Vice President JD Vance quietly but unmistakably broke with Donald Trump after the president posted, then deleted, an AI-generated image depicting himself as Jesus Christ, igniting one of the sharpest religious controversies of the administration's second term and jolting the religious right.
The incident began on Sunday, 13 April 2026, when Trump's Truth Social account published an AI-generated image showing him in a white robe, suffused in divine light, placing his hand over a bedridden patient as a nurse, a soldier and a praying woman looked on in apparent reverence. American flags, bald eagles, the Statue of Liberty and fighter jets adorned the background. A shadowy, demonic-looking figure lurked in the corner. The post arrived on Orthodox Easter Sunday, and in the middle of a very public feud Trump had ignited with the newly elected Pope Leo XIV, the Chicago-born pontiff he had branded 'WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy' in a 334-word Truth Social tirade.
