“The last 10 years of Donald Trump worming his way into our brains have been weird,” said Stephen Colbert on Tuesday evening. “But yesterday might have been the weirdest weird that ever weirded. And I’ll just let this actual 100% real, we did not make this up or change this footage in any way, CSpan report sum up the times we’re living in.”

Colbert then played a clip of CSpan reporting that Trump took questions outside the White House after having McDonald’s delivered via the food delivery app DoorDash. Trump talked about a number of topics, including the war in Iran and a controversial AI-generated image he posted to Truth Social that depicted him as Jesus.

“Even CSpan can’t make that sound normal,” the Late Show host said. “If you just woke up from a coma and that report was the first thing you saw, you’d ask the doctor to put you back in.”

In a rare move, Trump has since deleted the image, but “the damage has been done”, with even some staunch supporters now wondering if he’s the Antichrist, at least according to a report from Wired. “It’s an interesting theological question,” said Colbert. “Who are any of us to judge whether – yes, yes he is.”

Over the weekend, Trump also posted a long message on Truth Social criticizing Pope Leo XIV, calling him “weak” and a “loser”.

“Why would you start a beef with the pope?” Colbert wondered, as according to a new NBC poll, Pope Leo leads most public figures in the US in approval ratings. “It’s gotta piss Trump off to learn that the most popular guy on the planet lives in a palace dripping with gold and wears an insane hat and it’s not him.”

  • moxymarauder@thelemmy.club
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    8 hours ago

    I’d just about given up on my conservative Catholic family… defending Trump through and through… did not have “beef with the pope” on my bingo card, but in the words of my uncle, “I think he’s getting a little too big for his own britches.”…

    • Fishnoodle@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      He literally expects that his followers be cucks, and cheer him on as he rapes their God, savior, religion, country, and daughters.

        • Bluescluestoothpaste@sh.itjust.works
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          9 hours ago

          Idk, maybe if we joked less about it politicians would get more serious about removing him from power. I used to love Colbert and Stewart but after 20 years of hearing the same jokes and shit just gets worse i cant watch it anymore. Trump rapes children, there’s nothing funny about that. He blows up innocent people around the world to create distractions from his investigations. And he has widespread support from people who do not give a fuck about ruining the country as long as they make a profit this quarter. There’s nothing funny about that. And it clearly doesn’t hurt trump at all, he’s still president still raping children and stealing billions in taxpayer money in the open.

          • neukenindekeuken@sh.itjust.works
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            6 hours ago

            That’s a fair criticism, so I’ll only say that before there was a Colbert or Stewart, there were stupid fucking loons who went all dictator on their people and a population that supported their idiocy and cheered them on.

            Mussolini was famously a fucking idiot who could barely tie his shoes if they weren’t done for him. Same with Hitler.

            So not having satire ripping them a new one every week didn’t stop them from happening, or what came after. It won’t here either, but at least it can entertain some people and reach some people with humor that seriousness couldn’t.

            If people want serious, mainstream news, well, that’s still there, maybe just not in the US though.

          • yucandu@lemmy.world
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            8 hours ago

            I think you’re right. Satire is for when there’s a subsurface level of corruption that needs to be brought to light in an entertaining way.

            These times are not for satire. These times are for protests.

      • Alandrus_Sun@ttrpg.network
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        10 hours ago

        Nah, he breaks comedy. He is easy to make jokes that are “Can you believe this guy?” He makes it impossible to pitch hypothetical scenarios because he is bat shit insane.

        Seriously. The white house twitter account is posting MLG era meme edits of bombs dropping on Iran. That’s not a comedy sketch. That’s just real. The president said “Praise be to Allah” and posted an image of himself as Jesus which he said was a doctor in a fucking week.

        He breaks comedy because nothing is more preposterous than his real actions.

    • BillyClark@piefed.social
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      8 hours ago

      I actually think if a person is completely normal, they’re sort of boring and sad. So, I think of weird as a compliment.

      But if they want to keep being offended by being called weird, I’m all for it. It’s the sort of thing I guess a bootlicking sycophant would be offended by. They’ve given up their individuality and their ability to think for themselves to try to fit in and receive praise from their dear leader, so it makes sense that they’d be offended to be called weird.

    • zikzak025@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      I gotta respect the fact that the new pope is from Chicago. I’m not a fan of religion as a whole, so I have no attachment to the Catholic Church and believe they still have a lot of abuse and generational baggage to make up for.

      But I can at least appreciate having a second American world leader out there, acting sane and doing better global PR for the United States than we seem capable of doing ourselves. I’ll take any silver lining I can find at this point, something to convince the world that we’re not all insane.

      And maybe he can even convince the less sane of us to at least do the right thing in the end, who knows.

  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    Pope Leo leads most public figures in the US in approval ratings.

    In theory, could the Pope run for president (given that he’s a U.S. citizen by birth, etc.)?

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      11 hours ago

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_United_States#cite_note-132

      Eligibility

      Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution sets three qualifications for holding the presidency. To serve as president, one must:

      • be a natural-born citizen of the United States;
      • be at least 35 years old;
      • be a resident in the United States for at least 14 years.[126]

      A person who meets the above qualifications would still be disqualified from holding the office of president under any of the following conditions:

      • Under Article I, Section 3, Clause 7, having been impeached, convicted and disqualified from holding further public office, although there is some legal debate as to whether the disqualification clause also includes the presidential office: the only previous persons disqualified under this clause were three federal judges.[127][128]
      • Under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, no person who swore an oath to support the Constitution, and later rebelled against the United States, is eligible to hold any office. However, this disqualification can be lifted by a two-thirds vote of each house of Congress.[129] There is, again, some debate as to whether the clause as written allows disqualification from the presidential position, or whether it would first require litigation outside of Congress, although there is precedent for use of this amendment outside of the original intended purpose of excluding Confederates from public office after the Civil War.[130]
      • Under the Twenty-second Amendment, no person can be elected president more than twice. The amendment also specifies that if any eligible person serves as president or acting president for more than two years of a term for which some other eligible person was elected president, the former can only be elected president once.[131][132]

      So, going down the list:

      • Pope Leo XIV was apparently born in Chicago, so he meets the natural-born citizen requirement.

      • Pope Leo XIV was born in 1955, so he’s 70 and meets the 35 years of age requirement.

      • It looks like, checking other sources, that the 14 year resident is just a requirement for cumulative residency over one’s life. Unless he has other things he did that Wikipedia doesn’t mention, he was in the US until he joined a mission to Peru in 1981, so he should meet the residency requirement.

      • He has not been impeached and convicted, so he meets that requirement.

      • He has not rebelled against the US, so he meets that requirement…

      • He has not yet been elected to be President more than twice, so he meets that requirement.

      According to WP, he’s still a US citizen.

      So I expect that he could. There are no restrictions on also being a foreign citizen (he is a citizen of Peru and Vatican City as well) or of not also being concurrently a foreign head of government.

      • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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        12 minutes ago

        There are no restrictions […] of not also being concurrently a foreign head of government.

        This seems like this is going to be a weird problem for some future America

      • ceenote@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        He doesn’t give off enough pedo energy to simultaneously be a priest and the US president.

          • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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            10 hours ago

            The issue with the majority of the Catholic Church wasn’t that they were pedos, it was that they weren’t willing to do anything about those within the church that were pedos. It’s not even limited to pedophilia, even; they turn a blind eye to many things that would cast the church in a bad light. Better to keep it in house and sweep it under the rug. I had an (adult) family member who was sexually harassed by the principal of the school she worked at. They sent everyone to sexual harassment training, including her, rather than deal with it appropriately. He was not fired.

          • ceenote@lemmy.world
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            10 hours ago

            Possibly. I guess my standards have been affected by how poorly the current pedo in chief hides it.

    • Windex007@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      It’s a rare but not unheard of scenario for a US citizen to serve as a foreign head of state. A brief read makes it sound like a thorny issue. The US could theoretically attempt to strip his citizenship. Sounds like there was a Supreme Court decision in 1980 that would make that difficult… but there is a new Supreme Court.

    • CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de
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      11 hours ago

      I think that would probably fall flat on both sides, because the Pope is not supposed to meddle directly in human affairs just the spiritual, or something loosely to that effect.

      However, it is an interesting thought experiment.

      • OwOarchist@pawb.social
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        10 hours ago

        the Pope is not supposed to meddle directly in human affairs

        *looks at the entire history of the Papacy*

        ಠ_ಠ

    • CaptDust@sh.itjust.works
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      10 hours ago

      He could, yes. But let’s remember america flipped its shit when a catholic simply won the office. It was claimed JFK would put the Vatican interests ahead of the country, and he took deliberate steps to distance himself. I couldn’t begin to imagine what the response would be if Leo tried it.

    • Zahtu@feddit.org
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      11 hours ago

      which Title would come first then? Mr. President Pope - Mr. Pope President?

      • Tiresia@slrpnk.net
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        10 hours ago

        Depends on the role he is fulfilling. “President Leo” or “Pope Leo XIV” in the shortest forms, “President Pope Leo XIV” and “Pope Leo XIV, President of the USA” in slightly longer forms.

        • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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          2 hours ago

          Exactly. Look at the full title of the King of England (who is also the king of each commonwealth nation AND the head of the Church of England)

  • FaygoRedPop@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    A lot of Popes probably would have seen eye to eye with Trump on a lot of things. Things like raping children.

    • village604@adultswim.fan
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      7 hours ago

      It’s weird that people still think that’s the motivation behind what’s going on.

      They could release a video of Trump raping an infant to death and absolutely nothing would happen to him. If anything the files are a distraction from them consolidating their fascist state.

      • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        They’re aware of their influence over the news cycle and public discourse. It says a lot that they prefer to focus the spotlight on a war even their supporters don’t want than those files.

        If the files were a nothing burger, you know they would be bringing up them as a distraction instead.