Will Trump pay a price for tangling with the pope?

US President Donald Trump holds up a Bible during a photo opportunity in front of St. John's Episcopal Church in the midst of ongoing protests over racial inequality in the wake of the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody, outside the White House in Washington, D.C., USA, on June 1, 2020. Credit: REUTERS/Tom Brenner

Tonight at 6 p.m. EST, US President Donald Trump will be featured in “America Reads The Bible,” reciting a verse from the holy book in the Oval Office. The week-long event will see five hundred people, including Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, read the Bible in its entirety in a series of live and prerecorded segments. All the participants are Republican; organizers say they invited Democratic members of Congress, but that none responded.

The event has been a year in the making, but the timing is ironic. It comes as Trump’s relationship with Christians is suddenly in unusual flux. Last Tuesday, he clashed with Pope Leo XIV, the first American pontiff, calling him “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” after the Catholic leader criticized Trump’s threat to wipe out Iran’s “whole civilization.” Read more