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So, U.S. President Donald J. Trump has been complaining about Pope Leo XIV on social media, again. Sort of. “Someone should explain to the Pope that the Mayor of Chicago is useless,” Trump posted on Friday to his Truth Social account, “and that Iran cannot have a Nuclear Weapon!” The president’s remark came in the wake of a private meeting between the Chicago-born pontiff and Brandon Johnson, his native city’s mayor, a first-term Democrat elected after running on a fairly progressive platform. Johnson is also staunchly anti-Trump and anti-MAGA, but that matters almost as little to Trump’s calculus as does Leo’s stalwart advocacy for peace on earth. However, Trump’s online behavior wasn’t really about either the pope or the mayor. Why Leo again, and why now? Like almost all that Trump says and does – at least online – his remark was about Trump, and it was part of a calculated push to make leading Catholics in his administration choose between him and the pontiff. The two likeliest contenders for the Republican nomination in 2028 are U.S. Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, both of whom are visibly and vocally Catholic. They are also sincerely Catholic, by every observable measure, regardless of what one may say or think of their politics or their respective decisions to serve in the Trump administration. Trump is trying to make them choose him over the American pope, since the Catholic politicians will be asked about the president’s outbursts. RELATED: Trump’s social media attacks have put Leo XIV in the U.S. presidential mix Both Vance and Rubio know they will have to distance themselves from Trump at some point. The question for each is: When? The answer is going to be different for each man, and the timing was always going to be tricky for both of them, in different ways, for some of the same reasons and for some different ones. The last time Trump appeared to pick a fight with Leo XIV was in mid-April – only six or seven weeks ago – when he undertook a diatribe against the pope and posted a blasphemous AI-generated image of himself refigured as Christ the Healer. In fairness to Trump, he deleted the AI slop some hours after posting and said he “thought it was me as a doctor, and had to do with the Red Cross, as a Red Cross worker there, which we support.” That said, Trump never walked back his comments, and they were shocking even to Catholics otherwise well-disposed toward the president. Among other things, Trump called Leo “weak on crime” and “weak on nuclear weapons,” and said Leo should “stop catering to the radical left” and “get his act together.” Bishop Robert Barron – appointed by Trump to his special presidential commission on religious liberty – said the president “owes the Pope an apology,” and called Trump’s statements “entirely inappropriate and disrespectful.” He wasn’t the only one who found them so, and Trump’s support among Catholics has waned in the wake of the April episodes. That is partly owing to Trump’s anti-papal tirades and partly owing to his military adventure in the Middle East, his shifting tariff regimes and other economic policies, and his ham-fisted immigration enforcement. Mayor Johnson of Chicago noted as much – or hinted at it – in his rejoinder to Trump at the weekend, after Trump’s Friday broadside. “Chicagoans have had more than enough of Trump’s blasphemous war in Iran,” Johnson said in response to Trump’s more recent provocation. “Someone should explain to the president that he’s only making it harder for working families to make ends meet,” Johnson said. Chicago is also a city that has been living through some very hard times resulting from Trump’s ICE enforcement measures, which continue to be unpopular among Catholics – who generally support stronger anti-immigration policy – and particularly among Hispanic men, roughly half of whom supported Trump nationwide in 2024. The latest remark from Trump is mild by comparison with those from April, but it suggests a drip-drop approach after April’s major discharge, all designed to make it measurably more difficult for both Rubio and Vance to continue supporting Trump and also court the Catholic vote when the time comes. Vance’s position as vice president means Trump can’t fire him, so he has more room to maneuver while he is in office. Rubio, on the other hand, could be fired and, in any case, has the sort of job that requires him not only to execute U.S. policy as directed by the president but also – in Trump-World, at least – to support his principal personally and politically. Both men want to be able to court the Catholic vote in 2028, and 55 percent of Catholics chose Trump in 2024. Among Mass-going Catholics, the percentage that went for Trump was higher. So, one thing both men will be watching is whether Trump’s behavior – whether personal toward the pope or political at home and abroad – will further erode that support. Catholics who supported Trump last time tended to like his campaign promises and policy statements, but they were not, by and large, part of his MAGA Republican base. MAGA Christians form a large part of Trump’s support base. They tend to be evangelical Protestant and drawn to Trump’s persona as well as his politics. Trump appears to believe he can hold them through the midterm elections and even beyond 2028, regardless of who wins the White House. These are political realities with which everyone must contend. What about the midterms? Trump knows the U.S. military operations in Iran are deeply unpopular at home and abroad, as are his economic policies and the heavy-handedness of the manner in which he has gone about enforcing immigration law. Picking a fight with the pope – who is currently on everyone’s short list of most trustworthy figures in the world – is a horse that wouldn’t trot right now, especially with control of both the House and the Senate at stake in midterm elections later this year. It appears Trump may not be concerned with the result of the midterms so much as he is with keeping the Republican party MAGA and with keeping himself the MAGA figurehead as long as he can. Republicans don’t need to win in November in order for Trump to do that. Trump wants to keep the MAGA movement for himself, in other words, and he wants to keep the Republican party MAGA, and he wants to show Republicans they will definitely lose if they turn on him. Ask Senators Cornyn and Cassidy, and Rep. Massie, if you doubt it. The three Republican lawmakers from Texas, Louisiana, and Kentucky, respectively, each lost primary challenges to MAGA-aligned and Trump-backed challengers. Those challengers’ chances in the November general elections are not necessarily great, but that seems to be the point. Trump only needs to show Republicans the MAGA base is still his and still in effective control of the party, which may not be able to make new men but can unmake them. That is a message Catholic Republican candidates for governor and Congress in the midterms will be hearing, and Trump’s attack on the pope may, for that reason, more gravely affect them than Vance or Rubio, at least in the short term. Then again, Trump will turn 80 on June 14, and no man lives forever. Vance and Rubio will be watching to see what happens in the midterms, as will the American people, including the Catholics. *A copy-editing error in an earlier version of this story resulted in a misstatement of Thomas Massie’s office. Massie represents Kentucky’s 4th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Crux Now regrets the error. Follow Chris Altieri on X: @craltieri

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