Donald Trump ripped into Pope Francis as a "very political person" for visiting areas close to the United States' border of Mexico during an upcoming trip and for lacking an understanding of the U.S.' immigration situation, Politico reported.
“So I think that the pope is a very political person. I think that he doesn’t understand the problems our country has. I don’t think he understands the danger of the open border that we have with Mexico," Trump said in a telephone interview with Fox Business' "Varney & Company" on Thursday, adding, "Mexico got him to do it because Mexico wants to keep the border just the way it is because they’re making a fortune and we’re losing.”
Niall O'Dowd noted at Irish Central that Trump has dragged anti-Catholic and anti-papal rhetoric into an election for the first time since John F. Kennedy’s campaign, in 1960, when JFK was forced to explain his faith.
"It is not the first time that Trump has raised Catholic ire. Cardinal Timothy Dolan in New York spoke out fearlessly when Trump first began mouthing anti-immigrant slogans," O'Dowd noted.
"Cardinal Dolan wrote in Catholic New York, 'I am not in the business of telling people what candidates they should support or who deserves their vote. But as a Catholic, I take seriously the Bible’s teaching that we are to welcome the stranger, one of the most frequently mentioned moral imperatives in both the Old and New Testament.'"
O'Dowd added some context: "The latest comments by the billionaire must be seen in the light of Trump going to compete in the GOP primary in South Carolina, perhaps the most anti-Catholic state in America.
"It is home to Bob Jones University, long a bastion of anti-Catholic and racist commentary.
"In fact, so anti-Catholic is South Carolina that the Reverend Ian Paisley, at the height of his anti-Catholic career, traveled frequently to Bob Jones University, which gave him an honorary doctorate and praised him for calling the pope the 'whore of Babylon.'
"As for Bob Jones himself, the following comment is all you need to read: 'Pope Paul VI, archpriest of Satan, a deceiver and an anti-Christ, has, like Judas, gone to his own place … A pope must be an opportunist, a tyrant, a hypocrite, and a deceiver or he cannot be a pope.'
"By attacking the Pope on Mexican immigration, Trump is sending the dog whistle to two of his most important constituencies: those who are anti-immigration, and the many who are still anti-Catholic.
"Throw in the KKK roots of many good old boys in the state and you have the perfect trifecta of hatred."
Yes, Trump is an eejit, and sometimes Irish Americans need to be reminded why their parents and grandparents were Democrats.
What Trump means is the Pope doesn't appreciate how useful fear-mongering is for a political campaign like his own.
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