It all just gets weirder and weirder, doesn’t it boys and girls? I didn’t have “Trash the Pope” and “Post a Trump-As-Jesus Meme” over Truth Social within an hour of each other on my 2026 Bingo Card, but here we are.
If the president was trying his hardest to convince Christians and Catholics that he wasn’t a man of faith and had just been yanking their devout chain all along, he couldn’t do better than starting a feud with Pope Leo and depicting himself as Christ.
Here we have the least Godly human being presently walking the earth brazenly claiming religious turf he has no business being within a million miles of. It is as shameless as it is absurd.
The most befuddling part, of course, is that anyone takes a single bit of it seriously.
Let’s take them in order.
The war Trump has launched with Pope Leo is one he cannot win. The mystery is what he hopes to gain from this. He wrote on Sunday that the pontiff was “WEAK on Crime” and “terrible for Foreign Policy.”
Interesting. I wasn’t aware that the spiritual leader of the Catholic Church was also a politician. Leo, an incredibly cool human, basically told Trump to get bent, rejecting Delusional Donnie’s claim that the Pope would be nothing without him – certainly not Pope.
That’s right, a convicted felon who was once inseparable from the world’s most notorious convicted sex trafficker somehow believes he holds the moral high ground over the man who is the vicar of Christ on earth. In no movie script would this ever fly. And yet, this is what real life is currently handing us.
Does Trump somehow think his MAGA morons are going to suddenly believe, “You know, this Pope dude seemed to be upstanding, but now that Trump’s bashed him, it’s clear this guy in the funny hat is hopelessly partisan and corrupt.”
If it’s a battle between the world’s most holy man and the planet’s most criminal, my money’s on the guy who doesn’t lie to me every five seconds or unethically rake in billions off merchandise tied to my job.
This is all, of course, about the fact Pope Leo dared not blindly support Trump’s every move in the Iran War, given that he’s a man of peace. We all know that Trump’s flailing insecurity won’t tolerate the smallest bit of resistance without melting down. It’s what makes him so singularly endearing.
And then came the Jesus meme. The one Trump admitted that he posted himself. The one that he thought depicted him “as a doctor.” That’s right, a doctor who touched the forehead of a guy who looks like a cross between Jeffrey Epstein and Jon Stewart (sorry Jon) while Trump is holding a glowing orb of light and dressed in flowing robes as a light beam filters down from the sky behind him – beside the eagles, fighter jets, fireworks, and Statue of Liberty.
I could have sworn I saw that doctor on “The Pitt”?
It’s complete insanity, of course, and just another ridiculous lie to cover up the fact he got so much blowback on his blasphemous illustration. He naturally blamed “the fake news” for concocting such an unbelievable idea as a Christ depiction.
To which I respond: Oh, Jesus H. Christ, just cop to a screw-up for the first time in your pathetic life, you twit. Fat chance.
Will the supporters who have so loyally stood by Trump’s side through all of his madness finally see this as a breaking point? I wouldn’t count on it at all, and neither would you.
Why the Christian Right in particular still sees fit to support someone who mocks their religiousness at every opportunity remains unfathomable. It can’t just be that he was the savior who got the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.
We know Trump can’t really see himself as Christ. He’s using the image of Jesus to appeal to the fanatics who somehow view him as the Lord. Everything he says and does goes against everything Christianity is supposed to stand for. Not that Trump understands the first thing about it, given how he has never cracked open a Bible in his life.
It's a miracle that his base is even criticizing the Jesus move, which motivated him to retreat and take down the post despite defending himself as innocent due to the bogus doctor claim.
Trump uses religion like he uses everything else. It’s simply a way to justify his self-serving agenda and manipulate the already brainwashed. He hypes himself as a defender of Christian principles, fanning the flames of an imaginary “war on Christianity” and “war on Christmas.” He is supposedly dedicated to protecting “religious liberty” in everything from healthcare to business, solely as a means of deception.
He makes frequent appearances with evangelical pastors and faith leaders as part of his con job. And who can blame him? So far, it’s worked like a charm, except for the sudden turn against his Jesus fiasco (let’s call it Christgate).
No one should be shocked by his outrageous decision to post the meme. So many people in the Christian Nationalism movement in particular frame him as the flawed-but-useful – and perhaps even divinely appointed – Chosen One that he must figure he’s got these suckers right where he wants ‘em.
Trump has also successfully linked religion to the broader culture war, including framing LGBTQ+ rights vs. religious freedom. It puts religion at the center of a mythical “us vs. them” narrative that helps mobilize Republican turnout. He also uses meaningless religious phrases like “We’re a nation of believers” without the need to refer to any theological specificity.
In other words, we are, in fact, being ruled over by the most cynical anti-belief figure in American history. It’s high time for the people he’s hoodwinking to wake up and smell the sacrilege.
Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.
