By MIKE MAGEE
This past week, Trump’s posting of himself as The Pope surfaced once again David French’s classic Christmas, 2024, New York Times column titled “Why Are So Many Christians So Cruel?”
As I wrote at the time, “French and his wife and three children have experienced the cruelty first hand since he openly expressed his opposition to Donald Trump during the 2016 Presidential campaign. That resulted in threats to his entire family by white supremacists who especially targeted his adopted Ethiopian daughter. Ultimately, he was “cancelled” by his own denomination, the small (approximately 400,000 members), Calvinist “Presbyterian Church of America”.
Over the past week, American politicians of every stripe have debated what exactly was Trump’s motive in debasing the Papacy as Pope Francis was being laid to rest. Three main theories have emerged.
1. As a malignant narcissist, Trump could not bear the fact that Pope Francis was stealing his limelight.
2. Trump was appealing to conservative Christian Evangelicals who are strongly opposed to the Papacy on theological grounds.
3. Trump was appealing to conservative Catholics like New York Post columnist Charles Gasparino who says, “… we respect Trump more than the socialist Pope.”
Of course, there likely are elements of truth in each of these. But I prefer to fall back on my New York City high school training and believe that this is the product of a dull witted school yard bully who thought this was funny.
This is not to say he has the courage to claim ownership. (Obviously this doesn’t get posted without his approval.) No. He lies to your face, saying:
“I had nothing to do with it, Somebody made up a picture of me dressed like the pope, and they put it out on the internet. That’s not me that did it, I have no idea where it came from — maybe it was A.I. But I have no idea where it came from.”
With his blessing, the image was posted at 10:29 PM on May 02, 2025 on his Truth Social account.
David French likely sees accomplices in the shadows.
As he explained in 2024. “It’s remarkable how often ambition becomes cruelty. In our self-delusion, we persuade ourselves that we’re not just right but that we’re so clearly right that opposition has to be rooted in arrogance and evil. We lash out. We seek to silence and destroy our enemies.”
He may be right. But when it comes to Trump, I recall another bully, and another heroine. On June 1, 1950, a 53-year old Republican Senator from Maine rose to the Senate floor to confront Senator Joe McCarthy. Four months earlier, in Wheeling, WV, McCarthy had unleashed a populist attack on what he claimed to be a conspiracy of “205 card-carrying communists in the State Department.”
What happened next is proudly recalled in the official historical records of the Senate as “A Declaration of Conscience.” The tale speaks directly to all those who enable Trump in the current era. It took four years (after this speech) to finally rid America of its menace. It remains to be seen who will emerge as our modern day Margaret Chase Smith, and how much time will pass before we rid ourselves of this modern day tyrant.
Here is the official account of Senate Chase’s efforts that day as recorded by the U.S. Senate historians:
‘Mr. President,’ she began, ‘I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition…. The United States Senate has long enjoyed worldwide respect as the greatest deliberative body…. But recently that deliberative character has…been debased to…a forum of hate and character assassination.’ In her 15-minute address, delivered as McCarthy looked on, Smith endorsed every American’s right to criticize, to protest, and to hold unpopular beliefs. ‘Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America,’ she complained. ‘It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others.’ She asked her fellow Republicans not to ride to political victory on the ‘Four Horsemen of Calumny–Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.’ As she concluded, Smith introduced a statement signed by herself and six other Republican senators–her ‘Declaration of Conscience.’” . . .
“Smith’s Declaration of Conscience did not end McCarthy’s reign of power, but she was one of the first senators to take such a stand. She continued to oppose him, at great personal cost, for the next four years. Finally, in December of 1954, the Senate belatedly concurred with the ‘lady from Maine’ and censured McCarthy for conduct ‘contrary to senatorial traditions.’ McCarthy’s career was over. Margaret Chase Smith’s career was just beginning.”
Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and regular contributor to THCB. He is the author of CODE BLUE: Inside America’s Medical Industrial Complex. (Grove/2020)
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