The President Who Would Be God.
On Orthodox Easter Sunday, President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself to Truth Social. He wore white robes and a red sash, his hand rested upon a sick man lying in a hospital bed and supernatural light emanated from his outstretched palm. Behind him were the Stars and Stripes, bald eagles, fighter jets standing in for the Heavenly Host, the Statue of Liberty, and what appeared to be soldiers ascending heavenward through luminous mist. Surrounding him, people knelt in prayer.
It caused an outraged backlash and he deleted it within the hour.
When asked what the image meant, Trump said he thought it portrayed him as a doctor, or perhaps a Red Cross worker. “It’s supposed to be me as a doctor,” he explained, “making people better.”
A doctor. Right. I’ll leave that one with you, see what you think.
This may be the only post Trump has ever voluntarily deleted — I can’t think of another. Even his most ardent Christian supporters called it blasphemy. I’m smothering a smirk, but The Knights Templar International (“Largest Official Non-Masonic Templar organisation in the world & true to the spirit of our Christian forebears”) demanded a public apology.
And all this happened in the same week that he picked a fight with the Pope. He called Pope Leo XIV “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy,” declared that Pope wouldn’t be in the Vatican if Trump wasn’t in the White House and that he should be “thankful”. The Pope responded by saying he had “no fear” of the Trump administration and called Truth Social — with some understatement — “ironic”.
So what was actually going on with this image?
Unlike any other world leader alive, Trump has mastered the art of weaponising AI imagery and social media as propaganda. He is, without question, the President of Memes, producing a relentless stream of visual content that positions him as warrior, patriarch, genius, and saviour. (Read previous Substack article “The ‘Trump Gaza’ video is a masterclass in psychological warfare”.) He has even depicted himself as the Pope before.
The logic of his propaganda is consistent: he borrows the iconographic authority of a pre-existing symbol of power and transfers it onto himself. In the now-deleted post, he doesn’t merely lead America, he embodies, heals and transcends it.
But of all the posts he has ever shared, this one was different, as the Jesus image reaches into sacred and highly controversial territory.
The sick man in the hospital bed isn’t just a sick man — he is America. And whatever Trump is doing is unlike any doctor I have seen — this is divine salvific healing rather than anything medical. The nation is implicitly cast as wounded and he is the Healer-in-Chief, a supreme redeemer not merely an administrator.
From a Jungian perspective, this is a form of inflation — Trump’s ego appears to be identifying with something larger than himself, an archetype of King/Saviour/God. Jung believed that inflated states are unsustainable and inevitably lead to a fall or catastrophe of some kind, just as Icarus flying too close to the sun with wax wings and literally fell into the sea and died, or Rudyard Kipling’s Dravot fell from a bridge after pretending to be a god-king.
Deleting a post may constitute something of a catastrophe for Trump, but if there is to be a fall it is yet to come. In fact, since then he has followed up with another meme of himself with Jesus, a placatory gesture perhaps, but not exactly humble either.
Of course, some of Trump’s Q Anon supporters have inflated him for years, ascribing him quasi-mystical status through archetypal projection. The crowd creates its own messiah, and then the messiah reposts the image. It is a feedback loop of devotion, and it has been running for years.
The end result is apotheosis, from the Greek, to deify. In Ancient Rome, emperors were deified after death and in Ancient Egypt the pharaohs were considered living gods, and in China the emperor was thought to be the ‘Son of Heaven’. This way the leaders are placed above ordinary human status and ordinary human challenge.
Since the construction of the pyramids, has any world leader pursued apotheosis this hard?
Of course, the meme could simply have been a joke. That was JD Vance’s explanation.
What is clear is that Trump’s propaganda, or jokes, have found their glass ceiling. His supporters will accept a lot, but not that he is a living god, and definitely not the Son of God.
Many like myself were not offended by a man who works relentlessly to save US🇺🇸 from corruption and evil.
Missionaries (Apostles)
Commissioned to Serve: While "disciple" means learner, Jesus often sent them out (making them apostles, or "sent ones") to heal the sick and preach that the Kingdom of God was arriving.
Pope Leo XIV ... On his flight from Algeria to Cameroon, Pope Leo XIV told reporters: “I think the visit to the mosque was significant and to say that that uh although we have different beliefs, we have different ways of worshiping, we have different ways of living, we can live together in peace.
He's deluded.