Washington: Donald Trump deleted a social media post that depicted himself as Jesus Christ healing the sick – following a backlash from believers – and claimed that the image portrayed him as a doctor, not a messianic figure.
Trump posted the AI drawing to Truth Social on Sunday night (US time), minutes after he excoriated Pope Leo for opposing the Iran war and accused the first American pope of “catering to the Radical Left”.
On Monday, the president acknowledged he posted the image himself. “I did post it, and I thought it was me as the doctor, and having to do with the Red Cross,” he told reporters. “There’s a Red Cross worker there, which we support.”
There was nothing clearly depicting the Red Cross or a Red Cross worker in the image, though there was a nurse. Trump maintained it was the media’s fault for construing the image as blasphemous.
“Only the fake news could come up with that one,” he said. “I just heard about it and I said, ‘How do they come up with that?’ It’s supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better. And I do make people better.”
Trump made the comments while receiving a lunchtime delivery of McDonald’s at the Oval Office. Media were invited to cover the fast food delivery ahead of the president’s visit to Las Vegas this week to tout his “no tax on tips” policy. He tipped the “Doordash Grandma”, Sharon Simmons, a $US100 bill.
Along with his unprecedented criticism of a serving pope, Trump’s post caused significant consternation among American Christians, as well as within the broader Make America Great Again movement.
Riley Gaines, a conservative activist and former swimmer who campaigned against trans women participating in women’s sports, said Trump would be well served by a dose of humility.
“Seriously, I cannot understand why he’d post this,” she posted to 1.6 million followers on X. “Is he looking for a response? Does he actually think this?”
Michael Knowles, a MAGA media personality with nearly 1.5 million followers, said: “I assume someone has already told him, but it behoves the president both spiritually and politically to delete the picture, no matter the intent.”
Trump’s Truth Social account regularly posts AI-generated content and memes sourced from the internet. It is not the first time one of these posts has proven controversial. In February, he posted a video amplifying false claims about the 2020 election, which also included a clip depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys.
On that occasion, the White House said a staffer was responsible.
Meanwhile, Pope Leo responded to the US president’s attacks by saying that he was not afraid of the Trump administration and had no fear about preaching the gospel.
“That’s what I believe I am called to do, and what the church is called to do,” he told reporters. “We are not politicians, we’re not looking to make foreign policy.”
Leo, who was born in Chicago, is the first American pope in the church’s 2000-year history. Trump called him “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy” after he criticised the war in Iran and the administration’s immigration policies.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was among those who condemned Trump for the remarks on Monday, saying his attack on the pope was “unacceptable”.
The statement represented an extremely rare public rebuke of Trump from the conservative Meloni, who has cultivated close ties with the US president, and underscored widespread anger in Italy over his broadside.
Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said he was disheartened to see Trump’s disparaging words about the serving pope.
“Pope Leo is not his rival; nor is the pope a politician,” Coakley said. “He is the Vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel and for the care of souls.”
Sam Sawyer, a Jesuit priest and the editor-in-chief of the Catholic America Magazine, said Catholics should not take Trump’s “bait”, which was an attempt to focus attention on himself instead of Leo’s calls for peace.
“Christian faith is being misused and disgraced by those, including the president, who claim to act in its defence while ignoring its meaning and values,” Sawyer wrote. “But the Gospel demands more from us than to be outraged on its behalf.”
US Vice President JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism as an adult, told Fox News the conflict was not a big deal, but sometimes it was better for the Vatican to “stick to matters of morality … and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy”.
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.