Donald Trump often has a knack for turning controversy into spectacle. Just 40 minutes after unleashing a tirade against the ‘WEAK’ Pope Leo on his Truth Social account on Sunday, he shared an AI-crafted image depicting himself as Jesus Christ, performing a healing miracle on a bedridden patient.

In a follow-up post, as if to lighten the mood, he uploaded an image of a gleaming Trump Tower situated on the Moon. However, this whimsical post failed to capture much attention.

The provocative nature of his digital ‘art’ has sparked outrage among many of his Christian supporters, prompting demands for its removal and a public apology from Trump.

Conservative Catholic priest, Fr Joseph DeMarzo, urged Trump to reconsider, saying, ‘I implore you, repent. Our allegiance is to Christ first, not Maga.’

Michael Knowles, a prominent Catholic commentator, also joined in the criticism. ‘I assume someone has already advised him, but it would be wise for the President, both in terms of faith and politics, to delete the image, regardless of its intended message,’ he remarked.

But Trump never apologises for his online shenanigans. Instead, he told reporters that their eyes deceived them and he wasn’t purporting to be Christ. 

‘It wasn’t a depiction. I did post it and I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with Red Cross,’ he explained, before finally deleting the post. 

Online sleuths quickly discovered that the AI picture first appeared in February courtesy of the Trump superfan Nick Adams, who is now the Special Presidential Envoy for American Tourism, Exceptionalism and Values.

Bizarrely, however, the copy Trump’s account posted had one disturbing alteration from Adams’s original: An ethereal soldier figure in the clouds had been replaced by a horned creature, which some say might be a satanic representation of Baphomet, a goat-headed figure from the occult.

Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ, laying his miraculous healing hand on a hospitalised patient, on his Truth Social platform on Sunday

After attending the funeral of Pope Francis last year, a picture of Trump in white papal regalia appeared on his Truth Social account, though he later insisted he had ‘nothing to do with it’

This has only fed into a growing paranoia on parts of America’s religious Right that their former hero Trump, who they once supported, has become the opposite of Christ-like – that he’s now a demonic force. ‘It’s more than blasphemy,’ said Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Maga darling-turned-fierce Trump critic. ‘It’s an Anti-Christ spirit.’

On election night in 2024, Trump declared: ‘Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason [following an assassination attempt at a campaign rally], and that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness’. Yet he now seems to be almost deliberately debasing himself in the minds of so many Republican Christians.

This is by no means the first time Trump has dabbled with controversial religious imagery of himself. 

After attending the funeral of Pope Francis last year, a picture of Trump in white papal regalia appeared on his Truth Social account, though he later insisted he had ‘nothing to do with it’. During one of his fraud trials in 2023, he reposted a fake court drawing of himself sitting in the dock next to Our Lord and Saviour.

Neither is this the first time he has criticised a Supreme Pontiff. He called Pope Francis ‘disgraceful’ when the then-Vicar of Christ criticised his stern immigration policies. But for some, Trump’s latest AI-affront – combined with his decidedly un-Christian rebuke of Pope Leo and the Catholic Church – represents a sinister new low.

Paula White-Cain, the plastic-faced televangelist who is Trump’s spiritual adviser, gave the President and his war a weird Easter blessing

And it is striking that Trump’s harshest domestic critics have not been the Democrats, who don’t seem to be surprised, let alone horrified, that Trump might view himself as God. No, the angriest voices belong to the same Right-wing Republicans who used to adore the Donald.

Figures such as Taylor Greene, and the conservative commentator Candace Owens, have felt increasingly betrayed since last year, when the White House appeared to cover up the Jeffrey Epstein story – which some Maga elements truly regard as evidence that the world is controlled by a cabal of Satanic paedophiles.

Taylor Greene and Owens are obsessed, too, with the extent of Israel’s influence over America’s foreign policy and are furious that their President has launched a war on Iran, apparently at the behest of the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

For America First purists, the problem is not just that the President is making bad mistakes. It’s that he has been co-opted by evil, anti-religious forces which are trying to hasten the apocalypse by starting a nuclear war.

Trump, indeed, has become an almost uniquely divisive figure who draws praise and criticism from across the religious spectrum.

A surprisingly large number of evangelical Maga fans, for example – including Christian Zionists – believe that the Commander-in-Chief is doing God’s work by taking out evil Ayatollahs in a joint effort with the blessed nation of Israel. A growing range of Catholics, Orthodox and Episcopalian believers, meanwhile, believe that Trump’s actions are not merely regrettable but evil.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Maga darling-turned-fierce Trump critic, believes the US President is the opposite of Christ-like – that he’s now a demonic force. ‘It’s more than blasphemy,’ she said. ‘It’s an Anti-Christ spirit’

When Trump warned the world that ‘a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back’, his former friend, the influential podcast host Tucker Carlson, was outraged: ‘Christians need to understand where Trump is taking us,’ he said

The fact that the President chose Easter Sunday morning of all days, to issue an aggressive message to Tehran only confirmed to them that Trump’s faith has warped into something menacing.

‘Open the F****n’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell,’ he said on the joyful day of Our Lord’s resurrection. ‘Praise be to Allah.’

Two days later, he warned the world that ‘a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back.’

Trump’s more nihilistic admirers chortled at his provocative barminess. But his former friend, the influential podcast host Tucker Carlson, was outraged: ‘Desecrating Easter was the first step toward nuclear war,’ he intoned. ‘Christians need to understand where Trump is taking us.’

Carlson drew special attention to Paula White-Cain, the plastic-faced televangelist who is Trump’s spiritual adviser, and the weird Easter blessing she gave the President and his war.

‘Mr President, you were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused,’ she said. ‘It’s a familiar pattern that our Lord and Saviour showed us, but it didn’t end there for Him and it didn’t end there for you.

‘And I believe that the Lord said to tell you this: Because of His victory, you will be victorious in all you put your hand to.’

Carlson had a different take. ‘How could any Christian watch that and not feel revulsion?’ he asked, denouncing the ‘spiritual war’ being waged in the White House and what he described as the perversion of the New Testament.

Has the criticism got under Trump’s skin? Last Thursday – on the same day that his wife Melania issued a rather confusing statement about Jeffrey Epstein – the President delivered a furious 372-word Truth Social post attacking Tucker Carlson and another former supporter-turned-critic Megyn Kelly, as well as Owens and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, calling them ‘stupid people’ and insisting that ‘nobody cares about them’.

But in his desperation to offend his Maga critics, the President may end up alienating a large number of God-fearing Americans.

There are some 53million Catholics in the United States, and the so-called Catholic vote is often said to be the decisive ‘swing’ factor in elections. It is an intriguing fact that Trump won a majority of Catholic votes in his successful campaigns of 2016 and 2024, but not in his defeat to the Irish-Catholic Joe Biden in 2020.

As with so many other Trump stories, voters may soon forget all about the time the President posted a Christ-like picture of himself. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d got away with online excess.

But there is a broader concern among Republicans that, under the strain of his second term, the 79-year-old is starting to overstep the mark – badly.

His boasts about killing Iranians have left most decent people cold. In February, when film director Rob Reiner and his wife were brutally murdered in their home, Trump made an astonishingly crass and irreverent statement gloating that Reiner had suffered from ‘Trump derangement syndrome’.

And when Robert Mueller, the man who investigated Trump’s ties to Russia in his first term, died late last month, Trump responded: ‘Good, I’m glad he’s dead.’

While the vast majority of Americans won’t believe that their President has been possessed by the Anti-Christ, they do know that it’s wicked to speak ill of the recently deceased.

Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator