Washington D.C., Jul 9, 2020 / 01:57 pm MT (CNA).-

Officials working in the Trump administration have told CNA that they have been frustrated by recent presidential tweets elevating controversial Catholic figures, saying the tweets undermine the work many Catholics in the administration hope to accomplish.

In recent weeks, the presidents Twitter account has cited support from two figures with polarizing reputations among Catholics: former papal nuncio to the United States Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigan, and the author and online polemicist Taylor Marshall.

While both men have been publicly supportive of the president, both are better known for their criticism of Church authorities than for their views on secular politics.

Two Catholics in senior positions in the administration told CNA the decision to elevate Vigan and Marshall has put the White House at odds with the U.S. bishops, instead of putting a focus on issues of agreement, and has frustrated some Catholic administration officials.

It puts those of us who care about the Church and care about the work we are doing here in a bind, one White House official told CNA. I believe in the work Im doing, and believe it matters as a Catholic. But I spend enough time just defending that simple premise I dont want to have to deal with crazy Catholic Twitter too.

Everyone knows the campaign needs religious voters, and Catholic voters for sure. But there is such a divide between the people working on policy stuff around here and the people doing this. For us, we are doing things that matter: on religious freedom, on life issues.

A second senior administration official, who attends weekly meetings with the president in the Oval Office, told CNA the president believes he has not been supported by U.S. bishops for his efforts on religious liberty, and that White House strategists have urged him to court Catholic votes through figures like Marshall and Vigan.

Both officials requested anonymity because of the nature of their positions.

The officials each independently attributed the decision to highlight support from outside the Catholic mainstream to Dan Scavino, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and the presidents social media director. They said it is part of a broader effort to stoke enthusiasm among the presidents most ardent supporters through social media engagement.

You know who is putting [Vigans letter] in front of the president? one official said, Its coming from [Dan] Scavino. He runs all of that side of things.

Around him and the rest, they have only one plan right now, or only one they are talking about: weaponize the base, the base, the base.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration garnered attention for hosting telephone calls with bishops and other institutional Catholic leaders regarding both the impact of the coronavirus on Catholic schools and the decision of some bishops to begin limited reopenings of public Masses in the early stages of a national reopening.

In those calls, the president promised his administrations support to Catholic initiatives, and to financially struggling Catholic schools. Bishops, including New Yorks Cardinal Timothy Dolan, faced criticism for seeming to lend implicit support to the presidents reelection bid, a charge Dolan and others disputed, while defending their engagement with the president.

The administration is continuing to advocate for parochial school assistance in coronavirus relief legislation.

But Trumps more recent Catholic overtures have been of a different stripe.

Both administration officials told CNA that after Trumps June 2 visit to the St. John Paul II National Shrine, a decision was made by Scavino and other strategists that the president should cultivate Catholic support from leadership figures outside the mainstream.

The president doesnt get why the bishops arent with him for doing work on religious liberty especially after the shrine visit, he was pissed about that, one official said.

The official told CNA that Scavino, himself a Catholic, views the support of figures like Vigan as a means of delivering Catholic votes without the implicit or explicit support of diocesan bishops.

The presidents shrine visit came at the height of protests and demonstrations across the county, following the killing of George Floyd. It also came one day after the controversial dispersal of demonstrators in Lafayette Park, opposite the White House, to accommodate a presidential photo-op in front of the historic St. Johns Episcopal Church.

Washington Archbishop Wilton Gregory issued a stinging critique of the shrine visit, calling it reprehensible, and saying the shrine had been egregiously misused and manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles.

The next week, on June 10, Trumps Twitter account retweeted a long letter from Archbishop Carlo Vigan, former papal nuncio to the United States, in which the archbishop lavished praise on the president and repeated his own theories about an international conspiracy to use the coronavirus pandemic to bring about a one-world government.

Both of us are on the same side in this battle, Vigan wrote to Trump, calling criticism of the presidents June 2 visit to the National Shrine of St. John Paul II part of an orchestrated media narrative against the president.

Vigan gained national headlines in 2018, when he claimed that he had warned Pope Francis about allegations of sexual abuse against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, and then called on the pope to resign. Since then, the archbishop has lived in self-imposed exile, writing frequent open letters that make apocalyptic claims, proffer globalist conspiracy theories, and denounce sitting diocesan bishops and the Second Vatican Council.

Vigan last month denounced Washingtons Archbishop Gregory as a false shepherd after Gregorys criticism of Trumps shrine visit.

One administration official said Scavino saw Vigans letter as a way of touting support for Trump in the face of Gregorys opposition.

He thinks its a punch back against [Archbishop] Gregory, said the official.

On July 2, Trumps Twitter account tweeted about an appearance by Taylor Marshall on the One America News Network, in which Marshall said there is a war on Christianity, and praised the presidents leadership.

Marshall has recently been associated with the traditionalist priestly Society of St. Pius X, who are in irregular communion with the Catholic Church. He has tweeted that Catholic men should not attend diocesan seminaries, spoken about his resistance to Pope Francis, and has recently clashed with Bishop Robert Barron, who reportedly referred to him as an extremist, amid a disagreement over the role of clerics and laity amid the destruction of the statues of saints.

Marshals 2019 book Infiltration claims to outline a plot by which Modernists and Marxists hatched a plan to subvert the Catholic Church from within. Their goal: to change Her doctrine, Her liturgy, and Her mission, according to the books website.

Both Marshall and Vigan have large online audiences; Marshalls YouTube videos regularly draw more than 100,000 viewers, and Vigans missives are regularly published on popular conservative and traditionalist websites.

But one administration official told CNA that Catholics working in the executive branch have been discouraged by the presidents decision to promote Vigan and Marshall, especially because they believe the administrations work on life issues and religious liberty is important, and would benefit from more engagement with the bishops.

You feel like you cant win, the official said. Frankly, wed have liked a little more support from the bishops not for the president personally or the campaign, but for the work we are doing. There is stuff here that is important. But absent that, the thinking from the comms side seems to be have the friends we can get, and if theyre crazy, who cares? Its so frustrating.

Both officials told CNA that there exists a clear line between those senior Catholics in the administration working on policy priorities and those pursuing Trumps social media strategy.

There is no way the serious Catholics in the administration are pushing this stuff. They have too much to do, the first official told CNA.

The other senior source said the same, and lamented that some in the administration seem to view a combative stance against the bishops as a good in itself.

For headbangers like Scavino, real Catholics are the ones on message with the president, it doesnt matter how off the reservation they might be in the Church.

To [Scavino and Senior Advisor to the President Stephen Miller] the [U.S.] bishops are all shades of Pope Francis, especially on immigration, which drives Miller crazy.

The first official agreed, telling CNA that: The president doesnt know who Vigan is, he just knows hes an archbishop, he definitely doesnt know who Taylor Marshall is even I had to look him up. But you bet Dan [Scavino] knows, knows they are anti-establishment and have a following, and thats the campaign they want to run with everyone get to the people who are already there, intensify them, get them working for you and give the president some proof of support for what hes been doing.

[Scavino] has this idea that the more you can talk around the bishops the better the more radical you can be and the more you will deliver with the base. Him and [Stephen] Miller love that kind of stuff.

The White House first conceded in 2017 that Scavino assists President Trump in operating the @realDonaldTrump account, including by drafting and posting tweets to the account.

Scavino is an unlikely figure to mastermind the most famous Twitter account in the world.

A 2018 New York Times profile recounts that he first met Trump while acting as his caddie during a round of golf on a course upstate in 1990. In 2004, he returned to the course, then owned by Trump, as assistant manager, rising to manager four years later before starting his own business.

He returned to the Trump orbit at the early stages of the 2016 presidential campaign, eventually began helping candidate Trump run his Twitter account and later managed his social media output. Scavino earned a reputation for playing hard along the way. On one occasion, Scavino retweeted a video alleging that Sen. Ted Cruz was having an affair with a married former aide, Amanda Carpenter, who called the allegations a smear.

Carpenter told the New York Times Magazine that What Scavino did to me and what he still does to others would get any other professional fired. In Trumps universe, its a qualification. A willingness to engage in lies and smears on behalf of Donald Trump is a sign of loyalty that Trump treasures.

In the same profile, Former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks told the Times Magazine that Scavino is the conductor of the Trump train, and that his role in the administration is to tell [Trump] how things are playing with his people. Thats a gauge for him that the president takes seriously. Hicks left the White House in March 2018 but was named a counselor to the president in February this year.

Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon has also credited Scavino with bringing fringe figures and social media personalities to the presidents attention. Bannon told the Times Magazine that he used to share with Scavino an office in the West Wing and he has his hands on the Pepes, in a reference to a popular cartoon image used by alt-right internet posters.

[Scavino] knew who the players were and who were not. Hed bring me Cernovich I didnt know who Cernovich was until Scavino told me, Bannon told the magazine of Mike Cernovich, an alt-right blogger who has made highly controversial comments on race, womens rights, and rape.

According to Politico, Scavinos ability to represent Twitter support to the president has real-world policy effects. In a 2019 profile, Politico quoted two sources saying Trump turned to Scavino to justify the announcement of his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.

Trump himself told Politico that Oftentimes, Ill go through Dan.

You know, Ill talk it over. And he can really be a very good sounding board. A lot of common sense. Hes got a good grasp.

While not a well-known public figure, Scavino has attracted controversy through his responsibility for the presidents Twitter account.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump came under fire for the use of alleged anti-Semitic imagery in a graphic describing Hilary Clinton as the most corrupt candidate ever. The image featured Clinton, a red star of David, and images of cash.

While the campaign initially dismissed criticism of the image, insisting that the star was meant to resemble a sheriffs badge, it later altered the image to a circle. CNN also reported that the image was originally posted on an anti-Semitic and white supremacist message board.

It was Scavino who defended both the original image and the eventual alteration, saying that it was not created by the campaign nor was it sourced from an anti-Semitic site. Scavino rejected any insinuation of anti-Semitism, citing his wifes Jewish family, but took personal responsibility, saying "I would never offend anyone and therefore chose to remove the image."

The White House did not respond to questions from CNA regarding Scavinos role in Trumps retweets of Marshall and Vigan.

One White House official told CNA that the presidents recent Catholic retweets fit Scavinos approach.

I totally get why people like Vigan and Marshall appeal to Scavino. Conspiracy theories, communists, freemasons, tons of retweets and YouTube followers? Its right up his alley, the official said.

The problem is it has happened now, even if this isnt the presidents idea, one thing youre not going to do is change his mind there is no reverse gear.

It drives the Catholics around here crazy because we are trying to do real work, the first official said. We take the faith seriously, we came here to serve.

See the article here:

Why White House Catholics are concerned about Trumps Catholic tweets - Catholic News Agency