Donald Trump is testing out a new portrayal of himself as the chosen one after deleting a post that sparked backlash for depicting him as Jesus Christ.
“The Radical Left Lunatics might not like this, but I think it is quite nice!!!!” the 79-year-old president posted to Truth Social on Wednesday morning.
His comments accompanied a screenshot of a failed MAGA-loving congressional candidate’s post on X featuring Christ embracing Trump against the backdrop of an American flag. The caption reads: “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!” It was apparently a reference to the conspiracy theory at the center of the QAnon movement that claims Trump is battling a secret cabal of child traffickers.
Trump’s new post comes hot on the heels of an uproar, even among the MAGA base, over an AI-generated image he posted of himself Sunday as the son of God.
That image featured Trump, depicted as Christ, healing a hospital patient with hands gleaming with divine light, flanked by an American flag, bald eagles, the Statue of Liberty, and the Lincoln Memorial. He later admitted to posting the image but bizarrely claimed he thought he was depicted as a “doctor.”
It also followed a vicious, 334-word tirade in which he lambasted Pope Leo XIV, who has proven consistently critical of the president’s second administration, on everything from Iran and Venezuela to immigration.
He blasted Leo for supposedly thinking “it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon” and being “weak on crime,” further claiming the pontiff, history’s first American pope, would not have been elected last May “if I wasn’t in the White House.”
The AI picture drew furious responses from across the political spectrum, even from figures who have otherwise long served as the president’s most loyal cheerleaders.
“Why? Seriously, I cannot understand why he’d post this. Is he looking for a response?” Riley Gaines, a pro-MAGA pundit, posted on X. “Does he actually think this? Either way, two things are true. 1) a little humility would serve him well 2) God shall not be mocked.”
“I don’t know if the President thought he was being funny or if he is under the influence of some substance or what possible explanation he could have for this OUTRAGEOUS blasphemy,” Megan Basham, a culture reporter at right-wing outlet The Daily Wire, added. “But he needs to take this down immediately and ask for forgiveness from the American people and then from God.”
Trump, in a rare admission of having pushed things too far, did eventually take the image down Monday.
Vice President JD Vance, who has been promoting his upcoming book about his conversion to Catholicism, suggested the president had simply been “posting a joke,” and that he took the image down when he realized people were not appreciating his sense of humor.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.
