Scott Greer and Tim Pool dissect allegations that Pentagon official Elbridge Colby threatened a Vatican cardinal to force alignment with Donald Trump's foreign policy. While acknowledging a niche resurgence of Catholic converts in elite DC circles, the hosts express deep skepticism regarding the story's veracity, noting that standard Vatican opposition to U.S. interventions like those in Iraq and Afghanistan makes such criticism routine rather than unprecedented. Ultimately, they conclude the incident reflects an isolated creative commentary amplified by online sensationalism rather than a coordinated government effort to control the Church or signal a true ideological shift among average Americans. [Automatically generated summary]
I don't know if you saw that Trump is invading the Vatican.
This is according to Christopher Hale.
I'm paraphrasing a little bit here, but that is essentially what a lot of people on Twitter are under the impression of.
I went through the story, I went through some of the reaction from the based TradCath contingent of our MAGA coalition.
I wanted to get into the story first because a lot of people are immediately saying, should we take this guy at face value?
I mean, this is obviously like an Obama Biden apparatchik, and he's reporting that, you know, A Trump or a Pentagon official spurred out and, like, you know, crashed out on this Vatican official.
What's your analysis on this story?
I mean, I'm obviously a bit skeptical here, but what was your initial reaction to the story?
Was it, you know, is this base?
Is this justified?
Or was this crash out a little too beyond the pale?
It's also very odd for any administration to do this because what the official that is named in the story, Elbridge Colby, did is he brought in a Vatican official.
And a cardinal to castigate him for the Vatican criticizing American foreign policy.
But the Vatican has been doing that for many, many years.
You know, they oppose the Iraq war.
They've opposed some of the actions we did in Afghanistan.
This is not something totally new or out of the blue.
This is just something they do.
And according to the story, it's being treated as an unprecedented event that the Vatican has to be on our side, which has not always been the case in American foreign policy.
So I found it odd.
I don't know whether to believe it or not because it just sounds.
You know, pointless for defense officials to try to tell the Vatican to get on the side of America and be like, we need you to be supporting us, which, you know, they haven't really done that in the past.
I mean, they did show, I mean, the Vatican and the Catholic Church did show support for America during the Cold War against the communist threat, but, you know, it's been very different over the last 35 years with the Cold War over.
So I don't really understand why they would have this meeting or what they would accomplish by it.
You know, even the claims that they're going to support an Avignon papacy, I don't know how that would work for America.
Or there's this threat that keeps growing up.
I don't know what that would work.
I guess we're going to have a Doral papacy, a pope appointed by Donald Trump.
I don't know who he would pick for pope.
Uh, maybe himself, I don't know what that would do, so uh, but I don't think that's actually going to work out like it did in the middle ages, so I don't really understand what's going on, uh, with that.
But it's just a very bizarre story, it's very weird, you don't know whether it's true or not, and it certainly wouldn't accomplish anything.
I mean, there have been uh battles between the church and secular powers for many years.
I mean, this characterized much of the middle ages, it characterized uh battles in the 18th and 19th century between them and the French government, and then of course, the German government.
Of Bismarck's time, wage a culture war against Catholicism in Germany.
So there have been all these types of battles before.
It's not unprecedented for the church and a secular power to be at loggerheads.
But I think in this situation, it just seems weird because they accept that the church is not going to be happy with wars that America is carrying out or certain policies that we engage in.
And I don't think a random department official or war department, we were almost calling it a defense department, it's a war department official.
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Yeah, before we get to the thing where you accidentally slip up and say Department of Defense, and then people literally, it's like the dead naming thing.
It's like, oh, it's actually the Department of War.
And I'm like, what?
I need like a three year, like after three years, if I'm still saying Department of Defense, then you can get on my case.
With that, I mean, to your point, It's a good point, which is like, okay, the Vatican has been, you know, opposed to American foreign policy for decades now.
This is really not too big of a surprise.
I think it does actually kind of get to the point that a lot of Catholics are making, which is, you know, while, you know, obviously people are poking holes in this idea that there's this Catholic resurgence in the United States, because, I mean, you see numbers like for every Catholic convert, there's like eight that leave the church.
So it's like, on the whole, Christianity by and large is still declining.
Maybe it's declining slower now.
That's probably true.
But again, like Zoomers are the least religious.
Generation in history.
So, a lot of this, like New York Post sensationalism, falls short.
One thing that I think is true, and some Catholics are pointing this out, and it's true, is that it is sort of ascendant, so to speak, in DC circles.
You know, you see a lot of DC people in the DC sphere, specifically in the Trump admin, that are Catholic or Catholic converts.
And so, I think that could actually be what's going on here a little bit you have people that are staffing the Pentagon or, you know, the Trump administration by and large that are simultaneously.
Catholic and devout Catholics, but also loyal to Trump.
And that's a big point of contention for them.
That's frustrating.
And so I think that is why you are seeing this emphasis.
That's why you did see a crash out from a Pentagon staffer.
We don't know who it was, because they maybe feel a little bit of tension here between the Vatican's stance on this was following the Venezuela operation.
They were reacting to Pope Leo's comments, where he was basically just finger wagging.
That was kind of what this was in reaction to.
They probably feel that tension with the fact that the Vatican and their employer are at odds here.
And that's becoming abundantly clearer.
Maybe they didn't think about that before.
I don't know.
Do you agree with this consensus?
Do you think that could potentially be what's going on here?
Yeah, there is that element within the Trump administration.
I mean, there was last year where Vance got into a theological dispute with the church over immigration and other matters, which, you know, most prominent American officials have never gone into theology of like why we should deport people or why we should engage in certain policy.
But he was going really in the weeds on theological matters with the church.
And he had bishops, and even the Pope was rebuking him for his stance.
And it was just an odd matter because it's not, it's something that most Americans aren't.
That's familiar with what his arguments were making.
And it was like very in the weeds.
But it's something that was appealing to a lot of the people who are prominent in conservative circles and in the administration that they want these affirmative theological cases made for mass deportations or immigration restrictions of that sort.
And then they're going to go and make these arguments.
So it's for a certain audience, not necessarily the American public.
So you are, this type of dispute between the church and the administration.
Would definitely cause tension and awkwardness among them that they would have this.
And I don't know why the administration would gain that.
I think they would just have somebody, you know, release some type of official to make a theological case for the Don Roe doctrine or some sort.
I don't know what theological case they could make, but I'm sure they would find someone to do that.
And then they can have this debate between the church over what's proper Catholic doctrine or what's not.
Like Vance was doing last year.
But yes, no, I think it is very much true what you're seeing with the resurgences is definitely more a part of institutional conservatism.
I mean, they've always been a large number of Catholic converts there, but it's much more assertive than it was in the past.
And I think even a lot of the conversions are happening at a more elite level across the country.
I think it's more when you're seeing this, it's not so much the large country as a whole or in middle America, it's at elite institutions and elite universities.
Because if you talk to anybody who's still like Harvard or Chicago, And all these places, they will note that there's a larger number of their fellow classmates who are turning to the church, are turning to even orthodoxy of some sort, which a decade or 20 years ago, this had been very rare and very seldomly seen.
But now you're seeing a number of them.
Doing that, and also journalists are aware of those trends.
You know, they go to many of the same schools and they notice these trends and they're like, Oh, that's odd.
But it's certainly a major factor within the conservative movement and the Trump administration.
You know, no other past Republican administration would have trotted out their vice president to make a theological case, you know, really in the weeds case for a certain policy that they were pursuing.
I mean, because you can tell it's kind of a new paradigm.
I mean, because, you know, us, along with Christopher Hale, we all share the same home state of Tennessee, the great.
State of Tennessee.
And this whole topic is just bewildering to the Republican base, that kind of evangelical base, because they just don't really understand what's going on.
I can say this as someone that grew up evangelical.
I grew up in the Southern Baptist Convention.
I didn't really even really meet many Catholics growing up.
I mean, I grew up in the Memphis suburbs.
And so I always found this stuff just kind of like foreign and confusing.
I understood it later when I kind of got more into theology.
But the average Republican is just kind of like tuning this out, I would say.
This is mainly a in house conversation.
Sort of thing that's going on.
I guess this is kind of the frustration that a lot of people have had at the Trump administration where they do kind of get sidetracked on these issues that really only are like beltway issues.
These are only like topics that are really beltway.
And you can tell that the second Trump admin is staffed by a lot more, like I guess you would say, like zealous Catholics.
Because you'll see like Trump on Truth Social every once in a while just like randomly tweet out like a Catholic prayer.
Like I remember like a year, it was like a year or two ago, like it was that Archangel prayer and he just like chucked it up and was like, what's going on?
I thought this guy was like, Apollo White, you know, devotee, like what's going on here?
So, you know, I think that's kind of what's going on here is this is just an issue for maybe 10,000 people and it's kind of being exposed to the entire country.
And that's why everyone's just kind of like confused by what's going on here.
I mean, I actually grew up Catholic in Tennessee, but you didn't mean any.
And generally, this wasn't even a part of our experience there.
It was more Episcopalian flavor, I guess, of that type of growing up.
But, you know, a lot of this stuff even would seem foreign to me as someone who grew up Catholic.
And I think that would even be the case for a lot of the average Catholics who maybe only go Christmas and Easter.
You know, they're not as into this stuff as maybe their parents and grandparents would have been.
So this.
This is very much of an in house matter, but it also is, you know, if the White House did bring in a, you know, a representative of the Pope to skewer him or to criticize him and to demand the Vatican get on their side,
you know, that's just very strange for any administration to do, which is why I'm very skeptical about this story that they may have had, they definitely had the meeting, they confirmed the meeting, but over what that meeting talked about and how they went about things, I am skeptical as I'm not sure what they would have accomplished by yelling at him and telling him to be on the side.
And generally, it doesn't.
Most Catholics, I remember even when the lead up to the Iraq war was happening and the Pope came out against it.
And that didn't really sway the average Catholic in America because they're just like, oh, it's expected for the Pope to oppose the war.
I remember my parents saying that.
And then they, I mean, this is not an argument for the Iraq war, but that just didn't factor in.
People just expected it's like, that's what the Pope is supposed to say.
And I even think it's not like the Pope is going to be like, wow, this Maduro raid is one of the greatest accomplishments of all time.
Thank you, Donald Trump.
You know, he like hashtag MAGA.
I don't think that's going to happen with that.
I mean, the Pope is obviously going to oppose wars and military interventions.
You know, he's even had, well, I don't know, his predecessor, Francis, took a lot of criticism in Europe for wanting to end the Ukraine war and wanting to have negotiations with Russia.
And so, The Catholic Church was having a lot of this criticism and tensions and animosity with various European countries, particularly Ukraine, for wanting a peace deal with Russia, which, you know, it's standard practice for the church to want to end wars.
I mean, they were like this in World War I, World War II, you know, pretty much every conflict they've wanted to end.
And that's a problem for certain governments if it goes against their interests.
So it was very common in Europe for them to bring in Vatican officials and then lecture them about how they're not supporting Ukraine and not backing the war effort and then being too pro-Russia.
And there was all these conspiracy theories that the Pope is controlled by Putin for merely wanting a peace deal.
So it is standard for the church to do this.
And we saw this in Europe.
And many of the people who would be outraged by the Trump administration allegedly.
Castigating this official would have been supportive if the same thing had happened under Biden for the church not backing Ukraine.
So, you know, you would have seen some of the changes in that.
And this is, I guess, this would be kind of a good segue then into sort of the reaction to the story.
Because, I mean, to your point, you know, you go and you talk to, again, your average cradle Catholic, you know, anywhere in the United States.
And if you ask them, you know, what their opinion is on Pope Leo or what their opinion was on Pope Francis, you're either going to get sort of, Like, I don't really think about it too much, kind of response, as in, like, they don't have a strong opinion because they're just used to this is business as usual.
There's always been a pope.
Like, I don't need to have a strong opinion on every single statement he makes.
Or you'll get the take of, like, yeah, he's a liberal.
I kind of expect that.
Their faith is very much detached from, like, the Vatican, although they are part of the Catholic Church.
Again, they're not, like, pious zealots.
They're not going through every single ecumenical council and, like, giving their take on it.
That's just not how Catholics operate.
And to this point, I mean, that kind of demonstrates that I think.
You know, Catholic cradle Catholics in the United States are actually fairly well assimilated.
I mean, people make this point all the time, you know, outside observers that are Catholics make this observation about Catholics in the United States is that they do have this kind of Protestant flavor to them in some regard, where they do kind of make their faith their own, even within the Catholic Church, where it's this new breed of converts who I think another maybe classification you can make of these people would be like For You page converts or Instagram Real converts, where they saw like a based edit and they converted for political reasons.
Unfortunately, like we actually do have to address.
These people because they're dominating my timeline right now.
Some people are calling it the great Catholic call out, the great E. Cath call out of 2026, where they're just taking the story at face value and adding to it.
They're turning this into like there's some sort of showdown between the Pope and Trump right now, which is just not happening.
Trump probably doesn't even know this is going on right now, or he's probably not paying attention.
The Pope doesn't really care that much.
He's got a lot of bigger fish to fry.
But they're making this into this like, again, we have tanks right outside St. Peter's Basilica right now when we're about to go in, and they're like, I'm loyal.
To the Pope before I'm loyal to Trump.
And it's like, what are we even doing here?
But it's this new breed of converts who, again, unfortunately dominate a lot of discourse online.
And I was making this point at the top of the show that actually what happens on Twitter does have some implications because, again, a lot of Trump staffers and staffers across the world for various political institutions are reading Twitter.
They are participating in the political zeitgeist that is on Twitter and that is leaking into different policy decisions.
So it's really crazy to see.
Again, a lot of these people adopt a flavor of Catholicism that hasn't really existed in the United States ever.
And it's just really bizarre to see.
I'm wondering what your take is, especially, you know, you have a Catholic background.
So, I mean, you have a particularly insightful, you'll have, you know, particular insight into this.
He could say that, maybe, but I think it's that one thing about American Catholics is they do not live up to the know nothing myth that they would come here and be a fifth column for the Pope, is that they'd all be personally controlled by the Pope and acting under his orders, which that was a lot of the nativist sentiment against Catholics in the 19th century.
And as we've seen, that was not the case.
And that was illustrated by JFK, our first Catholic president, that he clearly didn't really care what the Pope and the Vatican were talking about.
He was not a very devout Catholic.
Yeah.
As you can see by his personal behavior, and that would have been the case with Biden as well.
Our two Catholic presidents, even though the media like to hype up about Biden's devout faith, it's very obvious he did not have a devout faith.
He probably forgot he was Catholic by the end of his presidency, anyway.
And yeah, and some of these types want to live up to that know nothing image of Catholics, but they themselves don't practice this because then if the bishops say something about immigration or they say something about Israel that maybe they disagree with or any type of other issue.
You know, it could be anything.
And then they'll take great umbrage at that and demand that the bishops change their opinion based on what they have.
And some of these, there are, I think this is a very small number of them that you really only encounter on social media.
I don't think this is even the majority of converts, but some of them immediately convert and then they become set of Achanists where they, this is a big problem under Francis.
I don't, this has not really emerged under Leo, but there'd become a lot who would join the Catholic Church and say, submit to Rome.
And then, you know, Francis would do a lot of, make a lot of liberal remarks, particularly about immigration.
Or sometimes there'd be a prominent official who would signal openness to maybe gays being welcome in the church of some sort.
And then people would get mad and then start demanding that this is not my pope, you know, not my pope.
They can't have impeachment proceedings against the pope, to the best of my knowledge, but they would almost like want that type of response to it.
And so it's, you know, they immediately go convert and then they start.
Advocating their own against their own hierarchy.
Yeah.
So sometimes they will do that.
I think there are a few people who maybe are taking this a little bit more seriously than it is.
The administration is not going to be evading the Vatican City.
I mean, if the government did come down hard on the Catholic Church, it would definitely make sense for believers to take issue with that and be very opposed to it and turn against Trump over that.
But I don't think that's going to be the case.
I think this is either.
Badly remembered marks, or maybe just one official made decided to do some creative commentary on what he thought the administration's policy was because it is very silly for the administration to try to tell the Catholic Church what to do.
It is, I mean, the church officials, especially in America, haven't been that.
Fond of Trump's policies.
You know, they did issue that unpressed, you know, it was a pretty notable letter that the bishops issued opposing his immigration policies.
And Leo himself has made it clear, even before he was Pope, that he was not a fan of Trump's immigration policies.
He makes this point, and I'm kind of sympathetic to it.
And you might disagree here.
But I think what's going on with a lot of the Catholicism energy you're seeing on the right specifically is because this is a Protestant country, not to say it's distinctly Protestant, but obviously the majority.
Of religious people in the country are Protestant or evangelical at this point.
And so I think something that's happening in regards to, again, this new interest in Catholicism is because it grants you something additional.
It sort of grants you like a minority identity in the sense of being a Catholic, being a devout Catholic gives you access to sort of some of these perks that would come with a minority identity.
You get like this in group preference, this group solidarity kind of thing.
Do you think that's part of what's going on here?
Because again, you see people convert.
I mean, to your point, this isn't.
Necessarily the majority of converts, but again, the people that are participating in the zeitgeist seems to be a good segment of them immediately become really zealous.
They put the Vatican flag in their bio or whatever, and then they immediately adopt this group solidarity with other Catholics.
And that's, to me, kind of a luxury of a minority identity in a country that, again, is like majority, or at least the majority of religious people are evangelicals, is it grants you that.
I don't know, maybe if you agree or disagree, but it seems to be that's something that I think a lot of people are enjoying.
Participating in is kind of this additional identity that you get when you, again, become a Catholic, or if you are a Catholic, when you begin to take it very seriously.
Yeah, I don't know if I would say minority identity, but they want a well-defined group identity independent of being a generic American.
And I think that's a common trait in a lot of Americans today.
I mean, you can even see that among certain groups that, you know, maybe their parents were immigrant and they were raised as a normal American.
Then they decide that they're suddenly very into the immigrant heritage that they had, that they weren't raised around, and they didn't even learn their homeland's language.
But what I think with a lot of Catholics is that they think of a generic American culture as just, McDonald's and the NFL, and they want something more than that, and they feel that the Catholic Church offers them that.
You could see that, I could see that even with conservative circles today is that people, when Ash Wednesday comes around, they're very enthusiastic to have the ashes displayed throughout the day, more so than it was, I think, 10 years ago when.
I know there was still some of that, but there wasn't as overt.
And you can see that even on Fox News, where there's far more guests and hosts that are displaying the ashes throughout the day.
And these are people who are having to have makeup on.
So I've heard even reports that some of them have it reapplied over the makeup to identify that.
But it is a way of saying that I have a particular well defined group identity that makes it different from just generic American, which they think is there's a lot of things lacking in maybe that generic American identity today.
And it gives them something unique and particular to themselves.
And they would like to have that particular group identity that you can see in other religious groups, such as Mormons, that they would like to have for Catholics, which, you know, it operates to a certain level at the elite level.
But I think for the rest of America, the average Catholics, as you can see by a lot of the, you know, people who only attend Christmas and Easter, you know, they don't even go to Ash Wednesday and all that, that they are not as participating in that Catholic culture.
They're practically generic Americans.
But I think for a lot of the converts and And cradle conservative Catholics that it does provide that unique, particular identity that is not offered by generic American identity.
And so that's why they accept it.
You know, maybe it in some ways resembles minority identity, but it's not so much to become, even though some of them might want to proclaim themselves as victims, but I think that's a tiny minority among the right because they also want to identify themselves with the right wing trends of America.
And some of them even adopt nativist slogans and lingo and symbols.
While being Catholic.
So they don't want to pretend that they were victimized by the Protestants of the 19th century.
They also accept that, but it's also adding this particular group identity with recognizable symbols and cultural events and traditions that makes them different from being a generic American.
I mean, I guess to kind of close here, maybe to escape the For You page discussion here and then go back out to like the geopolitical implications here.
We talked about last time on the show.
I think this was, I think we were discussing the Greenland situation, and we were kind of exploring how useful Trump, the Trump administration's rhetoric towards Europe is for, again, like our goals as American right wingers.
This, I think it's kind of tough for people to parse.
Would you say this is an example of the Trump administration just becoming increasingly frustrated with the Euros, so to speak, kind of mouthing off about American affairs and finger wagging from a position of authority that they don't actually have?
Or is this something separate?
I know you said this is just kind of redundant because this has always been the Catholic position.
But a lot of people are kind of tying this to kind of the same thing when, like, you know, you have like, you know, the president of Estonia come out and like start shaming, you know, Donald Trump as if like his opinion matters at all.
Do you think that's kind of maybe part of what's going on?
Maybe not from that specific official, but the Trump administration largely just kind of increasingly frustrated with junior partners starting to try and dictate terms for, again, our foreign policy?
Yeah, I think you could say that's a part of it, whether it's with the, I mean, the church is always going to do its own thing or not, but it is part of a pattern of greater criticism from our allies in Europe, far more than we've seen in past administrations.
Some of that might be with Trump's own commentary, but other times there's a greater overreaction towards it.
I mean, Europeans, you know, when they assess on polls, they generally like Democrats more than they like Republican presidents.
I mean, there was good reason not to like George W. Bush.
But then they thought Barack Obama was like the greatest president we've had in many, many years, which that was not the case.
And then they didn't really like Trump.
They liked Biden a lot more, and they certainly had a friendly relationship with Biden.
And even though Biden would make these, you know, off the wall remarks, he was also forcing Europe to cripple its economy on behalf of American foreign policy objectives and other things.
And, you know, the Biden administration likely played a role in blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline.
And then Europe would practically say, we have no idea who did this, but thank you, America, for looking into it.
And I think, you know, it's not like Europeans were not criticizing Trump in the first term, but maybe less so or less ostentatiously so.
And I think the administration feels the need to express itself more assertively when dealing with Europe and these allies.
So it could be seen as part of whatever that conversation revolved around.
I think the report is a little fantastical with their claims, what they kind of try to get across.
But I do think it's a part of a pattern of the administration getting.
Tired of their Europe and their allies constantly criticizing the administration.
And you can even see that with Caroline Levette's comments, I think she made yesterday, of basically promising for America to leave NATO, which is big news.
Whether that happens or not, that is it.
But it is part of this pattern of the administration getting tired of dealing with Western allies in Europe.
And I think that is part of.
Know the Vatican's comments about Trump administration align with European EU criticisms of the administration as well.
Yeah, before we go, uh, maybe if you could just quickly declare who you'll be loyal to in the incoming uh Vatican invasion, would you be loyal to the Pope and the President Trump?
Um, obviously, you know, pick one there, and then where people can find you for more.
Depending on what they're fighting over, if they're trying to get the Vatican to deport immigrants, I would have to decide with the administration on that remark.
But I don't have to worry about that.
I don't think it's going to happen.
But where you can find me, I'm on Twitter at Scott M. Greer.
You can also find me on Substack at highly respected.com.
And I have a new book coming out in June called White Pill, the online right.
And the making of Trump's America that can be available for pre order on Amazon and other great places where you pre order books.
He keeps it fairly level headed, I would say, where it's the outrage machine on Twitter right now.
You have the, again, like the e caths that are dominating the time.
You also have people that are responding with sort of.
Relitigating some of the sectarianism from the 19th century, which I don't know is particularly useful, especially if you just quiz your average Catholic United States.
Again, they don't really have too strong of an opinion on Pope Leo.
So, with that, we're going to wind this show down.
You can follow me on X and Instagram at Real Tape Brown.
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I'll be on the show tonight, so I'll see you guys there.
Blair White's coming on, so that'll be interesting.