Donald Trump has always struggled with the concept of letting stuff go. No matter how absurd, the president can’t seem to give up the need to try to persuade people that his version of events is the reality. So it’s no surprise that after drawing widespread condemnation for his unholy self-comparison to Jesus Christ earlier this week, Trump is doubling down on his holiness.
Trump spent Tuesday night regaling the public with another Truth Social posting spree, capping it off Wednesday morning with a screenshot of an X post featuring an AI-generated image of Jesus Christ embracing Trump. The image caption read: “I was never a very religious man .. but doesn’t it seem, with all these satanic, demonic, child sacrificing monsters being exposed … that God might be playing his Trump card.”
In his own caption, Trump added: “the Radical Left Lunatics might not like this, but I think it is quite nice!!! President DJT”
Trump’s affinity for styling himself as a quasi-religious figure is usually treated as just another facet of his cult-of-personality MAGA theatrics. Over the weekend — amid a feud with Pope Leo XIV — the president crossed the line into blasphemy so egregiously it merited criticism from religious leaders, and from his own supporters, posting an image depicting himself as a Christ-like figure healing the sick. The president’s implausible claim that he had thought the image depicted him as a “doctor” and that it has something to do with “Red Cross” (potentially a misinterpretation of the White House’s explanation that the image was “doctored”) was almost as absurd as the post itself.
Trump also on Tuesday boosted social media posts drawing attention to Pope Leo’s criticism of him in the years before his ascent to the papacy. “Not good,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. Over the weekend, the president escalated his feud with Leo — who has been vocally critical of the war in Iran — by accusing him of being “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.”
“If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican,” Trump wrote on Sunday.
He attacked Leo again on Tuesday. “Will someone please tell Pope Leo that Iran has killed at least 42,000 innocent, completely unarmed, protesters in the last two months, and that for Iran to have a Nuclear Bomb is absolutely unacceptable,” he wrote.
The Iranian government was nowhere near the creation of a nuclear weapon, but the president has been grasping at straws for weeks now to find a plausible justification for the quagmire he’s created for the nation in the Middle East — even if it means fighting the first American pope.
On Wednesday morning, during an interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo, Trump had the gall to whine that he’s not getting enough credit. “I had the greatest year, the greatest opening year,” Trump said. “I ended eight wars, a ninth is coming, but I ended eight wars — nobody’s ever ended one war.”
“The greatest economy ever,” he continued. “But even when you have a great president, they tend to lose the midterms. It doesn’t make sense to me. We’ve had the greatest year in the history of the presidency, the first year. We should be given credit.”
“But even when you have a great president, they tend to lose the midterms. It doesn’t make sense to me. So we’re going to try turning it around,” Trump added.
If Republicans want to “turn it around” in time for the midterms, they may want to start by trying to persuade their leader to stop attacking religious figures while casting himself as a divine savior.
