President Donald Trump launched a social media broadside against Pope Leo XIV this week while deleting a controversial post depicting himself as Jesus Christ—the latest chapter in a months-long pattern of inflammatory online behavior that has included racist content and attacks on former President Barack Obama.
The 79-year-old president posted an AI-generated image on Truth Social on Sunday, April 12, showing himself in white and red robes, placing a hand on a man’s head in a scene resembling a biblical healing. The image sparked immediate backlash from conservatives and religious leaders who typically support him, prompting allegations of blasphemy.
Trump deleted the post on Monday and offered a curious defense when confronted by reporters. “I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with Red Cross,” he said outside the West Wing. “It’s supposed to be me as a doctor making people better. And I do make people better.”
Vice President JD Vance attempted damage control during a Fox News appearance, suggesting Trump had been “posting a joke” and removed it “because he recognized that a lot of people weren’t understanding his humor.”
But Trump refused to back down from his broader war of words with Pope Leo XIV. Shortly before posting the controversial image, he had attacked the first American-born pontiff on Truth Social, calling him “WEAK on Crime” and accusing him of “catering to the Radical Left.”
The pope first drew Trump’s ire over comments critical of the administration’s mass deportation policies. The conflict has since escalated over the US war with Iran, with Leo urging peaceful resolution and calling Trump’s threat to destroy “a whole civilization” if Tehran didn’t comply “truly unacceptable.”
Pope Leo, currently on an 11-day trip to Africa, has shown no sign of backing down. “I have no fear of neither the Trump administration nor of speaking out loudly about the message in the Gospel,” he told reporters on Monday.
The papal feud creates an awkward dynamic given that several prominent Trump administration officials are Catholic, including Vice President Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and first lady Melania Trump. Neither Vance nor Rubio, both of whom met with the pope in May 2025, have taken public steps to ease tensions between the White House and the Vatican.
This week’s controversies follow a pattern. In February, Trump posted and later deleted a racist video depicting former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as primates in a jungle. The 62-second clip, posted at 11:44 PM on a Thursday night, remained online for nearly 12 hours before the White House took it down amid bipartisan outrage.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt initially dismissed criticism as “fake outrage,” telling reporters the video was “from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King.”
The White House later blamed an unnamed staffer for posting the video “in error.” Trump said he had only watched “the first part” about election fraud and passed it to staff without reviewing it fully. He condemned the racist portion but declined to apologize.
The animosity between Trump and Obama stretches back over a decade. In 2011, Trump became the most prominent voice promoting the false conspiracy theory that Obama was born in Africa rather than Hawaii. Trump has also falsely accused Obama of spying on his 2016 political campaign. The tension remains palpable—Michelle Obama did not attend Trump’s January 2025 inauguration or former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral that same month.