Trump's Enemies List Just Got Religious—And That's a Problem

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Donald Trump is picking fights with people who can actually hurt him back. Not metaphorically. Literally.

The latest: Trump’s public spat with Pope Francis is costing him real support among conservative Catholics—the demographic that’s supposed to be his firewall. Meanwhile, he’s threatening to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell if Powell doesn’t resign by May. And that’s just the domestic theater. Globally, Iran’s threatening to expand control over sea lanes, Hezbollah’s still lobbing rockets at Israel even after U.S.-brokered talks, and a Ukrainian postman named Oleksiy is somehow still delivering mail around an active war zone while Trump figures out what he actually wants to do about any of it.

This isn’t chaos. It’s a pattern. And patterns, in my experience reporting from three decades of conflict zones, are usually early warnings.

The Pope Problem Nobody Saw Coming

Let’s start with the weirdest one because it reveals something about Trump’s political calculation that’s fundamentally broken.

Trump doesn’t just disagree with Pope Francis. He’s publicly attacking him. Leading conservative Catholics—the people he needs—are telling the BBC why they’re siding with the Pope. Not begrudgingly. Actively choosing the Vatican over their party’s frontrunner.

This is almost unprecedented in modern American politics. The Pope doesn’t have nuclear weapons. He doesn’t control votes in swing states. He controls something arguably more dangerous: moral authority with a specific bloc of voters who still believe character matters. When those voters start publicly defending the Pope against Trump, it signals something has broken in Trump’s coalition that wasn’t broken before.

I’ve watched enough religious movements intersect with politics to know this never ends well for the secular leader. The Vatican’s been around for 1,600 years. Trump’s been around for 78. History has a funny way of picking sides in that matchup.

Photo by Allen Beilschmidt sr. / Pexels

The Fed Chair Threat Is Genuinely Reckless

Now let’s talk about the Powell thing because it’s somehow both more serious and more obviously self-defeating than the Pope drama.

Trump’s threatening to fire the Fed chair if he doesn’t leave voluntarily by May. This is Trump saying out loud that he plans to use executive power to control monetary policy. Not subtly. Not through proxies. Directly.

Here’s the problem: The Federal Reserve’s independence from political pressure is basically the only thing that’s kept American currency stable for seventy years. That’s not hyperbole. It’s functional reality. Every time a president has tried to weaponize the Fed, it’s ended badly—for the currency, for inflation, for ordinary people buying groceries.

Trump did this before. He publicly attacked Powell constantly during his first term. Powell didn’t resign. Markets got weird. Nothing catastrophic happened because Powell ultimately held his ground and Trump’s term ended. But now Trump’s saying he’ll actually fire him.

I think Trump genuinely doesn’t understand that you can’t run monetary policy like you run a construction company. You can’t just hire loyalists and expect the system to work. And markets are going to figure that out way faster than Congress will.

The International Stage Is Speeding Up Without Him

While Trump’s fighting the Pope and the Fed chair, the actual geopolitical pieces are moving.

Iran’s threatening to expand control over the Strait of Hormuz. Israel and Hezbollah just had direct talks brokered by the U.S., and they’re still shooting at each other anyway. China’s been quietly sending dual-use weapons parts to Iran for years—the U.S. just noticed. Turkey just had two school shootings in two days with eight students and a teacher dead, which nobody’s talking about internationally but should be.

And then there’s the postman.

Oleksiy Klochkovsky has been delivering mail in Ukraine for four years around an active front line. He keeps “one ear tuned for danger from above.” That’s the line that stuck with me. That’s what happens when diplomacy fails—ordinary people develop survival instincts for war zones.

These aren’t connected stories. They’re connected symptoms. The world’s moving toward escalation on multiple fronts simultaneously: Middle East, Ukraine, the Strait of Hormuz. The usual American stabilizer—presidential attention, consistent messaging, credible threats—is currently occupied fighting the Pope.

Photo by Mathias Reding / Pexels

Where This Actually Breaks

My honest assessment: Trump’s simultaneous feuds are going to collide in ways he hasn’t anticipated.

Conservative Catholic voters won’t abandon him en masse. But they’ll shift. Swing state margins in places like Pennsylvania get thinner. The Fed chair thing will spook markets when Trump actually wins the nomination and markets realize he might actually try this. And internationally, adversaries are going to test every assumption about American commitment while Trump’s distracted.

Here’s what keeps me up at night: None of these problems are unsolvable individually. The Fed chair issue resolves through markets punishing recklessness. The Pope thing fades as an election issue. The Middle East situation has de-escalated before. But they’re all happening at once, and Trump’s attention is a finite resource.

In 2003, the Bush administration was focused on Iraq and basically ignored the financial system building the housing bubble. Different conflict, same dynamic. You can’t actually fight everybody at once, even if you think you’re great at fighting.

I genuinely don’t know how this ends. But I’m confident it doesn’t end quietly.

What I’m Watching

• May 31, 2025 deadline on Powell: Watch if Trump actually fires him or backs down. If he fires Powell, markets will move within hours. The bond market’s reaction will tell you whether Trump’s Fed gamble is actually going to work or whether he’s about to learn why Fed independence exists.

• Conservative Catholic defection numbers: Polling on Catholic voters in PA, MI, WI after the Pope feud deepens. If Trump loses more than 5-7 points with this demographic, it’s ballgame in the Midwest.

• Iranian expansion into Strait of Hormuz: Watch if Iran actually attempts to interdict U.S. or allied shipping beyond normal posturing. If they do, Trump’s got a Middle East crisis whether he wants one or not. That’s not a hypothetical—it’s a trigger point.

• Hezbollah ceasefire status by June 2025: The Israel-Lebanon talks just happened and fighting’s already continuing. If there’s no actual ceasefire by summer, you’re looking at sustained conflict that’ll pull in Syria, probably Iraq, maybe trigger something with Iran that makes the Strait of Hormuz situation worse. This is the domino that could actually upend everything else.