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By Joshua Rhett Miller
Senior Reporter
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The ominous, unfulfilled threat by President Donald Trump to obliterate Iran this week signaled the "descent into corporate evil" for the United States, according to an editorial published on Friday.
Editorial staff at the Missouri-based National Catholic Reporter condemned Trump in a scathing critique days after he vowed to indiscriminately slaughter Iranians if their government failed to reopen the critical Strait of Hormuz amid the ongoing conflict.
"They will go down as three of the most reckless and defining days in the history of the U.S. presidency, an anti-Triduum that began on Easter Sunday morning," the staff wrote in Friday's editorial. "Announcing to the world that we were willing to annihilate a civilization, Donald Trump led our descent into corporate evil."
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To position the U.S. as such an extreme aggressor may also portend "some long-term consequences" that Trump might not have envisioned, the editorial said.
"Those days and words have brought us to yet another point in which we confront who we are as Americans and, more important for the Catholic community, who we are as believers," it continued. "Some indications of the answers to those questions are already in play."
Trump's threat on Tuesday that a "whole civilization" would die if the Strait of Hormuz was not reopened followed an Easter morning warning that Iranians would be "living in Hell" if they did not comply. He also vowed to blow up bridges and civilian power plants.
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The collective "outrageous tirade," his most spectacular to date, has inspired an "unlikely coalition" vehemently opposed to his intentions, which "crossed all manner of ideological boundaries" and religious divisions, the staffers wrote.
"In the civic sphere, former ardent supporters—members of Congress and popular online influencers—openly called for those responsible to defy his orders," they continued. "Others in that quickly emerging cohort urged legislators and cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment or begin impeachment proceedings leading to Trump's ouster."
The president's threatened mass killings did not come to fruition as the United States, Iran and Israel reached a tentative, two-week ceasefire on Wednesday in the war that has ravaged the Middle East.
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"Those three days were perhaps the most vivid reality check Americans have yet received regarding the danger inherent in having elected such a broken, needy and amoral individual to the highest office in the land," the editorial said. "That three-day period was singular in the danger it posed and in the inherent betrayal of U.S. ideals it represented. Seen in a larger perspective, however, those days and words represent an unsurprising result of forces intent not only on hollowing out U.S. democracy but also infusing a Christian Nationalism into the bloodstream of U.S. culture."
Trump's bombastic threats have triggered calls from across the conservative spectrum for his removal from office via the 25th Amendment, including former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, commentator Candace Owens and media personality Alex Jones.
The critiques show deep fractures within the Republican Party over Trump's handling of the conflict. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson warned on Monday that the administration had exhausted conventional military options and suggested nuclear weapons as a possible option.
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Trump's approval rating among Catholic voters has also slipped underwater amid tensions between his administration and the Vatican, new polling shows. Pope Leo XIV has criticized the president's foreign and domestic policies, and recent reports of a tense January meeting between senior Pentagon officials and the Vatican's ambassador have drawn international attention.
The staff at the National Catholic Reporter also criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, accusing him of invoking the "nonviolent Jesus to promote a war of choice."
"The religious vulgarity of Hegseth is so undisguised and noxious that it can't be ignored," the staffers wrote. "Invoking the name of Jesus to bless 'death and destruction from above' was as offensive a use of Christianity's founder as one might imagine. So was his comparing the rescue on Easter Sunday of a downed pilot to the resurrection of Jesus."
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