Donald Trump posted a picture of himself as Jesus. Now he’s trying to explain it away

The image showed President Donald 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 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, 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,” 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.”

The post’s removal was a rare retreat for Trump, who had posted the apparently artificial intelligence-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 Trump had appeared to depict himself as a Jesus-like figure.

Later in the day, in an interview with CBS News, Trump repeated his explanation that he believed the image, which he said he thought was made by “a very beautiful, talented artist,” had depicted him as a doctor.

“I viewed that as a picture of me being a doctor in fixing — you had the Red Cross right there, you had, you know, medical people surrounding me,” he said. “And I was like the doctor, you know, as a little fun playing the doctor and making people better. So that’s what it was viewed as. That’s what most people thought.”

He said he had taken the image down because “I didn’t want to have anybody be confused. People were confused.”

Trump did not apologise for either post, just as he did not apologise for threatening to wipe out the Iranian civilisation last week. (“I’m fine with it,” he said of the threat on Fox News on Sunday, because it had brought Iran to the negotiating table.)

The post attacking Leo as “weak on crime” remains online and so do countless posts from legions of critics who believe Trump’s mental fitness for office should be evaluated.

As a rule, Trump does not apologise for doing and saying things that hurt or offend people, and officials in his White House characterise his behaviour as radically refreshing and transparent.

Outrage from people representing powerful constituencies that helped elect him to a second term has only rarely prompted him to backtrack or retreat.

In February, Trump deleted a racist video depicting former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, the former first lady, as apes after several members of the Republican Party — including Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the Senate’s only Black Republican — called on him to remove it. Trump took the post down, blamed a staff member and never apologised.

“I just looked at the first part — it was about voter fraud in some place, Georgia,” Trump told reporters of that video in February. “I didn’t see the whole thing.”

A little over two months later, Trump was again in a position of explaining the thought process behind something inflammatory he posted to his social media account. (Other posts sent Sunday night included a rendering of a Trump office building on the moon and a meme mocking the long careers of Democratic politicians.)

Trump was talking to reporters in the first place because White House officials had staged a fast food delivery to the Oval Office to promote a Trump administration-led policy that has removed taxes on overtime and tips. A woman named Sharon Simmons delivered the bags of burgers and avoided the president’s questions about whether she opposed “men playing in women’s sports.” Simmons stayed on message: “I’m here about no tax on tips.”

Standing next to Simmons, who wore a red shirt that said “DoorDash Grandma,” Trump refused to apologise for his post attacking the American-born pope: “I’m just responding to Pope Leo,” Trump said. “There’s nothing to apologise for. He’s wrong.”

Leo is one of the world’s most powerful critics of the US war with Iran. In recent days, he has condemned the worship of mortals and money, the pitfalls of arrogance and the “absurd and inhuman violence” unleashed by fighting that has further destabilised the Middle East.

“Leo should be thankful because, as everyone knows, he was a shocking surprise,” Trump wrote in a lengthy social media post Sunday night. “He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”

On Monday morning, Leo told reporters he had “no fear” of the Trump administration. He added that he was not afraid of “speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do.”

Later on Monday, Vice-President JD Vance, the highest-ranking Catholic in the Federal Government, was asked to respond to the president’s criticism of the pope in an interview on Fox News.

Vance said that he would advise the Vatican “to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of, you know, what’s going on in the Catholic Church, and let the President United States stick to dictating American public policy.”

Other prominent conservatives, and not only Catholics, quickly expressed outrage at the image Trump posted of himself as a Jesus-like figure.

“Does he actually think this?” Riley Gaines, the anti-transgender rights activist, posted on social media. “God shall not be mocked.”

David Brody, an evangelical journalist with the Christian Broadcasting Network, called on Trump to take it down.

Last year, after the death of Pope Francis, Trump posted a photo of himself as pope and joked that he would like to be the next pope.