The Pope, as it turns out, has definitely got bars. At least in the hands of the writers from The Late Show. After a week in which Pope Leo XIV and Donald Trump exchanged barbed comments about each other’s competence and devotion to the word of God, Stephen Colbert and company did what they do best and turned the bizarre papal beef into a Kendrick Lamar parody song, naturally.
In the cold open to Thursday night’s (April 16) show, the infamous 2024 battle between Kendrick Lamar and Drake that was definitively won with K-Dot’s lacerating, Grammy-winning “Not Like Us” firebomb was given a holy makeover to fit the bizarre back-and-forth between the American president and the first-ever American Pope.
“Hey, peppers on my beef, yo/ Leo/ Here to defend my papacy, bro,” the faux Leo raps in a distinctive Chicago accent over Lamar’s bouncy backing track. “You got JD/ I got JC, though/ You keep Rubio/ I ride around with the holy trio/ I’m up in the Vatican/ You’re still in denial/ I’m the Holy See/ You’re the holy senile/ How many mentions of you in the Epstein files?/ Certified bestie with that certified pedophile.”
The sanctified slams play out over familiar news footage of Trump wildly waving around a soldier’s sword, cavorting at a party with late convicted pedophile Epstein and the AI-generated image that helped set off the war of words this week of Trump as a Jesus-like figure putting healing hands on a sick man.
“Pope, Pope, Pope, Pope, Pope/ Lemme do my prayer/ Pope, Pope, Pope, Pope, Pope/ Big hat on my hair,” the phony pontiff raps in a staccato fashion. “Seems like it’s past time you retired/ Called Jesus a doctor/ And it’s probably Alzheimer’s,” he adds before swapping out the Lamar refrain for a more devout diss: “They not pious, they not pious.”
In a rare retreat, the White House took down the image of Trump as Jesus after widespread condemnation from both sides of the aisle in D.C., as well as from many religious leaders and MAGA faithful. But not before Trump doubled-down on lashing out at the Pope and referring to the leader of the world’s more than 1.4 billion Catholics as “weak on crime” and “terrible on foreign policy.”
The attack on Pope Leo, combined with the shocking AI image from Trump, led former altar boy Jack White to question why any Catholic is still supporting the president. “Hey evangelical Christians? Remember that anti-Christ you been squawking about all these years and how he’d present himself as Christlike and bring about the end of days with a final war in the Middle East involving Jerusalem?,” White wrote alongside a repost of the image. “Well…check out your boy now! Listen, if the felonies, epstein files, rapes, bombing of schoolchildren, gestapo ICE agents attacking his own citizens, threatening to invade Greenland, Cuba, Venezuela and Iran all didn’t convince you that you fell for this deranged grifter, maybe this lil’ post will?”
Watch the “They Not Pious” video below.
