Trump’s get-well wish for the cancer-stricken pope quickly became a shout-out to the pontiff’s brother.
President Donald Trump wished Pope Leo XIV well after the pope’s cancer surgery on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2026, then pivoted to the pontiff’s Trump-supporting brother.
Trump, 80, took questions on the tarmac at Laughlin/Bullhead International Airport in Bullhead City, Ariz., just before boarding Air Force One. He had come from a midterm campaign rally in the city. A day earlier, on Tuesday, Oct. 13, the Vatican said Leo, 71, had undergone surgery to remove the lower lobe of his right lung after a lung cancer diagnosis.
“I want to see Pope Leo get well,” Trump told reporters. “I hear the prognosis for that type of a problem — it’s cancer, it’s big stuff anytime you have cancer — but the prognosis seems to be good. I’ve watched, and we just want to wish him our love and our best wishes.”
From there, the president moved to the pope’s eldest brother, Louis Prevost.
“His brother’s a friend of mine, he’s a great — he’s a fantastic guy. And his wife, you know, they’re big Trump supporters. They have MAGA all over their house, and I can say that his brother loves him a lot, loves the pope a lot, and that’s good. Good enough for me,” Trump said.
The Brother in the Oval Office
Prevost, who lives in Florida, has posted his support for Trump and the MAGA movement on Facebook. He met the president at the White House days after Leo was declared pope, and a White House photo shows him and his wife, Deborah, smiling beside Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office.
He sat next to Vance at Pope Leo’s inauguration Mass at the Vatican in May 2025. In June, he was invited to Trump’s 80th birthday MMA fight at the White House, where he was pictured mingling with the vice president.
His social media posts have also gone after Democrats and the transgender community. He once shared a video that referred to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a curse word.
‘I Like His Brother Louis Much Better’
The pope himself has drawn a different kind of attention from Trump. In a Truth Social post in April 2026, the president wrote: “I like his brother Louis much better than I like him, because Louis is all MAGA.” He also called the pope soft on crime and bad on foreign policy, and said he did not want a pope who would accept a nuclear-armed Iran.
Leo has condemned Trump’s war with Iran. He has criticized immigration raids and crackdowns in the U.S. He denounced the death penalty ahead of the Pentagon’s planned livestreamed execution.
Pew polling has shown Trump’s support among Catholic voters slipping as the midterms approach. The Bullhead City stop was part of a campaign blitz through key states.
Two Brothers, Two Cancers
Shortly after the Vatican announced the pope’s diagnosis, Deborah Prevost told CBS News that her husband is being treated for multiple myeloma. He was first diagnosed in 2017 and kept the disease at a very low level after treatment in 2019 that included stem cell treatment and a clinical trial. He fell out of remission three months ago, she said, and is now in a clinical trial at a local hospital. She did not say what stage his cancer has reached.
Leo’s own prognosis has not been spelled out. Tests identified pulmonary adenocarcinoma, a common type of lung cancer, and doctors did not disclose the stage or how far it had progressed. The pope was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli University Hospital for the operation to remove a lump from his lung, and he has canceled all of his audiences until Oct. 20.
His doctors said Oct. 14 that his recovery was going as expected and that he had begun walking around his hospital room. The Vatican said he underwent blood tests and an X-ray after the surgery, and he concelebrated Mass in a hospital chapel. Tests on the removed tissue are to be carried out in the coming days.
Louis Prevost spoke with his brother before the operation, his wife said. “We keep praying, keeping spirits up for both of them,” Deborah Prevost said.
