Make Vatican great again! Donald Trump posts AI image in papal attire

Turns out, Donald Trump wasn’t joking, after all!
Days after he jokingly said that he would “love to be the next pope”, the President of the United States of America posted an AI-generated image of himself dressed in papal attire. The image, surprisingly, was also posted by the official handle of the White House.
While some social media users found the post humorous, others criticized it as insensitive, accusing Trump of mocking Pope Francis’ death.

The ‘wishful’ thinking!

After Pope Francis’ death last month, the selection of a new Pope is underway. However, given a chance and choice – for Donald Trump – the selection process would have been way easier and less tedious. As the US President, as per his wishes, would love to be the next Pope.
A week after attending Pope Francis’s funeral at the Vatican, Donald Trump said becoming the next leader of the Catholic Church would be “his number one choice.”
“As Pope? I’d like to be Pope,” Trump said while responding to a reporter’s question as he left the White House for a rally marking his first 100 days in office. “That would be my number one choice.”
South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham, on X, requested the papal conclave “to keep an open mind about this possibility.”

The ‘artificial’ reality:

This isn’t the first time Donald Trump has been accused of mocking Pope Francis’ death (Re: the wrong dress, the controversial gestures, the hurried departure). However, this AI image of him in papal attire attracted several social media users’ negative reactions, who found it insensitive after the death of Pope Francis.
While one wrote, “This is disrespectful to the church and God himself… he’s literally the antichrist,” another said, “This is disgusting and entirely offensive.”
A third person posted, “This is extremely disrespectful and narcissistic. republicans really voted for that.”
Someone else mentioned, “How disrespectful to Catholics. That is what Trump and his maggots are all about, disrespect and meanness and stupidity. How dare you mock the process we Catholics go through to pick a new pope.”

Is Trump even Catholic?

Donald Trump was raised in his Scottish-born mother’s Presbyterian faith, and publicly identified with it for most of his adult life, including during his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump was confirmed at a Presbyterian church in 1959. Throughout many years, he identified as a mainline Protestant and attended Marble Collegiate Church in New York, where he was notably influenced by the philosophy of positive thinking advocated by Norman Vincent Peale.
In a 2020 interview with Religion News Service, Trump indicated a significant shift in his religious identity, stating, “Though I was confirmed at a Presbyterian church as a child, I now consider myself to be a nondenominational Christian.” He explained that this change stemmed from the exposure he and First Lady Melania Trump had to various churches and spiritual leaders, as well as their participation in online services during the pandemic.
In a 2020 interview with Religion News Service, Trump stated that he identifies as a nondenominational Christian, aligning himself with one of the largest and fastest-growing segments of American Protestantism. His religious messaging has become more pronounced since a failed assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the previous year. During the National Prayer Breakfast in February of this year, he declared, “God was watching me.”

In recent years, former President Donald Trump has increasingly utilized public religious rhetoric, despite not being a Catholic. Following a failed assassination attempt during a campaign rally. At the National Prayer Breakfast in February, Trump stated, “We have to make religion a much more important factor now,” indicating his belief in religion’s potential to unify people.
In alignment with this focus, Trump signed an executive order in February to establish a White House Faith Office, which he described as a response to “anti-Christian bias” within the federal government. Evangelical pastor Paula White, a longtime spiritual adviser to Trump, has played a significant role in his faith initiatives and previously led the White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative during his presidency.