(Adnkronos) – “I don’t know if the president thought he was being funny or was under the influence of substances or what other possible explanation I can give for this shameful blasphemy.” Thus, an important American evangelical commentator, Megan Bahsam, speaks for the dismay that the post Trump published, with an AI-created image depicting him as if he were Jesus, blessing a sick person, has caused even among the American religious right, evangelicals and conservative Catholics, who usually express solid support for the president.
According to Basham, Trump must “immediately remove” the post and “ask for forgiveness from Americans and then from God.” From the White House, no official comments have yet arrived on the post, which Trump published last night practically immediately after the one with which he launched an unprecedented attack on the Pope. But administration sources acknowledged to the Washington Post that the president had gone too far by publishing that image, even if many of his Maga supporters portray him in messianic terms.
“Other people at Trump rallies do it for him, but when he does it, it’s at least blasphemous,” say the sources, who nonetheless don’t seem very concerned, predicting that the outrage among the Christian right will last only a few days, as has happened in the past. Meanwhile, however, Catholic podcaster Isabel Brown, aligned with the White House’s positions, also called the post “disgusting and unacceptable” and also “a deeply mistaken reading of how Americans are experiencing a true and beautiful revival of faith in Christ in the midst of our failing culture.”
For another conservative Catholic podcaster, Michael Knoweles, “both spiritually and politically, it is in the president’s interest to delete the photo, regardless of intentions.”
Another staunch Trump loyalist, Riley Gaines, a former swimmer aligned with Trump’s crusade against the participation of transgender women in female sports competitions, was dismayed by the post: “I can’t understand why he published it, was he looking for a response? What was he really thinking?” she wrote on X, calling in any case for “a bit of humility” from the president and reminding that “one should not make fun of God.”
