CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell Confronts Trump About Attacks on Pope and Asks If He’s Willing to Call Him

LEFT: (Screenshot) RIGHT: (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

CBS News senior correspondent Norah O’Donnell confronted President Donald Trump about his recent attacks on Pope Leo XIV during a phone call on Monday.

Recently, Trump has been dialing up the aggressiveness of his attacks on Leo for his outspoken advocacy against numerous wars, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and more recently the U.S. and Israeli strikes in Iran, as well as criticizing the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

On Sunday, Trump posted a lengthy rant on his Truth Social account lambasting the pope as “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” — plus taking credit for Leo, formerly known as Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, becoming the first American pope last year.

Monday morning, the president posted and then deleted a meme showing him as Jesus healing a sick man. Trump claimed he thought it was showing him as a doctor or Red Cross worker — a claim that was met with immediate skepticism, as well as widespread backlash, including from Trump’s MAGA base.

O’Donnell reported Monday that she had spoken to Trump by phone about the controversy, and the president had confirmed that he had watched a 60 Minutes segment Sunday evening about Leo’s criticism of Trump’s Iran and immigration policies.

“He’s wrong on the issues,” Trump said about the pope. “I don’t think he should be getting into politics. I think he probably learned that from this.”

When O’Donnell asked Trump if he planned to call the pope, his response was “a firm ‘no,'” CBS News reported.

Trump did say he was not expecting the backlash he got from his base about the Jesus meme, claiming again that he thought the image was supposed to depict him as a doctor, not as Jesus, and said he thought it was by “a very beautiful, talented artist.” (The image was created by AI.)

“I viewed that as a picture of me being a doctor in fixing — you had the Red Cross right there, you had, you know, medical people surrounding me,” said Trump. “And I was like the doctor, you know, as a little fun playing the doctor and making people better. So that’s what it was viewed as. That’s what most people thought.”

According to Trump, he only deleted the post because people were “confused.”

“Normally I don’t like doing that, but I didn’t want to have anybody be confused,” he said. “People were confused.”

Trump further claimed that he thinks he has “done more for the Catholic Church than any president in the last hundred years.”

“During COVID I gave them billions of dollars,” Trump claimed. “They were gonna go under. I gave them billions of dollars for education and that’s not the right way to treat somebody that’s been so good.”

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