Trump vs. the Pope

I am not surprised that extremist nativist Donald Trump has declared war on the Vatican. Hating Catholics is an integral part of the American nativist tradition.

The Know-Nothing Party, which folded into the new Republican Party in the 1850's, had a single agenda to stop the immigration of Catholics from Ireland and Germany.

In 1884, Republican presidential candidate James Blaine ("Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion") ran on a blatant anti-Catholic platform that Catholic European immigration was a plot by the Pope to conquer the United States.

The Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century included Catholics in their hate list of Blacks and Jews.

Rabid, I mean that in the sense of dangerously diseased, Trump supporter Ann Coulter continues this nativist tradition of hatred towards Catholic immigrants.

the "not Christian" Berlin Wall

Now we get to the latest kerfuffle, Pope Francis correctly describing someone obsessed with building wall and not bridges as "not Christian." Trump responded with the timeworn nativist invective that immigrants are criminals and drug dealers intent on taking over and destroying the United States. I expect Trump supporters to accuse Pope Francis of being the anti-Christ soon.