Shownotes Transcript
The Telegraph.
There is quite a lot of creative diplomacy happening in Trump world. Perhaps to the surprise of observers who see this administration as sort of haphazard, sometimes belligerent, sometimes unprepared. Right now, all eyes are on Washington. But who's actually watching Europe?
At the moment. We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars we end. At this point, I spent a lot of time with the president, and not once have I seen him do something that was mean or cruel. Dear President Trump, listen very carefully. Greenland has been part of the Danish kingdom for 800 years. We're not going to be defeated. We're not going to be humiliated. We're only going to win, win, win. We're going to win, win, win.
I'm Roland Oliphant and this is Battlelines Trump Edition. It's Friday the 9th of May.
This week, as India and Pakistan lurch towards an all-out war, Donald Trump finds an unexpected task in his inbox. It is traditionally the United States that has intervened to broker peace when those two neighbours come to blows. Will Mr Trump himself take on that role? Well, he's had this to say about it. Hopefully they can stop now. They've gone tit for tat.
So hopefully they can stop now. But I know both. We get along with both countries very well. Good relationships with both. And I want to see it stop. And if I can do anything to help, I will be there. Events in Kashmir are a very fast-moving story. For the latest updates, please check the Telegraph live blog and the newspaper, indeed, if you still happen to buy one of those.
A war in the Indian subcontinent may not have been in Mr Trump's diary, but this week is going to be a big foreign policy week for him. On Monday he will commence his first major foreign trip of his second presidential term. And where previous presidents have often chosen Canada, Mexico or Britain, America's closest allies, for their first trips, he's decided to head to the Middle East.
He'll take a three-day tour visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. On the agenda, big issues. The nuclear talks with Iran, Gaza, of course, investment and apparently the name of the Persian Gulf. My co-presenter, Venetia Rainey, spoke to Jonathan Geyer, programme director at the Institute for Global Affairs at Eurasia Group, about Trump's Middle East trip. Jonathan, why has he once again chosen Saudi Arabia for his first official foreign trip of his term? What's the message here?
I think the message is foreign policy under President Trump is all about business. If you look at one of President Trump's first remarks, big public speech he gave in February, it was at a Saudi investment conference in Miami, which is, if you look at the Washington establishment, that's not usually the first port of call for a president who's developing his foreign policy in the second term. This is the art of the deal, but thinking about defense deals, thinking about AI deals,
Saudi Arabia has become this huge hub. It's not a coincidence that Elon Musk, advisor and investor and tech titan, was in the front row of that Saudi remarks in February. And I think we're going to see a lot more of that. It's sort of maybe happening a bit in the backdrop when you have so much hot conflict in the region, when you have a war on Palestinians in Gaza that's so harsh and ongoing in these first hundred days of Trump. With
with the conflict happening around Yemen and in the Red Sea. But, you know, business as usual is accelerating actually under Trump. And I think we're going to see a lot more, as I say, military deals, aerospace and defense deals, and also in the tech sector, especially with the Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
What's on the agenda? How much do we know? I know some details are being kept quite vague, but what do we think he's hoping to accomplish while he's out there? The White House, unfortunately, has not been entirely straightforward about what's going to be a part of this. Not to criticize them, I think it's probably very much happening in the mix. And I think
The major gap that a lot of analysts have identified is where's Israel in this trip? It's pretty rare for a president to go to the Middle East to meet with top Arab leaders and not have that other side of the coin in an Israel meeting, especially while this war on Gaza is continuing. And obviously the ceasefire that Trump's team negotiated in advance of his inauguration was sort of a signature accomplishment before he even came into office, but
And now that's very much fallen apart. Israel has not let food into Gaza for months now. The siege on the territory is just incredibly intensified. And they've even threatened to, you know, quote unquote, flatten the territory without much pushback from the White House. So I think as far as, you know, the president has said publicly, there's not much to be accomplished on the Israel side, perhaps significantly.
you know, that initial Trump factor that led to a ceasefire and some positive negotiations, that kind of creative diplomacy,
doesn't seem to be on offer with this trip. So it's really going to focus on Saudi Arabia, Emirates and Qatar. And I think part of that, which is going to be almost impossible to square under these current circumstances, is the president trying to focus on another Abraham Accord, another peace deal between Israel and possibly the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is
is not something the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, has said is on offer. And in fact, MBS, as he's known, has called Israel's campaign in Gaza a genocide. So it's a really difficult equation to square here. And I think that's why we're seeing the White House really focus on business and economic financial deals at the
Yeah, as you mentioned, it's such a sensitive time actually for Trump to be going to the Middle East. Israel has been quite explicit that they've set a date for May 15th, which is basically when Trump's trip ends. And if there's no new hostage or ceasefire deal by then, then, as you said, they're going to launch this massive new military operation that will occupy and apparently flatten all of Gaza.
Do you think there is a lot of movement going on behind closed doors to try and stop that? Or has Trump really taken a step back on this issue?
You know, there are so many competing factions within the Trump administration. This is sort of what I've been trying to understand is there's not one Trump Middle East policy. There's really five or six. And we have some people within Trump's orbit who really think that, you know, engaging with Hamas, something that previous administrations, including the Biden administration, did not do should be part of that policy.
You have a really hardline evangelical ambassador in Jerusalem, Mike Huckabee, who has a kind of rapture first vision of Middle East policy, which is sort of very incongruent with the kind of more restraint or realism focus folks who are in the Pentagon who want to see less conflict.
You have donors within Trump's orbit who are very pro-Israel, want policies that are just accelerating military aid and military backing to Israel. And then you have these kind of tech entrepreneurs who, like Elon Musk and others, who have a lot of business riding on Israel, that startup community. So all of these people, all these tensions mean that
Trump's Middle East policy is sort of, it depends who's the last person that spoke with him. It depends who's briefing him that day. And now with Marco Rubio serving both as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, it's hard to know exactly what advice he's being given on a given day. However, I do think that the track record so far of contradictions makes it really hard to have a
meta-narrative. I mean, you have a president who came into office with this ceasefire, which had eluded the Biden administration, and then who threatened ethnic cleansing in this AI-generated video saying, you know, Palestinians should leave Gaza. The contradictions are so immense that I think we have to think of them as part and parcel of the president's approach to the Middle East.
Let's go back to the Gulf countries. How does what Trump wants from this visit next week line up with what countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE are looking to get from the U.S.?
So Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been really adept in navigating the Trump administration. I mean, he's probably one of the most savvy leaders dealing with the politics of Washington. In the first Trump administration, he was said to be responsible for the killing of American-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He did all sorts of
heinous acts and still managed to stay in the good favor of the Trump administration and then in the subsequent Biden administration. So I think Mohammed bin Salman is very much just feeling out what is the maximum he can get out of the Trump administration, how he's playing off a great power competition between Washington and Beijing. The Gulf states play this really interesting role right now. They're sort of in between the
all these great powers. Saudi Arabia, it should be noted, was where Russia and Ukraine had some of their first meetings under Trump early in that first 100 days. They're really playing everybody off one another and really expert at getting what they want. And the question is exactly what do they want? And it seems like
More deals, more favorable economic connections with the Trump administration, and also kind of playing really outsized positions in geopolitics for very small states.
One country that we don't know if they will be part of this Gulf summit, but we can assume that maybe they will, is Oman. That's where the talks over the Iran nuclear deal have been taking place over the last few weeks. And we're expecting perhaps a fourth round of talks this weekend, although it's not been confirmed by the White House. How do you think those are going? How close is Trump to a deal? And how supportive are the Gulf countries of that conversation?
coming about? Well, first, it should be said, Oman is just a fascinating go-between and sort of also has been where some of the Yemen talks have been happening that have been leading to possibly a new arrangement to stop those Houthi attacks on shipping lanes. So, you know, definitely an important country to watch, even though it's very small and, you know, not usually on the radar of Europeans and Americans. The Iran talks, I think, you know, demand a kind of cautious optimism. I think,
Just the fact that they're happening is sort of exciting. This is something that hasn't been able to go on for almost a decade. There's been very limited engagement between the United States and Iran. And given the high-pitched geopolitics following Israel's campaign in Gaza and all the regional implications, as we've seen in Lebanon and elsewhere, this is a real way to dial down the temperature here.
I don't expect anything major in terms of a breakthrough. I think the Gulf states are very much aligned against Iran. They don't want to see Iran with a nuclear weapon. They've been very skeptical of these talks over time. But I do think there's a value, perhaps, in President Trump explaining the importance of these talks and his team kind of showing that this is essential to this policy, which is
there is quite a lot of creative diplomacy happening in Trump world. Perhaps to the surprise of observers who see this administration as sort of haphazard, sometimes belligerent, sometimes unprepared. I think we've seen this, as I mentioned, an engagement with Hamas, a terrorist group that the Biden administration didn't want to engage with. Seeing this with Iran, which again, the Biden administration saw this as a political hot potato, didn't really engage with Iran on
on some of this nuclear diplomacy. I don't want to say it's a Nixon in China moment. It's a little too ambitious. And I don't want to kind of raise the hopes that much will be accomplished in these talks. But again, just the fact that these talks are happening is a positive signal, I'd say.
You mentioned some of the people around Trump advising him on Middle East and security matters. Who are the other big players that we should be talking about now that Mike Waltz has gone? So one of the most fascinating dynamics of this administration, I think, has been Steve Witkoff, who's a real estate kind of tycoon, very much a New York animal of the Trump community, let's say, has played this huge role, you know, rivaling that of the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who now wears many hats and
Steve Witkoff has been running point on so many of these important files, especially on the Middle East and on Iran. So he's definitely sort of playing what Jared Kushner played, I think, in the first administration is kind of being Trump's man across the Middle East and
Definitely someone to watch and, you know, incredible slate of accomplishments so far, given his background is largely in real estate. At the same time, you know, as I said, Gaza is in the worst situation perhaps it's ever been. So I don't, you know, want to be too enthusiastic about his efforts so far. We also have Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon, which has been, you know, full of havoc since the Signal controversy and the group chat. At the same time, some of the Middle East experts there are
are really sober-minded and really focused on lowering escalatory tensions in the Middle East. Sort of more interesting than perhaps meets the eye what Trump's Pentagon is like. At the National Security Council, we have some really able Republican hands who've worked in Congress and across government,
Just kind of shepherding the Middle East file there. And then, of course, there's all the other folks in the Mar-a-Lago donor orbit, the tech bros, all these competing factions trying to get the president's ear on Middle East policy with, you know, varying success.
And of course, family members like Mossad Boulos, the father in law of Trump's daughter, Tiffany Trump, who new reporting suggests he's kind of less influential than he was in the campaign when he helped get a lot of Arab-Americans and Palestinian-American voters to line up behind Trump. So it's a constant give and take. And I guess battle lines is probably a good tagline to help understand who's up and who's down in the Trump White House. Benita Rainey talking to Jonathan Geyer there.
As he sets off overseas, Mr Trump is also being warned not to forget about domestic politics. Rob Crilley, our chief US correspondent, has been speaking to the firebrand Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene.
And she had a warning for Mr. Trump. Don't forget why America voted for you. We know what our problems are. Our problems are there's a drug pandemic in America. There's a mental health crisis in America. And we know who actually kills Americans. And those are the cartels that, you know, smuggle the drugs across our border all the time because there is a never-ending vacuum because of the addiction problem here in America. Like,
You can't lie to the people about this. It can't be sold to us on television anymore that Houthis are the greatest threat. Well, really? You know what? I haven't seen a Houthi or a Houthi or however you say it. I don't know what one looks like. They aren't at Walmart at home. They're not in the Waffle House. They aren't robbing anybody that I've ever met.
And so it's like, once again, we're told that we're supposed to go hate somebody and kill somebody. And it's not affecting anyone's personal life here in America. Marjorie Taylor Greene speaking to The Telegraph's Rob Crilley. You can read Rob's full interview with Mrs. Taylor Greene on The Telegraph website. We'll include the link in the show notes. After the break...
how the election of a new pope has cast attention on a new phenomenon in American politics, the rise of the MAGA Catholics. Welcome back.
As we speak, the top cardinals of the Catholic Church are locked into the Sistine Chapel where they are trying amongst themselves to elect a new pope. The world is watching for the white smoke to emerge from the chimney over the historic chapel. But the conclave in Rome has also cast attention on a new phenomenon in American as well as Catholic politics. The rise of the Maga Catholics.
J.D. Vance, the Vice President, is the most vocal of the Catholics in the White House, but he's not alone in the America First movement. Steve Bannon, Trump's first term Chief of Staff, is another. But there are many more. What unites these conservative Catholics and the MAGA movement? How much influence do they wield in Washington and in the Vatican? And what do they mean for the future of the Church and the world?
and the United States. To discuss all this, I spoke to The Telegraph's Tim Stanley, who is currently in Rome following the conclave and also happens to have met many of the self-proclaimed American conservative Catholics at the heart of that movement.
Tim Stanley, welcome to Battlelines. Tim, what is your actual title here? I am a sketch writer and columnist. You're a sketch writer and columnist, but you are also, I think it's fair to say, very Catholic, quite a conservative Catholic, not shy about it. I am a Watkins Grade Catholic.
That's great. And you're in Rome right now. You're following the conclave. Yes. Is it fair to say you're also, you're of the political right? I am. And I should add, for the sake of this podcast, that I also usually cover American elections. So I exist on the nexus between America, Rome and England. Which is exactly where we want to be. It's very hard right now. It's very hard.
In this week of the conclave, there has been an emerging discussion, even before the late Pope's death, about what's been called in the American press a movement of Maga-Catholicism. And it's been reported that several prominent figures within that movement have flown to Rome, apparently in an attempt to... No one would call this lobbying because that would be far too untoward.
Nothing as crude as that. But nonetheless, people are around in Rome trying to either to influence the outcome of the conclave. I want to get into whether you think that's realistic, but also to kind of stake this flag for this new movement. Could we start, Tim, with what's going on in Rome at the moment and the conclave? Because that's the real moving news event. Just tell us what it's like in Rome at the moment for a start.
It's very busy. Rome is an industry town. It's like Hollywood or Westminster. So everyone here knows each other and everyone here is a celebrity and a star within their own circle. But of course, that circle is well over a billion people. So, for instance, last night, I'm talking on Wednesdays, this is Tuesday night, I found myself sitting on a table next to Bishop Barron, who's a very important figure in what we're discussing.
Barron is, I don't want to call him conservative or liberal. He's a straight down the line Orthodox Catholic bishop. He's a genius at social media interviews and communicating the Catholic message.
in a muscular way, and I mean that quite literally. He's a big guy, and he's always surrounded by bodybuilders. It's really odd to see priests who are jacked, right? But these are the guys who follow Baron around. And I'm sitting in the restaurant next to Bishop Baron. You can't ignore him. It's like a scene from Reservoir Dogs, right? These guys in black with huge muscles.
And people from Chicago and Arizona are stopping by the table and spotting him and going, oh, my gosh, it's Bishop Barron. And they're having their photo taken with him. And you realize this, I could be sitting in Los Angeles. I could be sitting in Westminster. It's an industry town. The Americans are very important here. They're important because they're a large delegation. North America is about 16 or 17. I'm not quite sure how many cardinals will be voting in this conclave.
but they're most important because the Americans are rich. And American donor money in the Vatican is very powerful.
And the Vatican is running out of money. It has huge liabilities in its pension fund. It is running very large deficits in the billions of dollars. And during the general congregation, which has been running prior to the conclave, which is where the cardinals meet to discuss the issues, the church, the senior cardinals have been very keen to emphasize that after Francis's reign,
We need a little bit of stability. We need a solid hand on the tiller. And we need to start talking about balancing the books. So that is really the most important reason why America matters. It's got big money. But on this point about Francis, what you will end up with, this is important, because Francis stacked the concrete, he really did, he really did. Because of that, you will end up with a pope who is Franciscan in substance.
The church is going to continue down the road that Francis had been going on, which is about reaching out to the poor, making the church less grand and hierarchical, giving a greater voice for the laity and the women. That's going to be the future. What will change is style, because everyone, including most Francis supporters, is exhausted by the last few years. And they sense that the church needs a steady hand now.
So if only because you can't replicate the charisma of a man like Francis, the next pope is going to seem quite different, I suspect. Thank you for that. Can we get now to the role of the Americans and the role of this, what is being described in particular as a movement, a kind of a surge of self-consciously conservative Catholics who are also self-consciously aligned with the MAGA movement?
There's a guy called John C. Yepp, he's the CEO of something called Catholics for Catholics, who held a Mar-a-Lago event relatively recently. There's a guy called Brian Birch, he's the president of something called Catholic Vote, and so on. Are you familiar with this movement, and where do they come from?
I'm very familiar with this movement. It's important to stress that it's not new. Historically, Catholics overwhelmingly voted Democrat in the United States because they were a migrant people from places like Italy or Ireland. That started to change in the 1960s. The voting bloc became increasingly conservative, especially on socially conservative issues. And there was a subtle cleavage within the Catholic community, such that if you look at polling, you'll sometimes find
that people who self-describe as Catholic but don't go to church very often vote Democrat. So let me be so bold as to call them cultural Catholics, ethnic Catholics. People who go to church every week now tend to lean towards the Republicans. These are people who, for being Catholic, is about what I believe. It's not necessarily where I'm from, where my granddad came from, what my mother believed. It's what I personally believe.
So when you talk about a generation of Catholics who really self-identify as Catholics, what we're talking about is people who are really into the teachings, into the doctrine. And that has been added to by a new generation of converts like me. I'm a convert. And a number of Maga Catholics are converts, of which the most notable example is J.D. Vance. And he wrote a very good article about four or five years ago about why he converted.
And one thing you can infer from what he says and from a lot of other people say is if you are the kind of conservative who believes you're in a battle to save civilization. Well, what is Western civilization? It's the church. It's that alliance of Greek philosophy and Jewish religion, which comes together under St. Paul in the Catholic Church.
And which for the next 2,000 years, admittedly, with some very important schisms, because there are some Protestants who would not like what I'm saying and some Orthodox who wouldn't like what I'm saying, and I understand why. But essentially, the golden thread that runs through the last 2,000 years is Catholic theology and philosophy. So another dimension to this, which is very important, is the Supreme Court in the United States used to be dominated by WASPs. It's now dominated by Jews and Catholics.
By WASPs, we mean White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The Jews tend to be liberal. The Catholics tend to be conservative.
And Donald Trump has appointed some very important Catholics. Why is it that Jews and Catholics have come to dominate the sort of intellectual and legal life of the United States? I mean, it's a very difficult question to answer. I think it has something to do with that sense of intellectual tradition and being a voice piece for being a spokesman for a certain kind of political or historical perspective.
But basically, if you're a conservative and you're interested in religion, where are you going to go to in the United States? You're going to give the Catholic Church a good look. And I mentioned at the beginning Bishop Barron, and he's an example of the new gateway into the church, the kind of clerics who are media savvy, who are making the case for Catholicism, not just living it, not just saying this is what we've always done, they're actually making the case for its doctrine. And that is beginning to be felt within Mar-a-Lago.
I suppose there's two things that follow on from that. One is how influential...
Is that group in the White House, I suppose? And we know that J.D. Vance is, as you said, he's a very prominent convert. Steve Bannon is even a more outspoken, self-proclaimed fiery conservative Catholic. Do you feel that those people and that ideology has a real influence and bite in the White House in this current administration? The other question is, is how influential and how representative are they, I suppose, in
American Catholicism, but also particularly in Rome and in the Vatican, because you can be very, very loud mouthed without actually being as large as influential as you often are. We often see that in all kinds of political communities. Okay, so how influential are the Catholics? Melania is a Catholic, right? But Donald is not. Nonetheless, Donald is a transactional person.
He sees the world in terms of deals. You vote for me, I'll give you this. And he made a kind of a pact with conservative Catholics. Tell me what you want, I'll get it done. No one believes that Donald Trump is constitutionally pro-life and anti-abortion, right? No one's ever really believed that. But the guy delivered it.
So if you want some examples of the influence of Catholics, you would look at, for example, his appointments to the Supreme Court, some of whom have been Catholic, with the consequence that Roe v. Wade was overturned. This, for conservative Catholics who loathe abortion and believe it's the taking of life, is perhaps the most important achievement politically that they've made in the last generation.
So it's a key example of that influence paying off. And a lot of the people working with Trump to write the laws and to make the suggestions that end up getting put into policy are associated with something called the Federalist Society, which has a significant number of Catholics involved in it. So you can actually draw a kind of a conspiracy theorist's map linking these different organizations to Trump and to outcomes.
Another example, which some people might regard as a little more benign, if you don't share my politics and worldview, is Trump's attitude towards the persecution of Christians overseas. Trump is not big on aid. He's not big on taking refugees. But Catholics and Christians have successfully persuaded him to direct attention, political influence and money towards helping persecuted Christians in, say, the Middle East.
So I think there are real concrete examples of where they have influence. And I think it's based upon that transactional model of Trump saying, tell me what you want, I'll deliver it.
What about within Catholicism as such? I mean, they're not, they don't represent all Catholics, of course. I mean, how many Catholics are there on the planet? You probably know this. It's about 1.4 billion. 1.4 billion is the broadest of broad churches, if I may put it that way. I suppose the shining epitome of the example of the differences of view, I suppose, could be laid out with, you know, a clash between J.D. Vance and Pope Francis.
When J.D. Vance said a while ago, look, there's this is this is a quote I have here. He said, there's this old school. And I think it's very Christian concept, by the way, that you love your family. Then you love your neighbor. Then you love your community. Then you love your fellow citizens in your own country. And then after that, you focus on and prioritize the rest of the world. And shortly after that, Pope Francis died.
penned an open letter to all US Catholic bishops slamming Trump's immigration policy and refuting Vance's interpretation of the concept of ordo amoris
He said, Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. The true order of Morris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the Good Samaritan. And let me just stop you there, because this is important. What you've just described, just think about what you've just described as a really interesting theological philosophical debate.
that hinges on interpretations of St. Augustine, right? Because St. Augustine has this idea that you have to have a correct order of loves. So for instance, if I say, I love my son, I love pizza. I don't love my son as much as pizza. And if I saved a pizza from a fire rather than my son, that would be really weird, right? But my point is, if you just think about what you just said there, this is why so many people are drawn to Catholicism, because it's really interesting and intellectually engaging.
Right. Now, you're correct to say also that this debate points to the fact that one has to interpret Catholic teaching and the refugee debate is at the center of this. So if we consider how influential Maga Catholics really are, well, who are the Catholic cardinals who will be voting for the next pope? They do include a very conservative cardinal called Raymond Burke. They do also include the bishop of Chicago called Cupich, who's incredibly liberal and would take the pope's side in that.
My point being that you can't really talk about an American bloc, an American way of thinking in Catholicism. And no conservative movement in America could hope to control how Americans vote in the conclave because American bishops are as divided on these issues as American politicians are, precisely because Catholicism is so rich and there is so much room for interpretation and personal response to it. But I will add personally that I think the Pope is right. And this is a real problem with Marga.
Marga is a nationalist movement. Catholicism is universalist. We are taught that there is no such thing as East and West. St. Paul says that the church is like a human body, and when one part of the body hurts, we all hurt. So this means that if people are suffering in Nicaragua, American Catholics have an obligation to try to help them. But that runs right up against the wall, quite literally, of Marga's nationalism.
which says the point of democracy is to put your own constituents first. I'm not making a judgment here about what's right or wrong. I'm just saying there's a tension there that is very difficult for Catholics to live with. And at some point, people like J.D. Vance are going to have to explain that obvious tension. And whoever the next pope is, I confidently predict
will continue Francis's argument in favor of caring for refugees and is not going to be a MAGA person who says, let's build more walls. You lay out very convincingly a reasonable argument for why the MAGA movement or the White House cannot hope to control the Vatican or who the next pope is.
That said, there are also good reasons to say that America cannot take over Canada or annex Greenland or anything else. Do you come across rhetoric about where people are saying things like, no, we could influence who the next pope is and there is influence we can use. And you referenced at the beginning a lot about American money and how influential that is. I mean, the Vatican is and always has been political as well as spiritual. Do you get the sense that this White House is trying to flex
its muscles or influence here in some way? No, not at all. And I've only been here three days, but I've spoken to a lot of people. And sometimes the people who I see quoted in the media, hey, you know, occasionally by me. They talk a good game, but they probably don't have that kind of influence. And they actually tend to be drawn towards candidates who are not American. I mean, OK, so what would American conservatives really like? They'd like a Hungarian cardinal called Erdogan.
who actually is far more doctrinally sophisticated than some Maga Catholics are, but other cardinals hate him because they associate him with Orban, the conservative leader. So it's all so complicated like that.
But I think if anyone came into this imagining that they could buy or rhetoric or tweet their way into influencing the papacy, they're not going to. Because one of the real joys of coming to Rome is you're reminded that this is a universal church. I'm out there in the square and I'm surrounded by Brazilians, Filipinos. These people are not influenced by Donald Trump. And let's face it, millions of people across the world really don't like Donald Trump.
So there is probably a far greater reaction against that kind of politics and there is support for it. Tim, thank you so much. It's been a really, really illuminating conversation. I'm wondering whether, going back to this theme of the Magorization, you talked about people being people who feel that Western civilization is under threat, seeing that the Catholic Church is, as you put it, a kind of golden thread that runs through the history of Christendom.
I'm wondering whether you see, if we look at the kind of pattern of political and social thought and development in the world over the past several years, the rise of MAGA, the polarisation politically, the division between...
what some people call progressives, what denigrators would call woke, and those who are kind of cleaving to or seeking to return to maybe an imagined past or maybe a past that was real in a sense. Do you see a similarity between the tensions within MAGA America, for example, and this debate within the church between the Franciscans and the traditionalists?
Well, one irony in this is there are a lot of personality similarities between Francis and Trump. And I think that's generational. They're both boomers. They're both men. This is what an anonymous source said to me here in Italy. They're both men who got where they are by surprise. No one expected them to win an election. They're both fundamentally authoritarian in their personality. They don't take criticism. They're disruptors.
And you can see that as a good thing or a bad thing. And what I find funny is very often conservative Catholics will attack Francis for behaving in exactly the same way that Donald Trump has behaved. Oh, he has no respect for tradition. He doesn't care about order. He has no thought for process or constitutionality. All these things. But in both cases, what have you got? You've got institutions, which be it the American presidency or the papacy, which have lost a lot of prestige.
And that, in the case of the Catholic Church, is because of things like sex abuse in particular. And in both cases, either they required or they inevitably were going to get the disruptor, someone who would want to shake that arm.
And the influence of Francis, I think we'll see what the fruits of it, but some things have been very good. Like you see the homeless are now welcome to camp around the colonnades in St. Peter's. The church will never go back. No one's really talking about turning the clock back. Even the most conservative people, we're never going to go back to that kind of hierarchical, gilded kind of church that we had in the past.
But yeah, there are obviously connections between these two things because they're happening in the same world at the same time. Both countries, America and Italy, are going through the same sort of tensions, the same kind of politics, the same economic frustrations. A number of Italians have said to me, oh, did you know during COVID they shut the churches? There's an anti-vax movement here as well. So it doesn't surprise me that there are these parallels at all.
So let's end on a personal note. I mean, I know, look, the Vatican isn't a democracy. You don't get a vote, as far as I'm aware. But what kind of a pope would you like to see come out of this? I mean, what would you like? What do you want to keep from Francis and what do you want to change? Everyone, it's particularly a media thing, but everyone keeps saying there is a tension between being charitable, that is caring for the poor and the forgotten,
versus clarity, that is being honoring thousands of year old teachings. I want someone to say there's no tension. The mission of the church has always been both. It has been to promote the gospel of Jesus Christ, that is the teachings, and it's also to care for Christ, for Christ's children.
As we are taught in the Bible, the simple commandment is to love God and love others as though they were God. So I want a Pope who reconciles the Francis people and the conservative people and in the process allows us to get on with being Catholics. Because I think it's a great thing. It's transformed my life. It's a wonderful thing. I want more people to know about it. I want to stop arguing about it. I want people to enjoy it and to channel their energies into helping other people. Tim Stanley, thank you very much for joining us on Battlelands.
That's all for Battlelines this week. We'll be back on Monday with our usual dose of global turmoil. Until then, that was Battlelines. Goodbye. Battlelines is an original podcast from The Telegraph created by David Knowles. If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following Battlelines on your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, leave a review as it helps others find the show. To stay on top of all our news, subscribe to The Telegraph, sign up to our Dispatches newsletter or listen to our sister podcast, Ukraine The Latest.
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