“What to get someone who has everything, I thought,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday, as he handed Pope Leo a funny little crystal-football present. “Wow, OK,” replied Leo, stiffly.
It was a useful reminder that Rubio is not always a smooth operator. For all the articles suggesting he has now overtaken Vice President J.D. Vance as favorite to be the 2028 Republican nominee, for all the media gushing over the “Secretary of Everything” in the White House briefing room, Lil’ Marco can still be something of a robotic plonker on the big stage.
Lil’ Marco can still be something of a robotic plonker on the big stage
It was Rubio, after all, who was the first Cabinet official to suggest in public that Israel had strong-armed America into attacking Iran.
Rubio and JD Vance are currently friendly rivals – or “frivals,” if you want. There’s little doubt that, in their own ways, the VP and Secretary of State are dancing around each other’s ambitions to be president. And Donald Trump, who loves rehashing the Apprentice reality TV gameshow through politics, appears to be stoking the competition between both men: he’s said to be fond of asking guests at Mar-a-Lago who they like more.
The timing of Rubio’s visit is interesting, too. Tensions between the Vatican and Washington needed smoothing out, following the President and the Pope clashing over Iran and the nature of nuclear threats. But J.D. Vance, a devout convert to Catholicism, was clearly not the man for the job: his last visit to see Pope Leo was notably awkward, and he faced considerable criticism saying that the Pontiff should “be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”
Rubio is also a practicing Catholic, though one who has flirted more with evangelicalism, perhaps to improve his appeal with Republican voters. His visit to Rome appears to have gone relatively well.
Leo gave Rubio an “olive branch” – what else do you give the “Secretary of Everything?” The Vatican press office stated afterward that the two men had exchanged views – “with particular attention to countries marked by war, political tensions and difficult humanitarian situations, as well as on the need to work tirelessly in favor of peace.” A US official told reporters that the meeting had been “friendly and constructive.”
What’s clear, however, is that disagreements between the Vatican and Trump’s Washington go deeper than just Trump’s tweets and nukes and Iran. As Damian Thompson noted in his highly perceptive recent Spectator piece, the Holy See is particularly concerned with the so-called “Donroe doctrine” – the Trump administration’s highly assertive approach when it comes to American interests in the western hemisphere. The Catholic Church is, of course, still hugely influential in Latin America – and many of its bishops and cardinals are instinctively opposed to Trump’s interference in the region.
In January, there was the now infamous meeting between Elbridge Colby and the French Cardinal Christophe Pierre, which certain reporters recently characterized as a shouting match that included Colby threatening to recognize “the Avignon papacy.” That was all fake news, of course, largely drummed up by Democratic operatives hoping to peel away Catholic votes in time for the mid-terms.
But the meeting was “spirited,” to put it mildly, and its aftermath in light of the Iran war has left bitterness on both sides. The Trump administration has been resentful that the Pope, having appealed for dialogue, seems to have been unwilling to engage.
The Pentagon feels that modern weaponry means that the American military can be far more precise, and therefore just, in its targeting of enemy combatants. The Vatican, looking at the story of America accidentally blowing up a girls’ school on the first day of Epic Fury, has its doubts.
These differences are not going to be resolved any time soon, especially while the Strait of Hormuz stays closed and a US-Iran peace deal remains elusive. But Secretary Rubio has done his job, and the Rubio vs Vance 2028 chatter will persist.
This article originally appeared in Freddy Gray’s Americano newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.
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