Trump picked a fight with the wrong pope
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/4/26/800027268/series/trump-pope-leo-polling/
Trump picked a fight with the wrong pope
Survey Says is a weekly series rounding up the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics or culture.
The president is belittling the pope as “weak on crime.” The president has circulated an image depicting himself as Jesus Christ.
The fact that these two incidents, which would have been unfathomable 15 years ago, don’t fry our brains speaks to how far Donald Trump has dragged us from common decency. But unlike with so much of his obscene behavior, the American public isn’t standing for these two vulgarities.
Just 33% of Americans say Trump’s recent criticism of the pope was acceptable, according to a new poll from the Angus Reid Institute. A majority (58%) say it was unacceptable.
That finding holds true across many religious groups as well. Fifty-four percent of Catholics consider Trump’s pope-bashing unacceptable, as do majorities of mainline Protestants (57%), atheists (80%), and religiously unaffiliated Americans (66%).
Evangelical Christians are split, with 44% deeming the criticism acceptable and 43% calling it unacceptable. Of course, white evangelicals have been overwhelmingly supportive of Trump, though that support has waned since his inauguration.
However, that split is telling. Even with one of his most loyal groups, Trump can’t muster majority support for his war on the pope.
After all, Americans are broadly fond of Leo. A majority of the public (55%) has a favorable view of the pope, while only 24% have an unfavorable view, according to the latest Economist/YouGov poll. Leo’s net favorable rating of +31 points is leagues better than those for Trump (-16 points) and Vice President JD Vance (-14 points), who smugly told Leo, the leader of the Catholic Church, “to be careful” when discussing theology.
Likely voters, in particular, hold Pope Leo in especially high esteem, per a new poll from Echelon Insights. Leo’s net favorability with that group is +42 points, while Vance’s is -11 points and Trump’s is -15 points.
Americans’ fondness for Leo is no surprise. The pontiff was born and raised in Chicago. He loves the White Sox and tennis. He has almost certainly eaten hot dogs and deep-dish pizza. Chicagoans rep Leo on T-shirts that say “Malört and savior,” referring to a vile yet locally popular liquor. As many have said, he is the people’s pope—and more than that, he is the American people’s pope.
Trump almost couldn’t pick a worse target, but he couldn’t help himself after Leo lambasted the deadly Iran war and war-hungry “tyrants,” though he never called out Trump by name.
The thing is, Leo’s recent statements about war and peace are very popular with Americans.
The day after Trump launched his war on Iran, Leo told an audience, “Stability and peace are not built with mutual threats, nor with weapons, which sow destruction, pain, and death, but only through a reasonable, authentic, and responsible dialogue.”
Just 16% of Americans disagree with that statement, according to the Economist/YouGov poll. And that number appears to be held up almost entirely by MAGA supporters, 42% of whom disagree with the statement.
Overall, only 24% of Americans disapprove of Leo’s general statements about the war. Just 28% say they agree more with Trump and Vance than the pope. And even after Trump’s anti-pope missives, less than one-third of Americans (31%) think Leo has gotten too involved in politics.
It doesn’t help Trump that his Iran war is deeply unpopular. As of Friday, only 38.4% of the American public support the war, while 54.8% oppose it, according to a polling average from election analyst Nate Silver.
But rather than cut his losses, Trump has made matters worse. Less than an hour after he attacked the pope as “weak on crime,” the president posted an AI-generated image depicting himself as Jesus Christ. The image instantly ignited a broad backlash, leading Trump to laughably spin it as “a picture of me being a doctor,” as he told CBS News.
“That’s what most people thought,” he added.
Except “most people” very much didn’t. Only 12% of Americans say the image depicts Trump as a doctor, according to Angus Reid’s poll. On top of that, a large majority (67%) say Trump’s image post “went too far,” while just 21% defended him as merely “joking.”
Even fewer say they like the image: just 11% of Americans, per the Economist/YouGov poll.
Not even Trump’s MAGA movement is on board with the image. Only 34% of self-described MAGA supporters like the Trump-as-Jesus image. Another 30% dislike it but don’t think it’s important, and 9% say they outright hate it.
Notably, 26% of MAGA supporters say they aren’t sure about their feelings, which is the highest “not sure” among any demographic group in the poll. That suggests his base is deeply uncomfortable with the image even if they can’t bring themselves to denounce it.
Though Trump may not literally see himself as the second coming of Jesus, he is undoubtedly the leader of a personality cult. And clearly, he believes that anyone who doesn’t lick his boots deserves to be kicked in the teeth, even if it’s the pope.
Any updates?
- Following the Artemis II mission, “moon joy” has taken the United States—but that hasn’t translated into its citizens’ spending priorities. Though 57% of Americans see space missions as having a positive effect on society, only 48% say they’re a good use of taxpayer money, according to YouGov. A new poll from Echelon Insights finds a similar trend: 61% of likely voters say space exploration is a good use of resources, but just 41% think the U.S. should prioritize funding to send astronauts to the moon. Even fewer (33%) think funding should be prioritized for sending people to Mars. (Personally, I still want to go.)
Vibe check
Amid a ceaseless barrage of daily threats—war, economic insecurity, AI stealing jobs, and so on—Americans are feeling more and more depressed.
In the first quarter of this year, 19.1% of U.S. adults said they had or were being treated for depression, according to new data from Gallup. While that is just shy of the all-time high—20.0%, recorded in the final quarter of last year—it is well above where things stood just a few years ago.
In the third quarter of 2020, about six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the depression rate stood at 13.8%.
The pandemic made Americans lonelier and more isolated, and politics didn’t help.
As I wrote last September, Gallup also found that Americans were less satisfied with 26 of 28 national issues at the start of Trump’s second term than at the start of his first. The issue that saw the greatest drop in satisfaction was “the overall quality of life,” which fell 18 points between 2017 and 2025.
New data on those trends hasn’t been publicly released, but given that the national depression rate is higher now, it’s unlikely the situation has improved.
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