The AI images Trump can’t get enough of

In Donald Trump’s telling, the image showed him as a medical professional, never mind the lack of training.

“It’s supposed to be me as a doctor making people better,” Trump said, responding to the outrage after he posted an AI-generated photo which critics – including some on the right – say showed him as a Jesus Christ-figure.

Trump added: “And I do make people better. I make people a lot better.”

Of course. Trump was engaging in the famous medical practice of administering an ethereal light to a patient’s head, as translucent figures look down from the heavens.

While that explanation made perfect sense to the most severely indoctrinated members of the Maga cult, others took issue. “Gross blasphemy,” said a former co-chair of a Republican youth group. “There’s no context where this is acceptable,” Sean Feucht, a Trump-aligned Christian activist, posted on X.

Whatever Trump thought he was doing – and the New York Times ran a lengthy piece this week noting that he “seems even less restrained and more incoherent” and “regularly makes comments rooted in fantasy rather than fact” – it wasn’t the first time he has dabbled in Christian art.

An AI-generated image of Donald Trump as the pope. Illustration: @realDonaldTrump

Indeed, last May, with the Catholic church still mourning the death of Pope Francis, Trump shared a picture on social media imagining himself as pope. The picture showed him in a white cassock, crucifix pendant and a mitre hat, with a Solomon-esque look of wisdom on his face. That didn’t go down well either.

It fits a pattern. During Trump’s campaign, and continuing into his second term, either he or the White House has repeatedly used AI imagery to visualize the president as:

• A king
• A skilled footballer
• A person roaring with a lion
• A maestro
• What I think is supposed to be a rich guy, but instead looks like a money launderer
• Superman
• A 1930s-era private dick
• Colonel Kilgore from Apocalypse Now
• A Nobel peace prize winner
• A very muscly Sith lord

The AI-generated posts “rally his base and distract the public from other topics”, Poynter wrote. “But AI supercharges his messaging ability, providing hyperrealistic visuals of incidents that aren’t real.”

Even as Trump backed down on proclaiming himself the son of God, he seems unlikely to keep out of Christian issues altogether. On Tuesday night he extended his attacks on the pope – another thing which has drawn the ire of at least some on the right – in late-night Truth Social posts.

“Will someone please tell Pope Leo that Iran has killed at least 42,000 innocent, completely unarmed, protesters in the last two months, and that for Iran to have a Nuclear Bomb is absolutely unacceptable,” Trump wrote at 11.34pm. The president did not offer evidence for the 42,000 claim, and has previously cited a figure of 45,000 dead protesters, a number which has not been verified.

The grumbling continued into the small hours, Trump sharing a post critical of Leo’s social media use at 1.10am, and, later still, defending himself again over the Trump-as-Christ controversy.

As that conflict bubbles away, the AI continued. On Wednesday morning Trump reposted an image of what appeared to be Jesus Christ embracing him from behind, again risking the ire of Christians.

“The Radical Left Lunatics might not like this, but I think it is quite nice!!!” Trump wrote.

And therein lies another, simpler, explanation for the fascination with AI images: Trump just really likes the photos. He likes seeing himself as a superhero, or wearing a snazzy hat, or as someone who isn’t about to turn 80.

It means there are probably more images to come. Perhaps he’ll imagine himself as God next.