The Daily Blast: Trump’s Rage at Pope Backfires as Poll Reveals He’s Losing Fight Badly

The DSR Network

Chris Cotnoir

Government

4.5 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2026

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Donald Trump has been raging at Pope Leo’s criticism of the Iran war for weeks, and he just unleashed his most vile attack yet. Trump accused the Pope of “endangering a lot of Catholics” by advocating for peace. Yet a new Washington Post poll finds that Trump is losing this battle very badly. Large majorities react negatively to Trump’s claims about the Pope, and even more strikingly, big majorities approve of the Pope’s message of peace, even though Trump is bombarding America with relentless lies and propaganda about both the Pope and the war. We talked to scholar-of-religion Sarah Posner, who writes for Talking Points Memo and hosts the Reign of Error podcast. We discuss why this polling is encouraging in non-obvious ways, why there’s a schism between white Evangelicals and Catholics over Trump, how MAGA encourages Trump to imagine himself fighting a spiritual war against the Pope, and why that’s a political disaster for him. Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.
0:16.4	I'm your host, Greg Sargent.
0:32.4	Donald Trump has been raging at Pope Leo for weeks over the Pope's criticism of the Iran war.
0:39.1	And this week, Trump attacked Pope Leo again in truly bizarre terms, declaring that he's endangering Catholics by advocating for peace and not supporting Trump's war.
0:44.9	This was strikingly personal and extremely ill-advised, because new polling shows that Trump is
0:51.1	losing his battle with the Pope very, very badly.
0:55.0	Importantly, not only do large majorities reject Trump's attacks,
0:59.0	big majorities also side with the Pope on their underlying dispute.
1:04.0	We think that's encouraging in hidden ways.
1:07.0	So we're talking about all this with one of our go-to guests on these matters,
1:10.0	Sarah Posner,
1:11.6	a scholar of religion who writes for talking points memo and hosts The Rain of Error podcast.
1:17.3	Good to have you back on, Sarah.
1:19.2	Thanks for having me.
1:20.6	So let's start with Donald Trump's latest attack on the Pope.
1:24.1	Here's Trump on a right-wing podcast when asked about their ongoing battle.
1:28.3	Well, the Pope would rather talk about the fact that it's okay for Iran to have a nuclear
1:33.3	weapon, and I don't think that's very good. I think he's endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people,
1:39.3	but I guess if it's up to the Pope, he thinks it's just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
1:45.8	So there Trump repeats one of his favorite lines that the Pope wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
1:51.9	That's a vile way to characterize the Pope's criticism of the war.
1:55.7	But that aside, note the added line here about the Pope endangering a lot of Catholics.
	...

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