By MIKE MAGEE
This previous week, Trump’s posting of himself as The Pope surfaced as soon as once more David French’s basic Christmas, 2024, New York Occasions column titled “Why Are So Many Christians So Merciless?”
As I wrote on the time, “French and his spouse and three kids have skilled the cruelty first hand since he brazenly expressed his opposition to Donald Trump in the course of the 2016 Presidential marketing campaign. That resulted in threats to his whole household by white supremacists who particularly focused his adopted Ethiopian daughter. In the end, he was “cancelled” by his personal denomination, the small (roughly 400,000 members), Calvinist “Presbyterian Church of America”.
Over the previous week, American politicians of each stripe have debated what precisely was Trump’s motive in debasing the Papacy as Pope Francis was being laid to relaxation. Three important theories have emerged.
1. As a malignant narcissist, Trump couldn’t bear the truth that Pope Francis was stealing his limelight.
2. Trump was interesting to conservative Christian Evangelicals who’re strongly against the Papacy on theological grounds.
3. Trump was interesting to conservative Catholics like New York Put up columnist Charles Gasparino who says, “… we respect Trump greater than the socialist Pope.”
After all, there probably are components of fact in every of those. However I favor to fall again on my New York Metropolis highschool coaching and imagine that that is the product of a boring witted college yard bully who thought this was humorous.
This isn’t to say he has the braveness to say possession. (Clearly this doesn’t get posted with out his approval.) No. He lies to your face, saying:
“I had nothing to do with it, Any person made up an image of me dressed just like the pope, and so they put it out on the web. That’s not me that did it, I do not know the place it got here from — possibly it was A.I. However I do not know the place it got here from.”
Together with his blessing, the picture was posted at 10:29 PM on Might 02, 2025 on his Reality Social account.
David French probably sees accomplices within the shadows.
As he defined in 2024. “It’s outstanding how usually ambition turns into cruelty. In our self-delusion, we persuade ourselves that we’re not good however that we’re so clearly proper that opposition must be rooted in vanity and evil. We lash out. We search to silence and destroy our enemies.”
He could also be proper. However in terms of Trump, I recall one other bully, and one other heroine. On June 1, 1950, a 53-year previous Republican Senator from Maine rose to the Senate ground to confront Senator Joe McCarthy. 4 months earlier, in Wheeling, WV, McCarthy had unleashed a populist assault on what he claimed to be a conspiracy of “205 card-carrying communists within the State Division.”
What occurred subsequent is proudly recalled within the official historic data of the Senate as “A Declaration of Conscience.” The story speaks on to all those that allow Trump within the present period. It took 4 years (after this speech) to lastly rid America of its menace. It stays to be seen who will emerge as our modern-day Margaret Chase Smith, and the way a lot time will move earlier than we rid ourselves of this contemporary day tyrant.
Right here is the official account of Senate Chase’s efforts that day as recorded by the U.S. Senate historians:
‘Mr. President,’ she started, ‘I wish to communicate briefly and easily a few severe nationwide situation…. The USA Senate has lengthy loved worldwide respect as the best deliberative physique…. However just lately that deliberative character has…been debased to…a discussion board of hate and character assassination.’ In her 15-minute deal with, delivered as McCarthy appeared on, Smith endorsed each American’s proper to criticize, to protest, and to carry unpopular beliefs. ‘Freedom of speech isn’t what it was once in America,’ she complained. ‘It has been so abused by some that it isn’t exercised by others.’ She requested her fellow Republicans to not experience to political victory on the ‘4 Horsemen of Calumny–Worry, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.’ As she concluded, Smith launched an announcement signed by herself and 6 different Republican senators–her ‘Declaration of Conscience.’” . . .
“Smith’s Declaration of Conscience didn’t finish McCarthy’s reign of energy, however she was one of many first senators to take such a stand. She continued to oppose him, at nice private value, for the following 4 years. Lastly, in December of 1954, the Senate belatedly concurred with the ‘woman from Maine’ and censured McCarthy for conduct ‘opposite to senatorial traditions.’ McCarthy’s profession was over. Margaret Chase Smith’s profession was simply starting.”
Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and common contributor to THCB. He’s the creator of CODE BLUE: Inside America’s Medical Industrial Complicated. (Grove/2020)
