A Vatican Shakedown?

Trump to Cardinals: "You don’t have the cards"

The passing of a pope is always a solemn event. But Donald Trump doesn’t do solemn, so Saturday’s funeral at the Vatican could be a theater of the absurd. Trump, in his first international trip since returning to office, will find himself seated between Joe Biden (the "very destructive Moron” of his bizarro Easter greeting) and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky (whom Trump again falsely accused this week of starting the war with Russia). What could go wrong?

It’s not hard to imagine Trump, scanning the marble columns of St. Peter’s Basilica, seeing something more than ceremony (or the chance for another Ukraine-related impeachment): A captive audience of kings, presidents, and cardinals — and an institution on the brink of electing a new pope. In his mind’s eye, there may be opportunity for a deal. Or in mine, at any rate.

After all, it is well past time for a native English-speaking pope. The Catholic Church, a global institution with 1.3 billion adherents, increasingly communicates through English — the language of diplomacy, commerce, influence, and Ask Questions Later. Latin may remain the Church’s official tongue, but in the twenty-first century, a pontiff who could command the global airwaves with neither interpreter nor accent would be a massive asset. Primus omnium, if you will.

And if encouragement were needed for the Papal Conclave to pick one of the 10 American cardinals, Trump certainly has the toolkit: threats, tariffs, transactional leverage, and total absence of shame.

In my vision, I see Trump and JD Vance holding a sit-down with a cardinal boss who looks suspiciously like Ralph Fiennes (who played this exact role in the film Conclave - but also a major Nazi in Schindler’s List). Trump is doing his thing with the index fingers and horizontal hand movements as he tells the cleric that a lotta people wanna see a US pope, and America has “beautiful Catholics,” and it’s been a “raw deal” that is “very unfair and very bad.”

“You don’t have the cards,” Trump advises the red-robed man, who, still beset by grief, must now endure Zelensky treatment. An American reporter from the MAGA Post demands to know why he’s not wearing a suit.

“Did you even say thanks?” asks Vance, stabbing at the air of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Imagining Trump shaking down the Vatican doesn’t strike me as fanciful, since it’s clearly safe to say there’s nothing that’s too absurd for the man.