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Check out our latest episode of The Pod Millennial! I sit down with Nicki Neily of Parents Defending Education to discuss just how deeply activist ideology has taken hold in public schools—and, more importantly, what you can actually do about it. Brand new episodes drop every Tuesday! Listen, rate (5 stars, of course!), and subscribe!
Let's get into it:
President Trump on Monday angered a great many people when he posted an AI generated graphic of himself as Jesus. It shows him in the iconic white and red robes, with a spark of light in his hand, laying hands on a sick man in bed. He's flanked by a soldier, a nurse, the flag, the Statue of Liberty, an eagle, and floating soldiers, one of whom is either some kind of demon or a seraphim, depending on who you ask. People really hated it. I really hated it. It is self-aggrandizing in the worst way, it is self-idolatry.
People tried to defend it, saying he hadn't looked closely at it before posting, or that posting it was just really Boomer-coded, or that a staffer had posted it. People tried to make excuses for the president having shared the graphic, which was originally made using AI by Nick Adams in February. The one Trump posted was altered so that one of the background, floating figures appeared with wings. It looked demonic to me.
When asked "Mr. President, did you post that picture of yourself depicted as Jesus?" Trump replied that he had.
"Well, it wasn't depicted," he said. "It was me. I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor, and had to do with the Red Cross, it has a Red Cross worker there, which we support, and only the fake news could come up with that one. So I just heard about it, and I said, how do they come up with that? It's supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better. And I do make people better. I make people a lot better."
So I mean, that's pretty gross. No one looking at the graphic would see Trump portrayed as a doctor. Even just a cursory google of doctor Halloween costumes versus Jesus Halloween costumes shows what we as a society believe each one would wear. Doctors wear stethoscopes and scrubs. Jesus wears a white robe with a red sash. And Trump knows this, of course, because we all know this.
The president has had many good policies. The president was the only choice between himself and Kamala Harris. He doesn't advocate for sex changes for minors, and he doesn't advocate for abortion. It was under Trump that Roe v. Wade was overturned—of course, the number of abortions in America has increased since then due to the prevalence of chemical pregnancy terminations. The last year on record shows more than 930,000 American unborn children being murdered in utero.
The issue I had with it wasn't that the AI graphic was made by someone, people make whatever graphics they want all the time. The issue I had was that Trump, himself, posted it, because for whatever reason, he believes that he is equivalent to Christ. None of us is. But saying you are, thinking you are, even if, as his defenders say, it was just a momentary, throw-away thing, no big deal, reveals a level of self-worship that is incredibly dangerous. I think it was just a veil drop kind of moment.
Trump was angry with the Pope recently, and the Pope, in turn, took issue with Trump. “Leo should be thankful because, as everyone knows, he was a shocking surprise,” Trump said. “He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I weren’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”
The Pope opposes the war, which, sure, he's the Pope. “I have no fear of the Trump administration, or speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do,” he said on Monday. When asked about Trump's commentary against him, he said, “It’s ironic — the name of the site itself. Say no more," referring to Truth Social.
“The things I say are not meant as attacks on anyone,” Leo said. “I do not look at my role as being political, a politician. I don’t want to get into a debate with him. I don’t think that the message of the Gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing.”
We talked about all this and MORE on Timcast, you can check it out here!
Libby