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When Robert Francis Prevost was chosen as the first American pope last week, many joked that it was only a matter of time before Donald Trump claimed credit, as the U.S. president is a huge fan of demanding praise for things he did not do.
As it turns out, it only took him three days. Trump suggested that Pope Leo XIV owes it all to DJT in an an exceptionally incoherent Truth Social post on Sunday night:
Trump packed an almost impressive amount of nonsense into this 76-word post.
First, there’s the idea that he’s responsible for Prevost winning a secret vote of 135 cardinal electors. It’s true that Trump won the Catholic vote; he captured 54 percent of Catholic voters compared to 44 percent for Kamala Harris, according to an AP VoteCast survey conducted days after the 2024 election. But obviously the U.S. president and American Catholics have no say in the conclave process. And Trump never advocated for the election of an American pope, unless you count jokingly floating the idea that he should be the next pontiff. Perhaps Trump was suggesting that his personal popularity with Catholics, from cardinals to laypeople, motivated the conclave’s selection of an American. But that still doesn’t make sense; why would the cardinals express their Trump appreciation by electing Prevost, who’s known for criticizing the president’s policies and his vice-president, J.D. Vance?
Second, there’s everything Trump said about Martha Raddatz. He misspelled the journalist’s name and referred to her as an “old timer,” though she’s six years younger than him. Also, Raddatz did not “blurt out” that the pope’s selection had nothing to do with Trump while filling in as host for Sunday’s edition of This Week With George Stephanopoulos.
There are two moments that Trump might be referring to. The first is at the 13:50 mark in the video below, when Raddatz asked Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, “Pope Francis cared so much about the poor and migrants. Pope Leo does as well. In some ways will he be a counterbalance for what’s happening in American politics right now, and President Trump?”
The second moment, at the 32:44 mark, seems closer to what Trump described — but Raddatz wasn’t the speaker. During a panel discussion, ABC News’s Terry Moran said they’d asked cardinals if Prevost’s selection had anything to do with Trump, and they said no.
“The question that we had was, how much did the American moment with President Trump matter?” he said. “They’re telling us, not at all. It was him [Prevost] that mattered.”
Trump should be at least vaguely familiar with Moran, as the journalist interviewed him in the Oval Office less than two weeks ago.
Though the timing was probably a coincidence, hours after Trump’s Truth Social post went up, Pope Leo underscored the differences between him and his purported presidential benefactor during his first audience with the press.
“Let us disarm communication of all prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred; let us free it from aggression,” Leo told more than 1,000 journalists in Vatican City. “We do not need loud, forceful communication but rather communication that is capable of listening.”
Unfortunately, the rage-poster-in-chief probably didn’t hear Leo’s message.
