Trump, the Pope, and the Myth of Western Civilization

Brad Onishi: What's up y'all? Welcome to Straight White American Jesus. Today, I want to talk about Donald Trump, the Pope, JD Vance, and civilizational populism. Before we do that, I want to invite you to a special event on April 23rd with me — Sarah Posner, Matthew Taylor, Julie Ingersoll — we'll be talking about Iran and Christian nationalism and holy war. It's also a fundraiser for season two of Reign of Error. If you enjoyed that show, come and join us and hang out and participate. You don't have to give money. If you want to just be there, ask a question, get to hear insight from all of us, that's great too. All the info is at axismundi.us. That's axismundi.us. Check the show notes for the info. All right, let's get down to it.

Brad: I want to talk about Donald Trump's decision to pick a fight with the Pope. Reports claimed that Trump, on Air Force One, watched 60 Minutes and a special about the Catholic Church and Catholic leaders who were speaking out against his immigration policies and the conflict in Iran — that led to his post on Truth Social where he talked about the Pope and said he did not want a pope who criticizes the United States or one who wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon. He then said, in a very cringey way, that the Pope is soft on crime.

Donald Trump [Clip]: No, I don't, because Pope Leo said things that are wrong. He was very much against what I'm doing with regard to Iran, and you could not have a nuclear Iran. Pope Leo would not be happy with the end result. I think he's very weak on crime and other things. His brother is a big MAGA person, and he's a great guy, Louis. And I said, I like Louis better than I like the Pope.

Brad: And there you have it. To make matters worse, Trump then posted an image of himself depicted as Jesus. There is a kind of ethereal light coming from Trump. He is healing somebody with his hands. There are people who seem to be enraptured in a kind of religious reverence, and behind him are flying objects that may or may not be ascending into heaven — and or demons. This is clearly AI-made. It's something that Trump later would say he thought depicted him as a doctor. I'd like to point out we're now in the ridiculous position of asking the President of the United States what the AI image he posted of himself means, and whether or not he is the Messiah or somebody from the Red Cross. Now, there's little evidence that this is a Red Cross image, and Trump has been criticized endlessly — by Christians, non-Christians, anyone you can think of — for putting himself in the place of Jesus.

We should note that last Easter, Trump posted a picture of himself as the Pope. And as Robert P. Jones noted this week on The Daily Blast podcast, for someone like Trump with absolutely no sense of reverence, transcendence, or the sacred, Easter is probably a difficult time for him. He doesn't understand why so much attention is going to someone like Jesus, and therefore he lashes out. Last year he made himself the Pope. This year, he made himself into Jesus. In light of all this, Pope Leo XIV responded directly to Donald Trump.

Pope Leo XIV [Clip]: I have no fear. I am not afraid of the Trump administration. We are speaking out loudly about the message of the gospel. The message of the gospel is very clear — Blessed are the peacemakers. I will not shy away from announcing the message of the gospel. Too many people are suffering in the world today. Too many innocent people are being killed. And I think someone has to stand up and say, there's a better way between us.

Brad: So the Pope clearly has no fear of Donald Trump, and he is not backing down. What is clear is that something happened last week that has happened a lot in the last ten years. Trump picked a fight, and his only tactic in fighting is to bully people, to intimidate — well, it didn't work. Iran outmaneuvered him. He threatened to end their civilization, and that has gone nowhere. The negotiations have led to the Strait of Hormuz still being closed. There are talks of him blockading the Strait and so on and so on.

In addition, Jesus was getting too much attention, so when Trump can't bully somebody, he doesn't admit that he lost. He doesn't try to figure out a way to resolve the situation. He has seemingly given up on Iran. We don't know what's happening — it's out of the news. What is now the full-on attention is Trump thinks he's Jesus, and he's picked a fight with the Catholic Church. I don't want to look away from the fact that all of this is a distraction from Iran and the global mess that Trump has made, including the threat of nuclear winter just a week ago, and that Iran is, in many ways — not completely — a distraction from the Epstein files. That's what happens here. He bullies. He tries to get his way. When it doesn't happen, he goes and picks another fight, and the whole world is left in a mess.

But what interests me today are the statements made by Catholic Vice President JD Vance.

JD Vance [Clip]: The Pope has been critical of our immigration policy, but ultimately the immigration policy of the United States is set by Donald Trump. The Pope is going to have disagreements on other issues. We can respect the Pope. We certainly have a good relationship with the Vatican, but we're also going to disagree on substantive questions from time to time.

Brad: So he says, "We certainly have a good relationship with the Vatican, but we're going to disagree." He tries to downplay the conflict. He states it's normal, it's not a big deal, this is how things go. Now, I don't think that it's totally normal to have A) a president posting pictures of himself depicted as Jesus, B) a president who's openly and directly saying, I don't like this Pope, I don't want a Pope who criticizes the United States. This is not a light, indirect criticism of the Pope. This is a full, named confrontation with him. That is not normal. Yes, there have been many, many conflicts between heads of state and the Vatican over the years — sure, I know that. But in American history, to have a president directly approach a Pope in this way is not the normal, no matter how you try to spin it. This is something that is alarming to many Catholics and non-Catholics in this country and around the world.

But here's the real kicker with JD Vance's statements:

JD Vance [Clip]: I certainly think that in some cases it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of, you know, what's going on in the Catholic Church, and let the President of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.

Brad: So: "I think it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality and what's going on in the Catholic Church." Now, these comments seem completely hypocritical, but they're also vexing. JD Vance is a Catholic. He's a Catholic convert. His Catholicism is now a substantive part of his political identity. He has stated openly that he hopes his wife Usha will convert. How can someone like Vance attack the Pope in this way? How can he say, oh, I just think he should probably stick to matters of morality? Is this just rank hypocrisy? Is it just saying what Trump wants him to say on camera? Is Vance simply going along with the party line so he doesn't get in trouble with the big boss? I think that's part of it, sure.

But I think statements from a week ago about Viktor Orbán can help us understand Vance's ideology and theology when it comes to the Pope and Western civilization and politics. Here he is stumping for Orbán a week ago, right before Orbán's stunning result.

JD Vance [Clip]: I'm here because of the moral cooperation between our two countries, because what the United States and Hungary together represent — under Viktor's leadership and under President Trump's leadership — is the defense of Western civilization.

Brad: All right. Here are the words I want to focus in on from that clip. You ready? Vance talks about the moral cooperation between the US and Hungary, claiming that the two countries are the defenders of Western civilization. Vance goes so far as to say that both Hungary and the US are founded on a certain Christian civilization and Christian values.

JD Vance [Clip]: We are founded on a certain Christian civilization and Christian values that animate everything from freedom of speech to rule of law.

Brad: How can Vance praise Orbán — a politician — for his defense of Christian civilization and moral cooperation, while telling the Pope to stay in the lane of morality and the church? Moreover, isn't the Catholic Church — on which Christendom was built — the foundation of whatever Vance envisions as Western civilization? It seems that he wants a Christian state but doesn't want the church to have a say in it.

Now, there's a whole bunch of ways that we could approach this weird triangulation among Trump and the Pope and Vance. I want to offer one explanation that will not only provide a lens through which we can understand Vance's seeming contradictions, but also a wider phenomenon in which Christian nationalists and technocrats rush forth to protect Western civilization. They're always talking about Western civilization but ignoring Christian institutions and teachings — like, you can discard the Pope, but you're going to be the defender of Western civilization?

Two scholars, Yilmaz and Morieson, coined the phrase "civilizational populism," and I think it's really helpful in this case for understanding Vance and what he's up to in his comments with Orbán and with the Pope. I write about this in my forthcoming book, American Caesar. Civilizational populism is an ideology that uses a civilization-based classification of populations to draw boundaries around the people, elites, and others. It declares that the people — the people — are pure and good. In this case, that would be the United States and Western civilization. And religion plays a key role here, because to be part of a civilization, you have to be the right religion — in this case, Christian. In some instances it's Judeo-Christian.

Civilizational populists describe religious minorities as dangerous others who are morally bad because they belong to a foreign civilization and thus cannot assimilate. So if you're a Muslim, if you're from South Asia, if you're from South America, assimilation is nearly impossible for you just because you're from a different civilization. So if you're a civilizational populist, your worldview operates on the idea that we have the best, superior, pure civilization on the planet. We are Christians of European heritage who have created a unique civilizational iteration in the United States. The people who are part of us — the real people, the Christian American people, the white Christian American people — they are pure and good.

So when Vance is over there in Hungary, stumping for Orbán, talking about moral cooperation and defending Western civilization, to me, he is right in this milieu of civilizational populism. What he's saying is: we are both those who defend a Western civilization that sees European Christianity as the superior civilization on the planet. The influence of Christianity, the way we've built our societies — as opposed to those other ones, the Muslim-majority ones, the African ones, the Asian ones — we have the better society.

If you listen to Vance and the way he talks about Europe — whether in promoting AfD in Germany, or how he talks about immigration in the UK, or across Western Europe — he's always saying, we want Germany to be Germany, we want England to be England, we want France to be France. What he's saying there is: you have a Western civilization based on European Christian heritage, and that is not just distinct from others, it's superior to others. And what you need are leaders who will protect you.

JD Vance [Clip]: We cannot rebuild Western civilization. We cannot rebuild the United States of America or Europe by letting millions and millions of unvetted illegal migrants come into our country. It has to stop. Thank God it stopped here, but it's got to stop there.

Brad: And that means you have to get rid of the elites. If you listen to Orbán, if you listen to Vance, if you listen to the Republican Party, they're always talking about elites. Well, what does elite mean? Well, it doesn't actually mean a rich person like Donald Trump. It doesn't mean a billionaire. It means the traitors to civilization who've sold out the real people in order to get power or prestige or money. They've sold out the real people in order to benefit themselves, and they've done that by allowing foreigners to invade and pollute civilization.

So what happens with elites is they're willing to sell out the real people — to give away, quote unquote, their country — to immigrants and migrants, to refugees, to people who aren't Christian, so they can get ahead. This is why they're always talking about people like Hillary Clinton or George Soros or others as elites who hate their country. This is why they're so afraid of being replaced.

Okay, now you might be thinking: is this Christian nationalism? And that's — I've written two books about Christian nationalism, we've talked about it for ten years now. Christian nationalism, to me, goes like this. We're sitting around a table in the United States, and there are people represented from every ethnicity and religion and gender and sexual identity. And the Christian stands up and says, "Look, it's great, everyone's around this table. I just want you to know that I will always have a different place than you. I will always have an elevated position above you." That's Christian nationalism. Everybody can be at this table, sure — you just need to know your place.

Civilizational populism — Western supremacy, Western Christian supremacy — says you're not even allowed at the table. If you're South Asian, if you're Muslim, if you're Buddhist, you do not get to be here. And that justifies mass deportation. It justifies inhumane immigration tactics. It makes things that are so cruel into something that is a defense of Western civilization and a defense of, quote unquote, European Christianity — the superior, pure civilization on earth.

Here, the theology matters less than the mythology. You don't have to go to church to be a Western supremacist. You just need to believe that Western civilization — white, Christian-rooted, European-derived — is morally superior, yet somehow under existential threat. Elon Musk talks all the time about Western civilization, protecting it. He's not a Christian in any meaningful sense. Stephen Miller talks this way. He is not a Christian. Yet both fit comfortably in the middle of this ideology.

And this is the key difference from more recent iterations of Christian nationalism. In recent decades, Christian nationalism ran on the notion that the United States is a Christian nation built for and by Christians. That's exclusionary — it demands that non-Christians, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, take a back seat. But if Christian nationalists say everyone can sit here, you just might have to have a back seat or a lower seat than me — the Christian supremacy says many people can't be here at the table. Period.

The rhetoric that now shapes the post-liberal American right — people like JD Vance — is no longer satisfied with demanding privilege for white Christians. It demands supremacy for an entire, quote, civilization: a supposedly homogeneous, Western European, Christian-rooted people who are supposedly superior to the rest of the world. This is more expansive and more volatile than the kinds of Christian nationalism you might have seen with George W. Bush. It turns whole populations into existential enemies. It makes immigration into invasion, full stop. It marks millions of people as incapable of loving or contributing to the nation because they are not part of Western civilization.

Now, the Christian dimensions of this are really important. Here, you might be thinking: well, this is just white nationalism. And it is. But what anchors the story is this idea of Christianity, of a transcendent story.

Brad: When he was in Hungary, JD Vance talked about the God of our fathers. There's a sense here that there's a cosmic dimension to what they're doing. This is not just white people trampling everyone else. This is white people who are the chosen, blessed, superior civilization, taking their rightful place in the divine and natural hierarchy of God's creation. There is something here that goes beyond simply which nation has more money or power. It's recognizing which nation is superior to all the rest in the eyes of God.

And this is how Vance can proclaim the moral cooperation between Orbán's Hungary and Trump's United States while dismissing the Pope. It explains why Vance thinks he doesn't need the actual church or the Pope to defend Western civilization — but just a mythological caricature of a pure society erected on the promise of superiority. This is what justifies inhumane immigration policies and the destruction of Muslim-majority countries. You can threaten to end civilization in Iran. You can treat migrants as less than human because you're defending Western civilization, which is superior to all others and must be defended at all costs in the name of God.

When it comes to the Pope, Vance can write him off as one of those elites — a cosmopolitan elite who sold out the real people. Stay over there in morality, don't get involved in the nation or politics, Pope. Sorry, you're not needed here. We will build Western civilization, Christian heritage, and we will worship the God of our fathers based on the politics of Viktor Orbán and Donald Trump. We don't need you for that. This ideology dismisses actual Christian institutions and leaders in favor of a mythology about Christian Western civilization, and Vance's comments this week are the emblem of that.

They may just be written off as JD Vance sucking up to Donald Trump — saying what he needs to, he's not a real Catholic, blah blah blah. That's fine. But to me, there's a deeper story here that goes to Western civilizational populism. And when you view it in that lens, you can see how Vance can make alliances not only with Catholics who think like him, but also technocrats like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk and Curtis Yarvin. More on that in future episodes.

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