Welcome to Thursday. Today we have the Actual Pope Himself weighing in on Donald Trump.
Pope Francis on Wednesday suggested that Donald J. Trump “is not Christian” because of the harshness of his campaign promises to deport more immigrants and force Mexico to pay for a wall along the border.
“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” Francis said when a reporter asked him about Mr. Trump on the papal airliner as he returned to Rome after his six-day visit to Mexico.
By this standard, of course, none of the Republicans running for president are "Christian.” That's the sort of thing that people like me have been trying to more-or-less-patiently explain to people for some time now, but it's nice to have The Freaking Actual Pope pipe up with his own thoughts on that.
Trump had already been bashing the pope for visiting Mexico in the first place. As expected, Trump reacted immediately to these newest comments, in typical Trump form.
If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been President because this would not have happened. [...] He doesn’t see how Mexican leadership is outsmarting President Obama and our leadership in every aspect of negotiation. [...] For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful.
And video of Trump "responding" is here. What a gentleman.
He's going to be the Republican nominee, you know, at least unless something drastic happens. Won't that be fun.