Donald Trump on Wednesday posted an AI-generated meme showing Jesus embracing him, days after drawing fierce backlash from some supporters for posting an image that depicted him as Jesus. The new image, a screengrab from X, showed Trump standing at a microphone with Jesus’s arms draped around him and an American flag in the background.
Trump wrote, “The Radical Left Lunatics might not like this, but I think it is quite nice!!!” The post landed after he had faced pushback earlier this week over the older image, which he put on Truth Social late Sunday and which was later removed on Monday.
The president tried to explain the earlier uproar in a CBS News interview on Monday, saying he saw it as a picture of himself as a doctor, not a religious figure. “I viewed that as a picture of me being a doctor in fixing — you had the Red Cross right there, you had, you know, medical people surrounding me,” Trump said, adding, “And I was like the doctor, you know, as a little fun playing the doctor and making people better. So that's what it was viewed as. That's what most people thought.” He also said, “People were confused.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday he asked Trump to delete the earlier image. “I did ask him to delete it,” Johnson said. The episode became another test of Trump’s relationship with Christian conservatives, some of whom were already unsettled by the first post and the reaction it set off.
The latest meme arrived as Trump sharpened his public clash with Pope Leo over the Iran war. On Thursday, Trump said, “I have nothing against the pope,” and “I'm not fighting with him,” even as he falsely claimed, “The pope made a statement, he says Iran can have a nuclear weapon,” followed by, “And I say Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.” The pope has not said Iran should have nuclear weapons.
Pope Leo, speaking Thursday in Bamenda, Cameroon, used the same day to press the opposite message. He urged leaders to choose dialogue for a peaceful end to the Iran conflict and warned against those who use religion to justify war. “The masters of war pretend not to know that it takes only a moment to destroy, yet often a lifetime is not enough to rebuild,” the pope said, adding, “Blessed are the peacemakers, but woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.” He also said, “The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants,” in remarks that did not mention Trump or Iran’s nuclear program by name.
The exchange leaves Trump and Pope Leo in a public rift that has only grown sharper in the 7th week of the administration’s fight over Iran. Leo has become one of the most vocal critics of the war and has repeatedly urged dialogue, while Trump is pressing the opposite line and mixing it with a running dispute over religion, images and who speaks for faith.