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MAGA Jesus Fights The Pope

That’s yesterday’s Daily Mail. I’m sure you have all seen the full image that Trump shared of himself, as Jesus. He was widely and appropriately condemned by just about everybody — Catholics, Protestants, everybody. Because it was blasphemous for one thing, and because it’s — what’s the phrase? — batsh*t crazy! Even by Trump standards. America is in a very serious war now, a war Trump started, and yet he takes the time to post garbage like that. Something is very seriously wrong with that man. I think he’s losing it. Not kidding. It is not enough to shrug and say “Oh, that’s just Trump being Trump.” Some of us take holy things seriously. You don’t do things like that. You just don’t. Unless you are an insane narcissist. But Trump later took it down and said he thought he was portraying himself as a doctor. Does anybody believe that? This, from one of the best Trump impersonators out there, is hilarious. What must J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, who are serious Christians, be thinking now? And Trump’s beefing with Pope Leo. Lord, have mercy, how politically dumb can you be? Look, I don’t think that this or any pope is above criticism, simply because of his office. If Leo inserts himself into politics, then he is a fair target. (And I think he is very wrong on migration!) But he happens to be, you know, THE POPE! There is a way that Trump could have challenged Leo in a respectful way, but that’s not how Trump rolls. He tweeted about Leo as if the pope were Chuck Schumer. A friend in the US texted me: Remarkable that my ex-Catholic father, lapsed Catholic mother and never-baptized sister (all who are were mega-MAGA and had contempt for Pope Francis) have all taken the pope’s side against Trump in this spat. Even if Trump has nothing but contempt for Pope Leo, out of his own sense of political self-preservation, he should have either shut up or written something not crass. This is not a wise and prudent man. A leading Catholic politician of the nationalist Right in Europe texted me asking what the hell is going on with Trump attacking Leo like this, and then posting an image of himself as Jesus? This person said that Trump is making it extremely difficult on politicians of the nationalist Right. Their enemies are doing all they can to tie them to Trump, who comes off as a disgraceful lunatic when he does stuff like this. Frankly, I think it’s fine, and even important, for conservative politicians to stand up to the Pope and bishops when they make political statements, or rather, statements that entail a political position. On migration, I think the Catholic hierarchy — which has long been leftish — is not only wrong, but here in Europe, dramatically undermines the interest of Catholics and all Christians. That’s an argument that I would like to hear Catholic politicians make in public, not being afraid of seeming disrespectful simply because they disagree on substance with Church leaders. But again: there is a way to do this, and a way not to do this. This is the way to do it: Mr. Vance, who has often viciously attacked critics in much the same manner as Mr. Trump, offered a diplomatic tone as he spoke of Leo. “I think it’s a good thing, actually, that the pope is advocating for the things that he cares about,” the vice president said, adding: “We’re also going to disagree on substantive questions from time to time. I think that’s a totally reasonable thing.” J.D. Vance also did this when he schooled the Pope and the hierarchy on migration last year, from a Catholic point of view. Vance made a moral argument based on the teachings of St. Augustine, that one has a moral duty to love everyone, but more of a moral duty to love those closer to one (family, neighbors), because one bears greater moral responsibility for them. I asked two different Augustinian scholars who was right, the Pope or J.D. Vance. Both said, “J.D. Vance.” I bring that up here because there is a way to dissent from the political statements of one’s church leaders firmly but respectfully, with dignity. (But come on, this Vance statement brushing aside Trump’s blasphemous meme defies credulity.) Because Trump is not a Christian, or at best not a Christian in any meaningful sense, he doesn’t understand this. Decades ago, when I worked at the New York Post, I remember an editor there who only understood religion in political terms. Specifically, he cared about what the Catholics and the Jews had to say about politics, and what that might mean for how they would vote in the next elections in the city, and for state offices. This man was not disrespectful to religion; it’s just that he had a totally worldly view of it. This is Trump’s view, I think — but Trump is not an editor at a New York City tabloid. He is President of the United States. You know, the man who controls a nuclear arsenal, and who threatened a few days ago to destroy Iranian civilization. Oh, he was just kidding, you might say. Nope — he told the New York Post that he had meant what he said. I’m really, really tired of the drama, especially because it is hurting conservatives, both in the US and abroad. Does he really think that Americans find this amusing, or reassuring? The UK right-wing commentary Mary Harrington says the meaning for Britain and Europe of Orban’s loss, and Trump’s continuing spiral into whatever this is, means that nationalist-populist parties of Europe — the ones who were broadly aligned with the Trumpist vision — are going to have to go it alone, setting aside “any aspiration to serve as moral exemplar, and is now, like China, simply a superpower pursuing its own interests.” Excerpt: Indeed, Trump’s actions to date have rendered him so wildly unpopular across Europe that the surest way for the USA to lend support to a European populist party now would probably be encouraging King Don to say rude things about them on Truth Social. These parties seem, themselves, to have recognised this, and are taking steps to disavow any electorally toxic association with Trump. RN and AfD have both spoken out recently against him. Even Nigel Farage, grinningly photographed in 2016 in the gilded Trump Tower elevator, has begun to distance himself, as have other supporters of Brexit. But none of this tells us anything about the structural issues that drove those populist movements in the first place: immigration, living standards, and energy policy. This trifecta of wicked problems is so intertwined that it can appear as though solving any one of them will make another one worse. Some variant or other of this three-legged stool of populist disaffection can be seen across Europe, and none of these challenges have gone away just because Viktor Orbán became too firmly linked in Hungarian voters’ minds with crony capitalism and a paedophile cover-up. Because none of these challenges have gone away, she makes clear, any establishment triumphalism claiming that Orban’s defeat means a return to the old days of USAID, Technocratic Experts Know Best, and the rest is not in the cards, no matter how much the Davos class wants it to be. It just means that if you are going to offer an Orbanist kind of solution, you still need to deliver concrete results for your voters. The New York Times called and asked me last night what I thought the lessons for MAGA/Trump are from Orban’s defeat. That’s what I told them: that if you can’t deliver economically for your voters, then their tolerance for cronyism and other forms of corruption will run out. As I said in this space yesterday, Fidesz was no more or no less corrupt in 2026 than it had ever been, but the lousy economy — to which the EU’s refusal to give Hungary funds earmarked for Covid recovery contributed — made the corruption impossible to overlook. Similarly with Trump, his outlandish behavior, such as with the blasphemous Jesus meme, would be easier to shrug off if voters had reason to have confidence in his stewardship of the economy and foreign affairs (but especially the economy). The most important thing James Carville ever said was, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Henry Olsen of the EPPC has been here in Hungary observing the election. He delivers hard medicine from Fidesz’s massive loss. Excerpts: The Hungary results should also impel Trump and Vance to look the state of their own electoral prospects. Orbán kept trying to change the subject rather than deal with the issues voters actually cared about, like growth and inflation. Similarly, the economy consistently ranks as the most important issues among voters stateside. American polls have shown for over a year that the swing voters who made Trump president again in 2024 are dissatisfied with Trump’s handling of economic issues, yet the president keeps focusing on cultural issues and foreign affairs. Trump, like Orbán, is governing to please his base rather than his swing voters. Orbán’s defeat showed that there’s only so long that someone can do that and retain office. A similar massive rebuke is facing Trump’s Republican Party if he doesn’t change course soon. That realization may not come, though. Democrats in Reagan’s time had countless warnings that Americans had grown weary of the party’s emphasis on tax-and-spend and its inability to both bring down inflation or stop the Soviet Union’s rise. They were genuinely shocked when Reagan and the GOP won; even if things were bad, it could never come to this. But it did, and the rest is history. Insular elites are always the last ones to see the tidal wave coming. Orbán’s coterie told themselves the polls were wrong, that there was a hidden Fidesz vote that would come out of the woodwork to save them. That’s really true. Yesterday I talked to a hardcore Fidesz friend who had been genuinely shocked by the party’s overwhelming defeat. Friend said that their circle had been living in a bubble, in which it simply wasn’t possible to imagine losing. That friend will soon be out of a job. The Budapest conservative philosopher Ferenc Hörcher soberly assessed the anti-Fidesz blowout. Excerpt: The gap between ideology and reality was too wide. When someone invokes Christianity or a traditional bourgeois mindset, it is a standard against which they will be judged. Rhetoric, political manipulation may obscure reality, but finally, absolute power corrupts absolutely. We conservative intellectuals should have warned Orbán and his court that they lost their way, lost the trust of the majority of the country. We should have warned them that populism is not a viable path in the long run, as opposed to the principles of civic conservatism. Olsen’s warning for Trump and his most fervent supporters is bang on. You can keep making excuses for the president’s mindless, self-defeating behavior, and jeering at friends who point out that it’s hurting you (“Stupid Euroweenies, who cares what they think?”), but in the end, cutting yourself off from reality, by refusing to see what you don’t want to see, and mocking those who in good faith warn you, could easily lead you right off a cliff. Reality can only be obscured for so long. Is Trump The Antichrist? No, But… I told someone yesterday that Trump’s casual meme-ing exalting himself as a god-like figure was no doubt just another instance of Trump’s dopey narcissism, but that it does have Antichrist vibes. No, Trump is not the Antichrist — the Antichrist, when he comes, will be a figure to be taken seriously, and literally — but Trump’s meme has about it the Antichrist spirit. Matthew Walther, the Catholic writer, takes up the theme in an essay today. Whether he is, at minimum, simply one in a long line of “types” that runs from Cain and Nimrod on is not, I think, an unreasonable thing to ask about someone who now literally identifies himself with Jesus Christ. Fair enough. By posting that meme, Trump invited the comparison. More: “Blasphemy” is not a phrase we are used to seeing in print these days even in magazines like this one. When it does appear, it is usually in a non-literal sense, meaning something like “insouciance.” But blasphemy is not a mere casual lack of concern for sacred things; it is their willful profanation. If the image posted on Trump’s TruthSocial account on Sunday evening (only moments after a bizarre diatribe against Pope Leo) is not blasphemous, the word has no meaning. … The picture is not only blasphemous but idolatrous. It is an invitation to worship our 47th president. Yes, that’s right. Walther turns to a lecture St. John Henry Newman gave about the Antichrist. Pay close attention: For me what is most interesting about Newman’s lecture is his insistence that when faced with antichrist, we will deceive ourselves every bit as much as he deceives us. Antichrist, he argues, will not simply lie; he will lie about everything, especially the fact of his own lying—and he will expect all of us to repeat these lies. “Do you think he is so unskilful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the Truth?” Newman asks. “No,” he continues. “He offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty. . . he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform.” This, Newman says, is how antichrist “conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you.” That work is not simply co-operation with a series of falsehoods or accepting the overthrow of certain hitherto settled laws and customs—it is nothing less than a spiritual revolution, a rejection of all existing bonds, duties, affections, obligations, pieties, a reduction of all moral reasoning to a crude calculus of gain, a hatred for “times gone by” and “every institution which reveres them.” Once we accept this revolution, implicitly or otherwise, Newman thought that antichrist’s work would be done. This was true even, indeed perhaps especially, if you believe that the whole thing is hysterically funny: “Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his.” Trump is far too lightweight a figure to be the Antichrist foretold in the Bible. But what Trump is unambiguously doing is manifesting the spirit of Antichrist. When the real one shows up, most people will not grasp what they are dealing with. In a reversal of Marx’s dictum about history, this time Antichrist presents himself as farce; in the future, when the real one arrives, he will present himself as tragedy — that is to say, with real historical weight. Subscribe now Share Read more