Trump Posts Deranged New Jesus Picture After Backlash

Donald Trump is back on Truth Social doing what he does best: pouring gasoline on a fire of his own making.

Just days after taking heat for posting an AI-generated image that appeared to cast himself as Jesus Christ, the 79-year-old president jumped right back into the same toxic territory Wednesday morning with yet another religiously charged image. This time, Trump shared a screenshot of an X post showing Jesus embracing him in front of an American flag, then added his own taunt: “The Radical Left Lunatics might not like this, but I think it is quite nice!!!!”

The new post landed after a wave of backlash over an earlier image Trump had shared Sunday, one that depicted him in a Christ-like role healing a hospital patient with glowing hands while wrapped in a swirl of hyper-patriotic imagery, including bald eagles, the Statue of Liberty, and the Lincoln Memorial. The picture was widely condemned as blasphemous and self-aggrandizing, not just by his critics, but by some of the very conservative voices who usually rush to defend him.

In one of the more bizarre twists in the saga, Trump later claimed he posted the first image because he thought it showed him as a doctor, not Jesus. He said he believed it had something to do with the Red Cross, an explanation that only fueled more mockery online and on television, where even mainstream and late-night commentators treated the defense like political performance art gone completely off the rails.

The controversy did not happen in a vacuum. Trump’s now-deleted AI image came right after he launched into a long, angry screed against Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, who has been openly critical of his administration’s posture on immigration, Iran, Venezuela, and other flashpoint issues. Trump accused the pontiff of being weak on crime and absurdly suggested Leo would not have become pope if Trump had not been in the White House.

What made the backlash especially striking was how quickly it spilled across ideological lines. Riley Gaines, one of Trump’s usual allies on the right, publicly questioned why he would share the image at all and warned that “God shall not be mocked.” Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham went even further, calling the post “OUTRAGEOUS blasphemy” and saying Trump should take it down and ask forgiveness. Soon after, he did remove it.

Vice President JD Vance, however, tried to clean up the mess by suggesting Trump was merely joking and that the image was removed because people were not appreciating his sense of humor. But by then, the damage was already done. For critics, the episode was just the latest example of Trump’s endless need to center himself in every possible story, even if that means flirting with outright sacrilege while the White House tries to pass it off as a punchline.