{"id":582253,"date":"2026-04-13T20:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T20:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/582253\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T20:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T20:18:09","slug":"house-ethics-committee-investigating-eric-swalwell-trump-removes-jesus-like-social-media-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/582253\/","title":{"rendered":"House Ethics Committee investigating Eric Swalwell, Trump removes Jesus-like social media image"},"content":{"rendered":"

The president’s back-and-forth with Pope Leo is not the first time he has clashed with a pope.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Though Trump praised Pope Francis following his death on April 21, 2025, and attended his funeral, the two had previously clashed, dating back to before Trump\u2019s first presidential term.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In February 2016, Francis\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0of then-candidate Trump\u2019s promise to build a border wall: \u201cA person who only thinks about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0responded<\/a>\u00a0by saying it\u2019s \u201cdisgraceful\u201d for the Catholic leader to question his faith and called Francis \u201ca pawn\u201d for the Mexican government.<\/p>\n

But after taking office, Trump\u00a0met with<\/a>\u00a0Francis at the Vatican in May 2017, and despite the meme-able picture where the pope looks very glum, Trump called it a \u201cfantastic meeting\u201d and the \u201chonor of a lifetime.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

More recently, in February 2025, Francis\u00a0sent a letter<\/a>\u00a0to U.S. bishops criticizing Trump\u2019s mass deportation policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness,\u201d he wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Francis went on to say: \u201cI exhort all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of good will, not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and\u00a0refugee brothers and sisters.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the weeks following, Vice President JD Vance \u2014 a Catholic himself \u2014\u00a0acknowledged his disagreements\u00a0with the pope while still expressing his respect for the leader.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vance met with Francis on Easter Sunday 2025, the day before Francis\u2019 death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The president’s back-and-forth with Pope Leo is not the first time he has clashed with a pope.\u00a0 Though…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":{"0":"post-582253","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}