One of the most common T-shirts, caps and banners displayed during the Jan. 6 insurrection says, “Jesus is My Savior, Trump is my President.”
But Donald Trump erased the line between savior and president last Sunday evening by posting an AI-generated image of himself as Christ healing a bedridden man with white people looking on in awe and prayer as paratroopers descend from the sky.
That post quickly backfired, however, as even some of Trump’s staunchest allies came out of the woodwork to condemn the image posted on Truth Social. It later was removed from the site, but not before it had been shared widely.
The post was so outrageous that even Megan Basham, one of Trump’s most loyal evangelical supporters, questioned his sanity.
“I don’t know if the president thought he was being funny or if he is under the influence of some substance or what possible explanation he could have for this OUTRAGEOUS blasphemy,” Basham responded on X.
She reposted the image festooned with an array of patriotic imagery that is red meat in the MAGA movement, including a fluttering American flag, bald eagles, a fighter jet and the Statue of Liberty.
Trump “needs to take this down immediately and ask for forgiveness from the American people and then from God,” Basham asserted.
Conservative commentator and Trump supporter Michael Knowles warned the president to take down the image as soon as possible for the sake of his own soul. “I assume someone has already told him, but it behooves the president both spiritually and politically to delete the picture, no matter the intent.”
And Trump did just that less than 24 hours after posting the image. But rather than asking for forgiveness as Basham suggested, he claimed the image merely depicted him as a physician, even though the image portrays him the way Jesus most often is presented in classical art.
“I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with the Red Cross.”
“I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with the Red Cross,” Trump said. “There was a Red Cross worker there, which we support. Only the fake news could come up with that one. It’s supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better. And I do make people better. I make people a lot better.”
One of Trump’s well-known mantras, taught to him by mentor Roy Cohn, is never to apologize for anything.
Outrage has been building for years over messianic comparisons of Trump to Jesus — perpetuated both by him and his followers. On multiple occasions before, Trump’s critics have charged he was flirting with religious imagery and rhetoric in a way that’s idolatrous, if not blasphemous.
Some of the most blatant examples surfaced during the January 6 insurrection.
Crowds gather for the “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. . (Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)
“The conflation of Trump and Jesus was a common theme at the rally,” Jeffrey Goldberg wrote for The Atlantic. “‘Give it up if you believe in Jesus!’ a man yelled near me. People cheered. ‘Give it up if you believe in Donald Trump!’ Louder cheer.”
Some rioters even identified Trump as their savior, Goldberg reported. Several “would profess to me their belief that the 45th president is an agent of God and his Son, Jesus Christ.”
Photos from the assault backed up the report. Among the most prevalent were large wooden crosses, signs declaring “Jesus Saves” (some beside nooses hanging from gallows), “In God We Trust,” “Trump Presidency: Christ is King,” portraits of Jesus wearing MAGA caps and a Trump campaign sign reworded as “Jesus 2020.”
The religious and political symbols displayed at the riots also directly helped promote false claims the 2020 election was rigged against the president, according to a 2022 report issued jointly by Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
Such symbols are also a way to justify discrimination moving forward, the groups said. “Conflating religious authority with political authority is idolatrous and often leads to oppression of minority and other marginalized groups as well as the spiritual impoverishment of religion.”
Fake courtroom sketch of Donald Trump with Jesus.
But the urge to bestow Trump with divine favor, if not divinity itself, continued after Trump left office in 2021. One of the most infamous images was a fake courtroom sketch of Jesus sitting next to a resolute Trump during his 2023 civil fraud trial.
“Jesus’ presence only has the meaning Trump wants it to have for his followers. He’s reminding them that even sitting in court, facing indictment, in a trial where he already has been found guilty, he is still God’s anointed, the messiah of MAGA, the savior of America, pastor and writer Rodney Kennedy said in a column for Baptist News Global.
Kennedy analyzed several other Trump-and-Jesus images, including one of Christ guiding the president’s hand as he signs legislation, another of Trump walking on water slightly ahead of Jesus and a gleeful Trump extending his hands as he stands in front of Jesus on the Cross.
“When you have an ex-president of the United States reposting a courtroom sketch of himself with Jesus, you know you have a problem. The Trinity is not a political illusion of God, Jesus and Trump,” Kennedy wrote. “That Trump would project an image of Jesus being on his side and his supporters going ‘gaga’ over the image is evidence that some Americans no longer know how to recognize idolatry.”
But the president’s image of himself as a healing Christ crossed a line even for the most hardcore Christian nationalists and Trump supporters, including Brilyn Hollyhand, former chair of the Republican National Committee’s Youth Advisory Council and a commentator who has been described as a Charlie Kirk protégé.
“This is gross blasphemy,” Hollyhand posted on social media. “Faith is not a prop. You don’t need to portray yourself as a savior when your record should speak for itself. The same God who saved Trump’s life from that bullet sent his son Jesus to die for our sins. He died for Trump just as much as for you and I.”
Anti-trans campaigner and former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines also was astonished by the image Trump posted.
“Why? Seriously, I cannot understand why he’d post this. Is he looking for a response? Does he actually think this? Either way, two things are true: 1) a little humility would serve him well 2) God shall not be mocked.”
Multiple Southern Baptist leaders — who have been silent on almost every other aspect of Trump’s outrages — called Sunday’s image blasphemous.
Andrew Walker, ethics and public theology professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and an ardent Trump supporter, called it “rank blasphemy.”
The second Trump administration has flirted with Christian imagery across its departments as a means of combining patriotism with white Christian nationalism.
Such imagery has appeared in social media posts from the Department of State, Department of Labor, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice and Department of Defense.
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