Megan Basham

Well, immediately, many Trump supporters pointed out that not only does the Bible, specifically in several places, allow for war, famously in the book of Ecclesiastes, saying there is a time for war, but also the Pope's own father stormed the beaches of Normandy.

So we have to remember, I think, that Leo is an American, and he's from Chicago, and he's publicly engaging in American politics.

president by name.

So he's not just making general statements of principle.

And I think that is a setup for some of these dramatic tensions that we're talking about.

Yeah, they've been coming very fast and furious, so it's a little hard to keep track.

But toward the end of last week, we had the Avignon papacy controversy.

It started when the free press ran a story claiming that the Pentagon's officials threatened a Vatican envoy, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, with a new Avignon papacy.

Now, if you're not familiar with that, that's a reference to a 14th century pope

who was controlled by the French monarchy.

So essentially, this report was claiming that the Trump administration was threatening the papacy, threatening either to replace it or control it in some way.

And that story was then spread far and wide by a lot of legacy media outlets before the Trump administration came out and said, no, this did not happen.

We didn't threaten anyone.

And it took a few more days until the Vatican then confirmed that, no, this story was not true and it didn't happen.

But I think in the interim, you know, their delay in responding probably didn't win them a lot of new affection with the White House.

And then as this war of words between the pope and the president continued, the president posted a meme that even many of his own supporters took as blasphemous as it seemed to depict him as Jesus.

But Trump later took that post down and said he thought it was just depicting him as a doctor.

Yeah, I think if he can get the Strait of Hormuz opened and find some kind of closure point that allows him to claim that the U.S.

is the winner in this engagement, then, you know, we may still have some time.

It's early April.