Does anyone think Rubio's visit to Rome

[vapor2]

will stop an evil sadist from tweeting nasty tweets about the Pope??

[maxsolomon]

1. Nope.

It's a behind-the-scenes smoothing-over trip.

[irisblue]

2. Naaah

[Ocelot II]

3. Not at all. It's likely to inspire more of them.

Trump enjoys making Rubio crawl on his belly for his approval as much as he enjoys insulting the Pope.

[hlthe2b]

4. No... But sending Rubio over Vance had to send him over the edge given his book about his fake

conversion is about to his the bookstores. So, I'm pleased about that...

In reality, if Vance had gone (after his presence killed the last Pope--who clearly took the "easy" way out--kidding), those fancy Royal Vatican Guards would surely have had to pull him out by the ear to aggressively send him on his way. That would have been fun to watch, at least.

[Jbraybarten]

5. I can't imagine any non cultist believes that Trump will be nice or human, or professional, or decent...

[Prairie Gates]

6. The Pope is for show...the real problem is that Meloni is cracking after the courts referendum and Orban

Meloni is a shrewd and brilliant woman, and she does not want to cede power. She's seen two major losses that have her recalculating her allegiance to Trump. First, her own political capital was spilled over a referendum to change the Italian constitution - it failed badly when it was supposed to be close. Second, Orban, her closest ally in Europe, showed her what is happening to the global right. Meloni has always governed softer than Orban, even if her rhetoric is equivalent, but it no doubt scared her.

Finally, Trump humiliated her, beginning the Iran bombing without informing her, and embarrassingly so: Italy's defense minister was vacationing with his family in Dubai when the bombing started (hard to spin that you haven't been left out when your literal defense minister has his own children in the line of fire on a vacation!).

Rubio is there to do a show with the Pope for the US Catholics who are questioning Trump's nonsense. But he's really there to try to talk Meloni off the ledge.