Nia-Malika Henderson, Columnist

Vance Is the Loser of the Trump-Pope Feud

April 14, 2026 at 4:00 PM UTC

Nia-Malika Henderson is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former senior political reporter for CNN and the Washington Post, she has covered politics and campaigns for almost two decades.

In happier times.
Photographer: Vatican Media/Corbis/Getty Images

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Vice President JD Vance, a converted Catholic, would have you believe that President Donald Trump’s AI-generated depiction of himself as Jesus Christ is neither blasphemous nor offensive and that Trump’s virulent criticisms of Pope Leo aren’t newsworthy.

“Well, first of all, Bret, I think the president was posting a joke,” Vance replied when asked Monday night on Fox News by Bret Baier what he thought about the image of Trump, dressed in a red robe and healing a sick man by laying hands on him. “And, of course, he took it down because he recognized that a lot of people weren’t understanding his humor in that case.”