86. The Politics Behind the American Pope

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Hello, everybody.

We have white smoke from the Vatican.

We have white smoke on this podcast.

Anthony is with us.

And

we wanted to pick your brains, Anthony, as a Catholic American.

First of all, congratulations, America's first Pope.

Very exciting.

I've already had tons of texts from Catholic friends of mine, and including in Chicago, where apparently they are just going crazy in that city.

And we have Pope Leo.

XIV, the first ever American.

He's actually American and Peruvian.

He's a dual national.

So he's the first American and Peruvian Pope, born in the United States, has lived in Peru for a couple of decades

as a priest and then a bishop over there, and now has been in the Vatican under Pope Francis for the last three or four years, vetting new bishops.

And he has been chosen on the second day of the Conclave to become the new Holy Father.

What do you make of the new Pope?

Well, first of all,

We have some lapsed Catholics in life, and I've been intermittently a lapsed Catholic and a practicing Catholic, Daddy.

I would consider myself today a practicing Catholic.

Once again, I have young children, and I've gotten them through the sacraments of communion and so forth.

And so, you know, listen, it's a thrilling day for Catholics.

I guess I've got to make three or four points.

I'd love to have you react to all of them.

Number one, if you had said to me there was going to be an American Pope in my lifetime, I would have said that that wouldn't have happened because of the sort of force of the American military might and all the things related to America.

The Catholic Church is primarily a church that has poor people in it.

If you look at the demography of the Roman Catholic Church, and so I would have said it had been unlikely that there would be a pope from America.

So, number two, as an American Catholic, I have an 88-year-old mother.

I have

a friend of mine whose mother is 95 who cried today because they didn't think they would see an American in our lifetime.

But I do think there is a political message here.

And I'm not trying to make everything about politics.

And I want you to react to this.

I think that the church is looking at the meta forces that are going on in the world right now.

And you have some bullying and some intimidation going on in the world right now.

And they elected the antipode of that.

They elected a missionary.

They elected somebody that's for the poor and for the indigent.

And I think they're sending a message.

It's not just a message to the J.D.

Vance's and the Donald Trumps of the world, but I actually think it's a broader message about where we are, what the global identity should be.

And I'll end my remarks with this one sentence, and then I'd love to hear your reaction.

Joseph Stalin once said, but what of the Pope?

He has no armies.

And he wasn't answered until the

early 1980s when John Paul II went to Poland.

And alongside of Wayka Walesa, the messaging was very clear that we were going to puncture through the autocracy and we were going to bring down the Iron Curtain.

And it wasn't done with an army, but it was done with a message.

And it was done with a very, frankly, very Catholic message.

And so one has to wonder, the church being a political body, the type of messaging it's sending to the world right now.

So, what are your thoughts on all that, Gator?

It is very interesting.

And just to kind of fill those in, I'm sure all of you have been following it, but the sort of political conversation about Pope Leo XIV is that he has stood up online, and there is a tweet for everything in this life.

He has stood up online against J.D.

Vance when J.D.

Vance, as our colleague Rory Stewart, also got into a fight with J.D.

Vance

over the meaning of

love in the Catholic Church effectively, and whether there is a ranking of love.

And when J.D.

Vance suggested that there was a ranking of love, that the Catholic Church and the Christian Church calls for people to love those closer to them more than they should love people further away from them than their neighbors.

The Pope, who was then Cardinal Prevost,

retweeted an essay which was titled J.D.

Vance is Wrong.

Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others.

So that is all over Twitter at the moment, and that's why we're talking about this in a political context.

I should say that Donald Trump has put out, President Trump has put out a very nice

congratulations to Pope Leo.

He had earlier said that he would love to have an American, but he'd named a different American cardinal, Cardinal Dolan.

J.D.

Vance has also, in the last few minutes, tweeted out his congratulations and his prayers for the Holy Father.

But there are people in the MAGA world who are taking a lot of umbrage at this.

Laura Loomer has tweeted out.

This is the new Pope.

His name is Robert Prevost.

He's the first American Pope.

He is anti-Trump, anti-MAGA, pro-open borders, and a total Marxist like Pope Francis.

Catholics don't have anything good to look forward to, just another Marxist puppet in the Vatican.

The one thing that Cardinal Prevost has tweeted out continuously over the last few years is his support for poor people.

You mentioned that there are many poor people in the Catholic Church,

and in particular for immigrants and refugees.

In 2017, he tweeted out that we should be defending Syrian refugees.

So this is something that he has held dear for a very long time.

The situation of migrants and immigrants, the situation of refugees, people fleeing their home, whether it's because of political persecution or because of economic opportunity, it is something that he holds dear.

And this has now put him in this position, which is, I think, unusual, right, Antony, for a brand new Pope within a couple of hours of

taking the throne of St.

Peter saying that this is a political move.

I don't know know that the 103 cardinals who sat there in the Sistine Chapel were thinking, as some are suggesting, right, this is a direct rebuke of populism and nationalism and of Donald Trump.

I would be surprised if it was that much of a political statement, but you know the Catholic Church better than I do.

That doesn't feel like the Catholic Church to me.

And I wouldn't think that this is a pope who wants to drive a wedge between American Catholics and their government.

No,

I don't think it's any of that.

And

I think

that's a bridge too far.

I think this is a Catholic message.

This is a healing message.

And I was talking to Tony Pastor, one of the founders of Golehanger, a fellow Catholic

who inspired this live stream about a book called Jesus Wept, Caddy.

Philip Sheenan wrote this book.

It's about the seven popes,

the most recent popes, frankly, and the battle for the church.

And I would recommend it to people that are interested in these conclaves and interested in the decision-making that goes on to select a pope.

You know, John XXIII reformed the church.

We had this thing called Vatican II.

We were giving the Mass in Latin 65 years ago.

We now can give it in Latin or the language of the delegation.

And so changes and reform have to happen.

It's a 2,000-plus-year-old organization.

And And I think this is just a statement of our times.

I don't think it's a political statement as much as it is the church is trying to frame itself for the future.

And the church is trying to say that it's a healing organization, and the church represents the poor.

I think if you're in the age of intimidation and you're in the age of bullying, and some of the people, some of the political leaders are in that age, I do think it does represent an antipode to those people.

And those people can take it however they want to take it.

As it relates to President Trump, some people think it's great that he puts out AI images himself dressed as the Pope.

Other people think it's sacrilegious.

But I've said this to you privately, I don't think the president would be doing that about the Prophet Muhammad.

I just don't think he would be doing that.

I think it would be a point of no return for him with members of the Islamic faith.

So I do think if you want to make jokes in our society and you want to do things like that, fine, go ahead.

But you are the leader of the United States.

And some would say, or at least used to say, you are the leader of the free world.

And frankly, there's still a group of people that believe that there's a certain way that you should act when you're the leader of the free world.

And so I think this is a counterdote to some of the nonsense that's going on in the world.

I don't think it's as political as Laura Loomer is saying, but

I do think it's a statement.

And I do think that John Paul II, frankly, was a statement at that time.

And I think this represents a statement.

Leo XIV

represents something.

Age 69, a missionary, a gentleman that believes in the rights of the poor and human dignity, and

a man who would probably not approve of human rights violations, Caddy.

We're going to take a quick break and talk more about the new Pope.

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To what extent, Antony, do you think he is in the

mold of Pope Francis?

Is he going to...

Because I don't think Pope Francis was political in the way that John Paul II was political.

John Paul II and the end of the Cold War are intimately linked.

And you mentioned Lek Voenze, and they are intimately linked together in history.

Pope Francis is political, he did express political views, but it was definitely one of compassion for the poor around the world.

The fact that Pope Francis, I mean, it was incredibly moving.

I hadn't realized he was doing this, was calling a Catholic church, a priest in a Catholic church in Gaza every single night of the war,

was something extraordinary, I think, his humanity in doing that, in reaching out to Catholics in difficult circumstances.

But it was a different, I think it was sort of political with a small P.

Now, he did get in the crossfires of Donald Trump, he did get in the crossfires of J.D.

Vance to some extent.

But do you think that Pope Leo, and I keep wanting to say Pope Francis, but of course now we have Pope Leo, Pope Leo is more in the vein of Pope Francis than in the vein of John Paul II?

Well, here's what I would say.

I think that he was very close to

Pope Francis.

I think people have to realize that people thought, okay,

the Pope was for reform.

And remember in 2013, he said, who am I to judge?

Pope Francis said this.

and Pope Leo XIV is very close to him.

He's also an Augustinian, and so there's Franciscans in the church, there's Jesuits in the church, there's Augustinians,

and Augustinians believe in the,

they all do, but to a greater extent, the Augustinians believe in the advocacy of the minority, the people that are left out of a political system or the people that are in the poor.

He chose Leo for a reason.

I think it's important for people to understand this.

The last Leo,

basically,

and again, the name Leo, not Leo, the astrological sign, but wrote Rerum Norvarum.

And what was that?

It was a foundational text for the organized labor movement.

It wasn't a socialist doctrine, but it was about the restraint of capitalism in favor of human dignity.

And so it's a pretty overt message.

He's letting you know that he's a successor to Francis, and he's choosing Leo for a reason.

Leo, the last Leo that was a pope, had a philosophy to help

people

in the side of labor.

And by the way, I can just tell you as a capitalist, you know I'm a capitalist and you tease me about my capitalism.

I can tell you that as a society, we're better on the economic.

I'm not going to tease you, Anthony, about anything.

You've had your fair share of teasing.

You've done that to me and I've enjoyed it.

But what I would say to you is that we are at our happiest.

I could prove this to you.

It's not an economic podcast, but we're at our happiness when the distribution between labor and capital, the economic rent flowing from an organization or flowing from a society, when it's roughly 50-50, we're at our happiest.

The working class people feel aspirational, but we're moving towards 55-45.

Maybe that'll make some people trillionaires, but it makes them trillionaires at the great expense of the national or the international happiness.

And I think the messaging here is very clear.

This is

a message of moral leadership, and this is a message of balance.

And again, I'm not saying it's an overt political message.

There are some people that are suggesting that it is, but it is a message about directionally where the church is going to go, which is a counterdote to nationalistic movements.

It's a counterdote to the, you know, it's about people first, Caddy K.

It's not about America first or the UK first or you pick the country first.

It's about putting people first.

And he is a very global pope.

I mean, that's what is, you know, his first words were in Italian.

He has lived in Rome.

He speaks multiple languages.

He's a polyglot.

This is definitely not a nationalist.

He may be a small P populist in the sense of wanting to look out for people who don't have much in life and look out for the bottom up, but he's definitely not an America first type.

Andy has a good question here.

What does it say about US politics that the moral leadership of the new American Pope feels like a direct contrast to the values of the man currently sitting in the White House?

And I understand and I want to be sensitive here to Catholics, including yourself, that we're jumping straight from the new Pope

of two billion Catholics around the world,

the Holy Father

sitting on the throne of St.

Peter, Peter to politics.

And that may seem crass to some people, but I do think it is a, first of all, it is a reflection of what this man himself has said and where he stands, that he has directly challenged political leadership.

He has chosen to do that.

This is a man who has chosen in his past to retweet articles that talk directly in contradiction to the current vice president and to political leaders who suggest that we shouldn't be loving migrants.

And it's worth a read, by the way.

I did just read it before we came on of the article that he retweeted.

And I think it's also, let's not pretend that Donald Trump is seen as kind of an extraordinary American leader around the world.

I mean, you know, if we were to poll America's allies at the moment, Donald Trump's not going to get very high ratings.

Let's just, you know, let's not pretend that he is.

And so

it is a remarkable moment to have the head of the Catholic Church be the first ever American at the time that you have the head of the political American body, the leader of the White House, not particularly popular around the world.

And I think that

it would be kind of naive to pretend that conference wasn't there.

You know, we're having the conversation, so let's have it.

Is President Trump perceived by many as a bully, even by some of his supporters?

Oh, I think that's part of his appeal to many of his.

I mean, he would say that, right?

He likes, he has said in the past, he said in interviews, he said in the Art of the Deal that he likes,

you know, kicking people

who contradict him.

He likes, he enjoys putting people down and getting the better of people.

He's said that.

Okay, so,

well, let me ask you this, what you know of this new pope.

Is the new pope like that?

No, I mean, everything I've read about the new pope, I mean, it's a lovely article, the article that he retweeted about,

you know, that we,

of course, we invest in our local communities.

This is from that article.

Of course, we invest in our local communities.

In fact, this is how we enact the deepest change, by voting, by fighting, by pushing back against systems in place that refuse to protect the most vulnerable among us.

But love cannot stop there.

The love Jesus speaks of is not about calculation or a choice between our families or neighbours.

It is not a finite resource to ration out, but a river that flows wild and without restraint.

If we find ourselves asking, who is my neighbor, we are already missing the point.

The The better question is, how do I love without limits?

He didn't write that, but he retweeted it, and I bet you he read it.

That is the man who's just been chosen as the next pope.

And this is from the tweet about the J.D.

Vance, or this is the mystery of Jesus.

This was an article that was written in contradiction to J.D.

Vance's comments about how you should love people closer to you more than you should love people far away from you.

And this is the article that, as a cardinal, he chose to retweet.

Yeah, so it's interesting.

No, and it's interesting because I retweeted after his election,

something he wrote 10 years ago.

I was digging to find it.

And you can go on my Twitter feed at Scaramucci for those that have an interest in this.

It's the mysteries of Jesus, the migrant.

And this is

an article that he put out on his Twitter feed in 2014, September the 18th.

and it was about Jesus and the story of Jesus as an

indigent, story of Jesus as a migrant.

And obviously, this is before the rise of Donald Trump.

This is even before Donald Trump's declaration to run for office.

And I would implore people to look at it because in the messaging, Robert Prevost,

now Pope Leo XIV,

is letting people know what he thinks about the humble people of our society and the representation that Jesus is of those humble people.

And again, this is not political.

This is something that he's saying that predates even Donald Trump's decision to run for president.

So, yes, there's some of this.

There's moral leadership here.

I don't like bullies, Caddy.

I'm not a big fan of bullies.

America has never really been a bullying nation, for that matter.

Yes, you're right.

50% of the Americans decided to elect somebody that's proud of being a bully.

But I think there's 2 billion Catholics in our society, and I think the Cardinals are suggesting that they are going to present somebody to the world that doesn't have that message.

And we'll have to see how those two things work with each other.

Now, I predict, I'm going to make a prediction on this podcast.

The President of the United States is a very smart politician.

You can dislike him, but he has phenomenal instincts.

I think he's going to pull back on some of his worser tendencies.

That's even a word worser.

Forgive me for saying it that way.

But I think he's going to pull back a little bit on some of the AI tweeting, and I think he's going to pull back a little bit on some of the nonsense that he's doing, because there's now an adult in the room at the Roman Catholic Church that the president's going to want to have some

political neutrality with, some political respect with, and I don't think he wants to parry with him.

Because remember, there's a lot of people in this world that believe in the vicar of Christ and believe in the spirituality that that represents.

And he basically told J.D.

Vance, dude, you got it wrong.

Okay, the way you're thinking about things as a Catholic, you got it wrong.

And Vance is no dummy.

He went to see the Pope before he died.

He knows he's on the wrong side of these things.

And so maybe this will be a wake-up call for these guys in a gentle way.

But again, it's not just the United States.

It's other things that are going on in the world.

Authoritarianism is on the rise.

Taking things and going alone.

After the Second World War, we're coming together.

Now, all of a sudden, we've decided that our nationalism is more important than our comity.

And I think this Pope doesn't represent that.

And maybe this is a message from the Catholic Church.

It's a pretty fast message, too, by the way.

Two days into a conclave to get the white smoke.

There's a lot of people in that room who said, hey,

we're going to send a message to the world about where we want the church to go.

And maybe there'll be a lot of people, Catholics and non-Catholics, that will listen.

And maybe it'll help the world at a time where the world is debating the way it wants to go.

And don't forget that Donald Trump, who is not a Catholic, but his wife, Melania, is a Catholic, and something like 20% of all American adults identify as Catholic.

I don't think that Donald Trump is going to want to get into a fight with the the first American Pope.

I think he will want to have that as a harmonious relationship if he can.

I imagine that J.D.

Vance will.

It's why they've put out

very welcoming congratulations, both of them, on their social media feeds today.

They're not going to want to have that fight.

J.D.

Vance did go, and then we're going to wrap it up.

J.D.

Vance went, of course, to meet the Pope just the day before Pope Francis died.

What do you think J.D.

Vance is thinking about the selection of Pope Leo?

I don't know J.D.

Vance super well.

I've met him once or twice, but I would say

that message received.

I think it's rung his bell, frankly.

It's the bell's gotten rung, and J.D.

Vance is now going to have to answer the bell by either changing or modifying some of his behavior, not trying to out-Trump Trump, or maybe he'll continue on the path to out-Trump Trump.

But I do think that that will end in tears for J.D.

Vance.

You know, Caddy,

I want to say this to you, and I want you to think about this for a second, because I don't know the answer.

How many eligible vote, how many voting eligible Catholics are there in the United States?

Well, I know that 20% of adults are

Catholics.

Okay, so I'm going to, if you guys don't mind, I know it's a live show, but I'm asking Grock right now.

How many Catholic voters voters there are?

There are enough

that in

certain key states, particularly, that

Donald Trump won't want to alienate them.

And I'm sure Donald Trump's wife won't want to alienate them either.

So I think you could have a period at least.

And I don't think that Pope Leo will tweet in the same way I imagine that Cardinal Prevost did.

That would be another prediction that I would make.

He tweeted the J.D.

Vance thing fairly recently when Rory got into it with him a couple of months ago.

But I can't imagine that as Pope he's going to want to take on the White House in the way that he did.

And so that would leave presumably time for the two to establish some kind of a relationship.

And I agree with you, Anthony.

I think this is a Pope who is first and foremost beyond politics.

A lot of you asking questions about whether this he was elected in direct

kind of rebuttal of Donald Trump.

That is not the way I see it.

That's not the way I see the world.

I don't think the church does it exactly like that.

So, Grock,

our friend Elon Musk, is coming through for us, Caddy K.

Grock is saying that there are 50 to 52 million voting eligible Catholics in the United States,

of which 30 million of them are registered to vote.

So, remember, we have a lot of people in our country that are voting eligible.

They don't register, but that's 25 to 27 percent of the national electorate.

So again, it's a very, very big number.

Some are lapsed Catholic, some don't follow the Pope, some don't follow the church, some may even do the opposite of what the church wants.

But if you're a political leader in the United States, you probably don't want to upset the Pope.

You probably don't.

I don't think, I think if you ask Donald Trump quietly, the man does have great political instincts, Is it a good idea to upset the Pope?

Probably not.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, especially not the first American Pope when the whole country is celebrating the fact that they have the first American Pope.

If you were in Boston today, or you were in Philadelphia today, or you were in...

New York City today, or you were in Chicago in particular today, you would feel the excitement around this Pope.

Whether people are supporters of Donald Trump or not supporters of Donald Trump, there is an awful lot.

You saw it in St.

Peter's Square, the amount of people who were cheering, who were American visitors to Rome, who were very excited about America's first pope being selected at the Vatican.

We're going to leave it there.

Thank you very much for joining us, everybody.

What an exciting day.

Congratulations again, Anthony.

I don't know if I deserve the congratulations, but I'll tell you my mother's very happy cat.

We'll leave it there, okay?

If Mrs.

Scaramucci is happy, then we're all happy.

She's happy.

And you've met Mama Scaramucci, so you know she's a force.

I'll send her my best.

All right.

Thank you, guys.

Okay.

Thanks, everybody.