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\nUS President Donald Trump conducts a news conference in the White House briefing room about the war in Iran (File photo)<\/p>\n
The Government is facing a no confidence motion over the blockades and protests which disrupted fuel supplies and transport around the country.<\/p>\n
RT\u00c9’s M\u00edche\u00e1l Lehane joins Behind the Story to discuss the political fallout.<\/p>\n
He says two pro-Government Independents will be the ones to watch at tomorrow night\u2019s vote.<\/p>\n
It comes as the Government signed off on more than \u20ac500 million in measures to support those struggling with rising energy costs.<\/p>\n
Trump vs Pope<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a war of words has broken out between US President Donald Trump and Pope Leo.<\/p>\n
President Trump described the Pope as ‘weak\u2019 and \u2018terrible\u2019 – in an apparent response to growing criticisms of the US-Israeli war on Iran \u2013 before Trump posted an AI-generated image, portraying himself as Jesus Christ, on his social media platform.<\/p>\n
US-born Pope Leo XIV has said he has “no fear” of the Trump administration and that he plans to \u2060continue speaking out against war.<\/p>\n
Professor of International Politics at UCD Scott Lucas said Trump\u2019s imagery is meeting reality in the form of the Pope.<\/p>\n
“Donald Trump is not shy of approaching the blasphemous,” he said.<\/p>\n
“These images of Trump as Jesus \u2013 or as Trump as someone who is basically blessed by Jesus to carry out Jesus\u2019 commands \u2013 that\u2019s a feature of social media.<\/p>\n
“But what has happened here is that imagery now also meets the reality of this war and the responses to it.”<\/p>\n
\nUS President Donald Trump conducts a news conference in the White House briefing room about the war in Iran (File photo)<\/p>\n
Prof Lucas said Trump will likely force the Catholic Church to push back.<\/p>\n
“There\u2019s a question here: do you do man\u2019s work, or do you do the Lord\u2019s work?” he said.<\/p>\n
“Donald Trump thinks he\u2019s not only doing man\u2019s work, but he\u2019s going to portray it that he in fact is a version of the Lord, doing the Lord\u2019s work.<\/p>\n
“The church, which has tried to keep Lord\u2019s work separate from man\u2019s work, is going to have to be very full and forthright here.”<\/p>\n
Prof Lucas said it ultimately comes down to another person challenging the US President.<\/p>\n
You can listen to Behind the Story on the RT\u00c9 Radio Player.<\/p>\n
You can also find episodes on Apple here<\/a>, or on Spotify here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Government is facing a no confidence motion over the blockades and protests which disrupted fuel supplies and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-397386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}