You Come at the Pope, You Best Not Miss
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 16 April 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In Pope Leo XIV, Donald Trump has finally run into someone he can’t silence, threaten, or sully. He’s not taking it gracefully.
Guest: Christopher Hale, author of the “Letters from Leo” Substack, “a chronicle of how Pope Leo XIV’s papacy intersects with American politics, faith, and the digital age during the presidency of Donald Trump.”
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I got Christopher Hale on the line, because for lack of a better comparison, he basically writes the page six of the Catholic Church. |
| 0:15.0 | It's a substack. It's called Letters from Leo. |
| 0:19.1 | In our defense, I believe the Catholic Church invented drama. |
| 0:27.7 | I'm proud of us participating in this great 2000-year tradition that we have. |
| 0:33.9 | Christopher is Catholic himself. |
| 0:36.3 | His day job is as a Democratic political operative. So for the last |
| 0:40.5 | couple of weeks, he's been riveted. By the way, his church has dominated the news cycle. |
| 0:47.3 | The fact that you write this substack, the fact that you're so interested in Catholicism, |
| 0:52.0 | it actually makes you the perfect person to ask the |
| 0:54.7 | question that's been burning in my mind for the last few days, which is, is Pope Leo soft on crime? |
| 1:02.3 | I looked this information up, and I did confirm. Since he took the throne of Peter on May 8, |
| 1:08.0 | 2025, there have been zero murders in the Vatican. |
| 1:11.8 | So he's actually strong on crime. |
| 1:14.5 | The crime rates down to zero. |
| 1:19.5 | My question here was referring to a truth social post from Donald Trump over the weekend. |
| 1:25.0 | It was one of those really long ones. |
| 1:29.6 | It started out with Pope Leo is weak on crime and terrible on foreign policy. Then Trump touted his stock market numbers before |
| 1:36.1 | dragging the pontiff again, this time for meeting with Barack Obama's advisor David Axelrod. |
| 1:42.6 | A few hours after that, the president sent out an AI-generated |
| 1:46.6 | image of himself dressed up like Jesus Christ. Trump's main message in this post seemed to be, |
| 1:56.2 | I don't want a pope who criticizes the United States. He literally said that. That is quoting the president. |
| 2:03.0 | Is Donald Trump going to get what he wants? No, and he never was. I mean, he is not backing down. |
... |
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