“Marxist American Pope is Destroying Our Country”: Loomer Launches Another Anti-Catholic Tirade — And JD Vance Does Nothing

Trump ally Laura Loomer just smeared the Catholic Church as siding with “Jew haters” and blasted our “Marxist American Pope” for defending immigrants. JD Vance hasn't said a word.

Thank you for reading! Letters from Leo is a reader-supported publication. If you find value in my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or making a one-time donation.

Laura Loomer is at it again. In a furious X (Twitter) post this week, the far-right agitator unloaded on the U.S. Catholic bishops and on Pope Leo XIV – whom she derided as a “Marxist American Pope” — for condemning mass deportations of migrants.

“Are all of the Jew haters going to be calling out the US Catholic Bishops and the Marxist American Pope for condemning deportations?” Loomer sneered.

In Loomer’s warped logic, when the Church stands up for immigrant families, it’s somehow doing the work of anti-Semites. It’s a grotesque accusation, but sadly not a new one from her.

This isn’t the first time Loomer has attacked Pope Leo and the Church with unbridled venom.

Back in May, on the very day Leo XIV was elected, she dug up an old tweet in which then-Cardinal Robert Prevost criticized Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric – and Loomer’s response was a two-word slur: “WOKE MARXIST POPE.”

She went on to rant about Leo’s past social media posts, even twisting a prayerful tweet about healing racial hatred (after George Floyd’s murder) into an excuse to call him a “MARXIST POPE!

“Just another Marxist puppet in the Vatican,” Loomer fumed, claiming “Catholics don’t have anything good to look forward to” under Pope Leo’s leadership.

These outbursts might sound unhinged — and they are — but Loomer is not just an internet crank screaming into the void.

She’s a prominent MAGA influencer with direct ties to Trump. In fact, she met with the former president last month to advise him on staff shake-ups.

When someone of her profile smears the Pope as a Marxist and the Church as an enemy within, people notice.

Loomer’s latest screed comes on the heels of other MAGA-world attacks on the Catholic Church.

The catalyst? Pope Leo and the U.S. bishops have dared to preach basic Christian compassion in the public square — and Trump’s hard-line loyalists are livid about it.

Just this week, nearly all American bishops approved a historic statement denouncing “inhumane” mass deportations and hateful rhetoric toward migrants.

They reaffirmed that welcoming the stranger is a core tenet of the faith – not a partisan issue. That Gospel truth has sent certain Trump allies into a fury.

Exhibit A is Tom Homan, Trump’s hand-picked border czar, who publicly blasted Pope Leo and the bishops after their statement. Standing outside the White House, Homan huffed that “the Catholic Church is wrong” on immigration and should “spend time fixing their own problems” instead.

This from a man caught stuffing a $50,000 bribe into a takeout bag — not exactly a moral paragon. Homan, a self-described Catholic, insisted his harsh border policies “save a lot of lives” and he “wishes the Catholic Church would understand that.” It’s a striking image: a scandal-plagued official lecturing the Pope’s Church about Christian charity.

He’s not alone. Former Congresswoman Nan Hayworth went even further, unloading on Leo XIV as “an ignorant and unwise man.” She further fumed, “Pope Leo is an ignorant and unwise man whose urging should be ignored — with extreme prejudice. He is a tool of our enemies”

Not to be outdone, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) echoed a deranged conspiracy theory, accusing the Church of getting rich off of sex trafficking.

And right-wing media personalities like Matt Walsh and Lara Logan gleefully piled on as well.

In short, a whole swath of Trump’s orbit has decided that Pope Leo XIV and the Catholic hierarchy are now the enemy — simply because the Church won’t bless cruel immigration crackdowns.

A Catholic Vice President’s Deafening Silence

Amid this ugly onslaught, one might expect a prominent Catholic in power to come to the Church’s defense. Yet Vice President JD Vance has remained utterly silent. Vance — a convert to Catholicism campaigned on faith and family values.

Now he sits one heartbeat away from the presidency in an administration whose allies openly bash the pope as a traitor and a Marxist. And he says nothing.

No pushback against the anti-Catholic bile coming from Trump’s inner circle. No reassurance to America’s 70 million Catholics that their Church’s teachings on human dignity aren’t shameful or disloyal. Nothing.

It’s not as if Vance hasn’t noticed what’s happening. The vice president surely knows that the pope and bishops are simply reiterating age-old Catholic doctrine: that human dignity and national security are not in conflict, and that cruelty must never be policy.

For Vance to ignore his allies’ tirades against these Christian principles is a grave abdication of moral leadership. At worst, his silence looks like tacit approval.

Let’s be clear: the anti-Catholic vitriol we’re seeing from MAGA influencers and officials is not normal political dissent. It’s an assault on the Church’s core mission of mercy.

When Laura Loomer calls our pope a Marxist and essentially labels the bishops as enemies of the nation, she’s trafficking in the kind of bigotry and paranoia that Catholics have heard from Know-Nothings and Ku Klux Klansmen in ages past. Such rhetoric demands condemnation from all people of goodwill — especially from Catholic public servants.

Yet JD Vance has offered zero public defense of his Church. Not a word to rebuke the slander that Pope Leo is a traitor or that the Church is “wrong” to care about migrant families.

Why the silence? Perhaps Vance calculates that rocking the boat would jeopardize his standing in Trump’s MAGA hierarchy.

Loomer, after all, is reportedly a favored loyalty enforcer in Trump’s circle, and Homan is a key Trump official.

But that only makes his silence more troubling.

If the vice president of the United States — a Catholic — won’t stand up for the basic dignity and teachings of his own faith when they come under attack by his political compatriots, who will?

Vance appears to be choosing power over principle, party over faith. In doing so, he is failing not only Pope Leo and the bishops, but also the many ordinary Catholics who look to leaders like him for an example of integrity.

Catholics in America deserve better from their vice president.

We deserve a leader who doesn’t check his faith at the door of political expediency. We deserve a VP who will say “Enough” when fellow Trumpists hurl anti-Catholic slurs at the Holy Father and our Church.

By kowtowing to extremists like Loomer and Homan through his silence, JD Vance is sending a demoralizing message: that political ambition matters more than standing up for what’s right.

In a time when Pope Leo XIV is showing courageous moral leadership — speaking up for the voiceless, calling out cruelty, and reminding the world what authentic Christianity looks like — it’s a shame that America’s highest-ranking Catholic layman can’t even muster a tweet in agreement.

The Gospel of Matthew teaches that we cannot serve two masters.

Right now, Vance and others in Trump’s camp face a choice: stand with Leo’s Gospel-driven vision of compassion, or indulge the ugly anti-Catholic zealotry infecting their ranks.

Pope Leo XIV isn’t backing down. The U.S. bishops aren’t backing down. They have drawn a clear line in defense of human dignity, even at the cost of political blowback. J.D. Vance’s refusal to back them — or even to defend his own Church against calumny — is an embarrassment.

It’s time the Vice President remembers that his baptismal vows are more enduring than his loyalty to Trump.

History is watching, and so are American Catholics.

We will not forget who spoke up for our faith in this moment — and who stood by, tongue-tied, as the Church was under attack.

Letters from Leo is open to anyone who wants to be informed and inspired by our pope — and to turn that inspiration into action that leaves America and the world more just, less cold, and more alive with hope.

If you want to support this mission, here’s how you can help:

• Subscribe as a paid member to receive exclusive posts about the life and formation of Pope Leo and help sustain this newsletter.

• Donate with a one-time gift to fuel this project’s mission.

• Share this post (and Letters from Leo) with a friend who might enjoy it.

Whether you give $0, $1, or $1,000, your presence here matters — no matter your faith or your politics.

Thank you for reading. I’ll see you on the road.