Papal Connections in the Trump Administration (Pt. 1)
Posted Nov 25, 2024 by Danutasn Brown in Current Events in Church and State
I was looking into the eldest son of Donald Trump because I recently saw this headline: Trump’s eldest son emerges as key voice influencing cabinet picks – report. Trump Jr. was influential in bringing in J.D. Vance as Vice President, which originally looked odd because 8 years ago Vance spoke publicly against Trump. Vance had called Trump an idiot, compared him to Hitler, said he was unfit for office.
The Guardian article mentions:
Reuters spoke to half a dozen sources, including donors, political allies and friends, who confirmed Don Jr’s influence in pitching names for appointments, including inexperienced loyalists. Don Jr was credited with making JD Vance his father’s vice-presidential pick, helping cabinet contenders sink or rise to the fore and blocking former secretary of state Mike Pompeo from joining the cabinet.
So Don Jr. was crucial in getting Vance in. This is interesting, because Vance was baptized Catholic in 2019, something that doesn't usually happen to adult men. Did this help his political career? The Jesuit Magazine America wrote on this:
Vance converted to Catholicism in August of 2019, when he was baptized and confirmed at St. Gertrude Priory in Cincinnati, Ohio, by the Rev. Henry Stephan, a Dominican friar. According to an interview with American expatriate and writer Rod Dreher, who was present at the baptism, Vance chose St. Augustine as his patron saint.
Vance told Dreher that he’d converted because he “became persuaded over time that Catholicism was true” and had observed that the people who meant the most to him were Catholic.
...
Vance is tied to an ideology known as “Catholic integralism,” an intellectual movement that, experts say, prefers a “soft power” approach to exerting Christian influence over society. Thinkers in the movement herald the importance of a Christian “strategic adviser” to people in power.
As Kevin Vallier, a professor at Bowling Green State University and expert in Catholic integralism, told RNS earlier this year: “There’s the sense that the liberal order is so corrupt that elite Catholics have to find positions of influence and use them in a kind of noble and appropriate way,” he said.
Harvard University’s Adrian Vermeule [convert to Catholicism in 2016], a leader in the movement, stated that integralists once viewed Trump as a figure similar to Constantine the Great, the Roman emperor who converted to Christianity. Vermeule has also praised Trump by likening him to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a leader widely decried as being authoritarian.
Vance, for his part, spoke at a 2022 gathering at the Franciscan University of Steubenville that was widely associated with integralism and “new right” politics. Vance has yet to answer questions about his own thoughts regarding Catholic integralism.
Trump infamously had dinner with Catholic Integralist and memelord Nick Fuentes, whose Wikipedia says this:
Fuentes is an integralist and a Christian nationalist. He has said, "You're either a Catholic or you're with the Jews," and he has voiced support for a Catholic government and Catholic media. Fuentes supports a Christian theocracy instead of what he calls a "Jewish-occupied government".
Fuentes has described himself as a reactionary who supports autocracy, Catholic monarchy, just war, the crusades, and the inquisition. Fuentes opposes democracy.
I share this because I want to know about Don Jr.. Does he have Catholic connections? Interestingly, he also had dramatic events recently happen in his life that are connected to Catholicism. From 2005-2018 Don Jr. was married to Vanessa Haydon, with whom he has 5 children. Don Jr. and Vanessa Haydon are the same age (as of 2014, 46 years old), and divorced in 2018. Immediately, he started dating Kimberly Guilfoyle, and by 2020 they were engaged. Kimberly Guilfoyle is 55 years old, 9 years older than Don Jr. That immediately caught my attention. Divorcing the mother of your 5 children to immediately become engaged to a woman 9 years older than you? How often does that happen? Usually, rich powerful men marry younger women, not older women. So who is Kimberly Guilfoyle? Turns out she was an old family friend of the Trump family.
Surprise, surprise, her Catholic connections run deep. Her father is an Irish immigrant who came to the US in 1957 at the age of 20. He went into real estate and became a close advisor to his former son-in-law, Gavin Newsom, who is now the governor of California. Newsom was married to Kimberly Guilfoyle from 2001-2006. How does an Irish immigrant with seemingly no wealth come to America, join the Army, and become a massive real estate investor whose family has all these powerful connections? Gavin Newsom is a powerful DEMOCRAT politician, also with an enormous amount of Catholic connections. This shows another connection with the Democratic Party that is common in the Trump Administration, full as it is with people who are opportunists and aren't attached to a party.
Some more info about Gavin Newsom:
Newsom's aunt was married to Ron Pelosi, the brother-in-law of former speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi....
Newsom was baptized and raised in his father's Catholic faith. In 2008 he described himself as an "Irish Catholic rebel...in some respects, but one that still has tremendous admiration for the Church and very strong faith"; when asked about the state of the Catholic Church, he said it was in crisis. He said he stays with the Church because of his "strong connection to a greater purpose, and to sort of a higher being". Newsom identifies as a practicing Catholic, saying in 2008 that he has a "strong sense of faith that is perennial, day in and day out".
He attended kindergarten and first grade at École Notre Dame Des Victoires, a French-American bilingual Catholic school in San Francisco...
Newsom attended Santa Clara University, graduating in 1989 with a Bachelor of Science with a major in political science...He has reflected on his education fondly, crediting Santa Clara's Jesuit approach with helping him become an independent thinker who questions orthodoxy. While in school, Newsom spent a semester studying abroad in Rome, Italy.
In December 2001, Newsom married Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former San Francisco prosecutor and legal commentator for Court TV, CNN, and MSNBC. They married at Saint Ignatius Catholic Church on the campus of the [Jesuit] University of San Francisco, where Guilfoyle had attended law school. The couple appeared in the September 2004 issue of Harper's Bazaar; the spread had them posed at the Getty Villa with the caption "the New Kennedys". They jointly filed for divorce in January 2005, citing "difficulties due to their careers on opposite coasts". Their divorce was finalized on February 28, 2006. (It later emerged that Newsom, then 39, was having an affair with Ruby Rippey-Tourk, the wife of his then-campaign manager and former deputy chief of staff, Alex Tourk.)
Guilfoyle gained prominence in 2011 via a Fox News chat show. She was later named senior advisor to Republican president Donald Trump, whom Newsom has extensively criticized, and was later engaged to Donald Trump Jr. [notice the jump across the political aisle]
Remember it was Nancy Pelosi who convinced Catholic President Joe Biden to step down and let Kamala Harris run.
WASHINGTON — Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi stepped down from her powerful perch leading House Democrats nearly a year and a half ago. But behind the scenes, sources say, Pelosi, a Democrat from San Francisco, played a critical role in delicately nudging President Joe Biden to the exits...
“I think Pelosi continues to show she’s a master political tactician,” a House Democratic leadership aide said Sunday.
Throughout Democrats’ painful three-week ordeal, Pelosi never publicly called on Biden to quit the race; neither did Schumer or Jeffries. Doing so could infuriate Biden and cause him to become intransigent and never step aside.
Instead, Pelosi worked quietly and methodically, speaking to scores of rank-and-file lawmakers, members of her old leadership team and her large network of Democratic donors who had once made her the party’s most prolific fundraiser.
NBC News: As Biden dug in on continuing his campaign, Nancy Pelosi kept the pressure on
But going back to Kimberly Guilfoyle. Her Catholic connections, like Newsom's, run deep, back to Europe. Newsom studied abroad in Rome and learned French, and Guilfoyle studied abroad in Ireland.
Guilfoyle graduated from San Francisco's Mercy High School, and then the University of California, Davis. She received her Juris Doctor from the [Catholic] University of San Francisco School of Law in 1994. While in law school, she interned at the San Francisco district attorney's office. She also was a lingerie and fashion model, being featured in local department stores advertising campaigns (including for Macy's) and modeling Victoria's Secret lingerie for a bridal magazine. She later studied at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland.
Amazingly, she worked as an assistant DA with Kamala Harris! Do all these people know each other? What are the odds?
In 2003, by which time her then-husband Gavin Newsom was the front-running candidate in the 2003 San Francisco mayoral election, Guilfoyle publicly accused her fellow assistant DA Kamala Harris (who was running in the 2003 election for district attorney) of having been unwelcoming years earlier of Guilfoyle's re-hiring at the San Francisco district attorney's office, a claim Harris denied. Guilfoyle did provide positive comments on Harris' qualifications for office, describing Harris as someone that would "work very hard" if elected district attorney, as well as "very smart" and "a good speaker".
What is also remarkable is there is good evidence of her sexually harassing people when she worked at Fox News. This puts her in good company with many other politicians.
In mid-2017, Guilfoyle signed a long-term contract extension with Fox. A year later, in July 2018, Guilfoyle abruptly left Fox News; she began working for a pro–Donald Trump super PAC. HuffPost reported that, at the time of her departure, the network had been in the midst of a year-long investigation of a sexual harassment accusation against Guilfoyle. Network officials had given Guilfoyle an ultimatum: Resign by the end of July or be fired. The New Yorker subsequently corroborated reports that Guilfoyle had been forced to resign rather than leaving by choice.
After Guilfoyle left, Fox News agreed to an out-of-court settlement with an assistant who had accused Guilfoyle of sexual harassment. Terms were not disclosed. The New Yorker reported that the settlement was at least $4 million. The assistant alleged that Guilfoyle frequently displayed herself naked, showed photographs of the genitalia of men she had sex with, and required her to sleep over at Guilfoyle's apartment. The New Yorker independently verified several of the assistant's allegations...
n November 2020, Politico's reporting alleged that Guilfoyle had engaged in sexually explicit conversations during private Trump fundraisers that had made some attendees uncomfortable.
Would you want to marry someone with this kind of history— history that Don Jr. surely knows about? Oh, and after Newsom, she immediately married furniture heir Eric Villency. On October 4, 2006, Guilfoyle gave birth to their son, Ronan. Guilfoyle and Villency divorced in November 2009. It seems she is similar to Don Jr. in her ability to divorce and remarry so quickly.
The point here is that Donald Trump Jr. is marrying another important political operator with deep Catholic connections. Coincidence? I don't think so.