By Marina Hyde
The race to be Donald Trump's worst aide may seem very close. But in the end it's always JD Vance, right? You could say Stephen Miller, but Miller is too hidden to be considered a public aide in the grotesque court of the American president. Stephen seems to have been judged so terrifying that the administration has to keep him out of the public eye. If you walk into the store, Miller is that insider's product, about which the salesman speaks in a low voice: "We also have something in the back - off the register, so to speak - if the gentleman wants something a little more ... special."
But Vance? Vance is upon us like the eleventh plague—the plague of media appearances. For the next season of South Park, I hope the creators put a papal uterus on their terrible vice presidential avatar. After all, we are dealing with a man whose book about his journey to Catholicism has yet to be published. That book is currently in the bowels of HarperCollins, ready for release in June—yet Vance is already giving threatening doctrinal advice to the Pope, part of the multi-front fallout of Operation Epic Facepalm.
This week the vice president actually told a faithful Maga conference: “I think it’s very, very important that the Pope be careful when he talks about theology.” For God’s sake, Vance – he’s the vicar of Christ on Earth for your religion. Have you ever said thank you? In a way, Pope Leo escaped this confrontation easily. Last year, his predecessor Pope Francis met with Vance and died within hours.
Historically, there have been many ways to express discontent with Vatican leadership. Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to a church door; Trump poured his on Social Truth after television had angered him yet again. Perhaps Vance will turn out to be one of those breakaway Catholics like Mel Gibson, who rejects the authority of any form of Catholicism after the Second Vatican Council and has consequently not known a pope since 1963. (In practice, this meant that Mel built a private church complex in the hills of Malibu with $42 million in assets and a congregation of 70 families—my favorite “eye of the needle” ratio—and then reportedly berated those faithful when they didn’t support him in the crisis of his 28-year marriage and new relationship.)
Meanwhile, among the faithful of the Holy See, we are asked to believe that these are difficult times for Maga Catholics. But it is hard to have much sympathy for them, given that they often seem to have fully lived up to the old adage that “the Christian right is usually neither Christian nor right.” Honestly, imagine reading everything so wrong that you actually believe the anti-abortion credentials of a man who once explained that every vagina “is a potential landmine.” Speaking about avoiding sexually transmitted diseases in 1990s Manhattan, Trump famously declared: “It was my personal Vietnam… I feel like a great soldier and a very brave one.”
Perhaps a little belatedly, some Maga Catholics are now questioning the faith that gave him a moral abyss so vast it could be seen from space. Even from heaven. The attack on the Pope, coupled with Trump’s decision to post an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus, has led some to ponder the true nature of Trump’s religious beliefs. “I’m not entirely sure what faith he has,” one disillusioned believer told The Times this week. “From what I understand, Trump was raised a traditional Protestant, but he’s not a regular churchgoer. I get the impression that his knowledge of the Bible is very limited.”
Do you really think so?
