The US presidency and the papacy came together on May 3 when Donald Trump posted an AI-generated photograph of himself dressed as the pope to Truth Social. The image was then shared by the White House’s accounts.
Seated in an ornate (Mar-a-Lago-style) golden chair, he was wearing a white cassock and a bishop’s hat, with his right forefinger raised.
Trump has sincetold reportershe “had nothing to do with it […] somebody did it in fun”.
This image of “Pope Donald I” is of historical significance, for reasons of which, no doubt, the White House and Trump were blissfully unaware. It is the first ever image to combine the two most important understandings of the figure of the Antichrist in Western thought: on the one hand, that of the pope, and on the other, that of the authoritarian, despotic world emperor.
