We read with interest the article published by Il Fatto Quotidiano on April 13, 2026, titled “Trump’s attack on the Pope is a calculated move. Here is the project behind it.” The author’s central argument is that Donald Trump’s attacks should not be dismissed as impulsive outbursts or mere provocations. On the contrary, the journalist suggests that they are part of a precise political strategy aimed at weakening liberal democracies, destabilizing opponents, and shifting power toward increasingly authoritarian forms.
Put more simply, the author is saying this: Trump does not act in a chaotic way by accident. He uses chaos as a method. Constant confusion, aggressive statements, and open confrontation with institutions, the media, universities, and moral figures are presented as tools designed to prevent any coherent and united democratic response. In this reading, propaganda is not mainly meant to persuade everyone. Its real function is to disorient, divide, and paralyze those who should be resisting.
The article places this pattern within a broader strategy that the author describes as a form of “counter-revolution” carried out through hybrid warfare. The key point is speed. Political and executive action becomes a weapon when it moves so fast, and on so many fronts at once, that institutions no longer have time to react effectively. This is what the journalist means when referring to a kind of “cognitive fog”: an environment in which no one can clearly understand where the next attack is coming from until it is already underway.
Within this framework, the attack on the Pope is presented not as an isolated verbal assault, but as a preventive move. The logic is straightforward: if the Pope can become a moral voice capable of recalling principles, conscience, and ethical limits in the face of authoritarian drift, then attacking him in advance serves to weaken his authority in the eyes of part of the public. In other words, according to the author, Trump would be trying to inoculate his base against any future moral criticism coming from the Church.
The article then adds another deeply troubling element: signals coming from the Pentagon, especially the removal of several senior officials, which the author interprets as a possible sign of growing politicization within state and military structures. Against that background, the journalist argues that this is not necessarily a classic coup scenario, but rather a gradual erosion of constitutional balance from within, carried out under a formal appearance of legality.
The deeper meaning of the article is therefore this: the real target is not only the Pope as an individual, but everything he may represent as a moral limit on political power that seeks to become more aggressive, more personalistic, and less constrained by law, checks and balances, and international norms. It is a stark interpretation, but a clear one. According to the author, the symbolic clash with the Pope is part of a much larger battle against the ethical reference points that can still restrain authoritarian drift.
That is also where the most important criticism lies. When politics becomes a permanent machine of conflict against institutions, moral conscience, and democratic guarantees, the people who ultimately pay the highest price are not the leaders themselves, but ordinary citizens. Fundamental rights are weakened. Human dignity becomes more vulnerable. Entire populations are left increasingly exposed to power that is less accountable, less restrained, and less respectful of the principles that should uphold any just society.