“Take a Joke”: Trump Mocks Catholics Upset Over Image of Him as Pope

The White House’s social media post on Friday night depicting Donald Trump as the pope was apparently “just a little fun,” according to the president.

“Actually, my wife thought it was cute,” Trump told reporters at the White House, referring to a seemingly AI-generated image in which he appears dressed in white papal attire. “Actually, I would not be able to be married, though. That wouldn’t be allowed. To the best of my knowledge, popes aren’t getting married. Not that we know of, no.”

Still, personally acknowledging that he and his wife witnessed and shared the bizarre and offensive image wasn’t enough to deem the image real.

“I think it’s the fake news media, you know,” Trump said. “They’re fakers.”

Trump also insisted that Catholics “loved it” and chalked up critiques of the stunt to the “fake news.” But that also appears to not be based in reality.

“There is nothing clever or funny about this image, Mr. President,” posted the official account for the New York State Catholic Conference on X. “We just buried our beloved Pope Francis and the cardinals are about to enter a solemn conclave to elect a new successor of St. Peter. Do not mock us.”

Former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi also had rough news for Trump, writing in Italian that the image “offends believers, insults institutions and shows that the leader of the global right enjoys being a clown.”

Even New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan—a supposed Trump ally, who was named a member of the White House’s Religious Liberty Commission Thursday—said that the picture “wasn’t good.”

When asked by a reporter if leveraging the official White House account to share “memes” was “diminishing” the value of the channel, Trump responded that the press should give him “a break.”

“Somebody did it in fun. It’s fine. Hate to have a little fun, don’t you?” poked Trump.

It’s not the first time the self-purported Christian has made light of the religion’s principles. As a way to line his pockets last year, the notorious scammer launched a $60 Bible co-promoted alongside “God Bless the USA” singer Lee Greenwood.

And in the midst of his bank fraud trial in 2024, the famed adulterer compared himself to Jesus, claiming that someone had sent him a note likening his legal comeuppance for decades of financial abuse to Christ’s persecution.

And just last week, Trump actually said he’d “like to be pope.”

“That would be my number one choice,” Trump told reporters.

The Trump administration continues to subvert the constitutional right to due process to justify its illegal, extrajudicial deportations.

“The right of ‘due process’ is to protect citizens from their government, not to protect foreign trespassers from removal,” wrote deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller on Monday morning. “Due process guarantees the rights of a criminal defendant facing prosecution, not an illegal alien facing deportation.”

This is not how the law works. The due process clause of the Fifth Amendment states:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger. [emphasis added]

The clause has no specification for citizenship.

Miller’s claim has been widely rebuked.

“Stephen Miller is lying to you. The Supreme Court has emphasized for generations that EVERY person gets due process,” wrote American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. “Here’s none other than Antonin Scalia in 1993: ‘It is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings.’”

“What is it about the phrase ‘no person’—as in ‘no person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law’—that you seem to be unable to get into your thick, sociopathic skull?” asked George Conway.

“Shaughnessy v. U.S. (1953): ‘It is true that aliens who have once passed through our gates, even illegally, may be expelled only after proceedings conforming to traditional standards of fairness encompassed in due process of law,’” wrote The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake.

As Miller continues to contort the law to keep up his cruelty, Trump reaffirmed the administration’s commitment to authoritarianism when he responded to a simple question about being required to uphold the Constitution with an “I don’t know.”

President Donald Trump has claimed he’s not paying attention to who buys his cryptocurrency coin—but companies are openly trying to use it to influence the administration’s policies.

Freight Technologies Inc., a North American shipping company, is buying up to $20 million of Trump’s meme coin, $TRUMP, in the hopes of influencing his tariff policy, HuffPost reports. Javier Selgas, the company’s CEO, said in a news release Wednesday that purchasing Trump’s digital token would be “an effective way to advocate for fair, balanced and free trade between Mexico and the U.S.”

During an interview on NBC News’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Trump was directly asked whether he was profiting off his cryptocurrency, which he launched just days before his inauguration. “I haven’t even looked,” Trump claimed. “If I own stock in something, and I do a good job, and the market goes up, I guess I’m profiting.”

The official website asserts that while 80 percent of Trump’s meme coins, $TRUMP and $MELANIA, are held by Trump-linked entities, the tokens aren’t an “investment opportunity” but simply a means of showing support for the president. “GetTrumpMemes.com is not political,” it claims, “and has nothing to do with any political campaign or any political office or governmental agency.”

But it seems not everyone got the memo—one company is apparently hoping to use the purchase of Trump’s meme coin to influence trade policy.

Freight Technologies told the Securities and Exchange Commission in a filing last week that it had entered an agreement to issue convertible notes up to $20 million, which will be earmarked exclusively for the purchase of Trump’s meme coin, $TRUMP. In his statement, Selgas, the CEO, referred to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s recent remark that “America First does not mean America alone.”

Trump has implemented a 25 percent tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico, which would severely shrink shipping across America’s borders, hurting businesses like Freight Technologies.

Trump’s claim that he doesn’t pay attention to the cash generated by his corrupt crypto scheme seems particularly far-fetched considering that the White House announced last month that it intends to throw an “intimate private” dinner for the meme coin’s 220 top holders, according to Politico.

The meme coin’s official website launched a leaderboard to keep track of the biggest buyers, a list that was topped by Justin Sun, a Chinese billionaire who founded the crypto platform Tron and was sued by the SEC during the Biden administration. Sun apparently owns more than $1.2 million worth of Trump’s meme coins.

That’s not even the only crypto scheme the president’s family is running—and in which Sun is participating. Late last year, Sun also bought a whopping $75 million of $WLFI, the token for World Liberty Financial, the decentralized finance platform majority-owned by a Trump business entity. A few months after Sun shelled out for $WLFI, the SEC asked a federal judge to halt his case.

Israel has approved plans to completely seize the Gaza strip and install soldiers there indefinitely. This is yet another clear and obvious human rights violation that aligns with Israel’s greater plan to ethnically cleanse the Gaza strip.

Palestinians will be forcibly moved to Gaza’s south under the plan, which Israel’s ministers voted to approve on Monday morning. Israel will also take control of how food and supplies are distributed to the roughly two million people in Gaza. Israel will shut down hundreds of community kitchens and food depots across the region and instead install its own distribution centers run by a private security company. Israel has blocked all food from coming into Gaza for eight weeks, purposely starving civilians.

Israel also plans to insert Gazans into a facial recognition software to dole out food from its distribution centers. This plan will begin after Trump visits the Middle East next week.

Both the United Nations and the European Union have come out against the plan, opposing anything that would result in Israel taking full control of Gaza, an EU spokesperson told the Associated Press. Israel controls about 50 percent of Gaza at the moment.

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene believes that Republicans in Congress are on track to lose the midterms—because they’re not adhering strictly enough to the MAGA agenda.

The Jewish space lasers conspiracy theorist told Steve Bannon Monday that she would advise Donald Trump to “stick with the agenda and ignore the people here in Washington that are trying to get you to do something different.”

“Here’s the issue. We’re not going to get it done in two years,” Greene said on the former Trump adviser’s podcast, War Room, referring to Trump’s agenda.

“It’s the Republicans that are the problem, Steve,” she said.

“Stick to the program! Deliver the campaign promises we made!” Greene continued, “and understand that the way to win the midterms is by the House and the Senate delivering the campaign promises because Trump’s not on that, he’s not on the ballot in 2026.”

Bannon, in turn, lamented that conservatives in both chambers weren’t completely on board with Trump’s plan.

“The Hill newspapers will say that Republicans are on board, but you’re up there,” Bannon said, gesturing toward Greene. “But you’re up there; you know they’re not on board.”

And Greene agreed, blaming her party’s draining popularity on vaccine conspiracies and tip taxes.

“I’m telling you. If you ignore the parents that are furious over Covid vaccines being on their childhood vaccine schedule, you’re gonna lose the midterms,” Greene argued. “If you ignore the campaign promises of no tax on tips, overtime, and Social Security, you’re going to lose the midterms.”

“If you ignore the executive orders, the American people are like, yes, applauding for every single day, we’re going to lose the midterms,” she said.

Greene further explained that, from her perspective, Republicans will have little to campaign on other than preventing another Trump impeachment by a potentially Democrat-controlled Congress.

“If we’re campaigning in 2026 on, you have to vote for Republicans because the Democrats are going to impeach Trump, the American people are gonna go, we don’t care, we’ve seen that TV show before,” she said.

The rest of the country, meanwhile, has been turned off by the Trump administration’s aggressive proposals for gutting Medicaid, roller-coaster tariff announcements that have whipped the economy and shoved the U.S. closer to a recession, and unsuccessful talks to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Last week, an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll found that Trump’s approval rating had plummeted to 39 percent—a 6 percent drop from February—marking the lowest first-100-day rating of a president since modern polling began roughly 80 years ago.

Donald Trump’s administration is trying to trick immigrants into self-deporting by offering them $1,000—but it’s just another scam.  

The Department of Homeland Security announced Monday that any undocumented immigrant who uses the CBP Home app to self-deport would “receive a stipend of $1,000, paid after their return to their home country has been confirmed through the app.” 

DHS attempted to paint self-deportation as a “dignified” way to avoid being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and claimed that it “may help preserve the option for an illegal alien to re-enter the United States legally in the future.”

But Aaron Reichlin-Melchick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, wasn’t the least bit convinced by the government’s claim that those who self-deport would ever be welcomed back to the U.S. 

He wrote in a post on X Monday that the government’s offer was an “outright LIE that will trap people into WORSE outcomes for them than if they stayed and fought a case in immigration court.” Having a deportation order would make it harder to return, and the DHS’s offer would “sabotage” immigration cases, he added. 

Reichlin-Melchick also wrote that there was reason to doubt that DHS even had the authority to offer financial assistance to immigrants who chose to self-deport. “No law directly authorizes DHS to pay plane tickets and offer reimbursements to people leaving the country,” he noted. 

The only legal authority that allowed for the government to deport immigrants “desirous of being so removed” also included a “near-total ban on reentry,” Reichlin-Melchick wrote in another post.

“Any alien so removed shall be ineligible to apply for or receive a visa or other documentation for readmission, or to apply for admission to the United States except with the prior approval of the Attorney General,” states U.S. Code Title 8 Section 1260. 

In recent weeks, in an effort to encourage self-deportation, DHS has sent notices telling undocumented immigrants that their parole status has been revoked—but reporters discovered that some of these emails wound up in the inboxes of immigration attorneys, forcing DHS to acknowledge its sloppy mistake. 

Donald Trump continues to insist that America’s children deserve less.

“I don’t think a beautiful baby girl that’s 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls,” the president said when asked about the prices of goods rising due to his unprecedented tariffs on Chinese imports. “They don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”

“A young lady, a 10-year-old girl, a 9-year-old girl, 15-year-old girl, doesn’t need 37 dolls,” he continued. “She can be very happy with three or four or five.… Let’s not waste a lot of time on a stupid question.”

The president said something similarly tone deaf less than a week ago.

“[China] made a trillion dollars with Biden, a trillion dollars, even a trillion and one with Biden, selling us stuff,” Trump said, referring to the gargantuan Chinese import market in the United States. “Much of it, we don’t need. Ya know, somebody said, ‘Oh the shelves are gonna be open.’ Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls. And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”

This is all part of a tariff normalization campaign from the Trump administration, as they dismiss the legitimate fears that ordinary people have about costs for common goods rising. These asinine comments about pencils and dolls are well beside the point.

The former leader of the Proud Boys claimed that he spoke with Donald Trump on Saturday night, and that the president “loves” him.

Enrique Tarrio, the convicted ex-chief of the far-right hate group, was one of the nearly 1,600 people who received clemency from the president for his actions on January 6, mere hours into Trump’s second term. But that was apparently not the last time that Tarrio would interact with the president. Instead, Tarrio and his mother, Zuny Duarte, were ushered to meet Trump at Mar-a-Lago, where a member had personally invited them to dine, reported The New York Times.

“He called me and my Mother over while we were at dinner and said he was sorry for what Joe Biden did to all J6ers,” Tarrio posted on X. “He knew the hardships me and my family faced for [three] long years.”

“He knew how many times they moved me. And he said he is working on making things right. I thanked him for giving me my life back,” Tarrio continued. “He replied with … I Love You guys.”

“To the J6ers he wanted me to send y’all a message,” Tarrio wrote. “He said … Thank you.”

Tarrio’s presence at Mar-a-Lago was made all the more strange considering that he would have had to be personally screened by the Secret Service before entering the Florida resort.

By Monday, Trump had not denied the exchange, and a White House spokesman contacted by the Times did not respond.

Tarrio was one of four Proud Boys to be convicted of seditious conspiracy for his actions on January 6. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison—the longest sentence received by any Proud Boys member—for effectively planning the attack on the Capitol to keep Trump in power after his 2020 loss. Tarrio served less than two years before Trump’s pen set him free. Since then, Tarrio has sparked a podcast and a Proud Boys–oriented crypto coin, and has become a far-right social media influencer.

In an interview with Alex Jones in January, Tarrio promised “retribution” against people who worked on prosecuting January 6 cases.

Donald Trump blew his top on Sunday night after being skewered by prominent Republican political strategist Karl Rove on Fox News.

During an appearance on Sunday Night in America With Trey Gowdy, the former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush slammed Trump on several areas, including the president’s recent admission that as a result of his tariffs “children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls. And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”

“He sounds like Mr. Scrooge, and the ordinary American is like, ‘Wait a minute, I thought you were on my side, I didn’t think you were on the side of saying I need to do with less! You got plenty of money, I gotta make mine stretch as far as I can,” Rove said.

Trump didn’t take kindly to Rove’s feedback.

“I don’t need to have Karl Rove of FoxNews to tell me what to do. The guy’s a total Loser who’s been wrong about almost everything!” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.

It’s been almost a month since the president announced a 90-day pause on his so-called reciprocal tariffs (while an across-the-board 10 percent tariff remains in effect), and he has yet to announce a single deal. Last week, Trump claimed he’d struck 200 trade deals, but there aren’t even 200 countries in the world.

Rove didn’t just criticize Trump‘s “really problematic” defense of his tariffs. He also criticized Trump for posting a “deeply offensive” AI-generated picture of himself wearing papal clothes and sitting on a throne, and for his attacks on Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was wrongly deported to prison in El Salvador. The Trump administration has claimed without evidence that Abrego Garcia was “one of the top MS-13 members.”

“The fact is, is bring him back to the United States, lay out the facts in a court of law, and get it done,” Rove said. “It does no good to let that then go out there for four or five weeks, and eat away at the president’s approval on immigration.”

Rove also hit Trump for outright lying about inflation, and the price of gas, adding, “And there’s a lot of concern about the economy. The President’s ratings on the economy and tariffs are in the 30s. And his overall approval is in the mid to low 40s. That’s not a good place to be a 100 days in.”

New York Republican Representative Mike Lawler had yet another chaotic town hall on Sunday, in which multiple disgruntled constituents of his were forcibly removed by private security and a state trooper.

As his constituents grilled him with questions, and often loudly booed his answers, Lawler remained steadfast in his loyalty to the Trump administration and its destructive positions on tariffs, bureaucracy, Ukraine, and more.

“The courts have given the president the authority on tariffs,” Lawler said. He was met with groans and jeers, and even one “blah, blah, blah.” But he continued as security removed people from the crowd. “Well, if people would behave then there wouldn’t be a problem,’ said Lawler, which led to even more, louder boos from his constituents. “If they do not reach agreements within the next 30 to 45 days, then Congress will have to intervene—”

The crowd drowned Lawler out while more officers rushed to take a woman away by her ankles. An elderly constituent was given the same treatment. She flashed double peace signs as she was manhandled by security, as seen in a viral photo taken by Seth Harrison of The Journal News. The Associated Press reported that at least two more constituents were also removed from the town hall.

Lawler, who represents a swing district, is one of the few Republicans to keep holding town halls. Late last month, he had a similarly hostile town hall experience, where he lied about cuts to Medicaid as his constituents called him an authoritarian.

This story has been updated.