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On Sunday, April 12, President Trump took to Truth Social with a captionless piece of art. The now-deleted image<\/a>, which appears to be AI-generated, shows Trump wearing a flowing white and red robe, holding his hand over the head of a dying man in an apparently healing gesture, and standing in the center of a backdrop of almost comically patriotic imagery. The implication of divine healing, paired with Trump\u2019s tunic-like garb, makes a clear connection between the president and Jesus.\u00a0<\/p>\n The post came after Pope Leo XIV, a vocal critic<\/a> of the U.S.-Israel war in Iran, spoke out against Trump\u2019s threats to wipe out the Iranian civilization if Tehran did not agree to open the Strait of Hormuz. Leo\u2019s rebuke of the war spurred a series of insults from Trump\u2014as well as seemingly inspired the aforementioned Jesus-like image, which Trump posted just minutes after disparaging Leo on his official social media accounts.<\/p>\n In just a few hours, Trump\u2019s post caused the term \u201cTrump as Jesus\u201d to shoot to the top<\/a> of Google\u2019s most-searched list in the U.S., inspiring hundreds of reactions on social media and sparking a rare wave of dissent from some of his most ardent supporters, many of whom view the image as sacrilege.\u00a0<\/p>\n Certainly, the image demonstrates a major overstep from a president who has repeatedly pushed the limits<\/a> of democratic power. But this isn’t the first time that his administration\u2019s social media accounts have featured problematic messaging: For months, the White House, Department of Labor, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have been posting thinly veiled white supremacist rhetoric, often to little public outcry. Now that Trump\u2019s posts have offended his own Christian supporters, though, the backlash is taking off\u2014and it feels like far too little, far too late.\u00a0<\/p>\n The public back-and-forth between Trump and Leo started on Tuesday, April 7, when Leo told reporters<\/a> that Trump\u2019s threats against the Iranian civilization were \u201ctruly unacceptable.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He went on to call the president\u2019s plan to destroy Iranian bridges and power plants a \u201csign of the hatred, the division, the destruction human beings are capable of, and we all want to work for peace.\u201d Then, over the weekend, Leo added that the U.S. and Israel\u2019s attack on Iran has been fueled by a \u201cdelusion of omnipotence.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Following that commentary, Trump issued a lengthy social media post<\/a> on April 12 calling Leo \u201cWEAK on crime and terrible for foreign policy\u201d and adding that he should \u201cstop catering to the Radical Left.\u201d (Leo has since told reporters that he\u2019s \u201cnot afraid of the Trump administration or of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel.\u201d)<\/p>\n Less than an hour after Trump\u2019s post calling out the pope, the president shared the AI image of himself as a Jesus-like figure. The meme was later deleted on Monday morning, April 13. Predictably, the post has inspired an influx of negative reactions<\/a> from Trump\u2019s dissenters. More notably, though, it has also sparked some vocal outcries from his most ardent supporters<\/a>, many of whom have historically been reticent to criticize the president at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n Riley Gaines, a former collegiate swimmer who has built a political platform bolstered with anti-trans rhetoric<\/a>, wrote on X<\/a>: \u201c1) a little humility would serve him well.\u00a02) God shall not be mocked.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Megan Basham, a conservative Protestant Christian writer and commentator, added<\/a>: \u201cI don\u2019t 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.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n And Isabel Brown, a Catholic podcaster and conservative influencer, wrote<\/a>: \u201cThis post is, frankly, disgusting and unacceptable, but also a profound misreading of the American people experiencing a true and beautiful revival of faith in Christ in the midst of our broken culture.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump attempted to deflect the criticism on Monday morning, telling reporters<\/a> that the image \u201cwasn’t a depiction. I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor.\u201d<\/p>\n The response to Trump\u2019s AI Jesus image has been swift, broad, and almost universally negative<\/a>. But this is far from the first time that Trump has posted inflammatory artwork to his official social media channels: In fact, it’s been a consistent tool for his administration throughout his second term.<\/p>\n Last summer, the Trump administration began posting pro-America artwork to its official DHS accounts in between dozens of other posts celebrating mass deportations<\/a>, using dehumanizing language like \u201ccriminal illegal aliens<\/a>,\u201d and defending Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids<\/a>. The artwork included a painting titled American Progress<\/em>, created by John Gast in 1872, with the caption \u201cA Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth defending.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n American Progress <\/em>has long been used as an embodiment of the concept of \u201cManifest Destiny<\/a>,\u201d a belief held by many during the 19th century (and beyond) that the United States was destined by divine right to control the entire territory from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. For decades, this dogma was used to explain and legitimize the forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of Native Americans<\/a>.<\/p>\n And since then, Trump\u2019s administration has published multiple posts containing what experts warn are white supremacist dog whistles.\u00a0<\/p>\n In August 2025, an investigation<\/a> from from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) found that the “DHS and other agencies have used imagery associated with the white nationalist movement and other parts of the extreme right to promote and recruit for ICE,” describing the posts as “ranging from overt nationalist and antisemitic imagery to coded racist dog whistles about the supposed loss of white American culture.”<\/p>\n On New Year\u2019s Eve, the White House\u2019s X account posted a photo of Trump alongside the word \u201cremigration.\u201d<\/a> That’s a decades-old European concept centered on the expulsion of nonwhite people and immigrants deemed \u201cunassimilated,\u201d Wendy Via, cofounder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told The New York Times<\/em> in January<\/a>. <\/p>\n Also in January, the White House and DHS jointly posted a recruitment ad for ICE captioned with the words \u201cWE\u2019LL HAVE OUR HOME AGAIN,” which is also the name of a song written by members of an a cappella group called the Pine Tree Riots, a self-described<\/a> \u201cpro-white fraternal order.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Multiple Trump administration posts<\/a> have echoed the title of the 1978 book Which Way Western Man?<\/em>, which is a common source used by white supremacist groups to justify violence against Jewish people. As this piece<\/a> from The New York Times <\/em>explains, several others have been linked to neo-Nazi literature and QAnon conspiracies.<\/p>\n The Trump administration\u2019s official social media accounts have issued offensive and dangerous artwork since almost the moment he took office in 2025. The only difference this time is who is offended.<\/p>\nWhy did Trump post a picture of himself as Jesus?<\/h2>\n
Trump’s long history of offensive artwork<\/h2>\n