{"id":23231,"date":"2026-04-15T17:30:32","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T17:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2026\/04\/15\/michael-knowles-makes-the-case-for-why-trump-and-the-pope-must-get-along\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T17:30:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T17:30:32","slug":"michael-knowles-makes-the-case-for-why-trump-and-the-pope-must-get-along","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2026\/04\/15\/michael-knowles-makes-the-case-for-why-trump-and-the-pope-must-get-along\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Knowles Makes The Case For Why Trump And The Pope Must Get Along"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Daily Wire host Michael Knowles took the stage at Villanova University, Pope Leo\u2019s alma mater, on Tuesday night and addressed the ongoing feud between the president and the pontiff.<\/p>\n

Knowles acknowledged that the fight between President Donald Trump and Pope Leo has placed \u201cMAGA Catholics\u201d such as himself in a \u201ctricky position,\u201d but he added Trump ripped Pope Leo earlier this week after the pope condemned the president\u2019s immigration policies and the war in Iran.<\/p>\n

Knowles warned that any lasting division between Trump and the pope would affect the whole country, not just American Catholics, and benefit the \u201cdark forces\u201d that oppose Christianity and conservative political principles.<\/p>\n

Even in America\u2019s modern society dominated by secularism, there are moral and spiritual authorities competing for influence over politics, Knowles argued. The Daily Wire host highlighted leftist organizations that act as religious authorities, such as Planned Parenthood and LGBTQ activist centers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will have rulers and we will have priests of one sort or the other,\u201d Knowles said. \u201cIn an age of intensifying political and spiritual struggle, the president and the pope need to work together to illumine the earthly sphere because the alternative is that they work against one another to the sole benefit of the many dark forces that oppose us all.\u201d<\/p>\n

WATCH: MICHAEL KNOWLES AT VILLANOVA<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

For Trump and the pope, there are far more issues that bring them together than divide them, the Daily Wire host told students at the Catholic university near Philadelphia. Besides the pope\u2019s more Left-leaning position on immigration, the pontiff\u2019s views on nearly every social issue are to the Right of many Republicans, Knowles continued.<\/p>\n

He pointed out that America remains the most religious country in the West, and its Catholic presence is only growing.<\/p>\n

Knowles said that even if there wasn\u2019t a Catholic influence in the United States, there would still be \u201ca tension between the spiritual and the temporal authority, between the president and whatever pastor, preacher, or layman stood in inevitably to make spiritual claims.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even in the middle of a spat between the White House and the Vatican, conservative Catholic Americans can balance support for President Trump\u2019s policies with respect for Pope Leo, Knowles said, citing a passage from Dante, who revered the papacy but was a political enemy of Pope Boniface VIII.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou might say, in fact, that Dante found himself in exactly the same tricky position that MAGA Catholics find ourselves in this week,\u201d Knowles said. \u201cAnd with characteristic subtlety and sophistication, Dante offers us an example of how to deal with this dilemma in the very last lines of \u2018Monarchia.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that passage, Dante wrote, \u201cLet Caesar honor Peter as a first-born son should honor his father, so that, refulgent with the light of paternal grace, he may illumine with greater radiance the earthly sphere over which he has been set by Him who alone is Ruler of all things spiritual and temporal.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Daily Wire host Michael Knowles took the stage at Villanova University, Pope Leo\u2019s alma mater, on Tuesday night and addressed the ongoing feud between the president and the pontiff. Knowles acknowledged that the fight between President Donald Trump and Pope Leo has placed \u201cMAGA Catholics\u201d such as himself in a \u201ctricky position,\u201d but he added […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-23231","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-current-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}