Celebrations over the first American pope turned to rage fests among MAGA figures like Laura Loomer once his opinions came to light. The newly crowned Pope Leo XIV publicly criticized both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance on X before the conclave, and his left-leaning posts don’t end there. Right-wing personalities soon declared him “woke” and wondered how long Pope term limits last.
The new pope isn’t considered to be as lefty as the old pope, but Pope Francis was elected back when the general political vibes in the U.S. were a little less extreme. Today, anyone who isn’t Pope Trump gets the hate brigade.
Laura Loomer declares LEO XIV a ‘WOKE MARXIST POPE‘
After a bit of struggle to find a consensus, the conclave elected Cardinal Robert Prevost of Chicago as the new head of the Catholic church on May 8, 2025. Far-right personality Laura Loomer was among the first to denounce Leo, declaring him a “WOKE MARXIST POPE” as part of a series of social media rants.
“THIS IS THE NEW POPE!” she wrote on May 8. “His name is Robert Prevost. He’s the first American Pope. He is anti-Trump, anti-MAGA, pro-open Borders, and a total Marxist like Pope Francis. Catholics don’t have anything good to look forward to. Just another Marxist puppet in the Vatican.”
She later dug up a post of his sharing the words of a fellow cardinal on Trump from 2015. The Washington Post article titled “Why Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is so problematic” didn’t sit well with her, so she replied with “WOKE MARXIST POPE.”
She and other MAGA members also took exception to a more recent shot at Vance. On Feb. 3 of this year, he shared a National Catholic Reporter article titled “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.” This burns all the hotter for Vance, considering his conversion to Catholicism in 2019.
Loomer shared screenshots of both these posts plus Leo’s condemnation of the white nationalist “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, VA in 2019. She lamented that there is “nothing to celebrate” about the new pope.
“What do you want to do?” she asked. “Blow some smoke and cry over a pope who supports mass migration and open borders?”
“Conservatives love losing. They LOVE IT!”
‘An open borders globalist’
Laura Loomer isn’t the only one hating on the new pope. Right-wing political commentator and former GamerGate figurehead Mike Cernovich dove into Leo’s retweets, including those that support gun control action beyond thoughts and prayers and call for the return of mistakenly deported immigrant Kilmar Abrego-Garcia to an El Salvadorian mega-prison.
“Sorry, Catholics. This new Pope is an open borders globalist,” he claimed. “He will be pushing for abortion soon. This isn’t a guess. You can scroll his X account and see what he’s been up to.”
Meanwhile, the founder of right-wing outlet The Federalist Sean Davis said he’d fretted the election of a “left-wing, Western European pope to use the Roman Catholic Church to counter the rise of national populism in general, and Trump in particular, and to bolster globalist forces against those who believe the purpose of a country is to safeguard its own people.”
“The new pope was born in America, not Western Europe, so I was wrong on that score, but I fear I wasn’t wrong about the rest,” he concluded
Popular right-wing Italian-American X user Joey Mannarino pronounced the new pope to be “worse than Francis.”
“So the new Pope has recently attacked JD Vance, shown solidarity with Kilmar Abrego-Garcia and begged Trump to open the borders like Biden had them,” he pointed out.
On the other side, a celebration
Whenever the political right is sad and angry, it’s nearly inevitable that the left will be partying. Liberal and leftist social media users are rubbing it in and celebrating like the Cubs won the World Series.
“WOKE POPE WOKE POPE,” chanted @sportswaatcher to that Prevost post about Vance.
“If the American Pope is too woke for MAGA wait until they find out about Jesus,” said @TimHannan.
User @Tazerface16 made what is perhaps the first red laser eyes edit of Leo, evoking Dark Brandon, and laughing at “MAGA melting down right now about the new ‘woke’ Pope.”
At age 69, Pope Leo XIV should be around for a while. Maybe next time, Laura.
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