Is Trump Jesus or the Antichrist? What are American politics even about these days

Imagine that the President of the United States of America is actively in a beef with the new Pope (also American). Now imagine that, after several back-and-forth clashes, that same president posts on social media an image – clearly AI-generated – of himself portrayed as Jesus Christ the Savior, healing a man with his powers. Well, there’s no need to imagine it, because that’s exactly what Donald Trump posted yesterday on his official Truth Social account. The post caused such an uproar that, after offending the far-right in the United States, Salvini, and Fox News, he ended up being accused of being the Antichrist come to Earth. But what actually happened?

Trump as Jesus

For months now, Trump has been posting on his personal (and institutional) channels grotesque and surreal AI-generated videos and images. The image showed Trump dressed in a white and red robe, bathed in a golden light typical of Christian iconography, as he healed a sick man with an almost miraculous gesture, under the gaze of a praying figure. The president initially downplayed it, claiming he had thought of it as a depiction of himself as a doctor rather than Christ, before eventually deleting the post after hours of backlash.

As also highlighted by The Guardian, the president’s communication has increasingly relied on AI-generated content, made up of provocative memes and deliberately ambiguous imagery, in a strategy that seems designed to constantly dominate the media cycle, even at the cost of crossing symbolic boundaries. According to WIRED, however, this strategy has begun to create fractures within his own ecosystem. For years, religious language has been one of the main tools used to mobilize the MAGA base, but the continuous overlap between politics and Christian symbolism has gone too far, attempting to come dangerously close to the divine.

The fracture within the MAGA base

For the first time in such a visible way, the harshest reaction did not come from the opposition, but from within, as several figures within the MAGA universe shifted within days from calling Trump «chosen by God» to questioning whether he might represent the opposite, the Antichrist. Now, calling Donald Trump the eschatological enemy of the Messiah may be a stretch, but it’s worth remembering that religion, especially Christian/evangelical faith in the United States, remains one of the most resilient identity pillars, and going against that system of values means entering politically dangerous territory, even for someone like Trump, who has built his consensus on a highly cohesive ideological base.

The most interesting signal, however, comes from the broader geopolitical context. The recent political downfall of Viktor Orbán, leader of the far-right Fidesz party and Prime Minister of Hungary, opens up a scenario in which the international sovereigntist front appears less cohesive than in the past. And figures like Giorgia Meloni, who in recent years have maintained a close and strategic relationship with Trump, have in recent weeks shown signs of distance, especially regarding the handling of the conflict with Iran and an increasingly extreme communication style. For this very reason, the “messianic” image episode could mark a breaking point, not so much with the opposition, but with that network of political, cultural, and religious alliances that have enabled the rise and resilience of Trumpism in recent years. Because if there is a line that even spectacle-driven politics cannot cross without consequences, it is that of the «opium of the people».