Trump Almighty
This is how you know he's trapped
The more he fails, the further he needs to reach for validation.
The more he displays his incompetence, the more loudly he proclaims his invincibility.
The more he entraps himself, the more absurdly he declares his omnipotence.
So it was probably inevitable that as he struggles with a war of his own creation which he cannot end without longterm ramifications for the international order and the global economy, Donald Trump would feel the need to go to ridiculous lengths to assert his power. He would need to portray himself as God.
What may have been surprising is that he would do it in a dispute with the pope.
Trump’s back-and-forth with the Vatican received a lot of attention this week, because it’s unprecedented for an American president to behave aggressively and disrespectfully to the leader of the Roman Catholic Church. But what I find most telling about this episode is what it says about how far Trump has to reach to reassert himself amidst a crisis that may have finally shattered the illusion of strength on which his entire authoritarian project is founded.
The papal feud started last weekend, when Trump tore into Pope Leo XIV’s criticism of the Iran War the way he goes after Democrats or wayward members of his own party, calling the pontiff “weak on crime, and terrible for foreign policy.” He added that Leo should “get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.” He stopped just short of threatening the pope with a primary challenge.
