Like most people, the new pope thinks JD is a creep

Whether you believe JD Vance killed Pope Francis , we can safely say he’s not going to love the new head honcho of Catholicism. Pope Leo XIV is American, Peruvian, and, as a graduate of Villanova University, I assume he’s a March Madness fan. But in his previous life as Cardinal Robert Prevost, he was dunking on the vice president on X.

“Dunk” may be a strong word, but Prevost did repeatedly call out Vance for the inhuman deportations and for lying about church teachings on who you’re supposed to love. (Jesus said everyone, Vance said only people near you.) Vance is a showy Catholic convert, so this is especially embarrassing. But the choice of Leo is a promising sign that the Catholic Church is joining the worldwide trend of rejecting Trumpism. 

You can’t make sense of Trump’s ramblings

During the campaign, journalist Aaron Rupar popularized the term “sanewashing,” to describe how the press would paraphrase or attempt to contextualize Donald Trump’s incoherent ramblings, imposing a sensibility to them that doesn’t exist. Sometimes this was for nefarious reasons, but mostly because smart people struggle to understand that someone can be as dumb as Trump. So they seek meaning where it doesn’t exist, like taking the chaos of a sandy beach and pounding it into a sandcastle. 

We’re seeing the same phenomenon arise in response to tariffs, and for the same reason: it’s hard to believe that the man forcing this policy on everyone understands so little about what he’s doing. Even on MSNBC, where they are no fans of Trump, you hear hosts and guests try to make sense of Trump’s words when, mostly, he’s just filling up airtime with nonsense until reporters stop asking him questions. 

For instance, Trump filibustered on Tuesday by saying, “Think of us as a super luxury store” where “we're going to give you a very good price, we're going to make very good deals, and in some cases, we'll adjust.” CNBC reporter Megan Cassella interpreted this by posting, “By naming a ‘price’ for countries to pay to ‘shop’ in the US, it appears he wants some tariff to remain in place, and possibly with everyone.” 

She admitted this is “confusing,” but she still gave this idiocy too much credit. The likelier explanation is that President Drink Bleach enjoys the image of himself hashing out the price of oil and Barbie dolls. He likes to talk about this fantasy, because it’s a lot easier than trying to understand how international trade works. He’s always been dumb, and his brain is rotting from age and being surrounded only by sycophants. It’s not deeper than that.

Trump’s bribe pipeline will cost us all money

There was a ton of reader response this week to a story by my colleague, Natalie Chandler, titled “764,000 lost money on Trump meme coins, while 58 profited.” Nearly all of it was schadenfreude at the Trump fans who bought this, who missed the obvious hallmarks of a pump-and-dump scheme to take their money and redirect it into the wallets of Trump and the other grifters. “How much more money do his suckers have left?” was the typical Reddit comment. 

But truly, the money he’s skimming of the rubes might be the least of it. I wrote about Trump’s foray into crypto last week, and the reporting from the New York Times indicates that the real  money comes from people who are using this as a system to funnel bribes to Trump. Foreign governments and businesses currying favor don’t care if they lose money buying Trump’s coins, because it’s just a way to write him a check and avoid laws that ban bribing him with cash. 

Unfortuately, it’s hard to get people to care about this off-the-charts corruption, because they don’t see what it has to do with them and their wallets. I outlined some reasons it will hurt all of us in the story, but I want to add one more: it’s incentivizing Trump to keep issuing tariffs that are driving up inflation. 

Companies are already buying Trump coins and issuing press releases publicizing it, in hopes he will exempt them from the tariffs. He keeps talking about how he plans to use tariffs to force others into “deals.” That’s probably what he’s thinking. But of course, he is never satisfied after he gets the first pay-off. He might temporarily reward bribes by taking tariffs off, but when he starts hankering for another bribe, back they’ll go. And we’ll all pay for it with soaring consumer prices. 

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What we're reading this week

• “The Continuing Crisis, Part XIV: The Trumpist Worldview,” Derek Lowe, Science

• “Trump's Powers of Persuasion Are Failing Him,” Paul Waldman, Cross Section

• “There Should Be Social Penalties For Lying,” Jill Filipovic, Substack

• “How Trump Will Use “Anti-Christian Bias” to Entrench His Power,” Katherine Stewart, New Republic

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