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Radio War Nerd EP #598 — Pope Leo vs. Trump, feat. Annibale (Patreon)

Published:
2026-04-14 15:16:48
Imported:
2026-04
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Guest: AnnibaleRecorded: April 13, 2026

Annibale joins us to discuss the conflict between Pope Leo XIV and his 1.4 billion Catholic followers vs Donald Trump and his minions of cheesy badassery, a conflict that hath been foretold by Annibale on RWN last year.

Further listening:-EP #524 - The American Pope, feat Annibale-RWN's Hundred Years War series, feat. Annibale

Total time: 1:27:58Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

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Buy & review John Dolan's new book, They Should Have Been Hanged: War Nerd Essays on the U.S. Civil War

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

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Comments

Mungo Franczak

I am a Shiite Catholic and I will embark on the Butlerian Jihad.

AG

How will you get your radio earnerd? Lol

Jack Sylvia

leo preparing to call for an albigensian crusade against maga

Mungo Franczak

I will make the War Nerd himself into my Mentat.

ExtraJudicial Pod

Mister. I am the Pope, this might be your church, right now I'm the Pope of Greenwich Village 'cause I got the tape alright?

Hugh Jazz

I hate the fact that the title of this episode is a sentence that makes sense in the year 2026

Townes

Hey John, unrelated question. In Pasolini’s “Sex, Consolation for Misery,” he writes, “The pimps swarming around bloated and beat with their Brindisi or Slavic moustaches are leaders, rulers: in the dark they make their hundred lire deals, winking in silence, exchanging passwords: the world, excluded, remains silent about those who have excluded themselves, silent carcasses of predators.” Can you tell me what the hell a Brindisi moustache would look like? Thanks!

AG

I started writing "Leo > Trump" on my car windows when my wife caught me and made me stop. She is scared of stirring up trouble. So my windows just said "Leo > Tru." My kids go to catholic school and when I picked them up they asked what was on yhe windows. When I told them Trump said mean things to the Pope my 7 yr old got the marker and finished writing Trump on the windows. Then he said let's go to Washington DC so Trump can see it. I have never said anything negative about Trump to my kids cause...they are kids. They don't need to get into shit like that. But it was a funny moment. My wife erased it :(

Steven P Schiesser

I have differed with you on many things I think US imperialism is the greatest threat to humanity so I support China in Russia in toppling it however this was a really great conversation. Thank you.

Alex

As an Armenian christian orthodox woman born and raised in the US (and now an atheist)... watching Americans talk to me about Jesus has always been totally difficult to comprehend. The American Jesus just feels like a marketing plan - there's no sense of duty in the American church, just vibes and badassery (as Annibale says). Trump transposing himself onto Jesus is probably the logical conclusion. It was great to hear Annibale's take - sadly I just don't think Americans really even comprehend the seriousness of the church - or even really understand what the idea of "moral clarity" even means - although they can probably give you a diatribe on how they are "#winning" or "owning the libs". I have mixed feelings about the church, but at its best, it should be a source of moral clarity - and even more so in a time when we desperately need it. Thank you so much for covering this - I remember Annibale mentioning the Italian church's condemnation of the Ethiopian invasion in a prior episode - it feels like we are just watching a sad repeat... Thank you all for being a voice of reason in this time. And thank you for having Annibale on - his perspective is always appreciated.

Leyland

It’s Jordan B Peterson in the hospital bed… obviously!!

The Squash

Every once and a while Hannibale says something that makes me really wonder who the fuck he actually is. Haha

Thor

Lost Highway was Robert Logia, not Robert Goulet, as the mob boss Mr Eddy/Dick Laurent

Yoni Maltsman

Are China/Russia really trying to topple US imperialism though?

Seth

The Vatican needs its own version of DOGE. Maybe DOVE?

Hans Anders

I don’t believe in god, but since a couple of years, I do believe in the pope

John Waaben

trump has suffered and sacrificed much like Sanguinius, and he is just as beautiful.

showlistener

I know a lot of conservative evangelicals. They're not the Doug Wilson type, they see Catholics as a different flavor of Christian, so they don't like the Pope slander, but they REALLY don't like the Trump-as-Jesus post. How much does it really matter? Probably not much but it does matter at least a little bit.

showlistener

And with the way things are going I think we can all agree that Satan exists

showlistener

You're correct, they're not.

GueritoDeLaBahia

I look forward to the Avignon establishment soon. That or the 30 years war pt 2: The Pope DOES Have Divisions.

GueritoDeLaBahia

Salaam brother. As a Catholic Shia I look forward to meeting in the field lol

Michael S. Judge

As for shock at Trump talking shit to the Pope: if you didn't grow up in a furiously religious setting in America – not necessarily all that big on the 'we love God' part, but institutions, hierarchy, authority, punishment, YOU WILL ATONE – it's hard for anyone from such a background (mine was the One True Church and the Jesuits especially) to tell you just how thoroughly we believed the Church set the basic rules of everything. Not that other people would complain or try to break those rules, but that they'd know, from childhood, that the Rules are the Rules, and you CAN'T break them. We didn't make them up, and you aren't gonna survive a serious transgression. And then you get out in the world, to any significant degree, and you realize that the rules are NOT just the rules, and most people haven't even heard of them, and you can kinda do whatever you want, but that means you have to rely on something other than ecclesiastical dictates to tell you if you're a decent person or a piece of shit. At this point, sincere people who grew up extremely Catholic, including myself, tend to get seriously invested in alcoholism and/or opiates. But a whole lot of butter-insulated American quasi-Catholics have still never seen enough reality to know the rules don't matter, and – truly no joke intended – jesus CHRIST, I think we all know how American Protestants deal with, well, everything. So these people end up shocked at the most predictable shit in the world, because they still think, truly, in the most secret cove of their hearts, that a President of the United States knows about and acknowledges "the rules," which insane for Trump, but equally insane for Obama or Bill Clinton or Ronald fucking Reagan. Fucking Poppy Bush, ad majorem Dei gloriam

.

I was raised Catholic (I’m secular) but I can’t help but see the similarities between Catholics and Shia Muslims. You can see it in some praxis (Sandinistas and Iran amongst others) for liberation theology. I’m a communist and this isn’t my full idea of liberation but it is 100% anti imperialist which is the primary contradiction in this world and can open up a space for a better world going forward. I was glad to read the Pope’s messaging on this war and critiquing power in general and also the president of Iran fully backing him and praising Jesus. We need more solidarity even if it comes from religious circles mainly because the U.S. empire has used religion to spread sectarianism both at home and abroad.

Aidan Coffey

RE Pope meeting Axelrod- might have been more of a Chicago thing than an Obama thing. Axelrod was a local Chicago fixer long before Obama his claim to fame was getting Harold Washington elected as mayor of Chicago in the 80s.

CR

I was thinking the same thing. It’s just a meeting of the Chicago Mob.

CR

I expect Ken Klippenstein (?) has already submitted the FOIA request, and so I want to see what the prompt was to generate that AI slop.

CR

MAGA eat more shit than all of Germany

James Masters

I'm intrigued by Annibale's suggestion that, in the Middle Ages, theft was regarded as a crime worse than murder. Where can I read more about this?

Michael S. Judge

I don't totally know why, but Catholic + Shia is definitely a real thing

Aidan Coffey

We are very proud that we got a pope before NYC

Maggie+Al

Given how many saints the Church has made out of clergy shot by the Spanish Republicans when they feel arrived with PSOE, it strikes me that Leo could probably do a lot more. Can Daniel Berrigan get a look in?

Mac Robertson

It comes down to Penal Substitutionary Atonement and the denial of any cosmic nature to the Resurrection. These people care only about the Crucifixion so far as it is a one-time-only Get out of Hell card.

Maggie+Al

Also yeh one of those angles is 100% the siloutte of a 40k sanguinary guard, I assume that the "based Trump memee" training data is so lousy with 40k art Photoshop's.

C

Of course some Catholics that stuck with the church post-spotlight would stick with Trump post-epstein.

Miko

I live in Trump country. Trump yard signs and flags were a mainstay in the area for the entirety of the Biden years. The flags and signs would get tattered and faded and then be replaced with the latest Trump merch and whatever slogan was the new in thing. (even the occasional appeal to heaven flag) The signs and flags stayed up, possibly multiplied after he won the election. And then...things changed. Over the last 12 months all of his disasters have piled up. As of a few months ago, i'm not sure exactly when, ALL of the yard signs and flags are gone. I mean all of them. I and the partner have gone on several road trips through the country, even the reddest rural areas, and they're all gone. I couldn't believe it. Our MAGA relatives still support him, but things have definitely changed. The icing on the cake is the growing rift with the catholic block and especially the insane things the twitter right and MAGA are aiming at the pope. (the Maga catholic relatives we know are splintering over the immigration issues and the continued pope dust ups) So tonight I spotted a flag I haven't seen before, a US flag and the PAPAL FLAG at half mast in someones yard. I've never seen someone fly the papal flag before, much less at half mast. I don't know if it's a protest against the pope or against trump but it is new, and noteworthy.

Kevin Hickey

I think it was called P2😏

Jon Lyons

I grew up essentially secular and far, far outside of any religious tradition (or civil, or ethnic, for that matter), and the whole thing remains ineluctably foreign to me to this day, so I really appreciate your observation about "the rules" and their assumed universality as it makes so many patterns of religious behavior I've observed instantly much more legible; thank you for taking the time to write this.

Michael S. Judge

Even in a place with as many cultural inputs as middle America in the 1990s, it just never occurred to me that the adults around me were either making this shit up as they went along or so blinkered that THEY were still rattling around in the same little artificial chrysalis. "Irish Catholic" is literal historical ethnic group (of which I am a literal member), but it's also a distinct subtype of Catholic, and by the broader definition, 95% of the people I knew in any depth at all before I was ≈16 were Irish Catholics. I was stunned to discover, when I was maybe 12, that not only was Catholicism not the most common religion, it wasn't even the most common form of Christianity, and be-fucking-wildered by my first exposure to Protestants – and these are Missouri Protestants, so mostly Baptist, Pentecostal, and various other species of Evangelical. And I don't think most Americans, even Americans from core Jesus Country, understand in any meaningful terms that this is a country of tens of millions of people, maybe 100+ million people, who have absolutely no goddamn idea what anything means or how anything works, and are still living on the fumes of the fobbed-off bullshit they "inherited" from "church" – and who, more imporantly, don't even know that about themselves. I think it was Hugh Kenner who described the characteristic American view of the world as "I will happily and patiently explain The Truth to you, until you understand it, and if you finally understand but still don't agree, you have chosen to become The Enemy."

Clay Perry

Trump's press secretary said later that the picture of him as Jesus was "doctored" which makes his Red Cross explanation sounds like a game of telephone

xnfec

I doubt Trump spends time prompting ChatGPT to produce art. Theoden had one Wormtongue. Trump has thousands: and he appears to be listening to all of them.

Jason Thompson

A rare wedge driven between the “fuck your feelings” nihilist atheist fascists and the right wing religious fascists.

Jason Thompson

1:17:00 And that is why clerics in Dungeons & Dragons (traditionally) are only allowed to use maces and other non-edged weapons! 🤓

Terry Dunk

Wait why is John resuming the peripatetic lifestyle??

MC

I wonder how each Primarch would react to a Donald Trump figure

Studio Novaya by Fredrick Edward

I don’t know if you’ve already done an episode on Guatemala and the Civil War there, but it would be a great time to do so because of the role of the Catholic Church and the Evangelical Church; and how things played out there. It feels extremely familiar now here with the Evangelicals being the war mongers and the Catholic Church (at least locally in Guatemala) being a source of aid for the indigenous people who were being genocided. My neighbor in SF had a sister who was a midwife there in the Ixil triangle so I went to study with her in my youth and she explained that the Evangelicals were gaining converts solely because of their ability to “predict,” massacres as information was passed to them from Rios Mott and that the Evangelicals were key in bringing him to power and funding his regime. The Catholic church lost followers, but did outlast the war and were allied with her even though she provided birth control and abortions because they were focused on the greater good together for the locals. I’m not saying I love Catholics they’ve done some terrible horrible things and are hugely corrupt… but at least in some times and places have been voices for peace and aid 🤷‍♂️

J P 3

Trump is blowing up the Reagan coalition, piece by piece. First it was the professional class -- corporate law, doctors -- who were in the Reagan tent. Now it is Catholics, which were part of the "white ethnic" base that Reagan's cultivated. I wouldn't be surprised if white Evangelicals headed for an exit at a certain point too. Maybe it is over gasoline prices, or something else.

Aditya V

Dr. Dolan was making a good point when Annibale interrupted... Thankfully Dolan later returned to it ... Annibale is unaware of the US situation... IT is mostly Catholics that truly objected to Trump's attack on Pope Leo... The rest... one cannot be sure. If you listened to Jon Stewart's execrable comments, you can see why. He basically said that Trump and the Church are the same while mock addressing President Tump- Jon Stewart: "Look... President Trump, I know the Vatican has been critical of your policies , but you gotta remember that at the end of the day, you and the Catholic Church both historically care deeply about the same thing, covering up sex scandals" Stewart's audience laughed and clapped and cheered That Stewart would say this in the context of Pope Leo's call for peace shows that this is not a Trump thing. It goes well beyond Trump. https://youtu.be/g6k55WQ5GAk?si=C6bEnp_71km0XhJT

Rhys Hayes

That would be an absolutely fascinating episode, great suggestion

Google Hushabye Vally

I feel like that's both a yes and a no. They are interested in American hegemony dying, but they won't go on the offense unless the threat is right on their doorstep. They'll give offer some help to the Iranians, but they will never send their military to fight for them. They want the current hegemony to die, but they will not expedite that death because it would mean becoming a hegemon themselves. If they become hegemons, the new global order would be all for nought, because it'll be a different flavor of the old system. The world they actually want is free of hegemony. A world where blocks don't exist, where sovereignty is king, and a country can have a revolution with no worries of outsider interference. You have to patiently wait for the old order to collapse in on itself, and we're currently in that transitionary moment.

Mark Ames

I've noticed the same here in western NY state. The Trump lawn signs and such which were displayed so smugly during the Bidenschina quietly disappeared over the past 6 months. Actually I'm not even sure when they went down. Trump support is still there, but it's more of a sullen bitter support.

radiowarnerd

Hi Townes, I referred your question to a literary Italian friend who had the following response: The original poem line is I magnaccia, attorno a frotte Gonfi e sbattuti, coi loro baffi Brindisi o slavi, sono Capi o reggenti This translates as Pimps, around in flocks Bloated and worn out, with their moustaches [They come from] Brindisi or [they're] Slaves They're bosses or "capi" So it's the pimps who come from Brindisi, not that the moustaches are a different style.

a clash of purple

That's a good point, and I would go further to say that American Catholics are really not on the same page as the Church in the rest of the world. Don't forget that JD Vance himself is a Catholic convert, and he is absolutely on Trump's side against the Pope. The history of Catholicism in the United States is fraught - for most of our history, they were treated with suspicion and mistrust, possibly even moreso than Muslims at certain times. It wasn't until the racist, pro-fascist demagogue Father Coughlin took over the airwaves in the 30's that Catholics became more accepted in mainstream society, to the extent that it didn't stop Kennedy from winning the presidency. I can't speak for John Dolan's family, but from what I've heard and seen American Catholics don't care about anything except banning abortion and American nationalism. They've never been receptive to the Vatican's messaging about climate change or peace. The child sex abuse scandal seriously damaged their credibility, as Stewart was gesturing to in his joke. And quite a few (in)famous American Catholics, like Mel Gibson, are sedevacantists, meaning they reject the legitimacy of the pope altogether. I'm not Catholic myself, but from my outsider perspective Annibale's description of the Church in Italy and sentiments of Catholics outside the U.S. sound very alien to me compared to the American Catholics I'm used to.