President Donald Trump claimed Monday that he shared an artificially created image depicting him as Jesus because he thought it was portraying him as a doctor.
Trump, speaking to reporters during a last-minute press gaggle, confirmed he posted the image to Truth Social over the weekend.
“It was me. I did post it,” the president said. “I thought it was me as the doctor, and had to do with Red Cross as a Red Cross worker there, which we support, and only the fake news could come up with that one.”
The image, posted on Sunday night, sparked outrage from religious leaders and influencers, and it was deleted by Monday morning. The image showed the president draped in red and white robes, his hand resting on the forehead of a man wearing a patient’s gown who appears to be in a hospital bed as if to heal him, with a bright light surrounding the man’s head and Trump’s other hand, invoking elements of Jesus healing the sick.
Behind Trump, U.S. iconography — such as the Lincoln Memorial, bald eagles, and what appears to be U.S. troops and military planes in the sky — is also depicted.
Trump continued, “I just heard about it, and I said, ‘How did they come up with that?’ It’s supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better. And I do make people better. I make people a lot better.”
Riley Gaines, an outspoken critic of transgender people playing in women’s sports and a conservative commentator, said in a post on X, “I cannot understand why he’d post this. Is he looking for a response? Does he actually think this?”
Gaines continued, “Either way, two things are true. 1) a little humility would serve him well 2) God shall not be mocked.”
“This is gross blasphemy,” Brilyn Hollyhand, a Gen Z political commentator, wrote on X. “Faith is not a prop. You don’t need to portray yourself as a savior when your record should speak for itself. The same God who saved Trump’s life from that bullet sent His son Jesus to die for our sins. He died for Trump just as much as for you and I.”
The president’s relationship with religious groups has been strained recently, with Pope Leo XIV criticizing the president’s rhetoric over the Iran war and accusing the U.S. of fueling a “demonic cycle of evil.”
Trump told reporters he would not apologize to the pope after a Sunday night Truth Social post in which the president said the Pope was “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.”
POPE LEO DISMISSES TRUMP’S IRAN WAR DIGS: ‘I HAVE NO FEAR OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’
“Pope Leo said things that are wrong, and he was very much against what I’m doing with regard to Iran, and you cannot have a nuclear Iran,” Trump said Monday afternoon. “Pope Leo would not be happy with the end result. You have hundreds of millions of people dead, and it’s not going to happen. So I can’t — I think he’s very weak on crime and other things.”
Trump’s comments came after the pope told reporters Monday morning that he has “no fear of the Trump administration or speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the Church is here to do.”
Discount Applied Successfully!
Your savings have been added to the cart.