President Donald Trump’s Easter promise to send Iranians to hell and his anger at papal criticism of the Iran war shows the president has a God complex, civil rights activist Bishop William Barber said.
“Why is the pope’s teaching getting under his skin? Why is what Jesus teaches bothering the president so much?” Barber asked during a press conference the day after Trump, under extreme pressure from his evangelical base, removed an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus from his Truth Social account.
Trump backtracked and said he thought the image showed him as a doctor.
“It raises the question, are you trying to compete with God? What we are watching is a war on divinity, an attempt by a human being to shift the moral compass and for us to engage in a kind of moral deregulation where nothing is sacred anymore except what he says and an AI image of him as Jesus,” Barber said.
““It raises the question, are you trying to compete with God?”
The president’s statements and behaviors are blasphemous, heretical, sinful, idolatrous and nothing new, said Barber, founder of Repairers of the Breach. “His constant demeaning of other nations and cultures is also heresy and contrary to the gospel, his constant claim that no one ever did anything great or wonderful before him, his constant self-congratulation and adoration is also idolatry.”
Trump’s more recent religious offenses included an Easter Sunday social media post threatening to destroy Iran’s bridges and power plants and demanding the nation open the waterway that was keeping oil from flowing through the Persian Gulf.
“Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
William Barber holding an image of Trump as Jesus.
American-born Pope Leo XIV has sparked Trump’s rage throughout the president’s second term and most recently by declaring war to be contrary to the gospel. The pontiff also rebuked those in the administration who claim the U.S. and Israeli-provoked Iran war is God’s will.
“Even the holy name of God, the God of life, is being dragged into discourses of death. A world of brothers and sisters with one heavenly Father vanishes, as in a nightmare, giving way to a reality populated by enemies,” the pope said recently.
Trump responded with a rambling Truth Social post of more than 300 words expressing preference for Leo’s MAGA brother over the pope and defending the U.S. invasion of Venezuela.
Leo is “Weak on Crime, Weak on Nuclear Weapons” and meets with “Obama Sympathizers,” Trump said. “Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician. It’s hurting him very badly and, more importantly, it’s hurting the Catholic Church!”
The pope responded that he doesn’t fear the Trump administration: “I will continue on what I believe is the mission of the church in the world today.”
And that is also the mission of Americans opposed to a blasphemous president attempting to define who is a true Christian and American, Barber said.
“It is a war on divinity when you think because of a political office you get to decide who lives, who dies, what civilization gets to be and what civilization doesn’t get to be, who gets citizenship and who doesn’t, which parts of the Constitution will matter, which rights will be respected and which rights will not be respected.”
Trump’s declaration that the U.S. cannot afford to fund Medicaid, Medicare and child care because the nation is at war marks another form of playing God, Barber said.
“When he allows people in his administration to say that empathy is the cause of the decline of Western civilization, that too is contrary to the truths of the gospel, which tells us that a nation will ultimately be judged by how it treats the poor, how it treats the sick, how it treats those in prison and how it treats the immigrants,” the pastor said.
Those who oppose the president must make their voices heard throughout society, and not just over the offensive image Trump posted online, Barber said. “If we respond now and then go back into our quarantines of silence, that’s sin too. This must be a moment of entering the public square with the love and truth of the prophets and the courage to say we are not afraid of this administration or any administration.”
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