During a filmed interview with Politico’s Dasha Burns, President Donald Trump became confused when confronted with comments made by the first American pope, Pope Leo XIV.
As part of the 45-minute interview, where the president professed, “I watch everything, yeah. I watch everything. I see a lot of things,” Trump seemed surprised the Chicago-born pope has criticized his administration for the forced roundup of immigrants by ICE on orders from the Department of Homeland Security.
Asked by Burns, ”Immigration, sir, critical to your agenda. I want to ask about what the Pope has said, which is, he has called your immigration actions inhumane. Do you take that seriously from the pope?”
“I haven’t seen that. I mean ... I mean, he ... maybe he has,” Trump stuttered. “I mean, he also didn’t like the wall. You know, they didn’t like the wall. The wall turned out to be great.”
That led Politico’s Seb Starcevic to write, “Trump was apparently referring to Pope Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, who slammed Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall as ‘not Christian.’ The Republican and the former Catholic leader — who, months before his death, also called Trump’s mass deportation plans a ‘disgrace’ — frequently clashed over immigration, with Trump branding him a ‘very political person.’”
Having confused the current pope with the one who died the day after meeting with Vice President JD Vance, Trump responded to a question of whether he would sit down with the living pontiff by talking about his controversial wall by remarking, “You know, I built a wall that, uh, stopped people from flooding into ... we ... I didn’t put up the wall. I built the wall. The wall, nobody talks about that. You know, it’s interesting, uh, two years ago, a year ago under Biden, this country was out of control; millions of people pouring through totally unchecked, totally unvetted. And now we have nobody coming in. We have them coming in only legally. They have to go through a legal process. Nobody ever talks about that anymore. They should talk about that.”
“But I haven’t heard any statements from the Pope. I’m sure he’s a lovely man. His brother’s a lovely man. You know, his brother ...” he continued.
“Yeah, you’ve spoken to him,” Burns interjected.
“Do you know his brother is serious MAGA? Lives in Florida. He’s like ...” Trump replied as he was asked again, “So will you meet with the other brother, with the Pope?”
“I already met with the brother. He came to —,” he continued as the Politico interviewer asked again, “But with the Pope, will you meet with him or speak with him?“
"Sure, I will. Why not?” Trump finally replied.
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