Cenk Uygur says pope could break up Reagan's moral majority: 'He’s making conservative heads spin'

Cenk Uygur told “Nightly Show” host Larry Wilmore that Pope Francis is splitting up the religious conservative coalition built during Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign.

“The Young Turks” host appeared Wednesday night alongside comedians Jim Gaffigan and Kerry Coddett to discuss the pope’s liberal stances on global warming, divorce, same-sex marriage, and guns.

“He’s making conservative heads spin, which I love,” Uygur said. “They’re like, yeah – religion and state, let’s combine those two things, it’s going to be great. You can’t be a good Catholic if you’re pro-choice. Now the pope is like, all right, weapons manufacturers are evil and can’t be good Catholics.”

Uygur said the pope’s pronouncements could break up the “moral majority” built by pro-business Republicans to help elect Reagan 35 years ago.

“All my life they’ve been saying you’ve got to bring church and state together, and you’ve got to listen to my church,” Uygur said. “Well, I’m not in your church – don’t know why I have to listen to it, right? But now, all of a sudden, the church agrees with me – and boy, they’re not happy. So now it’s, ‘No, no, we didn’t mean church and state, we’ve got to separate church and state.’”

Gaffigan pointed out that many of Jesus Christ’s teachings were radically liberal.

“The Republicans hijacked the church for their own political reasons,” Uygur said. “Remember, evangelical Christians actually used to be on Jimmy Carter’s side, because he was evangelical. So they got to use religion for a while, and the guys who did that weren’t religious at all – they just wanted to use religion as a tool to get more tax cuts, basically, and to deregulate so they could poison the Earth and make an extra buck doing it, and now the pope is drawing the line, saying, ‘No, no, I don’t want you to poison the Earth. And they’re like, whoa, that’s not the deal we had.’”

Watch the entire discussion posted online by Comedy Central: