Widespread outrage forces Trump to back down
- jjcarney100team
- 2 minutes ago
- 1 min read
Trump rarely backs down, but he did this time. This image was posted to his Truth Social account on Sunday, then was taken down on Monday.
Reprinted from The Washington Post, April 13, 2026
Why the AI-generated meme — which the president posted on his social media platform, then removed — is offensive even to nonbelievers.
column by Philip Kennicott
There is a frightening urgency in the clumsy, AI-generated image of President Donald Trump posing as a saintly figure, perhaps Jesus himself. Trump posted the meme to his Truth Social account on Sunday evening, shortly after a long message criticizing Pope Leo XIV. It was taken down Monday after widespread outrage from people who considered it blasphemous.
As so often happens when an image is poorly made and overwrought, it conveyed more meanings than the artist — or whoever fed prompts into the AI generator — intended.
Among those messages: a palpable sense of desperation. In the rapid and angry response to the meme, one sensed a coalition beginning to crack, and in the message itself — unfiltered, offensive and unhinged — one sensed the instability of the man who disseminated it.
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