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Donald Trump rekindled religious controversy this Wednesday by reposting on his social media platform Truth Social an image generated by artificial intelligence depicting him being embraced by Jesus Christ, with a background of the American flag.
The post was originally shared by a related account called "Irish for Trump" and included a message suggesting that God would be playing the Trump card against satanic monsters and "child killers."
When reposting it, Trump added his own comment: "The radical left lunatics may not like this, but I think it's quite nice!"
The image shows the president in front of a microphone, with the arms of Jesus surrounding him in a protective or blessing posture, and the American flag in the background.
This new post comes just two days after Trump quietly removed another even more controversial image: last Sunday, during Easter week, he shared an AI-generated image in which he was directly portrayed as Jesus Christ, laying hands on a sick person.
That first image lasted barely 12 hours before being deleted, after generating unusual backlash even among his own conservative religious allies.
The president of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, publicly acknowledged that he asked Trump to remove it: "Yes, I asked him to delete it", he told reporters.
Trump insisted that the image from Sunday did not represent him as Christ but rather as a "Red Cross doctor who helps people improve," while Vice President JD Vance defended it as a "joke" that Trump took down "because he realized that many people did not understand his sense of humor."
The reaction among conservative religious figures was strong.
The Protestant Christian commentator Megan Basham described the first image as blasphemous and outrageous, and demanded that Trump apologize "to the American people and then to God."
Isabel Brown, host of a Catholic podcast, described it as "repugnant and unacceptable" and a "deeply misguided interpretation of the true revival of faith in Christ."
The new image from this Wednesday—Trump embraced by Jesus instead of Trump as Jesus—seems to be a calculated response to those criticisms: it retains the religious symbolism while avoiding a direct comparison to Christ.
However, it generated opposition again among Catholic sectors.
All of this takes place within the context of a bitter confrontation between Trump and Pope Leo XIV, the first pontiff born in the United States, who has openly criticized the war between that country and Israel against Iran and has called for a ceasefire.
Trump attacked the Pope on Truth Social, calling him weak on crime and terrible in foreign policy, and suggested that Leo XIV was only elected pope to "deal with Trump."
The Pope responded from a flight to Africa: "I have no fear of the Trump administration or of clearly expressing the message of the Gospel."
This pattern of AI images with grand symbolism is recurrent in Trump: in May 2025, he published an image of himself dressed as the Pope; in July 2025, the White House released an image of him as Superman; and in February 2025, he shared a fake magazine cover of Time with the text "Long live the king".
The conflict with the religious community comes six months before the midterm elections in November 2026, at a time when Trump is facing low approval ratings and dissent from his base over the war with Iran, precisely when religious voters have historically been one of the most loyal pillars of his electoral coalition.
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