Few demographics were more important to President Donald Trump’s 2024 win than Catholics. While Catholics usually split close to 50-50, the data shows Trump won between 55% and 59% of them — apparently the most of any presidential candidate in decades.
Just 17 months later, Trump is clashing with a pope … again.
This time, it might have a more lasting impact.
Trump went on to win the 2016 election after a brief spat with Pope Francis. But his new dispute with Pope Leo XIV is different.
Late Sunday, Trump lashed out at Pope Leo’s criticisms of the Iran war in a lengthy social media post, which:
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Called the pope “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.”
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Claimed Leo was only elected pope “because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump.”
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Said 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.”
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Said Leo was hurting the Catholic Church.
A member of Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, Bishop Robert Barron, called the post “entirely inappropriate and disrespectful” and said “the President owes the Pope an apology.”
Trump then took things to a whole new level by posting an apparently AI-generated fake image depicting himself as a Christ-like figure healing a sick person.
It’s an image that many critics, including some who supported Trump, like the Knights Templar International, labeled blasphemous. Trump later deleted the post and on Monday claimed he thought it depicted him as a doctor, which it did not. (“I don’t know too many doctors that have glowing hands,” Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest, quipped to CNN.”)
The situation harks back to one that played out just more than a decade ago.
In early 2016, as Trump was pulling ahead in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, he briefly tangled with Pope Francis over the pontiff’s comments on immigration.
When Francis was set to visit the Mexican border, Trump called him “a very political person” and suggested Mexico was using him. Days later, Francis seemed to criticize Trump’s plans to build a border wall, saying it was “not Christian” to focus on building walls rather than bridges.
Trump responded by calling Francis’ comments “disgraceful.” He even asserted that, if ISIS attacked the Vatican, the pope would have wished Trump were president.
It stood out, even in a campaign full of shocking moments. Here was the new frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination — a process that heavily involves religious voters — openly feuding with the most well-known faith leader in the world.
Plenty of think pieces were written about whether Trump was shooting himself in the foot, though Trump obviously emerged just fine from that dispute and won the presidency later that year.
The 2016 clash didn’t become a big deal because it was over about as quickly as it began. Just a day after his harshest criticisms of Francis, Trump suddenly sought to smooth things over.
He praised Francis as a “wonderful guy” and insisted they hadn’t actually been fighting. He even suggested the pope’s comment about walls and bridges had been overanalyzed and weren’t so critical of Trump.
It was a pretty shocking climbdown from Trump, a man who rarely backs down from a fight.
But the latest friction could drag out.
Trump has deleted his controversial social media image. But, otherwise, neither leader is signaling they have any intention of backing down.
Pope Leo is leaning into the dispute more than Francis did. While Francis obliquely criticized Trump’s immigration policies, Leo has been more direct about his criticisms about Trump, raising them repeatedly on both immigration and the war.
He even told reporters Monday aboard the papal airplane that he had “no fear of the Trump administration” and would continue preaching the Gospel.
And Trump doubled down Monday on his other criticisms of Leo and said he wouldn’t apologize.
“No, because Pope Leo said things that are wrong. He was very much against what I’m doing with regard to Iran,” Trump said, adding: “I think he’s very weak on crime and other things. He went public. I’m just responding to Pope Leo.”
Another key element is Trump’s apparently blasphemous post.
While he deleted it (and denied that it was clearly a reference to Jesus Christ), the comparison crosses a line for many faithful Catholics and other Christians. The post also came a week after Trump’s spiritual adviser, Paula White-Cain, openly compared him to Jesus Christ at a White House event. (Trump ally Tucker Carlson even cited the scene while attacking Trump for how he deals with faith.)
“What [the media] really should be paying attention to are the Christian Trump supporters who have stood with him through Iran, who are waking up to his blasphemy,” conservative commentator Erick Erickson said on X.
Then there’s the fact that this is the first American pope.
While every pope has an international following, it’s logical to assume that Leo might matter more not just to American Catholics, but to Americans in general. The criticisms might sound different coming from the Chicago White Sox fan who speaks in unaccented English.
And indeed, polling has suggested the pope is overwhelmingly popular with Americans.
He was the most popular national figure of 14 people tested by Gallup last summer. And Americans viewed him positively by a 5-to-1 margin in an NBC News poll last month. Trump, meanwhile, is at a low point politically, with approval ratings that are down in the 30s in some recent polls.
It’s certainly possible that most Trump supporters wouldn’t be alienated by a prolonged feud with the pope. In fact, we should probably expect that, given how devoted Trump’s base has proved over the last decade.
But Trump can’t really afford to alienate many more supporters right now.
Catholics weren’t just hugely important to Trump in the 2024 election; they’ve actually stuck by Trump more than most groups, according to January data from the Pew Research Center.
Pew showed support for Trump’s agenda among White and Hispanic Catholics dropped less than it did with other groups, including evangelicals, other Protestants and the religiously unaffiliated.
All that to say: We could be seeing a clash between Trump and a pope that actually matters.
