I truly hate making these a recap of screed-length Trump tweets, but sometimes they line up with a confluence of my interests that is IRRESISTIBLE! And Donald Trump’s Sunday night critique of Pope Leo lands Saint-Peter’s-squarely in that category.³

There is so much to get to it is almost impossible to write it all down in a way that is enjoyable to read while scrolling on your phone wandering through the grocery store… but we’re going to try!

Here is what happened, regardless of how people lied about it afterwards.

I wrote about Pope Leo right when he was elected, and he’s become an even larger media figure than I suspected. Because the Pope can speak like an American. He understands how to speak in soundbytes, he understands how he’ll be interpreted in the media, and he understands how it’ll be politically absorbed. He is leader of 1.4 billion people, has an incredible approval rating, and will be remembered as one of the most consequential and famous Americans of this decade / century / ever.

And he likes Trump about as much as he likes ketchup on a hot dog or the Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field.

Some people [the kind of internet-based people who think teasing Trump enough will save democracy] are taking the angle that Trump is jealous. I don’t think that factors in at all here. Trump is not jealous of Zohran Mamdani; he loves him. Because they work together, they play the game together, and a Trump who knows his star is fading gets to be in the ring with the new superstar at Wrestlemania.

He’s not jealous, he’s jilted. Leo can hate Trump or love Trump, but he needs to need Trump either way. And he doesn’t. Donald Trump is much more relevant and annoying to Robert Prevost, the priest from Chicago, than he is to Pope Leo the Fourteenth, Holy Roman Pontiff. An angry tweet? You don’t even wake the Pope up for that. You only take him off Do Not Disturb if there’s a sacking army at the Vatican City walls.

If you asked the Pope who personally made his life worse, Donald Trump or Jerry Reinsdorf⁴… he’s gonna say Trump becuase of the murder and war and stuff, but it’s a CLOSE race.

So Trump sees 60 Minutes, he gets mad, he picks up his phone and fires this off. WARNING: it is long, but we’ll get into it, so just read it here and keep scrolling.

Phew! Kinda makes you wish the Pope was still a guy who rode around on a horse swinging a giant mace!

So, we’re going to take this line by line. Here we go:

Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.

Pope

Leo

is

WEAK

on

Crime

**long exhale**

Trump has lost his fastball. This is such undeniable proof. In the 90s, or the 2000s, he would have invented an entirely new angle of attack for a new foil and thrown it out there. Same machinery, but a new angle. Instead, he falls back on patterns that make zero sense if you’re not talking about a politician.

If Pope Leo is weak on crime, does that open the possibility he’s strong on other political things?

WEAK ON CRIME, STRONG ON ELIMINATING THE PENNY FROM CIRCULATION!

WEAK ON THE BORDER, STRONG ON DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME!

WEAK ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS, STRONG ON NUCLEAR FAMILIES!

And if you want a Pope who was horrible on foreign policy, may I recommend Pope Julius II? You google him yourself, I don’t want that much blood in my search history.

He talks about “fear” of the Trump Administration, but doesn’t mention the FEAR that the Catholic Church, and all other Christian Organizations, had during COVID when they were arresting priests, ministers, and everybody else, for holding Church Services, even when going outside, and being ten and even twenty feet apart.

It blows my mind how much more people think about COVID who live places where COVID was a mild inconvenience. Like, if you live in Suburbatopia and your experience of COVID was (a) the senior living home you drove past was suddenly empty and (b) your kid’s high school track team had to cancel their season, you will never stop talking about COVID like it’s the worst thing that ever happened to you⁵.

I lived in a city where I had to shield my kids from the freezer trucks stacked with bodies that had nowhere to go, walk miles for toilet paper, and almost a tenth of the people in my apartment building died. And I almost never talk about COVID unless it’s in the context of, “Wow, I really thought after COVID I would keep washing my hands every time I was on the subway! What a fool I was!”

There are a group of people for whom the worst thing about COVID was to be inconvenienced. They hate that things shut down to keep other people from dying, and all things being equal they would have rather kept their Planet Fitness open if all it meant was their local cemetery had to open a new wing.

All that pretext laid out, this particular greivance culture² is mad because churches shut down. And… look. Trump doesn’t go to Church. Again, he didn’t even go to Church on Easter this year. He cannot be bothered to pretend to be religious.

But I am religous. I go to Mass every Sunday. Every Sunday. Even when it’s that horrible thing where Christmas is on a Monday and you have to go Sunday morning for Sunday and then Sunday night for Midnight Mass? I do both. And during COVID, Mass shut down. It was horrible. It was the place you’re supposed to go when things are horrible, shut down because things are so horrible. BAD! Like running to an escape pod and the escape pod’s just chain smoking, going “aww man we’re all gonna die, man…”

But I don’t think the solution in 2020 was to pack churches and kill off anyone old enough to remember Mass in Latin. And neither did the Church. That’s why there aren’t a bunch of stories of priests being arrested for doing Mass during COVID.

Technically, SOME Catholics were arrested for breaking COVID rules. In Uganda and Greece. But who needs reality when you have the emotional grievance of an audience who knows how to unfurl that into a whole political movement.

I like his brother Louis much better than I like him, because Louis is all MAGA. He gets it, and Leo doesn’t!

I’m smelling AntiiiiiiPope! Brother VS Brother! Possibly not for the first time in the Papacy!¹

I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s terrible that America attacked Venezuela, a Country that was sending massive amounts of Drugs into the United States and, even worse, emptying their prisons, including murderers, drug dealers, and killers, into our Country. And I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History.

God in Heaven, this is so BORING! Just pure autopilot, Trump might just have autocomplete on his phone where he types “immigrant” and it lays out the whole murderer killers bla bla bla. Maybe, like me, you’ve had an aging relative with frontal-lobe / dementia issues, and if you haven’t I encourage you to research the term “perseverating” to understand why our President does this.

You know how stroke victims sometimes can’t talk but can curse? Near the end, even if Trump’s nonverbal he’s still gonna be able to sit up in the chair and rip off “they’re sending murders, drug dealers, killers, people in insane asylums…”

And “I don’t want a Pope who…” Welcome to being Catholic, buddy! I don’t want a Pope that tells me it’s bad to solve America’s white nationalism problem with violence, or that I have to care about my kids more than myself, or that I have to go to Mass on Christmas Eve AND Christmas when they’re on a Sunday… but he does and he’s Pope and that’s how it goes! You’re mad at the Pope? Get in line! Or commiserate with JD Vance, he’s still Catholic (for now) I’m sure his CliffsNotes-RCIA⁶ ass has tons of thoughts on the papacy!

Leo should be thankful because, as everyone knows, he was a shocking surprise.

Thankful to…. whom specifically? And pal, I was alive on both election days you won and THAT 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.

Ok, he was on several lists to be Pope, just not a favorite, but that’s not the point.

This is where I forget that if you aren’t Catholic you do not think that the Holy Spirit swoops in and gets all the Cardinals to vote for the correct Pope. Is that weird? Does that make me weird? Sure. But I also will show my kid some 1,000 year old bones in a glass box like it’s cool and not the start of an Indiana Jones sequel.

But “put there by the Church.” Okay. Well. I don’t know how to make this simple but… he’s The Pope now, so “The Church” is kind of his whole deal. And if this was a room of guys wringing their hands about who to pick for the next 20 years to deal with 4 (or possibly less) years of Trump… there are actually a lot of other American Cardinals who like Trump even less that “they” could have picked. Or some that outright like him!

If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.

If God picks the Pope this sentence is probably still true! And I don’t think he understands how bad that makes him look. “I’m such a monster that God Himself had to lean down into human history and make sure someone stood up against me! My ears are burning!!! Also my ears feel like there’s a pitchfork poking them, is that related?”

Unfortunately, Leo’s Weak on Crime, Weak on Nuclear Weapons, does not sit well with me, nor does the fact that he meets with Obama Sympathizers like David Axelrod, a LOSER from the Left, who is one of those who wanted churchgoers and clerics to be arrested.

Popes do have strengths and weaknesses, but for this to really hit he should have gotten more specifically Catholic. “Pope Leo is WEAK on incense, only uses the thin smoke stuff because of woke ‘allergies!’”

Also, such an example of Dumb Guy Talking that Axelrod is an Obama “sympathizer” and not a much more factual and direct attack like “Obama’s chief strategist for his two winning campaigns.” It’s like calling Master Splinter “a guy rat openly rooting for the Ninja Turtles!”

Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.

“Leave being a politician to me, a man with the worst approval rating of any President who finished his term and who’s underwater on every single policy position.” And he’s saying “not a Politician” the way your aunt means it at Thanksgiving, which is “please don’t talk about things where my opinion might be the wrong one.”

It’s hurting him very badly and, more importantly, it’s hurting the Catholic Church!

It is, in fact, not hurting him or the Catholic Church very badly. First, because he’s the Pope and it’s a lifetime position without a popular election, and second because the things that actually hurt the Catholic Church are things people in the Church did themselves. The Church is famously good at surviving outside attacks. May I direct you to this past Good Friday where Pope Leo did the Stations of the Cross inside the Roman Colosseum where they used to, you know, have lions eat Catholics. That is, to use the language of the Church fathers, stuntin’ on em.

There is a quote the President sometimes likes to mangle when he talks about China, that “we think in quarters, they think in centuries.” (1) they don’t, and (2) the Church thinks in all of eternity in the new Heaven and the new Earth, forever and ever amen.

There are no approval ratings or opinion polls in Vatican City. But there ARE polls in America, of Catholics, on Donald Trump. And boy do they not look like they did in 2024, when polling tons of suburban white Catholics gave him an edge with the “sure he’s a horrible monster but if I vote for a Democrat it might mean some of the past 30 years of my life were ill-considered” demographic.

And in this new Fox News poll (data here for all you lil spreadsheet nerds), it looks like this:

Trump’s in the same situation Catholics are in when there’s one priest for confession, 30 minutes until he’s out of time, and the three people in front of you are sobbing. OUTLOOK IS NOT GOOD.

Because after stewing for 45 more minutes about how really the POPE was the problem and everyone should see that, Trump posted this AI slopjob:

So… sure. Sure. We’re going to get into it. Yes, that detail you’re screaming into the screen too. We’re going to get there, just… just wait. It’s a lot. It’s like when a friend tries to make ratatouille based solely on what they saw in the Pixar movie — it’s a lot, it’s messy, and you don’t know if you’ll ever truly understand what went into it.

First thing — do you hear the word “blasphemy” a lot in your life? Probably not? If yes, I think that raises separate questions. But you normally hear it around Easter. Why? Because it’s the thing they charged Jesus with before they put him on the cross. It is, even still, pretty high up on the list of sins and [hold on, checking, checking] yes it’s FIRST on the list of Commandments. To say that you yourself are The Christ is, open and shut case, blasphemy.

If you were making a list of things Trump could do to profane the faith, I’m telling you… this is on the top five things. Desecrating the Eucharist, or a Crucifix, those might be higher. Defiling an altar in a parish, also up there. But “I Am God” is straight blasphemy, in a way that is very hard to equivocate if you’re not a full sellout.

Which is why quite a few MAGA people came out today and said they didn’t like it. I mean, they excused it — JD Vance said it was a joke, some people said he must have been under the influence, someone else suggested he was possessed when it happened — so they excused it, but still had to go after it. (Not Bishop Robert Barron, though, he embraced his label as the “MAGA Bishop” and he stood by his patron.)

Trump got in so much trouble for this that he pulled out the move he uses in case of emergency: he apologized lied and said it didn’t happen. He deleted the post and said he thought it portrayed him as “a doctor” and had to do with the work of “the Red Cross,” but everyone got confused so he pulled it down.

And… my friend. Imagine I’m there with you as you’re reading this. Unless you’re in the bathroom, then finish that up, wash your hands, wash your phone, and come back. But I’m there with you and I’m grabbing your face with both hands and I’m saying “DON’T YOU DARE TAKE THE BAIT OF TALKING ABOUT IF HE MEANT IT INSTEAD OF TALKING ABOUT THAT HE DID IT.” You are smarter than gaslighting, and just because the people who talk on cable news are now going to debate the lie instead of the offense doesn’t mean you have to.

This is now the longest thing I’ve written for the newsletter at least twice-over so let’s end by going back to that photo, how insane it is, and how grade-school stupid the lie is. Scroll up, take it in, and come back.

DOCTORS DON’T WEAR WHITE ROBES WITH RED SASHES. Famously a Jesus thing! Specifically a Jesus thing! And I’m not just saying that, SPIRIT HALLOWEEN IS SAYING THAT!

[TRUMP VOICE] “You know, we love Doctor, folks. Doctor is so great with stethoscope but also in regards to multiplying loaves and fishes! Doctor came to me, tears in his eyes, and holes in his hands, and I said ‘Doctor, Heal Thyself! Yuck!’”

I know that’s not a doctor outfit because I’ve never turned on an episode of The Pitt where Noah Wyle’s red sash got stuck in an ambulance door. We know what doctors and nurses wear, and SO DOES THE PERSON TYPING PROMPTS INTO THE AI THAT MADE THIS BECAUSE THERE IS A NURSE IN SCRUBS IN THE LOWER RIGHT CORNER!

ALSO, why are BOTH hands glowing when only one is healing the old man? That’s healing power going to waste! And that man? He was killed by Obamacare. Sad.

Flags. Memorials. Fireworks. A soldier with AI gibberish on his hat. An off-season Santa with a different gibberish hat. Eagles. Everyone is white. Statue of Liberty. …oh sorry, I was guessing at the AI prompt.

And a friend raised a fantastic point: would love to see the AI prompt for this, because I know it doesn’t start with “Trump as doctor.” It’s Trump as Jesus, which Trump knew and liked because he was mad at the Pope for not playing ball with him. And, as everyone learns if they try, when you push back he folds and deletes it and lies like your roommate saying they don’t know how your 6 pack of Red Bull disappeared from your marked shelf in the fridge.

One of the ONLY non-obvious things about this post is who ran an original Trump-As-Jesus image through another round of AI to change the central floating soldier figure above Trump into a…. blobby mess. [A twitter account which I in no way have researched or vouched for does at least have the two versions side by side.] It also changes Trump’s face to make it longer and less… cherubic? It mangles the hat from VETERAN to mush. The dying guy is smiling, but now the soldier is frowning. And the soldier in the sky now has extra arms and maybe a cro—- what the hell am I doing? Sitting here in the middle of the night in my apartment flipping between TWO DIFFERENT AI PICTURES of Trump as Jesus Christ? Have I lost my mind? I could be playing video games! I could be baking cakes! (Yeah I just got into making cakes from scratch, we need offline hobbies.) What has become of me? Are there even jokes in the last thousand words of this thing? Dear God, what have I done?

So that’s what happened in… 24 hours of 2026. Wild stuff. And by the time you read this, Trump may have already sent Seal Team 6 to rendition Pope Leo and it’ll all be moot! Who knows? Everyone who’s already dead and in Heaven, because they’re outside of time! And now I envy them for two reasons! (The other reason being the know if the Phoenix Suns ever win a championship.)

Officially longest OMGreg ever. Maybe forever. I typed so much I think I pulled something. Quick, anyone have recommendations for a good in-network orthopedic Jesus?