Administration

DC bishop: AI image depicting Trump as Jesus ‘alarming’

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by Max Rego - 04/14/26 6:34 PM ET

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by Max Rego - 04/14/26 6:34 PM ET

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Washington Bishop Mariann Budde on Tuesday called an AI-generated image President Trump posted to social media depicting himself as Jesus Christ “alarming.”

“It’s one of many, many images, associations claiming of spiritual mantles and authority, associating the president and his administration with the teachings of Jesus and the will of God,” Budde, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, told host Kasie Hunt on CNN’s “The Arena.”

Last year, Budde urged the president to have mercy on gay, lesbian and transgender children, as well as immigrant families, during a National Cathedral prayer service the day after his inauguration — a sermon that Trump panned.

“And so, this is just one of many that have been consistent with the administration from the beginning,” she continued. “And when we get into greater fields of influence, either in this country and now on the world stage, they become all the more alarming, because it is so clearly associating the president and his administration with the assumed will of God and even the likeness of God.”

“And so, in this case he is taking on not just the mantle of Jesus’s teachings, he’s identifying with Jesus in a particularly alarming way.”

On Sunday, the president posted an image on his Truth Social platform depicting himself, clad in a white robe and red shawl, treating a sick man. Behind him are various forms of U.S. iconography, including the American flag and the Statue of Liberty.

After backlash from Christians online, including conservative figures such as former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), the president deleted the post. But Trump said Monday that he thought the image depicted him as a doctor and not the son of God.

“I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor, and had to do with the Red Cross, as a Red Cross worker there, which we support,” the president told reporters outside the Oval Office.

Trump also told CBS News on Tuesday that criticism from the right was not why he deleted the post.

During her interview with Hunt, Budde also said the president’s recent rant against Pope Leo XIV is proof he “doesn’t like to be criticized by anyone and takes out that criticism in very personal ways.”

The first American pope has expressed concern about the Trump administration’s crackdown on migrants and the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. That prompted the president to call him “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” in a Sunday Truth Social post.

“The pope’s actions are consistent with religious leaders, as I said, across the country and the world,” Budde added. “And all of us have some real concerns about what we’re seeing being played out on the international stage.”

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