Bulwark Takes - JD Vance Tries to Lecture the Pope About Theology

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

Tim Miller gives his take to Nicolle Wallace on MS Now about Donald Trump’s escalating feud with Pope Leo. Tim breaks down president's lie that the pontiff said Iran should be allowed to have a nuclear weapon, JD Vance’s public posture on Catholicism, and the White House's easily debunked talking points to justify its Iran messaging. In between his fight with the pope, Trump also spent time trying to downplay sky-high gas prices and try to claim his ballroom is a national security concern.Refresh your spring wardrobe with Quince. Go to https://Quince.com/BULWARKTAKES for free shipping and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too!

Hey, everybody, Tim Miller from the Bullwark here. I was on with my girl Nicole Wallace, Alex Wagner, and Elizabeth Diaz. It's an awesome religion reporter at the New York Times just a few minutes ago, and we were discussing Trump's feud with the Pope. It turns out he addressed that. Right before I popped on with Nicole,

I didn't have a chance to talk about on the podcast today. So I want to play for you a bit of Donald Trump's gaggle at the White House today where we can see what the messaging is from him as he flails and then after we watch Trump and I give you my takes

you can stick around for some of the discussion on the feud the Leo Trump feud with Nicole Wallace I think you're going to enjoy it. I really I got a little loose

for cable TV on JD Vance I got a little loose for cable TV on J.D. Vance so get ready that. All right. Or to play a couple clips. First one is what sounds like Caitlin Collins. Sorry if this is not her.

Asking a question to Trump about his Pope feud. Let's watch. Why are you fighting with the Pose? Are you worried it's upsetting your No, no, I don't. I have to do what's right. The Pope has to understand that very simple. I have nothing against the Pope. His brother's

MAGA all the way. I like his brother, Lewis. I'm not fighting with it. The Pope made a statement. He says, Iran can have a nuclear weapon. I say Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. And if the Pope looked at the 42,000 people that were killed over the last two or three months as a protester with no weapons, no nothing, I mean, you take a look at that. So I can disagree with the Pope.

I have a right to disagree with the Pope. I don't know if you could hear it there with Marine One behind it and all the noise, but my favorite part of that clip is just the reporter, I believe, Caitlin, he didn't say that when Trump says the Pope made a statement he says Iran can have a nuclear weapon and she's just like no he didn't say that that's wrong

that's not true I think what we learned here from that initial clip is that Trump is trying to back down just like he did in Iran just like he did with Jimmy Kimmel just like he did with the people of Minnesota are you guys starting to see a trend here but the importance of having a backbone

starting to back down he's talking to back down And he's talking to me like, well, I like his brother. He's okay. Me in the Popebrook. I'm not exactly going to war with him. It's not what he was saying, the Twitter, the keyboard tough guy. Leo is weak on crime. None of that.

Not getting that. Getting a bit of a climb down. Let's see where it goes from here. Because there was a group of bishops that did put out a statement saying the focus is merely exercising his opinion. He's preaching the gospel. And what do you say to people that do that? Well, I want him to preach the gospel.

I'm all about the gospel. But I also know that. You cannot let a certain country, which is a very mean-spirited country, have a nuclear weapon. If they did, they would use it, and I think they'd used it quickly, and they would kill many millions of people. So, you know, the Pope could disagree with me on that, but certainly we're allowed to have that. I'm all about the gospel. I'm about it as much as much as anybody can be. But I can't allow, as president of the United States of America, I can't allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

And here's the story. They won't have. they've already agreed not to have. That's good news. And I think the Pope will be very happy. Huge missed opportunity there to ask him to name the four books in the gospel. Do you think he knows? Do you think he could pull Matthew Mark, Luke, and John?

I don't think so. Maybe that's something to call him about. It's lamenting over none of these phone calls besides Andrew Krasinski to Donald Trump's cell phone, have yielded anything good. Maybe you just call him and say, hey, I saw you're all about the gods. Can you tell me which books are the gospel again? What what what what what what what what what? What what what?

What what? What. What. That's what he says about that. Um, you do have to say, Iran was not on the brink of getting a nuclear weapon. Even if they were, we don't have intelligence or evidence that they're going to use it and kill millions of people. That's just a lot. Nobody buys this.

Nobody buys this as a justification for war. You cannot take this to the American people and have it. and have anyone, even mega voters, nod their head and say, oh, yeah, I was really, I was really worried. Iran was going to, I was going to nuke Raleigh any day now. It's like, what? Come on. Be serious. I think that's it for over the Leo feud,

but I want to grab another clip from the gaggle. Let's watch that next. Crisis. How much longer will Americans continue to see these high gas prices? Well, they're not very high. If you look at what they were supposed to be, to get rid of a nuclear weapon with the danger that entail. So the gas prices have come down very much over the last three, four days. I know, you know, that's what ABC says.

But the fact is that if you look at the stock markets up, everything's doing really well. And the big thing we have to do is we have to make sure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, because if they do, you want to talk about problems, you have problems. So very important is that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon. And they've agreed to that. Iran's agreed to that. And they've agreed to it very powerfully.

They've agreed to give us back the nuclear dust. It's way underground because of the attack we made with the B2 bombers. So we have a lot of agreement with Iran. And I think something's going to happen very positive. I just don't think the gas prices are not very high is a sustainable message. That's me. You guys know my opinion on this at this point. I expect people are going to be very mad.

I don't think they're not very high. they've come down a couple cents. It's going to be a message that lands with the American people. And we'll just have to wait and find out to see who's right about that. Since I've been taping this, Trump has gotten back on truth to do some bleeding. This time about the ballroom. We're going to read this one together. Here it is.

The White House doesn't have a ballroom. No taxpayer money, exclamation point, which presidents have desperately wanted and desired for over 150 years. But a Trump hated. D.C. District Court judge. Amanda's gone out of his way to undermine national security and to make sure that this great gift to America gets delayed or doesn't get built.

Does Tony present future presidents or leaders from having a safe and secure, large-scale meeting place or ballroom, one with bomb shelters? State of the Air Hospital, medical, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let's see if we got anything else here of note. Then we go to the bottom here. This is a mockery to our court system.

I can think of some mockeries that you've committed on our court system, sir. The ballroom is deeply important to our national security. and no judge can be allowed to stop this historic and militarily imperative project. Yeah, oh yeah. The ballroom now is deeply important to our national security. Okay. Everything is.

You know, Melania coin is necessary because of our national security. We have to send people to war. We have to kill Americans and to die because the concern that Iran might get a nuke and then figure out some sort of way to send the nuke over the ocean and land it in Hartford, Connecticut. That was a threat to our national security. Everybody's gas prices are up because we had a threat to national security. The economy is in the tank because we have a threat to national security. We've got to deport people. We've got to kill American citizens on the streets of Minnesota because it's national security. And I need a fancy ballroom to host the King of England in.

Okay. I don't want to be embarrassed when little Emmanuel Macron comes to the Whitehouse and talks about Versailles and how much prettier their ballrooms are. I need to have a ballroom that is gold lamay and has my favorite type of marble. And if I don't have it, it's going to be a nobody is buying this bullshit anymore. Okay, it's laughable. It's laughable. He's having a crash out because he can't have his precious ballroom. And because he doesn't go about anything through the legal process. And now he wants us to sit here and believe that we need a ballroom. that we haven't had for our national security. It's like, it's preposterous.

It's preposterous. And it's just the degree to which he has distanced himself from the forgotten man, caring about the forgotten. I remember all this? We're going to care about the people that have been left behind by the globalism and the bipartisan establishment. It's like, he doesn't give a fuck. He's doing another Middle East war.

He's obsessed. With his fancy ballroom, he must be able to put his name on, and he needs his arc to trump. And like, that's the shit he cares about. Don't think that is going to play well. I've been doing a little bit of spring reset in my closet lately. You may have noticed on these takes, focusing more on quality over quantity. Just trying to build a wardrobe of pieces that are well made, versatile, and easy to reach for every day. That's why I keep coming back to quince.

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Subscribe to the feed right here. You got to get to 2-Milly. Let's do this. Stick around. I've got some funny J.D. Vance material coming up next. You know, there is something about this story, Tim, that is out of their control. And so the other fascinating dynamic is, you know, and I always think of that movie The Sixth Sense, right? Bruce Willis was dead and he didn't know it.

I mean, politically, this feels like a story that or a battle that they've lost and they just don't know it. And it is not just among Catholics that they are sort of losing ground. Let me show you how Stephen Colbert talked about it last night. Hey, hey, hey, JD, I know you're Catholic, but you joined in 2019, okay? I've been Genuflectin since the mid-1960s, and let me tell you, brother, I think you're out.

I think you're out, no, I got something to say. I think you're out over your Catholic skis here, okay? I think it's time for you to sit down, then stand back up, then kneel, then stand again. then shake hands with people around you, then kneel a little more, then go take communion, and then go back to your pew for some more kneeling,

because you're not sneaking out of here after communion, because you know who left the last supper early? Judas. You know, they're not just wrong. They're not just losing ground. They're the butt of jokes. Yeah, indeed. Stephen took the wind out of my sales a little bit

because I was about to make fun of J.D. Vance for joining the Catholic Church two minutes ago. when I had to go genuflected Neil and get First Communion and all that back in the 80s. So Stephen's got 20 years on me. But it is something that is worth noting, right? That to J.D. Vance in particular, we can put Trump in a separate category here. But he at least thinks that he has a future political career, right? I don't think that he thinks that he's in a sixth sense situation.

And he has a book coming out like this in the next couple months about his conversion to the Catholic Church. And so I just think about how insane the pitch, J.D. Vance, is offering to people is. It's like, I thought Trump was Hitler. I thought Trump could be Hitler. And then I came around to the fact that he was actually the greatest thing ever. He's perfect. And I have to follow everything he does. And at the same time as I came to that conclusion, I came to the conclusion that I have a new faith.

I'm a Catholic. And I went to the classes, the RCAA, OCIA classes. And apparently, after going to a couple of those classes, I think I know more about theology than the Pope. And then I'm going to warn him. I'm going to warn him with everything I've learned in my night classes or my craft course. I'm going to wag my finger. I'm going to wag my finger at Pope Leo. I know more than you. You should shut your pie hole and stick to theology. It's like, what? It's crazy. It's totally crazy. It's like, who is going to believe this? Like, that he had a conversion to Donald Trump and a conversion to the Catholic Church at the same time

and he thinks he's smarter than the Pope? It's just, I don't know. Donald Trump's a good salesman. J.D. isn't. And I don't know who's going to buy that pitch. Over the course of the week, I played some of the things that Trump has said over the years that reveal just what a mismatch this is. Donald Trump as the sort of politician of choice for Christians and Catholics and anyone for whom faith is important. But this idea that Alex, I think, is drilling down on, that Trump thinks he's at war with a person. when he's actually at war with an unshakable faith. And I want to read this piece that I loved in the New York Times.

Trump has Pope derangement syndrome. Quote, Pope Leo's statements are not partisan barbs. They are expressions of his understanding of the gospel and Catholic social teaching. For Trump to respond to them as pot shots or challenges to his authority reflects a misplaced obsession with the Pope and a misunderstanding of his role as a spiritual leader of more than a billion Catholics worldwide. Call it Pope Arrangement Syndrome. I think there's something else Trump doesn't appreciate him, and that is, you know, the B in the word billion. Trump likes to take on people who are powerless. He likes to take on asylum seekers or people in this country

illegally or the transgender community and their families. This is a billion with a bee Catholics worldwide that he has sort of kicked the hornet's nest, if you will, and really attacked someone they revere. Yeah. I think there are two things that put with Trump here. One is we need to keep open the possibility that he thinks that he's God. And he keeps posting about himself as God. And he certainly thinks that he is, you know, never going to die.

He certainly thinks that he beat death in Butler and that he's beaten political death a million times. He's a megalomaniac. And so when you have that mindset, it's like who the Pope is, you know, you don't have room for reverence to have for someone whom you may disagree with because they have a religious faith or they might be close to God because that does not comport with his worldview. So part of this might be just his own mental illness. But I also think that just, as you kind of laid out, even if that were not the case, even if he had a sane brain, he thinks he's built over time this idea that he can bully people and that they'll fold. And a lot of people have demonstrated that that works. Universities folded, law firms, excuse me, folded, all the Republicans folded. A lot of foreign leaders have folded, businessmen, the richest man in the world folded to them at some people.

level. And so he's going back to that playbook. And like that playbook doesn't work on the Pope, you know. There are just some roots that are deeper than that. And the Pope is not, it doesn't affect the Pope if his poll ratings go down among, you know, evangelical Christians in this American South, right? Like that's not what he's worried about. He's worried about theology and faith and his flock. And so, you know, Trump's just bag of tricks. don't work here. It's a fascinating thing to watch. It's both fascinating to watch someone who, as you said, is so different from everyone else we cover.

It is in some ways the most fascinating collision of two sort of forces. But the other thing you point out is also fascinating, that you realize how feckless and weak everything else is for capitulating, everything and everyone else. Because the reason this is news is that no one else stays true to their core. No one else stays true to their faith. No Republicans stayed true to their foreign policy ideals or their anti-tariff ideals. No business leaders stayed true to their belief that the government shouldn't own massive chunks of companies.

Foreign leaders, I mean, to the point you're making, Tim, what's extraordinary is that it's extraordinary. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And there have been some other examples of this, but obviously the Pope is unique. The Pope is unique.