On the menu today: Two things worth following — Jesus Christ, and the economy. Read on.
Trump’s Dangerous Savior Complex
President Trump has many powerful enemies, but few more powerful than his own emotional incontinence and lack of self-control.
As we slog toward the midterms, it is sometimes genuinely fascinating to see what Trump can and will do to alienate his usual supporters.
Sometimes Trump will have a public angry split with the likes of once-stalwart allies like Marjorie Taylor Greene or some high-profile podcasters. Sometimes he’ll hesitate or drag his feet on keeping a campaign promise, like releasing the Epstein files. While self-identified MAGA voters overwhelmingly support the war, no doubt the war alienated some Trump fans who thought they were getting an end to “forever wars” and regime change against hostile states in the Middle East.
And this week, amidst an increasing war of words with the pope, Trump shared an image of himself as Jesus.
On Monday, Trump denied the image portrayed him as Jesus, insisting it depicted him as a doctor:
Q: Mr. President, did you post that picture of yourself depicted as Jesus Christ?
Trump: Well, it wasn’t depicted. It was me. I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor, and had to do with Red Cross, as a Red Cross worker there, which we support. And only the fake news could come up with that one. So I — I had — I just heard about it and I said, how did they come up with that? It’s supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better, and I do make people better.
Look at the AI-generated image yourself and ask yourself if a near-octogenarian president with functioning eyes and mind could possibly mistake it as a depiction of Trump “as a doctor” or a Red Cross worker. Apparently, the president thinks that Red Cross workers or doctors wear long, flowing, red-and-white robes and use handheld spheres of bright energy to heal the sick by laying their hands on the patient’s forehead.
In a later interview with CBS News, Trump said he took down the image because, “Normally I don’t like doing that, but I didn’t want to have anybody be confused. People were confused.”
Some folks who are usually staunch allies of Trump declared on social media that the president had crossed a line — Michael Knowles, Riley Gaines, Megan Basham, Isabel Brown. In the CBS News interview, Trump said, “I didn’t listen to Riley Gaines. I’m not a big fan of Riley, actually.”
(Trump called out and praised Gaines at CPAC in 2022. She spoke at Trump campaign events in 2024; and in February 2025, Trump welcomed Gaines to the White House for the signing of an executive order on women’s sports. But he’s not a big fan!)
But this is far from the first time that Trump has posted or shared something that could be considered sacrilegious, blasphemous, conflating himself with divine figures from the Bible, or just generally disrespectful of Christianity.
In August 2019, Trump quote-tweeted conservative radio host Wayne Allyn Root as saying, “The Jewish people in Israel love him like he’s the King of Israel. They love him like he is the second coming of God.”
A day later, Trump told reporters that someone had to take on China on trade, and added,
“I am the chosen one,” glancing heavenward with outstretched hands.
In January 2024, right before the Iowa caucuses, Trump shared a video entitled “God Made Trump,” a cheap AI-created adaptation of Paul Harvey’s legendary monologue, “God Made a Farmer”:
And on June 14th, 1946, God looked down on his planned Paradise, and said, I need a caretaker. So God gave us Trump.
God said, I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, fix this country, work all day, fight the Marxists, eat supper, then go to the Oval Office and stay up past midnight at a meeting of the heads of state. So God made Trump.
I need somebody with arms strong enough to wrestle the deep state, and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to ruffle the feathers, tame the cantankerous World Economic Forum, come home hungry, have to wait until the First Lady is done with lunch with friends, then tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon — and mean it. So God gave us Trump.
I need somebody who can shape an ax but wield a sword, who had the courage to step foot in North Korea. Who can make money from the tar of the sand, turned liquid to gold, who understands the difference between tariffs and inflation, will finish his 40-hour week by Tuesday noon, but then put in another 72 hours. So God made Trump.
God had to have somebody willing to go into the den of vipers. Call out the fake news for their tongues as sharp as serpents, the poison of vipers is on their lips. So God made Trump.
The video was subsequently played at Trump rallies.
In March 2024, during his trial in New York City facing charges of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels, Trump shared Psalm 109:3–8, appearing to compare his trial to that of Jesus.
In May 2025, shortly after Pope Francis died, Trump shared an AI-generated image of himself as the pope.
President Donald Trump elicited laughter at a White House Easter lunch when he seemingly compared himself to Jesus Christ.
At the annual event on Wednesday, April 1, Trump spoke about Palm Sunday and said he could relate to one of the monikers that people use when referring to Jesus.
“On Palm Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem as crowds welcomed him with praise honoring him as king,” he said in footage that has since been deleted from the White House website.
“They call me king now. Can you believe it?” he added with a smile.
It’s worth noting that Trump then added, “Do you believe it? No king. I’m such a king, I can’t get a ballroom approved.” Trump was joking . . . but it’s also a bit revealing that when encountering the word “king” in the text about Jesus, Trump’s mind jumped to the “No Kings” protests.
I’m not going to give the president any grief for declaring that his survival of the assassination attempt in Butler, Pa., represents something miraculous. If a bullet nicked my ear, inches away from killing me, I might well deem it a divine miracle as well.
There was no political upside to sharing the image of Trump healing the sick, and a real risk of alienating and offending his Christian allies, but Trump doesn’t care about that. He just shares whatever he sees and likes, shrugging off the possibility of any lasting consequences.
As I’ve written a few times before, the more intensely someone tells Trump not to stick a fork in an electric socket, the more Trump lunges to jab it in there, just to prove he can.
When life in the country is going well, and particularly when the economy is doing well, the American people can forgive just about anything a president does. (Had the U.S. been in a recession in 1998, instead of enjoying roaring dot-com boom growth, would Bill Clinton have survived the Lewinsky scandal?)
Unfortunately, things in the country are not going well now:
- The tariffs have not spurred growth in manufacturing jobs. One economist characterized the overall state of the U.S. economy as “slow hire, slow fire.”
- The war against Iran, which started without much effort to persuade the public of its necessity, has been a military victory but an economic, and geopolitical strategic setback, while Iran can effectively control the Strait of Hormuz by threatening to attack ships with drones, missiles, and mines.
- Because of the war, the national average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline is above four dollars.
- Because fuel is more expensive, the last inflation report was a bad one. The Consumer Price Index got as low as 2.3 percent in April 2025, but it stubbornly won’t get down to the 2 percent target of the Federal Reserve. As the Wall Street Journal recently observed, “surcharges are suddenly everywhere.”
- Consumer confidence in the United States fell to a record low in April.
- Few Americans express worry about the deficit and the debt anymore, but the federal budget deficit in fiscal year 2026 is projected to be $1.9 trillion, and the debt is about to hit $39 trillion. So far in this fiscal year, the U.S. government has paid $519 billion in interest payments on the debt, 6 percent higher than last year.
The American people are grumpy, angry, dissatisfied, and pessimistic. They have good reason to be!
If Trump’s Truth Social feed is a reliable indicator of the issues on his mind, in the past day, the president has been still focused on his 2019 impeachment by the House, revenge against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, his lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal for their reporting of his signature on a letter to Jeffrey Epstein, and the construction of his ballroom at the White House. The president spends a lot of time ranting and raving about topics that the average American and the average midterm election voter doesn’t care about much at all. The president’s poor job approval rating is hardly a mystery.
ADDENDA: Over in that other Washington publication, a look at presidential libraries, as former President Barack Obama’s in Chicago is about to open; Donald Trump unveiled the renderings of his planned presidential library in Miami; and Joe Biden is having trouble raising money for his. An excerpt:
Now there’s the 19.3-acre, five-building Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, which has cost $615 million as of September and will perhaps reach $850 million once all is said and done. (You could buy more than 3,000 Lamborghini Uruses for that much money.)
Obama’s campus opens to the public June 19, and it’s getting a less-than-uniformly enthusiastic welcome, starting with the fact that the new museum building looks like a garrison built by the Galactic Empire from Star Wars. (“The Imperial Presidency,” indeed.)
Elsewhere, California Democrat Eric Swalwell is resigning from Congress, as well as Texas Republican Tony Gonzales — some much needed (no pun intended) housecleaning. Good riddance to bad rubbish.