Mayor Johnson responds after President Trump criticized his meeting with Pope Leo

Brandon Johnson is responding to President Donald Trump, who slammed him and Pope Leo on Saturday. This comes after Johnson and the pontiff met earlier this week in Rome. 

In a post on Truth Social, the president said, “Someone should explain to the Pope that the Mayor of Chicago is useless, and that Iran cannot have a Nuclear Weapon!”

Johnson responded to the post, saying in a statement, “Chicagoans have had more than enough of Trump’s blasphemous war in Iran. Someone should explain to the president that he’s only making it harder for working families to make ends meet.”

Johnson led a 46-member delegation to meet with the first American-born pope, a Chicago native. He also delivered him a little bit of home with gifts including giardiniera, honorary degrees from DePaul and Loyola universities, and a selection of Cubs memorabilia, which the pope graciously accepted, though he’s a known White Sox fan. 

Johnson said he and the pope spoke about social justice and discussed the pope’s apologies regarding slavery, but in the end it boiled down to a conversation between two guys from Chicago, one a mayor and the other the leader of the Catholic Church.

The president and the pontiff shared an exchange of words last month, with President Trump calling the pope  “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” and saying that he was “not a big fan of Pope Leo.”

The pontiff responded, “I have no fear of the Trump administration, or speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the church is here to do,” he said.