Donald Trump Wants Another Job He’s Not Qualified For: Pope

If anyone ever took the expression “fake it ‘til you make it” too literally, it’s Donald Trump. Trump has found his way into the White House twice; mostly recently, despite being a convicted felon with no prior political experience, and as of late has clung to a joking-not-joking throughline about finding a way to make it a three-fer, Constitution be damned. So, it should come as no surprise that he thinks he’d be a fantastic pope too.

On Tuesday, when asked by reporters who he thinks should be the successor to the recently deceased Pope Francis, Trump tossed off, “I’d like to be pope. That’d be my number one choice.”

Forget the fact that Trump isn’t a member of the clergy, or the College of Cardinals, who will convene for a conclave to select their new leader beginning May 7—he’s not even Catholic. Though confirmed earlier in life into Presbyterianism, in 2020, Trump told the Religious News Service in an interview that he now identifies as a non-denominational Christian. After an assassination attempt in July 2024, Trump, already popular with Evangelical Christian voters, dialed up the religious rhetoric in his messaging. At his inauguration in January, he even said that he was “saved by God to make America great again.”

When pressed, however, he did have one alternative suggestion for who should succeed Pope Francis. Sort of. “No, I don’t know. I don’t have a preference,” Trump continued. “I might say, we have a cardinal that happens to be out of a place called New York who is very good. So we’ll see what happens.”

Presumably, he was referring to Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who led the invocation at Trump’s inauguration. “Please, God bless America, please mend her every flaw,” Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, said as he prayed for Trump at the beginning of his second term.

Maybe Trump was trying to play coy by not mentioning Dolan by name, or perhaps he couldn’t remember it and figured that a made-in-the-USA answer couldn’t fail. The world may never know.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, for one, appeared to cheerfully second Trump’s self-nomination on social media on Tuesday.

“I was excited to hear that President Trump is open to the idea of being the next Pope,” Graham wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “This would truly be a dark horse candidate, but I would ask the papal conclave and Catholic faithful to keep an open mind about this possibility!”

He continued: “The first Pope-U.S. President combination has many upsides. Watching for white smoke…. Trump MMXXVIII!”