POPE’S TRUMP ATTACKS NOT CHURCH-APPROVED, POLL FINDS

Well, it turns out the Podcaster Pope’s stern lectures and morally foggy thunderbolts have done what so many elite moral interventions do best: mostly served as background noise for people who already had their minds made up, with churchgoing Catholics still giving Trump a tidy 58 percent approval rating and even splitting 50-50 on military action against Iran, because apparently “suicidal terrorist regime seeking nuclear weapons” remains a more persuasive pitch than a homily. Meanwhile, among Catholics who actually show up to Mass, Trump is still up 58 to 42, while the never-or-rarely crowd flips the script to 42 approve and 58 disapprove, which is about as surprising as discovering that media theater works better for the audience it was already preaching to. And yes, the whole thing invites that sacred American tradition of comparing one overconfident cultural gardener to another: if Kathleen Kennedy could learn that you can’t expand a fanbase by telling the loyalists to sit quietly while you remodel the cathedral, then maybe the Vatican’s