As the white smoke cleared, Robert Prevost of Chicago became Pope Leo XIV, the first ever American pope.
That revelation quickly gave way to an even more important one: Bob seems to have a Twitter account. Online sleuths quickly shared a February post from an account in his name sharing a National Catholic Reporter headline: “J.D. Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love of others.” The account also retweeted defenses of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a call for prayers for George Floyd and his family and a 2017 post from Jim Martin (a well-known liberal Jesuit I briefly worked with during an internship at America Magazine) reading: “We’re banning all Syrian refugees? The men, women and children who most need help? What an immoral nation we’re becoming. Jesus weeps.”
At least one contingent of the right is happy; the executive director of the Pro-Life Action League sent around a statement highlighting a reported comment the pope made during a homily this year: “God’s mercy calls us to protect every life, especially those society overlooks — the child yet to be born and the elderly nearing their journey’s end — because each bears Christ’s face.”
The political portrait that emerges is baffling to the American mind: liberal on immigration and the poor, conservative on abortion. It’s also a fairly typical Catholic profile, in a church that both urges social justice and care for the marginalized and also opposes abortion, women in the priesthood and same-sex marriage.
The MAGAverse, though, isn’t waiting for confirmation that the Twitter account is Prevost’s. It has seen enough — and it doesn’t like the cut of the new pope’s jib.
“MARXIST POPE!” bellowed Laura Loomer in response to the George Floyd retweet.
“The new pope seems to be anti-Trump and pro-open borders,” tweeted Sean Davis, CEO of The Federalist, reacting to Prevost’s alleged retweet of a Washington Post article headlined: “Cardinal Dolan: Why Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is so problematic.” Dolan, for what it’s worth, is a conservative who often cozies up to President Trump.
“Here is the new pope attacking Trump,” Jack Posobiec, a far-right activist, lamented in response to the same retweet.
“Is it too much to hope that some 20-year-old ran the new pope’s X account and he never looked at it?” grasped Megyn Kelly.
“Nightmare,” Catturd tweeted gloomily.
Many liberals loved Pope Francis not because he was “progressive” by American political terms — he maintained throughout his life that abortion is “murder,” and did not change doctrine forbidding same-sex couples from marrying in the church — but because he expressed warmth and acceptance towards LGBTQ people far beyond what his anti-gay predecessors had shown. He also championed the dignity of immigrants and refugees, advocated for environmental stewardship and appointed more women to senior Vatican roles than any other pope. For a worldview long boxed out of the highest ranks of Catholicism, Francis’ posture was a sea change.
But MAGAism brooks no dissent, tolerates no heterodoxy. Any departure from or criticism of Trump’s worldview, even indirect, is grounds for excommunication.
— Kate Riga
Well, Which Is Worse?
Now that Trump has dropped Ed Martin as his nominee to permanently hold the position of D.C. U.S. Attorney — due to Republican heartburn about his Jan. 6-related antics (not his recent targeting of Trump’s perceived political enemies, of course) — the President is reportedly mulling another trollish option to, at least temporarily, run the office. Per ABC News:
President Donald Trump is strongly considering installing Fox News host and former prosecutor Jeanine Pirro as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Double Take
In what appears to be a bid to help House Republicans who are at a standstill over how to get away with hoodwinking Americans into thinking massive cuts to Medicaid are a good thing — while hardliners in the conference claim they won’t support a bill that adds to the deficit — Donald Trump reportedly instructed congressional Republicans to … raise taxes on the wealthy.
It’s a surprising and somewhat contradictory directive from the President who also wants Republican lawmakers to extend his 2017 tax cuts, which primarily benefited the wealthy, as part of the same legislation. (It’s also, obviously, a policy proposal historically supported by progressives, not Trump and his billionaire buddies and not the Republicans in Congress who are at an impasse.) Trump may see the maneuver as a remedy, a way to break the logjam that is currently holding House Republicans back from releasing the text of the targeted cuts they need to make to pay for the 2017 tax cut extension. In theory, it could address hardliners’ demands that the deficit not increase or give House Republicans a bit of breathing room to slash less of Medicaid.
Whether any faction of the House Republicans will be able to swallow such a tax hike, in practice, is another matter.
From WaPo:
Trump, in recent conversation with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), said Congress should raise taxes on some of the highest earners, according to two people familiar with the president’s position, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly.
Administration officials have discussed several options for doing so, including allowing the top tax rate to revert back to Obama-era levels. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has also floated creating a new tax bracket for those earning more than $5 million per year.
Investigating The Investigators On Steroids
Trump’s Justice Department has opened an investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought a case that led to a $354 million fine for Trump after a New York judge found that he and the Trump Organization were liable for inflating his wealth and assets in order to secure loans, among other things. Attorney General Pam Bondi referred the investigation to New York’s Northern District instead of SDNY. The statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the New York’s North District to the Times Union was inappropriate … at best.
“This is being handled at this time by main (Department of) Justice and the Albany FBI field office,” said U.S. Attorney John A. Sarcone III, who oversees the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York’s Northern District. “We stand prepared to act in the capacity that we need to when and if we are informed there’s a charge to be made. Unlike Letitia James, who unethically ran around the state campaigning on getting Donald Trump… my office conducts itself in a manner that is proper and professional.”
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"Unlike Letitia James, who unethically ran around the state campaigning on getting Donald Trump… my office conducts itself in a manner that is proper and professional, by unethically running around the state boasting about how we’re gonna get Letitia James.”
Even without the addition, it’s an almost perfectly self-cancelling statement.
Maybe all these MAGA types might want to consider that people who understand what Christianity is supposed to be all about picked a man who can’t stand Trump and his policies.
I love the sound of exploding conservative heads!!!
Re: pope
A lot of people are saying that the MAGA were rooting for President Trump to be on the ballot. If he was, he would have won. What a landslide it would have been. He is very popular with the catholics. He has said so on Lies Social.
Indeed, Robert Prevost did not have any winning cards – he’s not a woman, but he’s from Democrat-run Chicago, after all. He won only because President Trump did so much. He spoke up, threatened tariffs against Heard and McDonald Islands, sent a Melanoma lookalike to Pope Francis’ funeral, and negotiated with the cardinals to make America great again. No other American President has been able to get an American elected to this position.
American Presidents have helped Americans win at the Olympics, the World Bank, IMF, and the lottery, but not at the College of Cardinals. Robert Prevost has not said thanks to Vice President Vance and to President Trump yet. When?
Dual citizenship with Peru.
His first speech was in Italian and Spanish, not English.
He us expected to carry on what Francis had begun.