Donald Trump is the Least Christ-Like President in American History

The president has taken down his blasphemous meme because "a lot of people weren't understanding his humor."

Credit: Truth Social

This weekend Donald Trump went on a social media tirade of religious proportions. He shared an AI slop image of himself depicted (literally) as Jesus Christ, applying a healing hand to the forehead of a man, while pious, red-blooded, presumably MAGA Americans—a soldier, a praying woman, a clinician—look on in awe. In the background eagles and fighter jets soar against fireworks, the American flag, and the Statue of Liberty.

He has since deleted it because, according to JD Vance, “a lot of people weren’t understanding his humor.” Trump also fired off a 334-word Truth Social missive attacking Pope Leo for all manner of heresies against MAGA. The post is too long and garbled to quote in full here, but the highlights include the following:

“Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy … I like his brother Louis much better than I like him, because Louis is all MAGA. He gets it, and Leo doesn’t! … I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do … If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”

The natural response to all of this is to say that someone needs to take grandpa’s phone away. In a sane world, the above would be grounds for instant disqualification from office. It isn’t just the deranged rambling, the nonlinear thinking, and the childlike inability to keep from lashing out in the stupidest possible way; it’s the fact that the president chose as the target of his ire the sitting Pope, the first-ever American Pope, a figure beloved by literally billions of people.

This isn’t the first time Trump has blasphemed in public. Last year, he Truthed an image of himself as the Pope. He spent this Easter not by solemnly pondering Christ’s resurrection, but by threatening the people of Iran in a profanity-laced tirade. In 2020, amid the Black Lives Matter protests, he had Lafayette Square forcibly cleared so he could stand in front of St. John’s Church holding a Bible upside down. This particular incident prompted Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington—who oversees St. John’s—to remark:

“The president just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese, without permission, as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teaching of Jesus, and everything that our churches stand for … I am outraged.”

Further back in mists of time, when asked by a pair of journalists for his favorite Bible verse, Trump made it clear that he couldn’t name any:

Trump’s not the only member of the administration who’s taken to menacing clergy. In recent weeks, there were credible media reports that senior Defense Department officials had summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s former diplomat to the US, to the Pentagon. The occasion: a formal dressing down in response to the Vatican’s statements opposing war, a fairly mainstream message for any pontiff. To drive their point home, the officials even invoked the Avignon Papacy, a 14th-century arrangement in which the French crown asserted state control over seven successive Popes. Subtle!

All of this has further inflamed the MAGA base, which is already up in arms against Trump for his disastrous war in Iran, and the economic devastation it is creating here at home. It’s worth noting that, during all the religious controversies prior to this dust-up, the president’s closest boosters stuck by him. And they still may find their way back into his good graces, even after this latest heresy.

Still, the kind of blowback we’re seeing from some of MAGA’s leading lights right now is noteworthy, and could be a harbinger of a sustained crackup inside Trump’s coalition. A sample of the reactions so far:

• Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said of the Trump/Jesus image: “I completely denounce this and I’m praying against it!!!”

• MAGA influencer Riley Gaines posted: “Seriously, I cannot understand why he’d post this … God shall not be mocked.” (Trump responded that he’s “not a big fan of” her.)

• The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles wrote that “it behooves the President both spiritually and politically to delete the picture, no matter the intent.”

• Mike Cernovich argued that this kind of imagery “would not be tolerated for any other religion.”

• Milo Yiannopoulos wrote simply: “Oh hell no.”

Things seem to be going from bad to worse for this presidency. The war in Iran is a failure. Trump didn’t honor his signature promise of bringing down prices, and instead has sent them skyrocketing. MAGA is in open revolt against all of this. And in response, Trump has chosen to dump gasoline on the fire by literally comparing himself to Christ while waging a rhetorical war against the man that billions of people regard as Christ’s representative on Earth. As Pepper Brooks once said, “It’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off.”

Going all the way back to 2016, buy-in from the religious right was key to legitimizing Trump’s candidacy, and winning him the presidency both times. This was always a tenuous bargain. It remains to be seen whether these latest actions will permanently sever the arrangement. But, as one of the president’s own followers on Truth Social wrote in response to his post: “If you call yourself a Christian and you’re not outraged by this, you really need to re-evaluate your faith.”

Sarah Matthews is an Advisory Board Member and Spokesperson for Home of the Brave, which exists to show Americans the real-world consequences of this administration’s policies, and to highlight what bravery looks like in defense of American democracy. She was White House Deputy Press Secretary until she resigned on January 6, 2021.