In re this interview where Trump says he doesn’t know if it is his job to uphold the Constitution https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/04/us/politics/trump-meet-the-press-interview-due-process.html?smid=url-share

@marym I feel like there might be a follow-up on how there have been no real jokes since the reign of Pio Nono, or something along those lines ;-)

It is good to see you here! Apparently this instance is about to end but I’m moving to beige party

“ No, Donald Trump is not the pope. But in an age when our prelates so often resemble bureaucrats and our politicians hollow suits, the image of a man who dares to signify authority, clothed in the vestments of divine kingship, may be the wake-up call we deserve.

Let the squeamish clutch their […]

“Yes, many are scandalized. But those same voices were scandalized when a Galilean carpenter ate with tax collectors, overturned tables, and uttered hard sayings. Scandal is often the price of truth.

If the image of Trump as pope unsettles, perhaps it is because it reveals how thoroughly modern […]

“It is no accident that this image arrived on the octave of Francis’s death. In the Church’s traditional rhythm, the eighth day is not merely a conclusion—it is a resurrection. It is the day beyond days, the eschatological symbol of new creation. Trump’s post—whether he intended it or not—taps […]

“This is not to suggest, God forbid, that Trump seeks ordination or that he would claim the apostolic succession. He does not need to. His critics forget—perhaps willfully—that the image he offered was not a theological claim, but a political theology. In it, we see a rebuke to the limp […]

“For a figure so often derided as crude and philistine, Trump has once again proved that he intuits the sacramental imagination far better than most of the bishops and theologians who lecture him. His act was not mockery—it was metapolitical iconography. He touched the hem of a deep Catholic […]

“Let us set aside the reflexive outrage of Twitter catechists and theological minimalists. What, after all, was the image? A provocation, yes—but not merely that. It was an assertion. A meditation. A gauntlet thrown at the feet of a Church hierarchy that has, for a decade and more, largely […]

The Throne and the Image: On Donald Trump and the Shadow of Peter
By Aurelius M. Valerianus

Eight days after the passing of Pope Francis, in a gesture that predictably sent the chattering classes of both the ecclesial and secular establishment into fits of hyperventilation, President Donald J […]

@Nonya_Bidniss I feel the same

@elizabethjacobs.bsky.social I mean Hegseth probably could if he really put his mind to it but point taken