The Media Research Center made sure to side with President Trump while he was beefing with the pope, and that partisanship continued in an April 17 column by Tim Graham:
When 60 Minutes lined up three American Catholic Cardinals who had been dropping angry “open letters” on President Trump, CBS reporter Norah O’Donnell mustered the audacity to claim “their candor surprised us.” No, they knew precisely what they were orchestrating – another carefully edited hit job on Trump.
Modern liberals, by their nature, are alienated from traditional Christianity, as exemplified by the classic front-page Washington Post phrase about Jerry Falwell’s followers: “poor, uneducated, and easy to command.”
Liberal TV networks find organized religion useful – when it helps sell the liberal view. They want to add the moral authority of organized religion to their causes. They will celebrate in this case that Pope Leo is not a “pundit” or a “politician,” which is true to a point. But it turns into a pundit-palooza.
This American pope surely knows that all of his speeches, interviews, and tweets are going to be used to score points by political actors, and he knows that he doesn’t have to name Trump for everyone to guess he’s calling out Trump.
When a pope speaks out about poverty or pollution or climate, our elitist media rush to publicize it. When the Catholic Church is vigorously opposing abortion or transgenderism, then they are either mocked or ignored — but mostly ignored. So you might think Pope Leo is a liberal when it depends on which issue is being discussed. They only want to present his opinion when he agrees with their opinion. If he speaks out against radical Islam or Christian persecution in Africa, they ignore him, so Americans might think he’s said nothing about it.
Graham didn’t explain why he won’t follow the pope when he talks about poverty or the climate. He then whined that right-wing Catholic officials didn’t get sufficient media attention:
The 60 Minutes gang could just as easily find a spokesman like Bishop Robert Barron, who is very popular among American Catholics. But he’s on Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, so he’s automatically an unpalatable choice. Leftist journalists call him a “MAGA Bishop.” That’s like categorizing the cardinals CBS interviewed as the “Biden Cardinals.”
In this case, they’re seeking to undermine the moral authority of a more conservative church leader. The journalists who sneer at a “MAGA Bishop” are the same hacks who describe Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi as “devout Catholics.” It’s all about political spin.
In other words, Graham is spinning when he complains that the pope is allegedly too liberal — that’s his right-wing bias coming through. He concluded by whining: “Advancing the Left is ‘courageous. Debating the Left makes you a wannabe despot.’” But he offered no evidence that merely “debating the left” is all he, Trump and his fellow right-wingers are interested in, and his being a political hack is not the “moral courage” flex he thinks it is.
Indeed, later that day he went after a priest he deem insufficiently right-wing:
In a war of words between President Trump and Pope Leo, the PBS News Hour is going to line up with the pontiff, who they perceive as on “their side.” To attack Trump, PBS on Wednesday welcomed on Stephen Colbert’s favorite priest, Father James Martin, a leftist activist hailed for being “passionate about LGBTQ+ inclusion and advocacy within the Catholic Church.”
The online headline for the 8-and-a-half minute segment was “Pope Leo’s critiques of Trump policies hold more weight as a fellow American, priest says.” It’s a little odd to imply on screen that it’s wrong to be “Criticizing the Pope,” when PBS found people to trash Pope Benedict for being soft on child abuse when he died.
Anchor Amna Nawaz threw softballs at the priest, starting with this: “So let me just ask what you thought when you heard Vice President Vance warn Pope Leo to be careful on matters of theology. What was your reaction?” This was Martin’s first answer knocking Vance as obviously dumber than the Pope.
Does Graham think he’s more Catholic than the pope? Sure seems that way. Also note that Graham insisted on smearing Martin as a “left-wing activist priest,” though he wouldn’t called Barron a “right-wing activist priest.” Does Graham refuse to listen to the pope when he speaks out against Trump?
(It should be noted that Graham appears to be a Catholic, so he has a certain bias in bashing fellow Catholics whom he deems insufficiently right-wing.)
Alex Christy complained in an April 18 post:
Ever since Pope Leo assumed the papacy, PBS News Hour Friday contributors MS NOW host Jonathan Capehart and The Atlantic staff writer David Brooks have tried to claim him as one of their own in their fight against the Trump administration. That continued this Friday as the duo essentially told Vice President JD Vance to shut up when it comes to criticizing Leo’s remarks about the Iran War, with Capehart claiming they are among “the most insulting things” a VP could say and Brooks arguing the Iran War is permissible under just war theory, but also isn’t because Trump.
[…]Eventually getting to Vance, Capehart added, “The vice president of the United States converted to Catholicism nine years ago. For him to tell the vicar of Christ, who’s been a priest for 34 years, that he needs to—quote—‘be careful’ about how he talks about theology is one of the most insulting things I think I could possibly ever hear being said, one, to the pontiff, but, two, from the vice president of the United States. All of this is maddening and surreal.
Nawaz then turned to Brooks, “David, what do you think of this? I mean, the way the president criticized the pope and then for Vice President Vance to speak of him the way that he did, what are you taking away from this?”
Brooks agreed with Capehart but shrunk Vance’s conversion from nine years ago to nine minutes, “I agree with Jonathan that you shouldn’t—J.D. Vance shouldn’t be questioning the pope after being Catholic for nine-and-a-half minutes. But I do think what you see here is the contrast between the way Trump has gone into this war, which is cavalier in the extreme, and Catholic just war theory, which traced back to Augustine and Aquinas, which is intellectually rigorous.”
Christy went on to huff: “The fact that Brooks can’t even agree with himself on whether the Iran War could pass just war theory only proves that this issue is nuanced, and telling Vance to essentially shut up does not actually help differentiate between just and unjust wars.”
Christy returned for another lashing out at a take he didn’t like:
The back and forth between Pope Leo and the Trump administration has produced several hot takes, but CNN’s Kara Swisher may have had the most bizarre and confusing on Friday’s edition of Real Time with Bill Maher Overtime on HBO. As the debate revolves around what constitutes a just war, Swisher threw the First Amendment into the conversation as if someone were attempting to muzzle the pope’s speech.
Maher began by asking, “What do you think of JD Vance saying the Pope should be more careful when talking about theology?”
Swisher jumped at the question, “As I’ve said, he has the charm of a Cybertruck as a politician, but I have one thing. I mean, look, the Pope is also an American citizen and should be able to say whatever he feels like under the First Amendment, and he just looks like a putz.”
Yes, the pope is an American, but he does not live in America anymore. Is Swisher suggesting that criticizing the pope is akin to trying to silence him?
We can think of numerous times when the MRC thought that criticism of right-wing views equated to silencing them. But Christy doesn’t want to bring that up. He’s apparently another MRC employee who won’t follow the pope if he criticizes Trump.