Center for Strategic Communication

Poping the Trump or vice versa

by | Feb 18, 2016 | Monitor

[ by Charles Cameron — happy to be a spectator at this particular game of ping pong ]
.

The Pope serves:

Trump returns the serve:

**

Here’s an excerpt from Emma Green‘s account of the point-counterpoint in a piece titled Pope, Trump, Decline to Turn Other Cheek at The Atlantic:

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not in the gospel,” he [Pope Francis] said, according to CNN.

Trump immediately hit back. “If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy,” he said in a statement on his website, “I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been President because this would not have happened.”

It is perhaps noteworthy that one of the Bishop of Rome’s many titles is Supreme Pontiff, a pontiff being a bridge-builder. Robert Frost, on the other hand, only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”

**

Dan Scavino, from the Trump camp:

And from the Islamic State magazine, Dabiq, supporting Trump:

Dabiq 4 cover Vatican with IS flag

Inside the magazine, the words of Sheikh Adnani are repeated:

We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women, by the permission of Allah, the Exalted.

OTOH:

**

Then there’s the always quotable Hend Amry, who puts the question to us all in the form of a DoubleQuote:

And here’s another DQ, this one from Mike O’Loughlin:

**

Finally — finally! — there’s always this to consider, from the New York Times of December 28th last year:

Americans named President Obama and Hillary Clinton as the most admired man and woman in the world, according to a Gallup poll released on Monday, with Donald Trump tying Pope Francis as the second most admired man.

We do indeed live in interesting times.