MS NOW’s Nicolle Wallace said Secretary of State Marco Rubio was on “clean-up duty” Thursday at his meeting with Pope Leo at the Vatican, following weeks of back-and-forth between the first American-born pontiff and President Donald Trump over the war with Iran.
Earlier this week, Rubio was asked whether his visit was an attempt to “smooth things over with the pope.” The secretary of state said the meeting had been planned earlier but acknowledged “obviously we had some stuff that happened.”
Last month, Trump took aim at Leo in a series of Truth Social posts, calling the pope “WEAK on crime” and “terrible for Foreign Policy” after the Catholic leader criticized the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
“Whatever lame excuse Rubio came up with for Trump’s bizarre obsession with attacking the pope over and over and over again is just the latest humiliation for the secretary of state forced to navigate Trump’s daily reversals on the status of the war with Iran,” Wallace said.
Thursday’s meeting was not Rubio’s first embarrassment, according to the “Deadline: White House” host, in a “busy week” for the secretary of state. On Tuesday, Rubio, who also serves as Trump’s national security adviser, took questions about the war at a White House press briefing, which Wallace said she “watched with a little bit of amusement.”








