Meghan McCain told Sen. Lindsey Graham to “get a grip!” after he backed President Donald Trump to be the next pope.
Trump, who has said he considers himself a non-denominational Christian, jokingly told reporters that he should take the reins at the Vatican to succeed Pope Francis. “That would be my No. 1 choice,” he said.
Graham quickly got in on the joke—while fueling speculation that Trump could seek to get around a constitutional ban to stay for a third term in office. “I was excited to hear that President Trump is open to the idea of being the next Pope,” the South Carolina senator wrote on X.
“This would truly be a dark horse candidate, but I would ask the papal conclave and Catholic faithful to keep an open mind about this possibility!”
He added: “The first Pope-U.S. President combination has many upsides. Watching for white smoke…. Trump MMXXVIII!”
MMXXVIII is the Roman numeral for 2028.
Serious or not, the South Carolina senator’s tweet got quite a reaction, including from McCain, the former View host turned podcaster.
“Lindsey - get a grip,” she wrote, quoting his message of support for Trump.
The podcaster’s father, the late senator and GOP presidential nominee John McCain, was famously best friends with Graham until his death. Their friendship ran so deep that Meghan McCain, for a time, refused to “talk crap” about her late dad’s pal.
“Lindsey is really hard for me to talk about in public because I have had to reconcile his politics right now are very different than mine, but I have known the man since I was 10 and I love him very much,” McCain said on a 2019 episode of The View. She has previously described Graham as an uncle.
Graham gave an emotional speech about his close friend after he died in August 2018. “He taught me that honor and imperfection are always in competition,” he tearfully said.
“I do not cry for a perfect man. I cry for a man who had honor and always was willing to admit to his imperfection.”
“There’s a little McCain in all of us,” he added.
Trump has been less than flattering about McCain, even after his death. “I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be,” he said six months after the Arizona Republican succumbed to cancer.
The president infamously also said the Vietnam veteran was not a war hero. “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured,” he said in 2015.
Graham’s relationship with Meghan McCain, meanwhile, has soured largely due to his unwavering support of Trump.
She took to X, then called Twitter, in October 2021 to distance herself from the senator after he questioned an account in her audio memoir, Bad Republican.
“Lindsey Graham may consider himself a member of my family, but he is not and hasn’t been for a very long time,” McCain said.
“He certainly doesn’t speak for me or my life experiences. Full stop. The media should stop treating him like he is an expert on anything McCain related.”
Satirical political blogger Jeff Tiedrich, meanwhile, also reacted to Graham’s papal musings, “Are you high right now?” he asked.
Journalist Aaron Rupar replied simply: “Wut.”
“Are you ok?” Republicans Against Trump asked.
Questioned by reporters as he boarded Marine One for a rally in Michigan on Tuesday evening, Trump said he had “no preference” as to who should be the next leader of the Roman Catholic Church, before praising Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York.
Dolan, considered a conservative within the church, will be one of 10 American cardinal electors who will join the conclave in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel on May 7.
Their votes will help determine whether the church continues along the relatively progressive path charted by Pope Francis or shifts course back toward a more traditional doctrine.
