May 05, 2025 11:04 AM UTC

Trump Time: Pope Dope and the Foreign Film National Security Threat

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• by: Colorado Pols

Over at the Get More Smarter Podcast, we’ve been regularly running a segment we call “Trump Time” that is intended to keep our listeners up to date on the more important/ridiculous developments in the administration of President Donald Trump. We’re adding a different version of this segment to Colorado Pols. Enjoy!

His Idiocy Donald the First

President Trump had a strange weekend, even by his standards, which started with insulting 1.4 BILLION Catholics and ended with another random tariff demand.

First, the Pope picture — retweeted by the official White House ‘X’ account, no less — that Trump sent to his Truth Social followers on Friday:

As you might imagine, this childish bit of trolling did not go over well among Catholics. As The Washington Post reports:

As Catholic cardinals prepare to choose a successor to Pope Francis, church leaders, politicians and pundits blasted President Donald Trump on Sunday for sharing an AI-generated image of himself on a throne in the cassock and miter of the pontiff.

“It’s sad both for the White House and for the president,” Cardinal Anders Arborelius, the bishop of Stockholm, told The Washington Post. “I mean, he makes themselves ridiculous, right?” [Pols emphasis]

“This is an image that offends believers, insults institutions and shows that the leader of the global right enjoys being a clown,” former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi wrote in a social media post Saturday…

…“There is nothing clever or funny about this image, Mr. President,” the New York State Catholic Conference said in a social media post. “We just buried our beloved Pope Francis and the cardinals are about to enter a solemn conclave to elect a new successor of St. Peter. Do not mock us.”

Trump is NOT Catholic and is not really all that into Christianity in general (though he pretends often enough). Heck, the man sells his own Trump-branded Bibles to MAGA rubes across the country.

Movies = National Security

Trump concluded his weird weekend with a new tariff announcement, via Truth Social, that was nonsensical even by his already-low bar. As The New York Times explains:

President Trump said he would impose a 100 percent tariff on movies “produced” outside the United States, proclaiming in a social media post on Sunday that the issue posed a national security threat.

Mr. Trump said he had authorized Jamieson Greer, the United States Trade Representative, to begin the process of taxing “any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.” Mr. Trump added, “This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat.”

The Motion Picture Association, which represents the biggest Hollywood studios in Washington, declined to comment. The association’s latest economic impact report, based primarily on government data and released in 2023, showed that the film industry generated a positive U.S. balance of trade for every major market in the world.

As is often the case with Mr. Trump’s declarations on social media, it was not entirely clear what he was talking about. Did he mean any movie, including independent foreign-language films destined for art house cinemas and movies that play exclusively on streaming services? [Pols emphasis]

As CNN notes, Trump’s announcement is freaking out movie studios, who worry that it could halt film production entirely…if the tariff threat is real:

“On first blush, it’s shocking and would represent a virtually complete halt of production,” one industry insider remarked. “But in reality, he has no jurisdiction to do this and it’s too complex to enforce.”…

…Some of the industry sources who spoke with CNN doubt that any such tariff plan will actually be implemented. As intellectual property, movies are a form of services – not goods. Services are not ordinarily subject to tariffs, and it’s unclear how Trump’s tariffs on foreign movies would work.

Furthermore, Trump’s assertion that foreign film production constitutes a “national security threat” may not withstand legal scrutiny.

But entertainment industry leaders are taking the possibility seriously. Multiple executives have reached out to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick about the tariff proposal, according to two sources familiar with the discussions. Lutnick on X responded to Trump’s tariff demand Sunday night, saying, “We’re on it.”

Whether or not any of this is even plausible or has been thought out more than just Trump firing off a social media post on a whim, the White House is now leaning into a new slogan: “Make Hollywood Great Again.”

As for how foreign film production constitutes a national security priority…

¯\_(ツ)_/¯