
Media positions Pope Leo XIV as potential 'counterweight' to Trump
Pope Leo XIV has been hailed as a major contrast to President Donald Trump by some in the press after the American-born cardinal was chosen to be the next leader of the Catholic Church on Thursday, with several liberal media figures wondering if he will serve as a counterbalance to the president and his policies.
"I think it's so timely that we have an American pope because we are going through things in this country, and it is good to show the world that not all American leaders are the same. It's good to have an American that can denounce the things happening against immigrants here," said "The View" co-host Ana Navarro on Monday.
"People are being dragged into the streets. Mothers are being separated from their children as they're breastfeeding. The things that are happening in this country are horrible, and I love that there's going to be someone who can call it out in English," she added.
After being selected as the first pontiff from the United States to lead the Church, Pope Leo presided over his first mass on Friday.
ABC News host Martha Raddataz spoke to Cardinal Blase Cupich, the Archbishop of Chicago, on Sunday and asked if the new pope would be a "counterbalance" to Trump.
"Pope Francis cared so much about the poor and migrants. Pope Leo does as well. In some ways, will he be a counterbalance for what's happening in American politics right now and President Trump?" she said.
Cupich responded, "I think he's going to help complete and complement our political agenda. He'll talk a lot about the immigrants as well, because he knows about the sufferings of people and the real needs that they have for a better life."
Raddatz posed the same question to her ABC panel, and ABC's Terry Moran argued it was likely inevitable that they would clash.
"Reluctantly. Right?" ABC's Terry Moran responded. "They are the two most famous Americans in the world right now. And arguably, Pope Leo might be even more famous than President Trump and whether the pope wants it or not, because I think he wants to preach the Gospel and do the good work of the Church. They have different approaches naturally in some ways, and I think that is going to come out."
Moran continued, "He will be a voice for the teachings of Jesus, which, in many ways, many Catholics believe are not consistent with some of the president's policies. That will happen. I don't think he's going to go look for a fight, but it will happen."
Several headlines from Time Magazine, NPR and more suggested the selection of Leo would lead to a clash with Trump on certain policies. NPR's headline read, "Pope Leo XIV may help Vatican explore the 'great uncertainty' that is Trump's America." Time Magazine published a headline that read, "In Pope Leo XIV, Donald Trump Finds a New Foil."
Politico Europe reported, "when the 133 cardinal voters sequestered themselves in the Sistine Chapel on Wednesday to elect the leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics, they settled on not just an American but one who could, plausibly, act as a counterweight against the impulsive U.S. president."
"This was not wholly by chance. When the cardinals eventually found unity on a new pontiff, the progressives among them were aware that Chicago-born Robert Francis Prevost, a 69-year-old former missionary with a mixed heritage, was a leader who could provide an alternative voice to Trump," the report continued, citing two cardinals who remained anonymous.
MSNBC's Chris Jansing asked former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi if Pope Leo would be a "moral" voice to counter Trump's immigration policies, citing social media posts written by Leo prior to becoming the pope.
"Do you think that at this moment, when so many people are looking to him, he could be impactful as a moral and ethical voice on that issue that we're dealing with, when so many people are being deported or fear it?" Jansing asked.
Pelosi responded, "I certainly hope so."
MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell asked Sister Simone Campbell on Thursday if Leo was among the cardinals who stand in opposition to Trump.
"We have seen some American cardinals who, I guess the way I would put it, are surprisingly sympathetic to Donald Trump. They try not to be overtly political, but you can tell that there's a certain chumminess and sense of support of Donald Trump by some of them. And we also have many American cardinals who stand in opposition to so much of what Donald Trump stands for. Can we place the new pope somewhere in that mix? Do we know enough?" O'Donnell asked.
Campbell pointed to Leo's social media posts and said he stood with the migrants.
MSNBC's Ayman Mohyeldin posed a question to Princeton professor Eddie Glaude Jr. about the selection of Pope Leo XIV amid Trump's presidency.
"I'm curious to get your thoughts on the fact that this is an American pope at a time when America's moral standing in the world has plummeted. We were speaking to Father Robert Hagen earlier this evening, and he said this was a pope for the time that we find ourselves in," Mohyeldin began.
"And I'm just thinking about the time that we do find ourselves in, with America having this moral reckoning internally, and now this pope who, in real time, the MAGA world found out was maybe not an America-first pope that they would have hoped for. Steve Bannon has said that there's going to be friction between the new pope and Donald Trump," he continued.
Glaude said it was historical, but said he was more interested in Leo's theology.
"How theologically he can respond to where the country is, the way he's interpreting or understanding the role of Christ in our lives, the importance of love in relation to the most vulnerable among us," he said.
During Leo's first meeting with journalists on Monday, the pope called for the release of imprisoned journalists and affirmed the "precious gift of free speech and the press." He also told the journalists they must act responsibly in using artificial intelligence in their work, asking them to "ensure that it can be used for the good of all, so that it can benefit all of humanity."
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
8 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Entire Fulbright Scholarship board quits, citing Trump admin actions
All members of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board announced their resignation on Wednesday, releasing a statement accusing President Donald Trump's administration of political interference in the prestigious exchange program. The 12-member board alleged the Trump administration "usurped the authority of the Board" by denying Fulbright awards to "a substantial number of individuals" who were selected for the 2025-2026 academic year. The board also alleged the administration is currently "subjecting" an additional 1,200 international Fulbright recipients to "an unauthorized review process and could reject more." "We believe these actions not only contradict the statute but are antithetical to the Fulbright mission and the values, including free speech and academic freedom, that Congress specified in the statute," the board said in its statement. MORE: State Department delivers crushing news to Fulbright scholar hopefuls in Afghanistan The board oversees the Fulbright Foreign Student Program, which offers international graduate students, young professionals and artists the opportunity to study and conduct research in the United States. The government-funded, non-partisan program -- which was established by Congress in 1942 under then-President Harry Truman's administration -- operates in more than 160 countries worldwide, providing scholarships to approximately 4,000 foreign students annually. In the joint letter on Wednesday, the board said the awards that were overridden by the administration were concentrated in biology, engineering, architecture, agriculture, crop sciences, animal sciences, biochemistry, medical sciences, music and history. MORE: State Dept. suggests Afghan Fulbright hopefuls seek other options as program stalls The board claimed it has raised "legal issues and our strong objections with" senior Trump administration officials "on multiple occasions," including in writing, but says the concerns have not been acknowledged. In a statement to statement to ABC News after the board announced its resignation, a senior State Department official called the decision "a political stunt attempting to undermine President Trump." "It's ridiculous to believe that these members would continue to have final say over the application process, especially when it comes to determining academic suitability and alignment with President Trump's Executive Orders." the official said. The board, however, said in its statement that the decision was not one "we take lightly," woth the board calling on Congress, the courts and future Fulbright Boards to "prevent the administration's efforts to degrade, dismantle, or even eliminate one of our nation's most respected and valuable programs." "Injecting politics and ideological mandates into the Fulbright program violates the letter and spirit of the law that Congress so wisely established nearly eight decades ago," the board concluded in its statement. Entire Fulbright Scholarship board quits, citing Trump admin actions originally appeared on


Fox News
15 minutes ago
- Fox News
House advances Trump's $9.4B spending cuts package targeting NPR, PBS, USAID to House-wide vote
President Donald Trump's $9.4 billion spending cuts package survived a key hurdle on Wednesday afternoon, setting the measure up for a final House-wide vote later this week. Trump's proposal, which was introduced as legislation by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., would cut $8.3 billion from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and just over $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting distributes federal funding to NPR and PBS. The House of Representatives made a procedural motion known as a "rule vote," which passed mostly along party lines. The rule passing now allows for debate on the $9.4 billion spending cut measure, followed by a final House-wide vote. But it's not atypical for House leaders to include unrelated measures in rule votes, as is the case with the spending cuts package – House GOP leaders included a provision with minor changes to Trump's "one big, beautiful bill" to account for the Senate needing to amend the bill. That latter piece of legislation, a vast tax and immigration bill, is moving through the budget reconciliation process. By dropping the Senate's threshold for advancement from 60 votes to 51, it allows the party in power to skirt the minority – in this case, Democrats – on vast pieces of legislation, provided they adhere to a specific set of budgetary rules. House GOP leaders said they needed to make the recent changes to the bill to better adhere to the Senate's "Byrd Bath," when the Senate parliamentarian reviews the bill and removes anything not adhering to reconciliation guidelines. Whereas that deals with the government's mandatory spending processes that are more difficult to amend, the $9.4 billion spending cuts package tackles discretionary spending that Congress controls every year. It's called a "rescissions package," which is a formal proposal by the White House to claw back federal funds already allocated for the current fiscal year. Like reconciliation, the mechanism allows for a 51-vote majority in the Senate rather than 60. Congress has 45 days to consider it, or it is deemed rejected. Republican leaders have held up this rescissions package as the first step to codifying the billions of dollars of government waste identified by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Trump allies have also made clear they view this first package as a test of what kind of cuts congressional Republicans can stomach. And while the rule vote was expected to pass, the bill could have trouble ahead of its expected Thursday afternoon vote. Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., pointed out in a bipartisan statement that the media funding represents less than 0.01% of the federal budget and said taking that money away would "dismantle a trusted source of information for millions of Americans." Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told reporters on Tuesday that he got assurances that USAID cuts would exclude critical medical funding. "I feel better than what I was hearing last week, that was gonna be a total cut," he said, without revealing whether he would support the bill.


Bloomberg
17 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
LA Protests Pit Gavin Newsom as Antagonist Against Donald Trump
California Governor Gavin Newsom took to the airwaves Tuesday night — with federal troops stationed in his state's largest city and immigration agents rounding up residents — and warned Americans that democracy itself was under attack from President Donald Trump. And in eight minutes, Newsom seized a new role: leader of the opposition.