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Late-night hosts dissected Donald Trump’s ability to anger Christians around the world with his attacks on Pope Leo XIV and the AI-generated image depicting him as Jesus.
Stephen Colbert
“The last 10 years of Donald Trump worming his way into our brains have been weird,” said Stephen Colbert on Tuesday evening. “But yesterday might have been the weirdest weird that ever weirded. And I’ll just let this actual 100% real, we did not make this up or change this footage in any way, CSpan report sum up the times we’re living in.”
Colbert then played a clip of CSpan reporting that Trump took questions outside the White House after having McDonald’s delivered via the food delivery app DoorDash. Trump talked about a number of topics, including the war in Iran and a controversial AI-generated image he posted to Truth Social that depicted him as Jesus.
“Even CSpan can’t make that sound normal,” the Late Show host said. “If you just woke up from a coma and that report was the first thing you saw, you’d ask the doctor to put you back in.”
“I’m sorry – you’d ask the ‘Jesus’ to put you back in,” he added, referring to Trump’s claim that he thought the image depicted him as a doctor.
In a rare move, Trump has since deleted the image, but “the damage has been done”, with even some staunch supporters now wondering if he’s the Antichrist, at least according to a report from Wired. “It’s an interesting theological question,” said Colbert. “Who are any of us to judge whether – yes, yes he is.”
Over the weekend, Trump also posted a long message on Truth Social criticizing Pope Leo XIV, calling him “weak” and a “loser”.
“Why would you start a beef with the pope?” Colbert wondered, as according to a new NBC poll, Pope Leo leads most public figures in the US in approval ratings. “It’s gotta piss Trump off to learn that the most popular guy on the planet lives in a palace dripping with gold and wears an insane hat and it’s not him.”
Jimmy Kimmel
On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host checked in on the latest reports from Iran. “We are now on week 7 of the war Trump won six weeks ago and day 2 of Hormuz-apalooza,” he said. “Yesterday, Trump decided to blockade the blockade around the strait of Hormuz, which right now is a lot like his colon – fully obstructed, with no movement expected any time soon.”
He then turned to Trump’s harsh words for Pope Leo XIV because “the pope dared to criticize his war in Iran”. Trump’s criticism “is putting the Magasphere in a tight spot, because the same people who are in favor of prayer in schools, respect for the church suddenly now find themselves in the unexpected position of having to defend an attack on the pope”.
To make matters worse for the president, he then posted the AI-generated image of himself as Jesus, then deleted it and claimed he thought the picture was of him as a doctor. “Which is so lame,” said Kimmel. “Not one person believes him. It is quite clearly an image of Jesus with his dumb head on it.
“Even JD Vance wasn’t able to go along with this doctor storyline. He came up with an entirely different explanation. Appearing on Fox News, Vance said “the president was posting a joke, and he took it down because he recognized that a lot of people weren’t understanding his humor in that case”.
“He was posting a joke, you understand?” Kimmel mocked. “And like all the best jokes, it had to be explained and then deleted. First, he was Jesus. Then he wasn’t Jesus, he was a doctor. And now it’s a joke. Why did I get kicked off the air again? I can’t remember …
“The White House can’t even keep their lies straight,” he concluded. “He knew full well that was supposed to be him as Jesus.”
The Daily Show
And on the Daily Show, Ronny Chieng checked in on JD Vance, who “had to come out yesterday to defend President Trump from all the woke Christians who are trying to cancel him just because he might have said, ‘I am Jesus.’ Hey, get over it, snowflakes! Where in the Trump Bible does it say you can’t worship false idols?!
“So poor JD Vance had to come out and explain why you don’t get it,” because according to the vice-president, the Jesus image was a “joke”.
Chieng translated Vance’s bluster as “shut up, it was a joke! What’s the matter, you guys don’t have jokes at Jesus camp? Everyone knows Trump posted this picture to be funny, right?”
Not according to Trump, who said: “I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor.”
“Wait … what you mean a doctor? Make up your mind!” Chieng responded. “Is it a doctor, or is it a joke? Or is it a doctor who is a joke, like a chiropractor. Anyway look, the point is, all these Christians need to get off Trump’s back.”
Later in the same interview, Vance, an adult convert to Catholicism, also defended Trump’s criticism of the pope: “I certainly think that in some cases, it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what’s going on in the Catholic church, and let the president of the United States stick to American public policy.”
“Yeah, stop getting all high and mighty, the pope!” Chieng laughed. “JD Vance just told the pope to shut up and dribble.”
