International Committee of the Red Cross may be so stunned by this interpretation that they have yet to officially point out that last November, they were forced to cut 3,000 jobs due to reduced funding from the United States and other top donor countries such as the UK and Germany).
As an explanation, it was striking. It can’t be said that president Trump looked like your typical doctor in the image, or at least not one from the 21st century, and if he was indeed a doc, he was one with an eye-catching celestial backdrop rather than the usual poster advising punters to cut the smokes and mind the cholesterol. The image was later removed from the president’s account. So, it wasn’t just jet lag that had Vance looking a little battle-worn as he answered the questions of Brett Baier on Fox News on Monday evening.
“First of all, I think the president was posting a joke and he took it down because he recognised that a lot of people weren’t understanding his humour in that case,” said Vance. “I think the president of the United States likes to mix it up on social media and I think that’s one of the good things about him: he’s not filtered … he doesn’t send anything through a social media professional. The pope has been critical of our immigration policy but ultimately the policy is set by the president of the United States. We can respect the pope – we certainly have a good relationship with the Vatican.”
Donald Trump taking delivery of an executive fast-food order at the White House on Monday. Photograph: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
In May of last year, the vice-president and the second lady, Usha Vance, met Pope Leo in the Vatican, shortly after his inaugural Mass. Just over six years had passed since Pope Francis had criticised president Trump’s border wall by stating: “Those who build walls will become prisoners of the walls they put up.” The election of then cardinal Robert Prevost, a son of 1950s Chicago, gave Catholicism its first American pope and hinted at a more placatory message emanating from the Vatican. Not so. Pope Leo has been an outspoken critic of the administration’s heavy-handed immigration tactics and of the war with Iran, and in brief comments yesterday he confirmed he had “no fear” of speaking out about the Trump administration if and when he felt it necessary.
Trump, in a separate post, reminded his public that the result of the conclave was “a shocking surprise” and, in a roundabout way, all due to him.
“He wasn’t on any list to be pope and was only put there by the church because he is an American and they thought he 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.”
That will remain unprovable. The conclave does not gossip. There are 53 million Catholics in the United States – and nothing like the same decline among young attendees as in Ireland. A recent New York Times piece on the resurgence of the Catholic faith among the young, by Elizabeth Dias, contained this observation on the returning youth:
“Bishops are buzzing about the surge, and confounded by what is behind it.
‘Of course we think the Holy Spirit is,’ Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington said. ‘But we are kind of stymied.’”
But could it be that the unshowy, understated – and very Chicagoan – charisma of the new pope has drawn some young Americans in?
Over at the Jesuit Review, an opinion piece by Sam Sawyer urged readers to turn to cool reflection rather than give in to the temptation of instant outrage. He recalled that shortly after Pope Leo was announced, president Trump posted an image depicting himself in white cassock and mitre, offering a blessing. That “joke” played well with Maga: it was still the Camelot era for the administration.
“As the America team in Rome and back at home discussed how much to cover that story, I reminded my colleagues that to the degree that the Trump-as-pope meme meant anything, it meant that Mr Trump was unable to tolerate anyone other than himself commanding the world’s attention,” Sawyer wrote before getting into the meat of his rebuttal.
“Perhaps the way in which Pope Leo presents the greatest challenge to President Trump is in his consistent demonstration of what it looks like to remain morally centred on the Gospel instead of acting for or against Mr Trump’s interests. In general, even when offering critiques that respond to American foreign policy moves, as in his description of Mr Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilization as ‘truly unacceptable’, Pope Leo does not mention the president by name. In part, this follows well-established Vatican diplomatic practice, but it is also meant to remind us that the pope is speaking more from principle than he is in response to persons, even the most powerful person on earth. When Leo is speaking more explicitly about persons, it is to call our attention back to people who are suffering: the poor and the victims of war or violence.”
The summer publication of Vance’s book – with the somewhat Rothian title of Communion – will presumably mark the beginning of a 2028 presidential election bid to sketch out his credentials and his separateness from the two-term president who believes he has the power to make popes, and vice-presidents, like so many loaves and fishes, or even Big Macs and fries.