U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he holds a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 30, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
President Donald Trump and his administration talk a big game about their devotion to and support for religion, but in practice, their "high-octane condescension" exposes their "contempt toward Christianity," according to a new analysis from The Bulwark.
Mona Charen is a veteran writer and journalist who previously worked as a staffer for former President Ronald Reagan and as a speechwriter for First Lady Nancy Reagan. She is now an outspoken critic of Trump and his political agenda, writing for The Bulwark on Wednesday about the ways in which he has "revealed MAGA's anti-Christian nature."
"The past few days have featured the vice president of the United States lecturing the pope on morality and church doctrine; Sean Hannity making it official that he worships at the Church of Trump; Pete Hegseth quoting made-up verses from Pulp Fiction as if they were actual scripture; and Trump styling himself as Jesus Christ," Charen wrote. "A few years ago, one might have wondered how these acts of contempt toward Christianity would go down with the religious right, but after 10 years of cultishness, it would be foolish to expect many defections."
Speaking from her own background in the conservative movement, Charen called it "dizzying" to see "people who used to venerate religious leaders of all stripes" morph under Trump's influence into people who now "smack-talk the pope and commit what some have characterized as blasphemy." She took particular exception to Vance's "swipes at the vicar of Christ," in which he urged Pope Leo XIV "to stick to matters of morality," and "let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy," a set of assertions especially galling considering Vance's much publicized late-in-life conversion to Catholicism.
"You do Mass and baptisms and such and let us handle war and peace. That’s some high-octane condescension, but if he had stopped there, it would only have registered as normal MAGA insolence," Charen continued. "But no, Vance wasn’t finished. Speaking the next day at a Turning Point USA event, Vance rebuked the spiritual leader of 1.4 billion Christians (including himself: Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019) for his theology!"
While she herself is Jewish, Charen explained that she had always had an admiration for "serious Christians" and their commitment to doing good. In the face of Trump's contamination of right-wing religiosity, she called it "One of the sad revelations of our time" how MAGA has exposed "the shallowness of many Christians’ professed faith," becoming another in a long line of historical examples of faith being "perverted to enable cruelty and even atrocities."
"But the particular sacrilege that late stage Trumpism has adopted must be tearing at some hearts," Charen concluded. "From Trump’s declaration that unlike Erika Kirk, he doesn’t forgive his enemies, to his crude attacks on the pope as 'weak on crime,' to his insane AI rendering of himself as Jesus, he seems to be deliberately testing Christians’ forbearance. Above all, his threat to commit war crimes by deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure in Iran (bridges, power plants) and culminating in the maniacal vow to destroy Iranian civilization in one night ought to have produced a recoil in any nation with a conscience. Time to consider that he might be a false prophet—if people can distinguish truth from falsehood anymore."