Trump goes nuclear on Leo XIV, then posts himself as Jesus Christ
There is something genuinely embarrassing about having to write this story. Not because it lacks importance, but because it is so entirely cringeworthy. The President of the United States posted an AI image of himself as Jesus Christ. On Orthodox Easter. One hour after attacking the Pope.
And yet here we are, because when the two most powerful cultural forces in the Western world collide, the story demands to be told regardless of how surreal the telling gets.
On one side: the Roman Catholic Church, a two-thousand-year-old institution representing 1.4 billion people, whose leader commands a moral authority no election can manufacture. On the other: the American presidency, the most consequential political office on earth, currently occupied by a man who apparently could not get through Orthodox Easter Sunday without comparing himself to the Messiah.
“Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” Trump wrote,  just hours after the Chicago-born pontiff wrapped a globally broadcast peace vigil at St. Peter’s Basilica. The president accused Leo of “catering to the Radical Left,” griped that the pope had met with Obama strategist David Axelrod, and then claimed what may be the most audacious thing any American president has ever put in writing: “If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.” 
The man was taking credit for the papacy.
Less than an hour later came the image. Trump in a flowing biblical robe, hands outstretched over a bedridden man, divine light pouring from his fingers. Bald eagles. An American flag. National monuments. The whole messianic tableau, generated by artificial intelligence and posted to Truth Social on the holiest night of the Eastern Christian calendar.
His own supporters recoiled. Conservative commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, not exactly known for papal sympathies, wrote that Trump’s allies had “tolerated this kind of meme against our better judgment” and closed with, “Pray for his soul. Pray for us all.” Mike Cernovich put it more plainly: “Would not be tolerated for any other religion.”
The pope, for his part, did not blink.
Aboard the papal plane en route to Algeria Monday morning, Leo told reporters he had “no fear of the Trump administration” and vowed to keep preaching peace.  “I am not a politician,” he said. “The message is the same: promote peace.”
The contrast was striking. The first American-born pope, flying to Africa to visit the spiritual home of St. Augustine, calmly telling the world he was not afraid. The American president, back in Washington, posting himself as the Son of God.
Trump’s tirade landed one day after Leo presided over a vigil condemning what he called a “delusion of omnipotence” driving the Iran war, declaring that the kingdom of God has “no sword, no drone, no vengeance.”  The feud sharpened further when three American cardinals appeared on Sunday night’s 60 Minutes to criticize Trump’s foreign policy and immigration stance.
Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said he was “disheartened” and reminded the president that the pope “is the Vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel and for the care of souls.” 
Trump did volunteer one Catholic he admires. He said he likes Leo’s brother Louis, a Florida MAGA supporter, “much better” than the pope himself. 
Leo landed in Algiers without appearing to lose any sleep over the comparison. Some stories write themselves.