Presented by BP.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Playbook Deputy Editor Zach Stanton. It's Friday, May 9th.

And joining me to discuss everything that's driving the day is Politico National Politics Correspondent Adam.

Good morning, Adam.

Hey, Zach. So it's great to have you. You're a fellow Midwesterner, and so it brings me some pleasure to

have you on board as we talk about our first American Midwestern Pope. Yeah, this is a huge win for my people, for our people.

It is, you know, I think we were both enjoying some of the memes going around yesterday of

OPE, the Midwestern thing people say when they want to just pass by you or things like that.

You know, it occurred to me that, you know, it takes a lot to sort of bigfoot news from the current

president out of the news cycle. And you could tell that the Trump White

House was really planning, understandably, expecting that the US-UK trade deal that was announced

yesterday was going to be the big story. And then you also had, you know, former president

Joe Biden on the view yesterday. and he was hoping that his media appearance

would be another big story. But instead, the thing that everyone seems to be talking about is

Pope Leo, who seems at this point, because he is American, destined to perhaps be a huge figure

in domestic politics, whether or not he wants it to be.

He'll be sort of dragged into these debates.

And we began to see that a little bit yesterday.

Yeah, it was remarkable to see, like, such a global figure, have their X account sort of rated for any tea leaves on where Pope Leo stood politically.

We haven't verified independently at Politico that the X account going around was his.

Other outlets have argued it is, but we do know that CNN is reporting that he voted in the general election in

2024, 2018, 2014, and 2012 in Will County, Illinois. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. There

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