Transcript: Angry Trump Spirals as Poll Shows Him Losing to Pope Badly

Source: The New Republic · Bias: Left

Summary

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 7 episode of The Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.Donald Trump has been raging at Pope Leo for weeks over the pope’s criticism of the Iran war. And this week Trump attacked Pope Leo again in truly bizarre terms, declaring that he’s “endangering Catholics” by advocating for peace and not supporting Trump’s war. This was strikingly personal and extremely ill advised, because new polling shows that Trump is losing his battle with the pope very, very badly. Importantly, not only do large majorities reject Trump’s attacks, big majorities also side with the pope on their underlying dispute. We think that’s encouraging in hidden ways. So we’re talking about all this with one of our go-to guests on these matters, Sarah Posner, a scholar of religion who writes for Talking Points Memo and hosts the Reign of Error podcast. Good to have you back on, Sarah.Sarah Posner: Thanks for having me.Sargent: So let’s start with Donald Trump’s latest attack on the pope. Here’s Trump on a right-wing podcast when asked about their ongoing battle.Donald Trump (voiceover): Well, the pope would rather talk about the fact that it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. And I don’t think that’s very good. I think he’s endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people. But I guess if it’s up to the pope, he thinks it’s just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.Sargent: So there Trump repeats one of his favorite lines—that the pope wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon. That’s a vile way to characterize the pope’s criticism of the war. But that aside, note the added line here about the pope endangering a lot of Catholics. Sarah, what do you make of that, and how will Catholics receive it?Posner: I think that Trump is flailing around on this. He’s trying to find a way to contest Pope Leo’s message of peace. And so he’s coming back at him with this ridiculous claim that (a) he doesn’t care if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, and (b) that that lack of caring about that will endanger a lot of Catholics. If Trump felt confident that he was winning this war of words with Pope Leo, he would not feel compelled to flail around on a right-wing radio show and claim that Catholics were being endangered by their own pope.Sargent: You’d think. Well, The Washington Post had a really interesting new poll which shows how badly Trump is losing here. It found that 57 percent of Americans have a negative reaction to Trump’s claim that the pope thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. As an aside, 87 percent reject Trump recently posting an image depicting himself as Jesus. Sarah, I find that heartening. It suggests the public really gets how dishonest Trump is being in attacking the pope. It’s almost as if Trump is unable to grasp that the pope might be broadly seen as a more honest interlocutor than Trump is. I mean that sincerely. I think Trump is unable to get that the pope might be seen as a more honest and more pious figure than him.Posner: He cannot fathom it because he has been told for well over a decade by his most loyal base that God has anointed him to lead America. The idea that Pope Leo is a moral voice for the world—or for Americans, in particular—is anathema to Trump. That’s part of his narcissistic personality: Because he’s been anointed by God in his view, somebody else cannot be speaking on moral or ethical issues to Catholics and to non-Catholics around the world. This is further evidenced by the comment that JD Vance made when this whole thing started, when he said that the pope has to be very careful when discussing matters of morality.Sargent: What’s going on here is that Trump doesn’t understand that his powers are limited to the temporal realm, to the secular realm. He really doesn’t get that. I want to talk a little more about what you just pinpointed there, which is that large swaths of his base have told him that he’s not just a secular leader—they have told him that he’s a spiritual leader to them too.Posner: Yes, and that’s why he felt emboldened to portray himself as Jesus in that post a few weeks ago. He’s out of touch with what’s going on in the temporal realm. Pope Leo understands what’s going on in the temporal realm more than Trump does. [Trump] seems to not know what’s going on at all with regard to the war, anything that’s going on domestically, the economy and so forth. He leans on the idea that God has anointed him, that he can magically fix America’s problems and America’s standing in the world.

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Transcript: Angry Trump Spirals as Poll Shows Him Losing to Pope Badly
The New Republic

Transcript: Angry Trump Spirals as Poll Shows Him Losing to Pope Badly

Left

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 7 episode of The Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.Donald Trump has been raging at Pope Leo for weeks over the pope’s criticism of the Iran war. And this week Trump attacked Pope Leo again in truly bizarre terms, declaring that he’s “endangering Catholics” by advocating for peace and not supporting Trump’s war. This was strikingly personal and extremely ill advised, because new polling shows that Trump is losing his battle with the pope very, very badly. Importantly, not only do large majorities reject Trump’s attacks, big majorities also side with the pope on their underlying dispute. We think that’s encouraging in hidden ways. So we’re talking about all this with one of our go-to guests on these matters, Sarah Posner, a scholar of religion who writes for Talking Points Memo and hosts the Reign of Error podcast. Good to have you back on, Sarah.Sarah Posner: Thanks for having me.Sargent: So let’s start with Donald Trump’s latest attack on the pope. Here’s Trump on a right-wing podcast when asked about their ongoing battle.Donald Trump (voiceover): Well, the pope would rather talk about the fact that it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. And I don’t think that’s very good. I think he’s endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people. But I guess if it’s up to the pope, he thinks it’s just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.Sargent: So there Trump repeats one of his favorite lines—that the pope wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon. That’s a vile way to characterize the pope’s criticism of the war. But that aside, note the added line here about the pope endangering a lot of Catholics. Sarah, what do you make of that, and how will Catholics receive it?Posner: I think that Trump is flailing around on this. He’s trying to find a way to contest Pope Leo’s message of peace. And so he’s coming back at him with this ridiculous claim that (a) he doesn’t care if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, and (b) that that lack of caring about that will endanger a lot of Catholics. If Trump felt confident that he was winning this war of words with Pope Leo, he would not feel compelled to flail around on a right-wing radio show and claim that Catholics were being endangered by their own pope.Sargent: You’d think. Well, The Washington Post had a really interesting new poll which shows how badly Trump is losing here. It found that 57 percent of Americans have a negative reaction to Trump’s claim that the pope thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. As an aside, 87 percent reject Trump recently posting an image depicting himself as Jesus. Sarah, I find that heartening. It suggests the public really gets how dishonest Trump is being in attacking the pope. It’s almost as if Trump is unable to grasp that the pope might be broadly seen as a more honest interlocutor than Trump is. I mean that sincerely. I think Trump is unable to get that the pope might be seen as a more honest and more pious figure than him.Posner: He cannot fathom it because he has been told for well over a decade by his most loyal base that God has anointed him to lead America. The idea that Pope Leo is a moral voice for the world—or for Americans, in particular—is anathema to Trump. That’s part of his narcissistic personality: Because he’s been anointed by God in his view, somebody else cannot be speaking on moral or ethical issues to Catholics and to non-Catholics around the world. This is further evidenced by the comment that JD Vance made when this whole thing started, when he said that the pope has to be very careful when discussing matters of morality.Sargent: What’s going on here is that Trump doesn’t understand that his powers are limited to the temporal realm, to the secular realm. He really doesn’t get that. I want to talk a little more about what you just pinpointed there, which is that large swaths of his base have told him that he’s not just a secular leader—they have told him that he’s a spiritual leader to them too.Posner: Yes, and that’s why he felt emboldened to portray himself as Jesus in that post a few weeks ago. He’s out of touch with what’s going on in the temporal realm. Pope Leo understands what’s going on in the temporal realm more than Trump does. [Trump] seems to not know what’s going on at all with regard to the war, anything that’s going on domestically, the economy and so forth. He leans on the idea that God has anointed him, that he can magically fix America’s problems and America’s standing in the world.

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