The Media Research Center’s whining that non-right-wing media wasn’t taking President Trump’s side in his beef with the pope continued in an April 21 post by comedy cop Alex Christy:
Of all the liberals with a strange, new respect for papal wisdom, HBO’s John Oliver might be the most brazen. On Sunday, the Last Week Tonight host, who spends a great amount of time lamenting pro-lifers and religious people who operate under the assumption that the First Amendment applies to their views of homosexuality, became the latest to pile on Vice President JD Vance for his comments about Pope Leo and the Iran War when he told Vance to stay in his lane, which he argued was teaching sex ed with couches.
Oliver introduced a clip of Vance by playing up the idea that Vance was doing something risky, “Now, when pressed on the pope’s remarks, Vance took a bold swing.”
In the clip, Vance declared, “When the pope says that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword, there is a thousand-year—more than a thousand-year tradition of just war theory. Okay? Now, we can of course have disagreements about whether this or that conflict is just, but I think that it’s important in the same way that it’s important for the vice president of United States to be careful when I talk about matters of public policy. I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”
It’s not a completely unreasonable thing to say. The United States did not attack Iran for the purposes of annexing its territory or some racist urge to wipe out Persian people and their culture. You could say Iran has an urge to wipe out Israel, just like their Russian allies certainly desire to do that to Ukraine.
Why has Christy lost respect for papal wisdom when it contracts Trump? He doesn’t say. And we have to wonder about his newfound respect for Ukraine given that a few years ago, his employer was uncritically pushing a GOP conspiracy theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Christy then complained that the pope wouldn’t endorse Trump’s war in Iran:
Popes simply don’t endorse military action anymore, so unless Oliver wants to announce he is a total pacifist, he should refrain from using Leo as a shield for his own agenda, especially considering that when the news cycle shifts to abortion, or same-sex marriage, or transgender-related things, Oliver’s interest in Leo’s thoughts will either disappear or shift to opposition.
For a May 2 post, Christy groused over praise for the pope naming a bishop who was once (gasp!) an undocumented immigrant:
With the help of The Washington Post, Saturday Good Morning America co-host Gio Benitez brought back ABC’s habit of hyping actions by Pope Leo if it could help them in a shot at Trump. This time, the news revolved around a new bishop in West Virginia who used to be an illegal immigrant and is naturally a Trump critic.
Benitez reported that “the next bishop to lead Catholics in West Virginia is formerly an undocumented immigrant. Pope Leo appointed Bishop Evelio Menjivar to the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston. Bishop Menjivar was born in El Salvador. The Washington Post reports that he was smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico in the trunk of a car back in 1990. In 2023, he was ordained an auxiliary bishop of Washington. Bishop Menjivar has publicly spoken out against the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrants.”
ABC loves to talk about Pope Leo when he is contradicting Trump on immigration or Iran, but when he recently rebuked German bishops for formally blessing same-sex couples, they were nowhere to be seen.
Christy didn’t explain why he thinks the pope’s words are newsworthy only when they criticize gay people, which has long been Catholic teaching. Still, Christy continued to whine:
If it means a lot of things to different people, then it is reasonable to point out that some people believe Diversity with a capital D is not the same thing as diversity with a lowercase D.
While Leo certainly has been critical of Trump on immigration, based on other comments he made about a country’s right to control its borders, there is no reason to believe he would support turning asylum into a way to bypass laws against illegal entry. Perhaps ABC and The Washington Post should report that as well.
Why is Christy so upset about “Diversity with a capital D”? Given his employer’s longtime rage against DEI programs, such manufactured anger must be part of his job.