Trump Posted a Picture of Himself as Jesus. Now He’s Trying to Explain ...

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Trump Posted a Picture of Himself as Jesus. Now He’s Trying to Explain It Away.

The image showed President Trump bathed in divine light and clad in religious robes. His interpretation was that the image depicted him as a doctor, not Jesus Christ.

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President Trump said on Monday that he had thought the image he had posted to his Truth Social account had depicted him not as Jesus — but as a physician.

Credit...

Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times

By

Katie Rogers

Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent who has covered President Trump since his first term. She reported from Washington.

April 13, 2026

Updated

2:53 p.m. ET

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The image showed President Trump in a white and red robe, commonly used in renderings of Jesus Christ and in Scripture prophesying his return. Bright golden light, which is used to depict divine intervention in religious imagery, radiated from Mr. Trump’s hand as he touched the forehead of a sick man. A woman observed the scene with her hands steepled in prayer.

As he received two bags of a McDonald’s

food delivery

to the Oval Office on Monday morning, Mr. Trump told reporters that he did not catch all that religious imagery. He said he had thought the image he had posted to his Truth Social account had depicted him not as Jesus — but as a physician.

“I thought it was me as a doctor,” Mr. Trump said of the social media post, which he deleted after an outcry. “Only the fake news could come up with that.”

He added, “I make people better.”

Image

A screenshot of a post on President Trump’s Truth Social account. The image in the post, likely created with artificial intelligence, shows the president as a Jesus-like figure apparently healing a man.

Credit...

via Truth Social

The post’s removal was a rare retreat for Mr. Trump, who had posted the apparently A.I.-generated image shortly after using the same platform to attack the American-born Pope Leo XIV, a vocal critic of the U.S. war in Iran. The appearance of the image had sparked an evening’s worth of backlash from religious leaders and Christian supporters who were hurt and shocked that Mr. Trump had appeared to depict himself as a Jesus-like figure.

Mr. Trump did not apologize for either post, just as he did not apologize for threatening to wipe out the Iranian civilization last week. (

“I’m fine with it,”

he said of the threat on Fox News on Sunday, because it had brought Tehran to the negotiating table.) The post attacking Pope Leo XIV as

“weak on crime”

remains online, and so do countless posts from legions of critics who believe Mr. Trump’s

mental fitness for office

should be evaluated.

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