Overview of S6 Ep35: Trump Voters Say 'Nope' to the Pope (with Jonathan V. Last)
Sarah Longwell hosts The Bulwark’s Focus Group podcast with guest Jonathan V. Last. The episode centers on tension between Donald Trump and “Pope Leo” as a flashpoint to explore how American Catholics across the political spectrum reconcile faith and politics. The team played clips from two recruited focus groups — Catholic 2024 Trump voters and Catholic 2024 Harris voters — and used those reactions to probe broader trends: partisan realignment of Catholic voters, the politicization of religion, and the risks loyalty tests pose to both church and democracy.
Who’s on the episode
- Host: Sarah Longwell (publisher, The Bulwark)
- Guest: Jonathan V. Last (writer, editor; frequent Bulwark collaborator)
- Format: discussion + audio excerpts from two focus groups (Catholic Trump voters; Catholic Harris voters)
Key topics discussed
- What Catholics actually mean by “papal infallibility” — limited to matters of dogma, not everything the pope says.
- How different Catholic voters treat the relationship between religion and politics.
- Responses from Trump-supporting Catholics vs. Harris-supporting Catholics to conflicts between Trump and the Pope (and to Trump’s AI/Photoshopped image portraying himself as Jesus).
- Broader demographic and political trends: the Catholic electorate’s shift toward Republicans since 2008 and how that compares to white evangelicals.
- The danger of Christian nationalism and loyalty tests that force believers to choose between religious authority and political leaders.
Focus-group findings
Trump-voting Catholics
- Many tried to keep religion and politics “separate” — often as a post-hoc rationalization to square support for Trump with Catholic identity.
- When pushed to choose between Trump and the Pope on specific conflicts, many sided with Trump. Example sentiment: “He has every right to respond to the Pope.”
- Reaction to Trump’s AI image of himself as Jesus: most thought it was in poor taste but it didn’t significantly reduce support; the group admired his candid, rule-breaking style.
- Their Catholicism was often described more as an identity or badge (“a jersey I put on”) than as a daily moral practice.
Harris-voting Catholics
- More likely to express that faith informs daily life and public policy (charity, welcoming the stranger, LGBTQ outreach in parishes).
- Critical of mixing religion and partisan politics when it leads to restricting rights (e.g., criticism of Catholic groups lobbying for abortion bans).
- Viewed the Pope positively; many interpreted his statements as aligned with longstanding papal positions (especially anti-war stances).
- More composed and measured in reaction to Trump’s controversies; saw faith as motivating progressive policy choices more than partisan signaling.
Data & trends highlighted
- Pew Research (cited in episode): Catholics voted 50–49 for Biden in 2020 and 55–43 for Trump in 2024 — indicating a partisan swing.
- Vote-shift analysis: Catholics moved from +9 Democratic in 2008 to −12 Republican in 2024 — a net 21-point shift.
- Comparison: white evangelicals were +50 Republican in 2008 and +66 in 2024 (a smaller net swing than Catholics over that span).
- Jonathan’s thesis: American Catholicism may be undergoing a tribalization similar to white evangelical realignment — religion increasingly folded into partisan identity.
Notable insights & quotes
- On papal authority: “The Pope is infallible on matters of dogma… but not infallible about everything else.”
- On pope/war messaging: “Every time there’s a war somewhere, the pope says, ‘this war is bad.’ We don’t want war. Stop.” (JVL)
- On Catholic voting shifts: “This is a 21 point shift over the course of like 18 years. That’s huge.” (JVL)
- On where some Catholics put their loyalty: “If we wind up in a place where even the Catholic church in America winds up becoming fully politicized…that’s going to be very, very bad for America.”
- On Trump’s base reaction to excesses: for many Trump-supporting Catholics the line is: “I didn’t love it, but I still support him.”
Main takeaways
- American Catholics are not monolithic: two Catholic focus groups exhibited very different ways of integrating faith and politics — one more identity/presentation-oriented and Trump-friendly, the other more practice-oriented and critical of Trump.
- Many Trump-supporting Catholics will defend Trump over the Pope in public disputes; attacks on the pope did not reliably alienate Trump’s Catholic backers.
- The longstanding assumption that Catholics uniformly follow papal pronouncements is false in practice — many Catholics pick and choose based on political and cultural priorities.
- The partisan realignment of Catholic voters is substantial and ongoing; its causes are complex (race, education, immigration, cultural identity) and not reducible to a single factor.
- There is a democratic risk if religious affiliation becomes a loyalty-test conduit for illiberal politics: polarization can harden religious communities into partisan tribes.
Recommendations / implications (what listeners should take away)
- Don’t assume papal statements translate into uniform political behavior among American Catholics; listen to lived religious practice, not just labels.
- Watch the immigration axis — it’s a current dividing line among Catholics that often trumps abortion or same-sex questions in shaping political identity.
- Be alert to loyalty tests that ask people to choose leaders over institutions (or over religious authorities); those tests can deepen polarization and institutional distrust.
- For analysts: further data-slicing (by race, education, region, immigrant status) is necessary to unpack why Catholic voters shifted so sharply toward Republicans between 2008 and 2024.
Final note
The episode uses focus-group audio to demonstrate how messy and contradictory real voters are — many hold internally inconsistent views and prioritize identity or partisan signaling over doctrinal consistency. Jonathan V. Last and Sarah Longwell treat the Pope–Trump incident as a revealing case study of those dynamics and warn of long-term civic risks if religious communities are fully subsumed into partisan loyalty.