President Trump shared an AI-generated image depicting himself as the leader of the Catholic Church, coming as the Vatican’s conclave to select the next pope is set to commence next week.
On Friday evening, the U.S. president posted the image on his official account on Truth Social, the social-media platform run by Trump Media & Technology Group, without any comment or context. The source of the image is unclear.
Trump had previously joked that he would like be the next pope, following the death of Pope Francis on April 21 at the age of 88.
“I’d like to be pope. That would be my No. 1 choice,” Trump told reporters outside the White House on Tuesday, April 29. He then added, more seriously, “No, I don’t know, I have no preference. I must say we have a cardinal that happens to be out of a place called New York who is very good. So we’ll see what happens.” Trump was referring to Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, whom the president on May 1 named to serve on the White House’s newly created Religious Liberty Commission. At a Rose Garden event Thursday, Trump remarked about the commission, “They say separation between church and state… I said, ‘All right, let’s forget about that for one time.’”
Following Trump’s tongue-in-cheek comment about wanting to be pope, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) picked up the thread, writing in a post on X, “I was excited to hear that President Trump is open to the idea of being the next Pope. This would truly be a dark horse candidate, but I would ask the papal conclave and Catholic faithful to keep an open mind about this possibility! The first Pope-U.S. President combination has many upsides. Watching for white smoke…. Trump MMXXVIII!”
Trump, along with other world leaders, attended Pope Francis’ funeral last Saturday (April 26) in Rome. Viral images on social media purported to show that Trump had fallen asleep during the funeral service; however, according to Snopes, that is false, with the fact-checking site saying “the video coverage indicates otherwise.”
The Vatican conclave, set to begin on May 7, will include 133 Cardinal electors, the first with more than 120, according to Vatican News.
Trump has said that although he was “confirmed at a Presbyterian church as a child, I now consider myself to be a non-denominational Christian.”
It’s not the first time Trump has shared fake images on his Truth Social account. Last August, Trump posted a series of AI-generated images falsely claiming that Taylor Swift endorsed him for president. And later that month, Trump shared a photoshopped picture depicting himself and several associates as DC superhero characters (with Trump as Superman, JD Vance as Batman, Elon Musk as the part-human/part-robot Cyborg, Vivek Ramaswamy as the Flash, Tulsi Gabbard as Wonder Woman and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Aquaman).
