Axelrod, the Chicago political boss who served as former President Barack Obama’s guru, has won more political battles than he’s lost. He is a master of media dynamics, of knowing exactly what needs to be done to flip a narrative in his favor. Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Mitt Romney could all attest.

This makes his visit to Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican last week worth examining very carefully. Because in the days that followed, the pope’s criticism of President Donald Trump grew dramatically sharper — and Trump, true to form, couldn’t resist taking the bait.

Leo, a fellow Chicagoan, is no fan of the president or his administration — that was made clear by the social media trail left by the man known then as Robert Prevost. Last February, he shared a National Catholic Reporter article criticizing Vice President JD Vance’s interpretation of Jesus’ teachings on love and immigration. Weeks later, he reposted a commentary condemning Trump’s coordination with El Salvador on deportations with the caption: “Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed?”

The Vatican meeting between Leo and Axelrod almost necessarily touched on the obvious common ground between them. What else would a Chicago Democratic boss and a Chicago-born Trump-critic-turned-pontiff have to discuss? And the conversation would have naturally turned toward Trump’s threat to erase Iranian civilization and the urgent need to rein him in.

Now I’m not saying the pope knowingly participated in a Democratic Party political operation. Axelrod could have merely volunteered that the Holy Father’s moral witness could provide a useful counterweight, and the pontiff could have concurred. Regardless, it’s impossible to miss the fact that Leo’s tone and rhetoric shifted sharply following his meeting with Axelrod.

Consider the pope’s remarks following Trump’s “civilization” post but before meeting with Axelrod: “Today, as we all know, there has also been this threat against the entire people of Iran. And this is truly unacceptable! There are certainly issues of international law here, but even more, it is a moral question concerning the good of the people as a whole, in its entirety.”

Now consider his tone immediately after the meeting:

“It is here that we find a bulwark against that delusion of omnipotence that surrounds us and is becoming increasingly unpredictable and aggressive,” he said. “The balance within the human family has been severely destabilized. Even the holy Name of God, the God of life, is being dragged into discourses of death.”

Then later in that same speech: “Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war!”

Now of course, it’s possible that Axelrod had nothing to do with Leo’s rhetoric shift. But it’s not likely. Axelrod came to the Vatican ostensibly to arrange a papal audience for Obama, a move that would simultaneously elevate his old boss and diminish the current president. He doubtlessly understood that goading Trump into a public brawl with the pope would advance both aims.

It was, in retrospect, the perfect trap. That’s because Leo is perhaps the only person on earth whom Trump can’t out-duel. Not because he isn’t clever enough or because he isn’t ultimately correct on the issues at hand — on the issue of preventing a nuclear Iran, I believe Trump is correct — but because fighting with the pope is a political loser yesterday, today, and forever.

Trump dominates his opponents by making them look small and himself look big, historic, and indomitable. But in the Catholic imagination, and to a large extent in the public imagination generally, it’s impossible to diminish the office of the papacy. Trump is a politician. The pope is not. He cannot be “brought down to size.” The more you try to diminish a pope, the larger he seems. The weight and substance of his office, the lineage that traces back to Saint Peter, the authority, the pageantry, dwarf anything a modern politician can summon. The juxtaposition of the pope in his papal garments with a Trump Truth Social rant is the argument itself rendered visually.

Who started this exchange matters little in the political sense. So does who is right. It isn’t fair, but life often isn’t. Sometimes you need to realize no good can come from whatever is about to leap from your mouth and zip it.

Trump’s decision to belittle Leo by taking credit for his election was the single most self-defeating moment of the entire episode. He could not possibly have made himself appear smaller compared to the office of the papacy.

“Leo should be thankful because, as everyone knows, he was a shocking surprise,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”

Axelrod probably framed this post and placed it on his mantel right beside the Bain Capital opposition research that forced Mitt Romney into defending corporations as “people, too, my friend.”

Trump’s attack on the pope never had a chance of serving him well, but only caused him damage. That’s surely why Axelrod rope-a-doped him into it.

Realizing his error, Trump attempted to explain away the picture he posted of himself as Jesus by saying he thought it was of a doctor. But the damage is likely to linger. A mass exodus of Catholics from Trump’s coalition is unlikely, but that’s not necessary. A 5% or 10% drop in Catholic support would be enough to doom his party’s prospects in the 2026 midterm elections and beyond.

Trump likes to boast about winning 2024 in a landslide, but it was Catholic voters in the swing states, particularly Hispanics, who delivered him his electoral blowout. Losing this bloc dismantles the coalition that made his victory possible.

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Vance, who is about to publish a book on his conversion to Catholicism, appears somberly aware of this fact in recent interviews. A president at war with the pope is a complicated partner for a man who has staked his political identity on his Catholic faith.

Then again, Vance might have been Axelrod’s real target all along.