On Wednesday, President Donald Trump journeyed to the Vatican to visit the head of the Catholic Church, His Holiness Pope Francis. When the Pope and President Trump stopped for a photo-op, the Bishop of Rome looked rather, well, miserable.
First, let’s state the obvious: the photo is hilarious, no matter which side of the aisle you sit on politically. But, in true leftist fashion, anti-Trumpers used the photo to suggest Pope Francis absolutely hates Trump and simply could not contain his disgust for the cameras; Slate, GQ, and New York Magazine, among others, all ran stories with such a suggestion, focused on selective photos of the Pope not smiling.
This just isn’t the case.
Here’s are photos of Trump with a smiling Pope, which some have purposefully chosen not to highlight.
And here’s the Pope with President Obama and former Secretary of State John Kerry with the same non-smiling face he has in the now-viral photo with Trump, what I’ve dubbed “Resting Pope Face.” Clever, I know.
Of course, President Trump and the Pope had words about walls and borders during the 2016 presidential campaign, and the Pope clearly holds a strongly progressive stance on man-made Climate Change, but the “Trump is so evil, even the Pope hates him” is silly.
And let’s also note, while Pope Francis gave the POTUS a signed copy of his work addressing man-made Climate Change at his Wednesday meeting, His Holiness gave then-President Obama a copy of Evangelii Gaudium, a book on morality, covering the horror of abortion, when they met back in 2014.
In other words, this is just the Pope being the Pope, not hating on no-good, terrible Trump.