(CNN) — President Donald Trump is backing away from a social media post depicting himself as Jesus — but not from the broader war of words he’s still waging against Pope Leo XIV.
Trump on Monday deleted an image of him as Jesus from his Truth Social account amid intense backlash, telling reporters that he thought it was meant to portray him as a doctor.
“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.”
Yet pressed on whether he also disavowed a separate post in which he slammed the pope as “WEAK on Crime” and accused him of “catering to the Radical Left,” Trump stood his ground.
“Pope Leo said things that are wrong,” Trump said, adding that he wouldn’t apologize for his social media post. “We believe strongly in law and order, and he seemed to have a problem with that, so there’s nothing to apologize for.”
The pope first earned Trump’s ire last year over comments seen as critical of the administration’s mass deportation policies. Leo has since clashed with Trump over the US and Israel’s war with Iran, urging the sides to seek a peaceful resolution and then more explicitly rejecting the president’s threats to wipe out “a whole civilization” if Tehran didn’t bend to his demands.
Trump’s tensions with the papacy come despite the president surrounding himself with several prominent Catholics, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and first lady Melania Trump. Vance and Rubio met with the pope last year but have not taken any public steps to ease relations between Trump and the Vatican in recent days.
Still, Trump appeared to realize that the depiction of him as Jesus — which he first posted Sunday — went too far. The image showing him in white and red robes and composed in the style of religious art prompted criticism from several Republicans and conservative commentators who saw it as anti-Christian.
“I cannot understand why he’d post this,” Riley Gaines, a conservative activist who has served as a key cheerleader for the administration’s restrictive policies on transgender athletes, wrote on X. “Either way, two things are true. 1) a little humility would serve him well 2) God shall not be mocked.”
The post was gone by Monday morning, with the president later telling reporters that “I just heard” about the controversy and acknowledging that he made the initial decision to put up the post. It was a comparatively rare and rapid walkback for Trump, who frequently reposts a range of AI-generated videos and images to his Truth Social platform and has previously dodged responsibility for their content.
In February, for instance, Trump shared a racist video depicting former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as apes, which remained online for nearly 12 hours before it was deleted. The White House ultimately blamed a staffer for the post and Trump declined to apologize.
The-CNN-Wire
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