Directed to Stand Behind Him

By David Crush | | Politics & Religion | 10 min read

Colored-pencil illustration: in a sunlit oval office, a man in a dark suit sits at a carved wooden desk with his back to the viewer and his head bowed. Seven Catholic bishops in black cassocks, magenta sashes, and skullcaps stand behind him with their hands folded in prayer, one resting a hand on his shoulder. A small gold commemorative coin glows on the desk. In the foreground, a hand holds up a phone that is recording the scene.

On October 22, twelve Catholic bishops went to the White House to talk about immigration enforcement, visas for religious workers, and human dignity. First they sat through a policy meeting with administration staff. Then, as Milwaukee Archbishop Jeffrey Grob tells it, they were “ushered into the Oval Office.”

“The president greeted us, took a seat at his desk and presented us with commemorative tokens. We were then directed to stand behind him and pray.”

Photos were taken. “Unbeknownst to the group of bishops a video was also taken.” Margo Martin, a special assistant to the president, posted it. It went out twelve days before the midterms. Grob says none of the bishops gave permission.

Two days later, ESPN’s College GameDay broadcast from Salt Lake City. Before the show, the Utah Student Experience Instagram account, posting together with the university’s official account, put up a video with the caption “Best @patmcafeeshow impression?” One student called Pat McAfee corny. Another called him creepy. That Saturday, on air, McAfee said the account had posted “something talking a little trash about me last night, which I certainly love.”

By Monday he did not love it. “I’ve never been more uncomfortable, honestly, in my life,” he told his audience.

The Same Act

Here is the claim. These are one story told on two stages. Modern conservatism sells itself as the alpha in the room, blessed by God and afraid of nothing. Look closer and the blessing is borrowed and the toughness is a costume. It wears both until they cost something. Then it plays the victim.

Trump needed the look of the Church’s approval, so he borrowed it from twelve men who had come to talk about immigrants. McAfee needs the look of a man nothing can rattle, and two college students with a phone took it from him in one weekend.

The Photo

Grob titled his statement “A Public Apology.” He wrote: “I feel a heavy sadness, not only over the pain I caused, but also for the fact that something so sacred to a group of religious leaders, prayer to our Heavenly Father, would be manipulated in that way.” Bishop William Joensen of Des Moines wrote: “I wish I had been more shrewd and less simple, like those who exploited our meeting for partisan political purposes.”

Not every bishop in the room sees it that way. Denver Archbishop James Golka, who led the prayer, told his archdiocese’s magazine that he knew the meeting “could be shared and that some might use it for political purposes,” and he went anyway, because “this is what Catholics do. We pray for people.” I take him at his word. Praying for a president is old Christian practice. Turning that prayer into a campaign video twelve days before an election is not, and that was not his decision.

Leo XIV is the first American pope. Last November he called this country’s treatment of immigrants “extremely disrespectful.” When the United States and Israel went to war with Iran in February, he spoke against it with growing force. On April 12, Trump posted: “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.” Then he posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus. Four days later, in Cameroon, Leo answered:

“Blessed are the peacemakers. But woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.”

When the BBC asked the White House about the bishops’ regrets, spokeswoman Taylor Rogers did not address them. She said:

“There has never been a greater president for Catholic Americans than President Trump, and his strong record proves it.”

The bishops came to talk about immigration enforcement and left as props. Afterward Grob heard from people “who felt wounded because of the ways they or their family had been harmed by the president’s policies.” Their own pope calls the treatment of immigrants extremely disrespectful. I have never seen immigrants in this country treated worse in my lifetime. That is the record the White House says proves it.

I wrote about how churches got recruited into politics wholesale in How Churches Got Used. This is the retail version, and we have seen it before.

On June 1, 2020, federal officers cleared mostly peaceful protesters out of Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House, with pepper balls and chemical irritants. The operation began at 6:23 p.m. and was finished by 6:50. At 7:01, Trump walked across the cleared park to St. John’s Church and held up a Bible for the cameras. He did not open it. He did not pray. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, had not been told he was coming.

“It almost looked like a prop. … I was outraged that he felt that he had the license to do that, and that he would abuse our sacred symbols and our sacred space in that way.”

In 2021 the Interior Department’s inspector general found that the Park Police had planned the clearing so a contractor could install fencing, not for the president’s walk. That review covered only the Park Police, not the six other agencies on the scene. Take it at full strength anyway. Whatever the gas was for, he chose to walk across ground it had cleared eleven minutes earlier so he could pose with a Bible. In 2020 the prop was a book, and the church did not know he was coming. In 2026 the props were bishops, and they did not know about the camera.

Jesus covered this. “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward” (Matthew 6:5). The next verse says where prayer belongs instead: “go into your room and shut the door.” The Oval Office has a door. Somebody left a camera running.

He also told us what to watch for. “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:15–16). I held Elon Musk up to that verse in The Man in the Mirror. Here the fruit is already picked: a pope insulted, a Bible held up over a gassed park, twelve bishops arranged behind a desk. Trump is the wolf. The bishops were the wool.

The Bro

McAfee was an All-Pro punter for the Indianapolis Colts. In 2023 he walked away from a four-year, $120 million deal with FanDuel to take his show to ESPN. That deal, as reported, pays him about $17 million a year for roughly 230 three-hour shows plus GameDay every Saturday. He spent years at WWE’s commentary desk and has wrestled at WrestleMania. The brand is the guy who will do anything: loud, shirtless, unbothered.

In Salt Lake City he picked Houston to beat sixth-ranked Utah “10 times out of 10,” then signed off: “I’ll never see you again, hopefully.” Utah won 21–13. That is trash talk, and trash talk is fine. It is the job.

Then came Monday. If the students had said it “on their own blogs, all good,” he explained. “The university puts that out?” Then he asked his audience:

“Has anything like really scary happened at like a college gathering in the state of Utah recently?”

And:

“Do we think we should be amplifying reasons for why people hate my guts as a university?”

On September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at an event at Utah Valley University, about forty miles south of where McAfee stood. A man was murdered at a college gathering. McAfee reached for it to describe two students calling him corny. If GameDay ever goes back to Utah, he said, “I think I’ll have COVID or something.”

I love wrestling, and wrestling is honest about the act. Everyone in the building knows the heel is playing a part. The word Jesus used for the men praying on street corners, hypocrites, meant stage actors. I wrote about that in The Oldest Booking Sheet. The hypocrite plays the part and swears it is real. On Saturday McAfee loved the trash talk. By Monday it was a security concern. One of those was the character.

Watch him when there is no college crowd to play to. On August 11, he met the president on a rainy tarmac in Cleveland, in a T-shirt and a backward hat, walked with him to Marine One, and sat beside him in the front row at the Patriot Games. Two students with a phone were too much for him. Trump, he would stand in the rain for.

Who Actually Isn’t Safe

When McAfee shook that hand on camera, he did not stop to ask who it made uncomfortable. The families Grob heard from. The immigrant families in Colorado that Golka says are afraid of stepped-up enforcement. The immigrants watching at home. That was theirs to sit with. When two students called him creepy, the whole world was supposed to stop, and a university got the blame for his safety. His comfort is a crisis. Theirs is a bit.

Sit with that.

He has about 230 three-hour shows a year. He found time to ride along with the president. He found time to spend a Monday on two students and an Instagram caption. How does he not find an hour for what it is like to be an immigrant in this country right now? Or for the people to whom $17 million a year is a sentence that does not parse?

Instead he plays the jester. A jester has a job at court. He keeps the room laughing so nobody looks too long at the throne. McAfee is a useful idiot for people like Trump. His noise fills the room while someone else pays.

Learn the Difference

I follow Jesus. He was not vague about men like this. When the bill comes due for the rich man in the costume, he does not pay it. He asks for sympathy.

No. You aren’t the victim. Jesus didn’t bless you. Learn the difference.

Go back to the order of things in Grob’s account. The president took his seat. He handed out commemorative tokens. Then he told the bishops where to stand. A token is what you get for showing up to somebody else’s event.

Further Reading

The bishops:

Trump and Pope Leo:

Lafayette Square:

McAfee:

Scripture quoted from the NRSVUE: Matthew 6:5–6, Matthew 7:15–16

Companion essays:

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