New American Pope Blasted Trump and JD Vance Before Election

Summary

Bulwark Takes: New American Pope Blasted Trump and JD Vance Before Election – Episode Summary

Release Date: May 8, 2025

---

Introduction

In this episode of Bulwark Takes, hosts Tim Miller and Jonathan V. Last delve into the groundbreaking news of Cardinal Robert Prevost’s election as the first American Pope in history. The episode provides an in-depth analysis of Pope Leo XIV’s background, his unexpected criticisms of prominent American figures, and the broader implications of having an American at the helm of the Vatican.

---

Pope Leo XIV: A Historical Milestone

Tim Miller introduces the monumental election of Cardinal Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, highlighting his status as the first American Pontiff. At [00:00], Tim exclaims:

“For those who haven't seen it yet, Cardinal Robert Prevost. Prevost. I got that right. Of the United States has been selected as the first American Pontiff in history.” [00:00]

Jonathan V. Last adds depth by discussing Prevost’s background:

“He is a skinny Pope. Looks a great deal like our good friend Eric Edelman from Shield of the Republic.” [02:16]

Pope Leo XIV, a 69-year-old from Chicago, brings a fresh perspective with his significant global experience, including his tenure as a bishop in Peru and leadership of the powerful Vatican office for bishop appointments.

---

Unexpected Criticisms: Tweets Against JD Vance and Trump

One of the most surprising aspects of Pope Leo XIV’s ascent has been his critical stance towards prominent American figures, notably JD Vance and Donald Trump.

Tim Miller points out:

“And the only other thing that I know about him is that he shit on JD Vance on Twitter a couple weeks ago.” [00:33]

The conversation shifts to Pope Leo XIV’s tweets, particularly his criticisms of JD Vance regarding immigration and moral issues. Jonathan V. Last elaborates:

“Robert Prevost … Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others. … he was kind of misinterpreting ... he was misinterpreting their doctrine about how, like, you care, you love your family more than you love strangers.” [10:09]

Additionally, Pope Leo XIV's final tweet before his papacy involved retweeting a message that challenges political leaders on their stance towards suffering and immigration:

“How can you stay quiet? That is his final tweet.” [11:20]

---

Analyzing the Papal Conclave

The hosts discuss the dynamics of the conclave that led to Pope Leo XIV’s election. Jonathan V. Last notes:

“This conclave … the votes … only four ballots, which tells you that he was probably the front runner from the first ballot.” [03:56]

They highlight how Pope Francis reshaped the College of Cardinals, influencing the conclave's outcome. Unlike previous conclaves where cardinals knew each other well, this conclave saw many cardinals meeting for the first time, contributing to a swift election process.

---

Papal Rhetoric and Future Direction

Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural speeches and blessings have been noted for their inclusive and global approach. Jonathan V. Last remarks:

“His papal blessing was a, you know, peace. He referenced Francis like three times … he is definitely going to continue that ... he will be the Pope for the whole world.” [06:11]

The hosts speculate on the potential direction of Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate, suggesting it may align closely with Pope Francis in embracing the global south and fostering a more inclusive Church.

---

Reactions and Implications in America

The election has sparked varied reactions within the United States, particularly among political figures. Tim Miller anticipates Donald Trump's response:

“It's already happened. Just happened. I'm actually not surprised by this. … Congratulations to Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost. Such an honor to realize he's the first American Pope …” [12:22]

He humorously predicts Trump’s likely attempt to associate the election with American greatness:

“How long is it before he takes credit for this and says that it's because America … they respect America now.” [13:36]

Jonathan V. Last shares his optimistic outlook, expressing hope that Pope Leo XIV’s leadership will bring positive change:

“I have full Pollyanna … Maybe it'll be a great Pope.” [07:05]

---

Community Reactions and Celebrations

The hosts discuss how Catholics around the world, especially in the United States, are responding to the election. Jonathan V. Last describes personal celebrations:

“We stayed for the blessing. We held up our little rosaries and got them blessed … It's just awesome.” [14:06]

They also mention the surge in Villanova University alumni enthusiasm, hinted at by the influx of Villanova sweatshirts in Rome and playful remarks about the prospective renaming of campus buildings after the new Pope.

---

Conclusion

Bulwark Takes concludes with a blend of excitement and cautious optimism regarding Pope Leo XIV’s future leadership. Tim Miller and Jonathan V. Last encourage listeners to subscribe for more insightful discussions, celebrating the historic election while contemplating its potential impact on both the Catholic Church and American society.

---

Notable Quotes

1. Tim Miller (00:00):

   “For those who haven't seen it yet, Cardinal Robert Prevost. Prevost. I got that right. Of the United States has been selected as the first American Pontiff in history.”

2. Jonathan V. Last (02:16):

   “He is a skinny Pope. Looks a great deal like our good friend Eric Edelman from Shield of the Republic.”

3. Jonathan V. Last (10:09):

   “Robert Prevost … Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others. … he was kind of misinterpreting ... he was misinterpreting their doctrine about how, like, you care, you love your family more than you love strangers.”

4. Tim Miller (12:22):

   “It's already happened. Just happened. I'm actually not surprised by this. … Congratulations to Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost. Such an honor to realize he's the first American Pope …”

5. Jonathan V. Last (07:05):

   “I have full Pollyanna … Maybe it'll be a great Pope.”

---

Implications and Future Considerations

The election of Pope Leo XIV marks a significant shift in the Vatican’s history, reflecting a more global and inclusive approach under his leadership. His critical stance towards American political figures suggests a Pope unafraid to voice moral concerns, potentially shaping the Church’s role in global and domestic issues. As Pope Leo XIV begins his pontificate, both Catholics and international observers will be keenly watching his initiatives and teachings to gauge the future direction of the Catholic Church.

---

Stay tuned to Bulwark Takes for ongoing coverage and analysis of Pope Leo XIV’s actions and their impact on both the religious community and the broader socio-political landscape.

Transcript

[Tim Miller]

Hey everybody, it's Tim Miller from the Bulwark here with my colleague Jonathan V. Last, author of the Triad newsletter, my co host on the Next level. We have Lapsed Catholic, an actual Catholic, here to discuss the breaking news with the Pope. For those who haven't seen it yet, Cardinal Robert Prevost. Prevost. I got that right. Of the United States has been selected as the first American Pontiff in history.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Usa American Pope.

[Tim Miller]

We have an American Pope. Jbl. He will be usa US I feel.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Like hacksaw Jim Duggan out here with my two by four. Look at that. Lee Greenwood.

[Tim Miller]

Q. Lee Greenwood, American Catholic moment. He'll be known as Pope Leo the 14th. He is a 69 year old. Nice. From Chicago. He's global experience. He served as a bishop in Peru. He's most recently leading the powerful Vatican office for bishop appointments. And the only other thing that I know about him is that he shit on JD Vance on Twitter a couple weeks ago. So that's honestly, he's from America and he, he hate tweeted JD Vance. That's enough for me. But Jonathan, you're a little bit deeper in this. So what, what's your assessment?

[Jonathan V. Last]

We got a resistance Pope. No, I'm kidding. That's, that's a joke. We'll use that as a headline, but it's basically a joke. So this is shocking, I think to everybody. Not, not totally shocking because his name had been in the conversation. Conversation. My, my, my best sources on this are the people over at the Pillar. Go tothe pillar catholic.com and subscribe to them. And they did a profile on him like three days ago, which they would not have done if they didn't hear rumblings that there were, there was some talk.

[Tim Miller]

I've not read that profile. So is he, did he ever, was he ever a bishop in America? Was he ever a U.S. yes, I.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Believe he was in, in Chicago for a little bit. But he did, he did all of his, his ministry was done in South America and then he's been over in Rome. He's reasonably young. He's 69. The last two popes.

[Tim Miller]

I love that.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Well, the last two popes were 76 and 77 upon their elections. So 69 is, you know, he's just a kid.

[Tim Miller]

Is he skinny? They say fat pope, skinny pope.

[Jonathan V. Last]

He is skinny. He's a skinny Pope. Looks a great deal like our good friend Eric Edelman from Shield of the Republic. And I don't believe anyone has ever seen the two of them in the same room together. He's a Villanova grad, let me tell you mention that.

[Tim Miller]

I did know that my brother went to Villanova. Hell, yeah.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Our friends at Villanova, a school that Flash is highly interested in, are going to have to rename every fucking building on that. That campus after him. And they are going to be the most. You think the Notre Dame Catholics are insufferable. Just wait. The Villanova Catholics who have their own Pope? Wow. Wildcat nation gonna run crazy.

[Tim Miller]

He's an Augustinian. Tell us about that. What does that mean? I know about the Jesuits, so I.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Don'T know all that much about the Augustinians, to be honest. And he is, again, I just want to say how utterly insane it is to have an American Pope. Most of us in Catholic world thought that we would get an African pope and an Asian Pope before you'd get an American Pope like that, you know, because the Europeans control all of this stuff. Basically, most of the votes come from Europeans. Heavily Italian in the College of Cardinals. And, you know, like, their views of the Americans are like, you guys have enough, right? They don't need to be lectured to by Americans. The idea that an American will be sitting on the throne of St. Peter is wild.

[Tim Miller]

Since he was the guy that picked the bishops or was the point man for that. Do we think. Is this a Dick Cheney situation? Do we think where, you know, a lot of the bishops, you know, they were looking at some other candidates, they settled around the guy that all the bishops knew.

[Jonathan V. Last]

So this is. I mean, this is a real thing that Francis really did reshape the College of Cardinals in very significant ways. The college of this College of Cardinals is Francis's College of Cardinals. This is the. The college. This is the electoral College he wanted. And what one of the things he did that was interesting is that he kept them apart from each other. Normally the cardinals are all very chummy and they, you know, are. Most of them know each other pretty well. This conclave, these guys were sitting down for the first time together in many cases. And that is interesting. Very, very short, only four ballots, which tells you that he was probably the front runner from the first ballot because you got to get to. Got to get to a su. I forget the. The full number that you need, but it's a large super majority of the ballots. And typically what happen is, you know, they do an initial vote that just takes taking everybody's temperature, and one or two clear front runners emerge, and then there's like a lot of commitzing about, like, well, do we think we could go with this Guy, or do we think we can go with that guy? And then you, you know, as they do the next vote and you, you then see basically whether these names have been vetted. A third vote to see, okay, is there real momentum. And then a fourth vote is like, okay, everybody's decided that this is it. The most interesting thing about this to me is that at his blessing that he gave from the balcony, he spoke in Italian, Latin and Spanish, not English. He did not speak in English. And I find that fascinating and kind of heartening, actually. This is a guy who is not going to, not going to rub the rest of the world's nose in the fact that he's American and is clearly in the most basic way possible. Just the tongue he uses to speak to them is saying, I am the Pope for the whole world. And Timmy, you know, I don't know if you're like me, but often in American politics after a presidential election, there's this groundswell of, well, you know, anything can happen and I hope it all works out for him.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jonathan V. Last]

You know, I never feel that I am almost. Well, not never. I guess I've felt that once or twice, but most of the time I'm just like, boy, this, this guy who just got elected is a piece of crap and we're going to get what we deserve. I'm one of those naive suckers with popes, whatever we know about them before, whatever, whatever there is beaten around in inside their hearts. New guy gets on the throne of St. Peter. I'm only going to get lifetime, maybe six popes. I mean, you know, like this is a very, very rare season and I am in full Pollyanna. Like, I don't know, maybe it'll all work out this time. I love it. Maybe it'll be a great Pope.

[Tim Miller]

I want to read his resistance tweets since that is, people are here for that. But before we do that, I want to leave that for everybody. For the dessert. Is there anything else from the profile that you read and the pillar or from the speech that like jumped out to you?

[Jonathan V. Last]

Yeah, I mean, very, very non ideological speech. So his, his papal blessing was a, you know, peace. He referenced Francis like three times and he's really, you know, love, love me. My Francis, he's Francis's boy in, in a similar way that Benedict xvi, Joseph Ratzinger had really been John Paul's boy. And so maybe a lot of people saw Benedict's pontificate as basically doing the closing out the books on JP2 and the idea was he was going to be the reform of the reform. JP2 basically carried forth the Vatican II reforms through the Church in addition to all the other stuff he did. And Benedict was basically tidying up the books before they put that aside. And maybe that is what Leo the 14th will be to Francis. Maybe he will be, you know, I don't quite know. Francis pontificate. I have complicated feelings about it. You know, it was kind of a mess in many ways. I'm not sure that there is like an ideological project that was happening that needs to be tidied up. And again, Leo's a pretty young guy. He's only 69. And so who knows? I mean, again, it is possible that he could be a significant Pope.

[Tim Miller]

He's not going to be though, I guess. Your point on what the king of the books. He's not going to be like a reaction to Francis that's like, oh, we need to turn away from. Even though maybe some of the actual policies of the Church didn't change dramatically, but the rhetoric of it, we're not going to reject, know, kind of the, the, the Francis's turn from a rhetorical standpoint.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Yeah. And the Fr. I mean, part of the thing of Francis was he really, really leaned into embracing the global south, which is, you know, a really big and important significant part of the Church. Not being ashamed of that, not viewing them as like, you know, second class Catholics. And Leo is certainly going to continue that. As you say, it's not a, it's not a reaction. Right. You know, and, and that's, that's good. I don't know, I'm just all like aglow and I feel it's one of these things where if you're Catholic, you, you think about. Did you ever do the Rome thing, Tim?

[Tim Miller]

Oh, yeah, of course.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Yeah. Yeah. You know, so like the white smoke comes up and what happens is people, if you haven't been to Rome, like, it's tiny, it's tiny, tiny, tiny. And the white smoke goes up and people just start running from all over town.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Like they literally run. They walk to get there, you know, and the square just starts filling up and filling up and nobody knows what's going on because this stuff is real. It is impossible to keep things secret in the modern world, but the Vatican actually does it and just standing there waiting and this guy comes out and speaks to you and it's like the same. It's been like this for a thousand years. They've done it this way for a thousand years. And you know, and maybe this time it'll turn out great.

[Tim Miller]

Let's get the video. One thing we didn't do for a thousand years because we didn't have modern video, but the video of the camera, like close up where the chimney is and the bird was there and the bird kind of looks up and then people start cheering and then the bird's like, what the fuck is happening around here? And then the bird flies off. It was a cool. That was a really cool video. Okay, here's the good stuff for the non Catholics who stuck around this far. Robert Prevost A few tweets recently I think are worth noting. J.D. vance is wrong. Colon. Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others. This is with regards to JD Doing the thing about Ordo and Mortis and how you can be mean to immigrants. Because there's, you know, he was kind of misinterpreting a. Was it Aquinas or Augustine? Either. I think it was. I can't remember. It was either Aquinas or Augustine. He was misinterpreting their doctrine about how, like, you care, you love your family more than you love strangers. And then he did another one on it. Pope Francis letter, JD Vance's Ordo Amoris and what the gospel asks of all of us on immigration. And then I missed this one. This is his most recent tweet, the most recent tweet of the new American.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Pope, the last tweet before he ascended to the throne of Peter.

[Tim Miller]

You think, think you would have maybe had to clean up the tweets before you went in? You know, you might have had somebody delete them. It's probably the first time that's been a problem or an opportunity, depending on it. This was just a retweet of somebody named Rocco Palmo. Good on you, Rocco. You're right, said the loggia. Anyway, as Trump and Bukele use Oval to push the illicit deportation of a US resident, once an undocumented El Salvadoran himself, now DC Auxiliary Avelio asks, do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed? How can you stay quiet? That is his final tweet. It's a retweet. But is your conscious not disturbed? How you. How can you stay quiet?

[Jonathan V. Last]

He did retweet Chris Murphy. I get it. Can we. I mean, again, I. We're going to find out all sorts of. Previously, he had retweeted Chris Murphy previously. Previously. I do want to ask you very, very sincerely.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Jonathan V. Last]

So by the time this is posted to YouTube, I assume Donald Trump will have tweeted about this. What do you think he's going to do? Because I could see Trump on the one hand wanting to warm up and make it like, oh, yeah, this is an American Pope. We're going to give great deals, great deals. You know, maybe we'll get a. Maybe we'll get, you know, over there in the Vatican palace, maybe at a casino we could put us in. Beautiful. It's great real estate. On the other hand, I could see it as a persecution complex of, you know, these very unfair popes being so mean to us Anti American. These woke DEI Popes.

[Tim Miller]

I got the answer for you. It's already happened. Just happened. I'm actually not surprised by this. This is what I was going to go. The U.S. pope that he does the U.S. thing. Congratulations to Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost. Such an honor to realize he's the first American Pope. What excitement. What a great honor for our country. I look forward to meeting him. He's wanting to meet Donald, not J.D. probably just for just a better safe than sorry. That sounds surprising. If you're Trump, you're first focused on how can I spin this about the golden age of America if it's only because I've made this the golden age that the cardinals would have chosen American Pope.

[Jonathan V. Last]

How long is it before he takes credit for this and says that it's because America. Because the cardinals, they respect America now. Exactly. Because of my leadership, they respect America and realize that they had to make an American Pope.

[Tim Miller]

T minus 12 minutes, I think until that happens, I think that is imminent. Don't ruin this for you, jvl. Don't ruin this for yourself. You're happy. You're giddy.

[Jonathan V. Last]

I am.

[Tim Miller]

Are you gonna go to church tonight? What do faithful Catholics do on the election of the Pope? It's been a while for me.

[Jonathan V. Last]

I mean, I don't know, like, nothing special. Like, I watched it with my wife and kids and we were all super happy about it. We stayed for the blessing. We held up our little rosaries and got them blessed. Cause you know, it transfers when the first papal blessing, it's. It's just awesome.

[Tim Miller]

We've got a text chain. Our family text chains blowing up. Very exciting. My brother went to Villanova and Villanova alarm Pope.

[Jonathan V. Last]

So I have to guess now, if you're a Villanova alum and you show up in Rome, your chances of getting a papal audience are now pretty good.

[Tim Miller]

A lot of sweatshirts. A lot of Nova sweatshirts in Rome this fall. I think you'll be saying a lot of those little v hats. I definitely think you'll be see that. Okay, jvl. Thank you. Congratulations. Congratulations to the Catholics. We did it. We got a resistance pope. Everybody's happy. Everybody subscribe to the feed. We'll be seeing you soon.

[Jonathan V. Last]

Peace make Rome great again.