Turning Water Into Whine: Trump’s Holy L
The Lincoln Project
The Lincoln Project
4.6 • 9.1K Ratings
🗓️ 17 April 2026
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Trump decided to cosplay as something divine—and then picked a fight with the Pope. In this episode, Rick Wilson unpacks the sheer audacity and absurdity of Donald Trump elevating himself to messiah status while clashing with Pope Leo I. From ego-driven delusion to global embarrassment, this is what happens when performance politics collides with actual faith and authority. It’s chaotic, it’s surreal, and it’s another reminder that the line between spectacle and reality isn’t just blurred—it’s gone. A different kind of Holy War has begun.
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Rick Wilson is on X at @TheRickWilson, on Bluesky at @TheRickWilson.bsky.social, and you can check out Rick's Substack at therickwilson.substack.com. You can check out more of LP's work at www.lincolnproject.us and on X at @ProjectLincoln.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Your task will not be an easy one. |
| 0:02.5 | Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battlehardt. |
| 0:06.2 | There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. |
| 0:09.9 | There is the United States of America. |
| 0:14.5 | Good night and good luck. |
| 0:17.0 | Hey everybody, it's Rick. |
| 0:18.2 | I want to welcome you, as always, to Friday's Elephant in the Room. |
| 0:21.7 | I'm recording this on Thursday night, as you might imagine, so you can have it on Friday. |
| 0:26.6 | I'm sitting on my porch right now. |
| 0:28.1 | I'm in the middle of a really big final, well, not final, but a really big milestone push |
| 0:34.3 | on my book. |
| 0:35.4 | So I've slammed a lot of stuff together this week on that. I've been |
| 0:39.9 | working basically 10 hours a day on it, which for mortals is a lot. But for me, that's about an |
| 0:46.1 | average workday. I've had to put a lot of other stuff aside. We will not be having the |
| 0:49.7 | Friday brief this week. I'm sorry, but it'll be returning next week. It's been a, |
| 0:53.3 | it's been a hard push, |
| 0:54.4 | but we're here for you. And I just want to say, first off, also, I can't tell you how much we appreciate this, that you're, you know, tuning into this show, sharing it, liking it, and all those things. It really has been a lot, because we started the elephant in the room sort of as a as a pop-up. An aside amuz bouch if you will but it's grown into something really great and it's because of you and i really appreciate it i'm very very grateful i am like i said sitting on my porch if you hear a lot of splashing out there that is one of our alligators we've got a big old boss alligator out there right now who is splashing around trying to catch birds |
| 1:28.5 | and trying to catch otters or whatever the hell else he's trying to catch. |
| 1:31.1 | But he has been very busy today. |
| 1:33.1 | So if you hear that, that'll be what that is. |
| 1:35.1 | But let's get on with the show. |
| 1:36.4 | This week's elephant in the room |
... |
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