The dust-up between Pope Francis and Donald Trump is "a contrived controversy" caused by a misleading question to the Pontiff by a reporter, the Catholic League's Bill Donohue told
Newsmax TV on Thursday.
"The Pope was asked to comment on something that is not Trump's position," Donohue told "The Steve Malzberg Show" in an interview. "The reporter actually had the audacity to say can a Catholic vote for a man like this after misrepresenting what Trump said."
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Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, added:
"This is the same old anti-Catholicism revisited once again."
Donohue said that "Trump has three principles dealing with immigration: one of them is borders, which the Catholic Church has no problem with, and the other is that we have to be a nation of laws and a nation that serves its citizens.
"That goes way beyond just a border," he told Malzberg. "This is a contrived controversy."
Donohue described Pope Francis as "a very genuine guy and he's going to give you the answers straight-up — regardless of how it may look, politically speaking."
But he also gave Trump "the benefit of the doubt."
"He had two qualifiers there: If that's what the person said …, and if he's only in favor of borders," Donohue said. "Those conditions have not been reported by most of the media — and I think it's despicable.
"They're out there to smear Trump."
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