On January 6, 2021, Liz Cheney watched fellow Republicans in Congress line up to sign sheets objecting to the electoral vote. In her 2023 memoir, Oath and Honor, she said they were afflicted by a plague of cowardice. One of them, Mark Green of Tennessee, later became a small piece of Trump lore after reportedly muttering, “The things we do for the Orange Jesus,” as he signed his name. Green denied saying it, and the next year Trump praised him for his many political talents.
That old jab has come back in a stranger form. This week, Trump circulated an AI-generated image of himself as the Christian Lord and Saviour during an escalating public feud with Pope Leo XIV, then deleted it before speaking to reporters at the White House the next day. Asked about the post, he said, “I did post it.” He added that he had thought the image showed him as a doctor tied to the Red Cross, then brushed off criticism with, “And only the fake news could come up with that one.”
Trump did not stop there. He said, “It’s supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better, and I do make people better. I make people a lot better.” By Wednesday, he had posted another AI-generated image of himself standing alongside Jesus, with Jesus’ arm wrapped around his shoulder. Trump captioned it, “The Radical Left Lunatics might not like this, but I think it is quite nice!!!”
The images fit the style of Trump 2.0 as described in the article: a president who has gilded the White House to resemble a profane copy of the Vatican, slapped his name on everything and repeatedly reminded the country that he recognizes no earthly limits on his power. That posture has extended beyond symbols. He has spoken of war in the Middle East and of conquering other lands, while in January telling The Times, “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
The tension is not that Trump is using religious imagery. It is that the old Trump 1.0 insult, “Orange Jesus,” once aimed at Republicans who knew better and followed anyway, now reads less like mockery than diagnosis. In Trump’s hands, the joke has been inverted. He is no longer the object of the line. He is acting as if he is the thing it named.