Anthony Scaramucci says President Donald Trump’s public squabble against Pope Leo XIV this week was more than a clash with the Vatican, arguing it also amounted to a subtle sabotage of Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic who has become one of the administration’s most visible defenders on the Iran war.
Scaramucci Sees Vance In The Crossfire
In a post on X, the former Trump White House communications director wrote that Trump “puts everybody in the woodchipper before it’s over,” that Vance is “feeling it now,” and that “he won’t be the last,” calling the pattern “not personal” but simply “who he is.”
Scaramucci framed the Pope dispute as both a political and a religious slight. “People are missing the Vance dimension entirely,” he wrote, arguing that because Vance converted to Catholicism and the pope is a signal figure for roughly 80 million American Catholics, Trump’s attack on Leo was also, deliberately or not, a slight against his vice president.
Earlier this week, Scaramucci had separately mocked Vance as a “jellyfish” and questioned why he would not defend the pontiff.
Iran Talks Add Pressure On Vance
Scaramucci also said Vance may have been “set up” during the weekend Iran talks because Washington was never going to accept any outcome that left Tehran with continued uranium enrichment and a path to a bomb. His remarks came after Vance, in media appearances, defended Trump’s criticism of Leo while saying disagreements with the Vatican were “natural” and “not that big of a deal.”
Old Critiques Fit A Familiar Pattern
In a Newsweek interview published April 6, Scaramucci argued that “nobody is actually friends with Trump” and said Trump sees people as “an object in the guy’s field of vision,” not as full individuals. In social clips tied to that interview, Scaramucci described alliances with Trump as ego-driven “Faustian” arrangements, a view he has linked to his own short and combustible White House tenure.
The Vance angle matters because the vice president is also under fresh scrutiny over Iran. A CNN report syndicated elsewhere on Thursday said Trump has been closely monitoring Vance’s efforts to help broker an end to the war and has been asking friends and advisers how they would rate his performance.
Anthony Scaramucci | Photo courtesy: Al Teich /Shutterstock.com
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