‘He’s radiating the spirit of ANTICHRIST’: Conservatives FURIOUS at Trump's AI Jesus, Pope posts

So JD Vance has entered the chat and is offering the world's Catholics proof that he just might be as politically toxic as his caricature Suggests this time by extending Donald Trump's war with the Catholic Church and the world's first American Pope Vance who was going to release a book about converting to Catholicism in two months Taking his turn in the ring against Pope Leo after Donald Trump managed to anger religious leaders inside his own political coalition. Vance lobbed shut up and dribble like insults at the Pope

by suggesting the Pope stick to the moral stuff.

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 dictating American public policy. But when they're in conflict, they're in conflict. I don't worry about it too much, Brett. I think it's a natural thing. I'm sure it'll happen in the future, and it's not that big of a deal

that it happened in the past.

Really? Because that's the same J.D. Vance who said this six months ago.

I think the most important principle that we have got to remember is you do not, you do not have to completely kick God out of the public square, which is what we've done in modern America. It's not what the founders wanted. It's not good for the United States of America. It's not what the founders wanted. It's not good for the United States of America. And anybody who tells you it's required

by the constitution is lying to you.

It would be insane and crazy and a dramatic about face, but we do always have to remember that that is the person who now works for a guy he once called, quote, America's Hitler and quote, cultural heroine. The New York Times reports this, Pope Leo, quote, has a native fluency

in American politics and culture, and his leadership is supported across broad swaths of the American church. Pope Leo has growing support from conservative Catholics in pews across the United States. As the anniversary of his election approaches next month,

he has so significantly rebuilt the Vatican's relationship with the American Catholic right that many in Donald Trump's own camp rushed to the Pope's defense on Monday. And if the attacks against the Pope are not enough, Donald Trump's posting of an AI image of himself

as Jesus Christ was indeed the straw that broke the camel's back for some Christian leaders. One conservative writer who attended J.D. Vance's Catholic baptism offered this blistering criticism in the Wall Street Journal, quote, not saying Trump is the Antichrist, but he's radiating the spirit of Antichrist, no question. And even a founder of Pete Hegsis, Protestant denomination, called Trump's image, quote,

blasphemous. The outrage is also widespread among rank-and-file American voters.

Watch.

What do you make of this?

Personally, it's disgusting. I talked with my wife about it earlier. I mean, Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, and that right there is, I mean, that's, I don't really have words for that. That's disgusting.

As a Christian, how do you feel when you see this image?

Offended. Yeah, I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed that he would actually do that.

The man I voted for and trust. What do you make of this as a Christian? I don't agree with it, to be honest with you, personally. If he truthfully boasted this, I don't really agree with it, honestly. Politics are one thing, but stepping into that area is a little bit different, you know, a little bit, it stings for me a little bit.

Donald Trump failing to contain the outrage from some of his most important coalition members and some of his own voters is where we start today with Media Matters for America. President Angelo Carusone also joining us, Democratic pollster and political analyst Cornell Belcher and Anthea Butler is back with us. She is the chair of the Religious Studies Department at the University of Pennsylvania. She's the author of the book, White Evangelical Racism.

Anthea, I'd start with you. This is one of those rare political stories that isn't political at all, right? Those three voters were Trump voters describing themselves as, quote, disgusting, quote, ashamed and jolted, that third voter said, if this really was Donald Trump. This was Donald Trump.

He owned up to it. He tried to tell those three people and all of his voters that he thought it was a picture of a doctor, which is, frankly, on the insanity metric,

just as crazy, but also not credible even to his own voters. What do you make of the fact that this story is still sort of picking up steam, picking up heat and breaking through to the American people?

Thanks, Nicole. The story is breaking through because it's blasphemy. And you know, you know it when you see it, right? And this is it. And I think that what Trump has done is basically, you know, it's worse than jumping the shark.

He basically shot himself in the foot because you don't depict yourself as Jesus. But I also think that this is something that has been brewing for a long time. If you recall, he depicted himself a few months back as the Pope, right?

He has a real problem with people who are authority figures who are also moral figures. And so the Pope is probably the highest you can get on a figure of authority who also is a figure of morality, right? So this is bothersome for him. But I think that the disdain and the disgust that people are feeling right now is that they're fed up with the trolling.

This is like, basically like a teenage boy doing stuff just to get your attention. But it's quite worse because it's the president of the United States who claims to be a Christian, who claims to have such Christian support, and he's completely eroded that support

with these kind of antics. And I think yesterday, when he took everything down, somebody had to pull him aside and basically say, you know, you stepped in a big pile this time, and you need to fix this. I mean, I will say one thing. When Bishop Barron, who is someone who has been very much a Trump supporter, says, you need to apologize to Pope Leo, I think that's a moment where you have to take pause and say, even if your conservative Catholic clerics are saying you

are wrong, then you are wrong. And moreover, you are absolutely out of pocket.

Let me show you—let me let this speak for itself. This is from a 60 Minutes piece over the weekend.

Yeah.

We're the three American cardinals that are actively serving dioceses right now. So we listen to a lot of people. It's part of the job description.

And I think we're aware of the anxieties of people about the threats to peace at all different levels. This is a war of choice that we went to and I think it's embedded in a wider moment in the United States that's worrying, which is this. We're seeing before us the possibility of war after war after war. We're dehumanizing the victims of war by turning the suffering of people and the killing of children

and our own soldiers into entertainment.

Cynthia, that was specifically about the war with Iran, but what they're able to speak to, I think, so with so much authority and precision precision is that we're seeing before us the possibility of war after war. It's coming from Donald Trump and Lindsey Graham. They're talking about doing Cuban necks, like wars are things you do.

And then they're also taking on this, the dehumanizing of victims of war by turning the suffering of people, the killing of children and our own soldiers into entertainment. Those are done in our name as the American people. U.S. taxpayers fund the propaganda videos made to intersplice video game footage with war footage, which we now know, in the conduct of the war, we bombed a girls' school in Iran.

If not directly rebuking Donald Trump. I mean, what is this moment, what is it leading to in your view?

Well, I can tell you what it's leading to, and Trump won't like it. It's leading to the closing of the ranks of the Catholic Church. That's number one. I think these three cardinals, Cardinal Cupich, Cardinal McElroy, Cardinal Tobin, they are three very powerful cardinals in this country, over New Jersey, actually also DC, also Chicago. So there's a lot of things going on here, and I want to unpack this very quickly. One thing is that Cardinal Cupich had already said

back in March that this use of AI to make these kinds of images was terrible. And so if you think about all the imagery that's come from the war, and then this imagery of Trump as Jesus, this is just going back to exactly what Cardinal Cupich said, which is this gamification of suffering. And the gamification of suffering is not correct.

It is not right, first of all. Second, what they've inadvertently done is get everybody together and understand what just war theory is, as opposed to these endless wars. Just war theory very plainly says, you don't engage in war unless it's

for the betterment of people, and you also have to protect the women and the children and innocent people in the midst of war. You go to war sometimes because you have to protect the women and the children and innocent people in the midst of war. You go to war sometimes because you have to, but you don't do it for sport. What the Trump administration is trying to do

is go to war for sport. And if we think about this in relationship to Polly Market and all of these things where people are betting on whether somebody's gonna die or whether you pull somebody out of the desert or anything like that,

this is so against Catholic teaching right now that this is bringing together the Catholic bishops in a way that nothing else has brought them together before. Before it was all about abortion. This time, they're even coming together about this war where we couldn't get them all together about immigration. So I think that this is a very interesting moment

that people are not really paying attention to because it's not just Leo. It's not just Pope Leo that he is having to fight himself against. He's having to fight against the Catholic bishops. And once you bring together these two groups,

which have kind of been at odds with each other, basically back from Pope Francis, and now you're bringing them together, I think he's gonna find a formidable opponent in terms of speaking out against the war, speaking out against the war, speaking out about against immigration,

and speaking out about this kind of gamification of war in every way.

And Thea, let me read one more development to you, and then I wanna bring Cornel and Angelo into this. This is Pope Leo's message today, quote, "'God's heart is torn apart by wars, violence, injustice, and lies, but our Father's heart is not with the wicked, the arrogant, or the proud.

God's heart is with the little ones and the humble, and with them, he builds up his kingdom of love and peace day by day. Wherever there is love and service, God is there. It would be difficult not to wonder if the wicked, arrogant, and proud include Donald Trump?

Well, you know, as they say, a hit dog always hollers. And so I got to say it in a Texas way and just say basically, you know, what Pope Leo was quoting is basically the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's not anything any different than any Christian would know, Protestant or Catholic or Orthodox for that matter. Okay, so that's number one. What we're seeing here is this, and I want to state this as plainly as I possibly can. Whenever Pope Leo says something like this

and doesn't say any name, it's a tendency for everybody to want to read this as about Trump or about the administration or about Vance or somebody else. He's not even addressing them directly. He is just addressing the truths of the gospel in a time that is very violent and virulent for many people. And I think that for the people that he's speaking to in Algeria and later on in this week in Angola and other places that he's going to in Africa,

this is a really important message. But if that message is hurting President Trump and JD Vance and the Secretary of War and everybody else, then and JD Vance and the Secretary of War and everybody else, then I would say that maybe they should search their hearts and understand what kind of Christianity