Anderson Cooper isn’t buying President Trump’s explanation for that AI-generated image — not even a little. The CNN anchor delivered a sharp on-air rebuke this week after Trump posted, then deleted, an AI image depicting himself in a Christ-like pose, and then insisted he thought the picture showed him as a doctor.
The image landed on Truth Social on Sunday evening, April 12, capping a turbulent stretch in which the 79-year-old president slammed Pope Leo XIV in a lengthy social media screed, calling the pontiff “WEAK on Crime and terrible for Foreign Policy.” Trump doubled down in remarks to reporters at Joint Base Andrews on Sunday night, describing Pope Leo as “a very liberal person” who “doesn’t believe in stopping crime,” and continued posting throughout the night.
Somewhere in that posting spree came the image now dominating the conversation: a glowing, robed Trump with light pouring from his hands, hovering over a sick man while a woman prays nearby. The backlash was swift and bipartisan, drawing criticism from people of faith across the political spectrum, including some prominent MAGA voices. By Monday, the post was gone — and Trump had a new explanation ready.
Cooper’s On-Air Takedown
On Monday’s “AC360,” Cooper walked viewers through the timeline before turning to Trump’s defense, in which the president claimed the image was meant to portray him as “a doctor making people better.”
Cooper wasn’t sold. He called it “one of the lamest lies imaginable” before airing a side-by-side comparison: a traditional depiction of Jesus, the AI Trump image, and a working doctor in scrubs.
“We’ve all been to doctors,” Cooper said after pointing viewers through each image in turn. He capped the segment with a dry sign-off: “Here endeth the sermon.”
The White House, asked by the Daily Beast about Cooper’s questioning of Trump’s doctor explanation, referred the outlet to “the president’s comments.” Trump confirmed Monday that he made the post but said he did not recognize the Christian iconography — only “the fake news,” he insisted, would read it as Jesus imagery.
Axelrod Joins the Conversation
Later that night on “AC360,” Cooper interviewed CNN Chief Political Analyst David Axelrod, who had recently met with Pope Leo. The meeting came a day after reports that Pentagon officials had berated a top Vatican diplomat over Pope Leo XIV’s criticism of Trump’s warmongering. The pope has been a strong critic of the war with Iran.
Trump, in his Truth Social broadside, took aim at Axelrod directly, slamming the Pope for meeting “with Obama Sympathizers like David Axelrod, a LOSER from the Left, who is one of those who wanted churchgoers and clerics to be arrested.”
On the air, Axelrod kept his focus on the bigger picture, saying Trump “treats the Pope as if he’s another politician,” adding that the pontiff “is not a politician. He’s the leader of the Catholic church. He’s the keeper of the faith.”
Cooper jumped back into the AI image, noting the visual cues were hard to miss. Trump, he said, is “wearing Jesus-like robes” with “light emanating from his hands.” Axelrod suggested the immediate reaction from people of faith — including Trump’s own supporters — likely drove the deletion, even if the president “never concedes error.”
The Origin of the Image
The picture wasn’t actually new. Nick Adams — the Australian-American conservative commentator and Trump-appointed (in March 2026) Special Presidential Envoy for American Tourism, Exceptionalism, and Values — posted the original version in February, captioning it, “America has been sick for a long time. President Trump is healing this nation.” That detail became central to a fiery CNN “NewsNight” panel on Tuesday, where conservative influencer Emily Austin tried to defend the president.
Austin told fellow panelists, including “View” co-host Ana Navarro, that Trump didn’t generate the image himself and pointed to Adams’ “healer of the nation” framing. She acknowledged she could see why viewers thought Trump was portraying himself as Jesus Christ but argued the original creator’s intent mattered.
However, the version Trump shared differed somewhat from Nick Adams’ original — in Trump’s version, the background soldier figure had been altered into a demonic figure with horns.
The Panel Pushes Back
Former Trump White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews pressed Austin on whether she truly believed the image depicted Trump as a doctor. Austin pivoted, then conceded that Trump likely recognized the iconography, “and that’s why he deleted it.”
That answer didn’t satisfy Bakari Sellers, the Democrat and former South Carolina state representative, or “NewsNight” host Abby Phillip, who pointed out the picture clearly showed Trump “dressed like Jesus with an aura around his hands.” Sellers pushed Austin to simply say Trump was wrong on this one. Eventually, she got there: “It was wrong to post. He took it down.”
Subsequently, the president re-posted an AI image of himself being embraced by Jesus. That was after he claimed the Jesus-like AI image he posted earlier in the week was meant to depict him as a doctor.
For Cooper and his colleagues at CNN, the takeaway was simpler. As the anchor put it before cueing his side-by-side graphic: “Come on.”