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Notes -
It turns out Greenland/Denmark and Canada aren't the only friendly countries that the US has been threatening, the Vatican's ambassador to the US (according to The Free Press and Letters from Leo a Catholic focused blog) was given both explicit and coded threats of military force against the Holy See.
JD Vance, a Catholic himself, has done a pretty rare thing for the Trump admin and said they're gonna get to the bottom of it first, instead of immediately dismissing it as fake news.. This doesn't confirm it as real, but that it wasn't immediately denied and dismissed like the typical M.O. is quite interesting.
This could help explain why Pope Leo has felt so emboldened to speak up against Trump's war efforts in Iran, cause the administration officials have been warmongering against them behind the scenes. The chance that the admin actually pulls the trigger and attacks the Vatican is obviously low, but that they keep threatening many of our allies both publically and privately seems quite concerning to me. It also opens up a new thing to consider, how many other allies are they threatening behind closed doors too?
It's the pope. How many times in recent years has the pope not spoken up against war efforts?
I mean, usually when the administration responds that they're going to look into a situation, that means that the message that's been reported is not what the administration approves of. At least publicly. So this would have to be something where they told Colby to threaten the Vatican, but unlike Canada and Greenland, wanted it kept on the down low? Seems implausible, but I've been wrong before.
Yes the papacy is typically against war, but Leo seems particularly passionate about this recent one.
What is implausible about threats being made behind closed doors? If anything the Trump admin being openly aggressive against Canada and Greenland is the weird thing. But ok let's say this was done entirely without the top brass, it seems concerning that our under secretaries are apparently going around and threatening our allies and no one above in the chain of command knew about it/cared until it became public.
How would they have known? It's not like he's going up to them after the meeting and saying "Oh, by the way JD, just so you know I told the Pope's ambassador we'd go Avignon on his ass, you cool with that?"
It doesn't seem like it was just Colby considering "and his colleagues". Did none of them think to report that they might have accidently threatened the Vatican with military force? Either Colby did a great job convincing the others that this was planned and to not report anything about it, the colleagues agreed with him (making it multiple admin officials who went with the threat) or it was ignored/supported by the upper brass.
But even if it was just him and he hid it, not a great sign when high up officials are covering up their mistakes instead of reporting them.
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