Trump spent the Lord’s day railing against the Pope and posting an image of himself healing the sick. As I wrote earlier, Trump had previously sent his cronies to strong-arm the Pope with a thinly veiled threat of assassination. In this AI-generated image, Trump is attempting to reinvigorate his White Christian Nationalist base. But will it work?
Trump is at the center, healing a sick man who looks suspiciously like Jeffrey Epstein. Historically, English and French Kings and Queens claimed they could heal the sick. The royal touch isn’t well known. I’m hard-pressed to believe Trump is framing himself like the King of England.
With his robes and glowing hand, Trump is framing himself as Jesus. (Trump has previously shown himself as the Pope and with Jesus). The comparison is apt only in that both men had hands. Otherwise, Trump might be the least Christ-like man who has walked the planet, and that’s impressive given many of the doozies in history.
Jesus healed the poor and the sick. In touching lepers and the dead, he was also demonstrating he’d care for anyone, no matter what their station in life or circumstance. Trump’s image shows him healing a white man, being surrounded by white people. Trump is only here to care for a part of our country. He’s also using figures that harken to this past, which he’s used as a carrot for his followers. The nurse is also dressed as a mid-century Nurse, back when doctors were men.
To round out this digital altar to himself, Trump places the Lincoln Memorial and the Statue of Liberty over his proper left shoulder, perhaps as a reminder that he’ll take us back to the Civil War and happily steal our civil liberties and keep the poor from our shores. On his right, the flag waves proudly above a building that looks more like a 19th-century county courthouse than the US capital. Eagles soar alongside fighter jets. Above him, soldiers ascend to heaven.
The soldiers are joined in heaven by a strange figure. Its wings align the figure with Assyrian Genies. Its three radiating spikes are reminiscent of ancient Greek haloes. Early Christian iconography adopted the wings for angels as well as the haloes (though those radiating elements eventually gave way to the round halo). The Statue of Liberty draws on a ray-like halo, as she is a personification of an ideal, and it was meant to evoke ancient styles.
AI doesn’t have sentience, but it does make you wonder what the prompt was. Most likely, Trump’s cronies are just put in heaven. Given they have no hope of seeing the pearly gates, should they exist, they couldn’t discern they’d created a pagan deity to accompany the dead soldiers to the afterlife.
In this image, it’s foolish elements aside, Trump was trying to show his brand of White Christian nationalism, one that conflates war might with goodness. Liberty, warfare, and Jesus will save our nation from the ills of diversity and change. As I’ve mentioned before, while Christians have gone to war often under the auspices of faith, this type of overt conflation of faith and destruction has been historically frowned upon. One cannot claim moral high ground while overrunning and destroying everyone on the ground.
As I’ve mentioned, white Christian nationalism in the United States rises out of a specific type of Protestantism that prized spectacle but didn’t have a structured visual language. This is in opposition to Catholicism, in which the Church had defined accepted iconography for religious imagery. But, unlike Jesus walking on the Beach or playing basketball, this is Trump as Jesus.
Trump paired this image with a long rant about the Pope being a terrible leader who is weak on crime. Trump was raised Presbyterian, and mostly for appearances (his father made his money from brothels), so he clearly has not been taught the role of the Pope. The Pope is a religious leader, and for Catholics, God’s voice on earth.
His rant against Divine Mercy Sunday, instituted by Pope John Paul II in 2000. In the Christian religious calendar, in the week after his resurrection, Jesus remains on earth, appearing to his devotees before his Ascension. For this mass, people who receive communion obtain the total forgiveness of sins and punishments.
Trump amassing sins while Catholics were being absolved is not much of a surprise, given his mental state. Speaking of the Pope in such a manner is blasphemy, which is defined as profane speech.) But placing himself in the place of Jesus is both sacrilegious and heretical, where the former is disrespect for the doctrine, and the latter is subscribing to false doctrine. Managing to hit all three on a Sunday night is a feat for many, but an average evening for Trump.
But, while the economy is tanking and gas prices are soaring, many Catholics are waking up. On Truth Social, Trump’s direct remarks about the Pope made many catholics withdraw their support for him. As I wrote recently, Catholics had aligned themselves with the right because of abortion, often ignoring the pro-life aspects of social services after birth.
Some called him the Antichrist. The Book of Revelation has long served as a hermeneutic lens through which Christians have evaluated political power and its potential for spiritual corruption. In it, there are warnings about False Prophets, like “He had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon.” (Revelation 13:11). So, someone who wraps themselves in faith but as a way to share an evil message. By coopting Christian messaging, the False Prophet can enveigle believers, often through extraordinary means. In Revelation 13:13, the False Prophet "performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men." Staging an assassination might fall into this category?
Finally, Revelation 13:16–17 describes a system in which participation in economic life is conditioned on a visible marker of loyalty to the beast: "He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark." Red MAGA hats and fervent declarations of fealty are a visible, compulsory demonstration of allegiance without which one is excluded from the marketplace of political and social participation.
From the outside, though, it’s a bit baffling how MAGA didn’t see some of the less godly aspects of Trump. Trump himself might have the answer. He has famously said, “Smart people don’t like him.” Trump’s cult took off amongst people who have been trained to have simplistic understandings of the world. Christian nationalism is about seeing the nation and faith as conflated to uplift white people, but largely, it has functioned as a form of control. So, up to now, Trump could get away with his shenanigans. Abortion is bad, vote Republican. The’d been trained to ignore complexity, and Trump offered a simple solution. He happily said what they wanted to hear, and they had long ceded their ability to use rational thought.
But all these people he aligned with came from many different, often opposing ideas. While all right-wing Christians might be anti-abortion, for many Catholics, attacking the pope is too far. The Rapture is not in the Bible, as it’s a 19th-century innovation and only adopted by some Christians, so Hegseth’s Holy War to bring about the end of times might turn off Catholics. While the pretty lie of being able to go back to a past where white men won for existing was able to unify everyone under Trump, the divisions amongst Christians and their baseline faith might splinter them away from MAGA. Of course, their choice to vote for a pedophile and rapist should have been a sense that they’re not all that Christ-like, so who knows.
