On Sunday night, Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ, robed in white, hand glowing, healing a man in a hospital bed, American flags and bald eagles filling the sky around him. He did this one hour after calling the Pope weak.
The sequence matters more than the image. Earlier that evening, Trump had attacked Pope Leo XIV on Truth Social in a 334-word rant, declaring him 'WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.' Leo's offence was hosting a prayer vigil for peace the previous evening, during which he had denounced what he called a 'delusion of omnipotence' fuelling the war in Iran. The Chicago-born pontiff, the first American ever to lead the Catholic Church, had also said that God rejects the prayers of those who wage war. Trump took this personally. Then he posted himself as God.
The image was deleted on Monday morning. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene called it blasphemy.
Trump has been collecting enemies since February 28, 2026, when the US-Israel war on Iran began. Spain closed its airspace to American military planes, calling the conflict 'profoundly illegal and profoundly unjust.' France refused overflight support for Israeli resupply missions. Italy denied landing access at Sigonella. Britain this morning declined to join Trump's naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump called NATO a 'paper tiger,' threatened to withdraw from the alliance and told its secretary general Mark Rutte, face to face, that allies had been 'tested and failed.' The White House considered moving US troops out of countries it deemed insufficiently loyal. He has picked a fight with every institution, alliance and moral authority that declined to serve as a supporting actor in somebody else's military campaign.
One name sits at the intersection of every decision that has produced this result: Israel.
The US-Israel war on Iran is Trump's war in name only. Every objective the campaign was designed to serve — the elimination of Iran's nuclear programme, the destruction of its missile capacity, the removal of the one military force in the region capable of threatening Israeli territory — belonged to the Israeli government's agenda long before it belonged to his. NATO partners who refused to play along were not protecting Iran. They were declining to be conscripted into a war of choice that was not theirs. The Pope who called for peace was not naive about geopolitics. He was doing what popes do when governments invoke God to justify bombing campaigns. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth prayed at a Pentagon service for violence 'against those who deserve no mercy.' Military commanders reportedly told troops that Trump had been 'anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran.' The war that the White House has dressed in scripture is a war fought for Israeli objectives, at the cost of American alliances, at a price paid most heavily by countries that had nothing to do with starting it. The oil that stopped flowing through the Strait of Hormuz did not belong to the nations now paying the highest prices for its absence.
In that context, the Jesus image is not a surprise. It is a confession. An administration that has wrapped a war in the language of divine mandate, that has alienated every significant ally in the course of prosecuting it, and that has now declared the head of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics an enemy of the state has revealed exactly what this war has always been about.
Leo said on Monday, aboard the papal plane to Algeria, that he had 'no fear of the Trump administration.' He will keep speaking against war. He is flying to a Muslim-majority country to talk about peace and coexistence while the president he left behind poses as the Messiah.
Israel has a patron. The rest of us have a problem.
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