RealClearPolitics has flagged this X post by Jesús Enrique Rosas by including it in its lineup this morning. It is necessary and clarifying.
Last week the pope met with former Obama strategist David Axelrod. CBS News reported that the meeting took place this past Thursday. No one said anything about what went down at the meeting.
Axelrod’s memoir, by the way, is entitled Believer. The reference is not to religion. The subtitle clarifies the subject: My Forty Years in Politics.
Conrad Black notes in his Brussels Signal column this morning that over the weekend, “The CBS television program 60 Minutes, a long time spigot of anti-Trump bile, gathered together three haemophiliac bleeding-heart cardinals, Tobin of Newark, McElroy of Washington, and Cupich of Chicago, to amplify the scurrilous theme that Trump was fundamentally irreconcilable with the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church, which represents almost a quarter of Americans, including Melania Trump.”
The 60 Minutes segment somehow happened to coincide with Pope Leo’s condemnation of our efforts to reduce the threat that Iranian regime poses to the world. This coincidence is the subject of the post by Rosas (text below):
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So the Pope met with David Axelrod last week. David Axelrod. Obama’s campaign architect. A man who is not Catholic, has never met a pope before, and whose entire career has been engineering political narratives for the American left.
And then, by pure coincidence, the Pope immediately started lobbing shots at the Trump administration, and three US Cardinals popped up on 60 Minutes doing the same thing.
All organically, I’m sure.
I’m a practicing Catholic. I need you to understand that part. But in my opinion, Trump has all the right to lash out at him. Maybe you’ll disagree, but in the end, Trump talks like Trump. Water is wet. I’m talking about MY Church being run like a DNC satellite office but with a golden throne.
This is the same Vatican that watched governments padlock churches during COVID and said nothing. That let Biden take communion while funding abortion and said nothing. That fired Bishop Strickland for defending actual Church doctrine. That removed Bishop Fernández in Puerto Rico for defending religious exemptions THE CATECHISM ITSELF supports.
But somehow Trump is the threat to human dignity.
Pope Francis was bad. Leo has turned out to be worse. Francis at least was vague about his politics. Leo went and hired the consulting firm.
The man has ignored the slaughter of Christians across Nigeria, the Sahel, India, Syria, Bangladesh, Pakistan. Hundreds of believers murdered, churches burned, pastors kidnapped. His response? Platitudes about dialogue.
OF COURSE he won’t even name who’s doing the killing.
But he’ll fly across continents to make interfaith gestures the week after his people coordinated a media hit on a sitting US president.
The weaponization of belief is obvious. You get the Pope to pick a fight with Trump, and suddenly millions of conservative Catholics have to choose between their faith and their vote.
