Newsmax TV Panel Discusses Kim Davis Visit With Pope

While Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis said the Holy See extended an unsolicited invitation for her to meet privately with Pope Francis last week, "there is some culpability here on the Vatican," Republican strategist Bradley Blakeman told Newsmax TV on Friday.

"You don't get to see the pope without an invitation," Blakeman, a public policy professor at Georgetown University, told "The Hard Line" host Ed Berliner. "And the fact that she wasn't invited in a larger group doesn't take away the fact that she didn't get in that room unless the Vatican invited her."

But Democratic media strategist Franco Ripple slammed the whole thing, exclaiming, "oh boy."

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"Now that we have the facts about the supposed Kim Davis meeting, holy mackerel!" he told Berliner. "Was she telling the truth about meeting the pope? All the signs point to no. Absolutely not."

"The Vatican Embassy supposedly made a mistake for inviting her in the first place, but she was one of dozens of people in a line to briefly greet the pope."

"But the fact that Davis and her husband are now lying about the length of time that they spent with the pope, as well as his support for her abhorrent position that is against law — any law — I don't know what she's thinking," Ripple said. "The truth always comes out."

Blakeman echoed that sentiment, though cautioning this of Davis and her attorney, Mat Staver: "If they thought they could get away with that, that the Vatican was not going to push back, shows their naiveté — but also the Vatican invited her."

"They invited her for a reason and maybe it wasn't the outcome they wanted, but it was the outcome they got."

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