In the corridors of Capitol Hill this week, two very different battles bearing Donald Trump’s name are unfolding. One is loud and legislative, a bold eleventh-hour push to slash taxes for corporations. The other is quieter, more philosophical — but it might just leave the deeper mark. At its center: a fierce accusation that Trump, along with Vice President JD Vance, is leading an “all-out assault” on the core of the Christian message.
These are twin dramas — one political, one moral — and together, they paint a vivid picture of the contradictions and convictions shaping Trump’s second presidency.
The Tax Crusade: Factories First, Details Later
It started with a closed-door briefing. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett presented what some lawmakers described as a surprise: Trump doesn’t just want to extend the 2017 tax cuts. He wants something bigger.
The proposal is ambitious — and expensive. At its heart is full expensing for factories and equipment, a tax mechanism that would allow companies to immediately write off the full cost of building new U.S. facilities. That includes the factory floor itself — a rarely proposed perk. Trump also wants auto loan deductibility for American-made cars, and a sharp cut in the corporate tax rate for manufacturers, from 21% to 15%.
In essence: bring your factories back home, and you can write off the entire investment on day one.
For Trump, it’s economic nationalism with a turbocharger. For Congress, it’s a headache. The House is already looking to trim $1.5 trillion in spending. Moderate Republicans are drawing red lines around Medicaid. Now they’re being asked to accommodate billions more in tax cuts — fast.
Some senators were caught flat-footed. “I haven’t even heard of the factory proposal,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) admitted. Others are privately wondering whether this was Trump’s plan all along, or a last-minute addition driven by campaign optics.
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The Culture War Pope Didn’t Want
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, another story is playing out — this one, less legislative but arguably more explosive.
British author Robert Harris, whose novels dissect the corridors of power with scalpel-like precision, has leveled a blistering critique at Trump and Vice President Vance, calling them hypocrites and heretics — not in name, but in action.
“Trump and Vance have launched an all-out assault on everything the Christian message is,” Harris told The Times. “We’re preached at by billionaires and tech bros without any apparent sense of irony.”
He was responding to a moment steeped in symbolism: JD Vance, the Silicon Valley-funded senator from Ohio and now Vice President, was the last person publicly photographed with Pope Francis before his death.
“It looked to me like the Pope was quite aware of who he’d got in his room — and was pretty keen to see the back of him,” Harris said.
To Harris, a self-professed Catholic, the irony is rich and bitter. The Christian tradition, he argues, stands for welcoming strangers, protecting the vulnerable, and caring for the poor. Trump’s policies — from immigration crackdowns to Medicaid cuts to the glorification of corporate wealth — invert that message.
The timing couldn’t be more pointed. As the Vatican prepares for its conclave on May 7 to select a new pope, reports suggest MAGA-aligned Catholics are pushing for a more “traditional” pontiff — a hardliner who would reflect their cultural conservatism rather than Francis’ pastoral outreach.
Faith vs. Power
What we’re seeing, in real time, is a widening gap between the rhetoric of moral leadership and the machinery of political power. In Trump’s America, Christian symbols are frequently invoked — often on stages draped in flags and gold — but the substance behind them is fiercely contested.
Trump’s economic platform paints him as a builder — of factories, of jobs, of national pride. But for critics like Harris, he’s just as much a demolisher — of compassion, humility, and the very Christian ethos he claims to uphold.
This duality has always been part of Trump’s political genius and his polarizing legacy. To his base, he’s a savior reclaiming lost glory. To his critics, he’s the ultimate secular populist, cloaked in the language of faith while advancing the gospel of greed.
Now, as he seeks to reshape both America’s tax code and, indirectly, the moral tone of the West, the real question may not be whether he succeeds — but whether we recognize the full cost of letting power speak louder than principle.
