Never before has an image created by AI been so widely commented upon. On April 12, Donald Trump posted a photo of himself dressed as Jesus Christ on his social media network Truth Social. This marked the beginning of a new era: AI has risen, for the first time, to the heart of current events.
The image is not especially beautiful on an aesthetic level: its pompier style (others may say kitsch) is as easily identifiable as it is outdated. At the center, the President, bathed in light, wears the white and red toga characteristic of contemporary iconography of Jesus. Like the thaumaturgic king dear to Marc Bloch, he practices the laying on of hands on a sick person. He is surrounded by figures who represent average Americans: an enamored nurse, a young woman praying, an admiring soldier, and an old man in a cap (all white, it should be noted: diversity has never been Trump’s strength). Behind, one can make out all the symbols of the United States: the Statue of Liberty, a bald eagle, an F-35 fighter jet. Finally, above the President, in the clouds, several manifestly angelic figures can be seen.
Since then, everyone—whether on social media or traditional newspapers from around the world—has offered their analysis: most focus on Trump’s megalomania or even madness and denounce the image as yet another attack against the Pope and Catholics. However, as sympathetic as these criticisms may be, they are not up to the moment. They are at most descriptive; they do not really go beyond the event itself and, above all, do not make it possible to grasp the ins and outs of the current crisis. Tim Stanley, editorialist at the English newspaper The Telegraph, suggests that “Europeans cannot understand what this administration is doing without understanding how a right-wing evangelical thinks.”
Evidently, the issue is far more consequential than a simple blunder on the part of Trump; it is not only a blasphemy or a provocation. The reactions to the image of Trump made up as Christ indeed prove that the messianic propaganda that carried the New York billionaire to power has now turned against him. He wanted to embody the Savior of humanity; he is now, in the eyes of many, the Enemy of humankind. Unsurprisingly, he who wants to embody Christ often becomes the Antichrist.
He who wants to embody Christ often becomes the Antichrist.
Trump’s Messianic Communication: The Race to Disaster
Messianic Relaunch
To better understand what already appears to be a turning point in Trump’s second term, one must go back a few weeks. The campaign in Iran is going badly. As on several occasions in the past, when Trump encounters difficulties, he plays with the theme of the golden age and reintroduces messianic elements throughout his speeches.
A few days after the start of the war, on March 5, the President received about twenty Christian pastors in the Oval Office and broadcasted a photo of himself and the pastors in full prayer. The message is clear: the war is willed and blessed by God, whose representative Trump claims to be. On the eve of Easter, Paula White, the President’s religious advisor and now head of the White House Faith Office, directly compared Trump’s life to that of Jesus. In doing so, she undoubtedly sought to strengthen the support of the most fundamentalist evangelical voters, those who think that Trump was sent by God. The Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, who often seeks to portray himself as a “crusader of Christian nationalism,” subsequently compares the rescue of a pilot lost in Iran to the resurrection of Christ, using a religious register that would otherwise be quite unusual in this type of situation. A few days later, Hegseth comments on the just-announced ceasefire, loudly affirming that the “victory” in Iran is due to divine providence. The damned souls of Trumpism therefore recoil before no hyperbole and no religious symbol to affirm that they have divine favor on their side: the President’s drop in popularity, which has reached unprecedented levels in recent weeks, justifies great means.
The President’s Hazardous Communication
These efforts may have borne fruit, but Trump’s erratic and disastrous communication during the Easter weekend annihilated all hope. A first tweet published on April 5, Easter Sunday, on Truth Social, shocked everyone. With an unmatched vulgarity, he called the Iranians “crazy bastards” and ordered them to open the “fucking strait,” otherwise they would “live in hell.” The message ends with a downright bizarre statement, no doubt sarcastic: “Praise be to Allah.” On April 7, a new tweet provoked a second shock wave: Trump announced that the entire Iranian civilization would die. Many saw this as threatening a nuclear attack which, coupled with the prospect of a genocide, created an atmosphere undeniably reminiscent of the end of the world.
Fortunately, the next day, the President announced a fifteen-day ceasefire, then going so far as to proclaim that it may be the beginning of a new golden age in the Middle East. No one was fooled: the victory claimed by the USA looks more like an attempt to exit the crisis as quickly as possible. The President claims that all military objectives have been achieved; he triumphs in announcing the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Alas, even the Chinese, little talkative since the beginning of the conflict, point out that the Strait was fully open prior to the US-Israeli invasion. Beyond the evident American failure, the overuse of apocalyptic tropes is manifest: in the space of a few hours, we have gone from Armageddon to the golden age, from apocalypse to the millennium.
It is in this context that the image of Trump disguised as Christ was published. This post followed severe criticisms by the American President against the Pope, calling him “weak” on crime, supportive of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon, and of the Venezuelan Maduro regime. How can we explain such an attack? Commentators often see it as incomprehensible given that Catholics represented a significant part of Trump’s electorate.
Since the 16th century, the struggle against the Pope and Rome has consistently been a central element of the Reformation, from which evangelical movements derive.
However, two essential things must be recalled. First, since the 16th century, the struggle against the Pope and Rome has consistently been a central element of the Reformation, from which evangelical movements derive. One can recall the example of Antoine du Pinet, pastor of Ville-la-Grand and friend of Calvin who, as early as 1543, denounced the diabolical nature of the Roman Catholic Church in his commentary on the Apocalypse. In the United States, there exists a deeply rooted anti-Catholicism, fostered by the first Puritan and Anglican settlers: from the “Pope Nights” celebrated in Boston and the colonies, when residents would burn effigies of the Pope—comparing him to the Beast in the Book of Revelations—to their later adoption by ultra-nationalist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. As Mark Massa points out, many American Catholics view anti-Catholicism as “the last acceptable prejudice.” Thus, it is not very surprising that Trump would attack the sovereign pontiff, especially given the Pope’s unequivocal criticisms: on April 11, Leo XIV declared: “Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war! True strength is shown in serving life.”
Second, beyond the tradition of American hostility towards Catholicism, there also exists, at least in Trump’s eyes, a competition between the American President and the Pope. Trump has never ceased to present himself as God’s chosen one, a tendency which escalated following the assassination attempt in 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania. He conceives of his vocation as universal, and this idea undoubtedly contributed to his interventions in Venezuela, Panama, and Iran. If he is the chosen one of the American people, he also claims to be the instrument of God on Earth, the one who prepares the return of Christ. He has portrayed himself as a champion of dominionism, “a theocratic idea according to which Christians are called by God to exercise their authority over all aspects of society through control of political and cultural institutions.” In this perspective, there is no place for another spiritual authority, no space for the vicar of Christ who would also have a universal vocation. In a striking testimony of this competition, in the spring of 2025, Trump sparked a scandal by posting an AI image of himself dressed as the Pope.
The fact that the billionaire backed down and removed the image that likened him to Christ, and that he stammered an excuse so utterly worthless (“I thought it was me as a doctor”), only confirms the disaster. Far from its messianic hopes, this media sequence was no doubt a resounding error of judgment: it angered not only Catholics but also lots of believers.
Reversed Fronts: When the Savior Becomes the Antichrist
The Theology of the Antichrist
How could Trump’s advisers have made such a blunder? By what blindness did the cohort of pastors, often Pentecostals, who haunt the corridors of the White House fail to understand that, by overindulging in messianic rhetoric, Trump risked it being turned against him?
When one refers to the only biblical source that explicitly mentions the Antichrist, the Letters of John, one finds that one of the major characteristics of the Ultimate Enemy is deceit:
Who is the liar, if not the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? That one is the Antichrist, who denies the Father and the Son.
It goes without saying that proclaiming oneself Christ cannot be seen otherwise than as a lie, which denies the divinity of the Father and of the Son. Trump is often identified as precisely such a compulsive liar.
In chapter 11 of the Book of Daniel, the prophet announces the arrival at the end of times of an Ultimate Enemy of Humanity, whose troops
shall profane the sanctuary, the fortress, they shall put an end to the perpetual sacrifice, and set up the abomination of desolation.
Trump’s many vulgarities, especially those on Easter Sunday, come to mind. As Maya Kandel underlines, in his eyes, “transgression and vulgarity are guarantees of authenticity, proofs of the popular character of Trumpism.”
The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians warns against the tyrant of the end of times in these terms:
the adversary who raises himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped, to the point of sitting in the temple of God, proclaiming himself God.
Finally, in the Book of Revelation, one reads this description of the Beast rising from the sea, which traditional readings most often describe as the Antichrist:
And there was given to him a mouth speaking arrogant words and blasphemies; and it was given to him to act for forty-two months.
In this context, his opponents have rushed into the breach.
Enough is Enough: MAGA Implodes
Since the beginning of the catastrophic sequence that began on Easter Sunday, many former MAGA supporters have announced a definitive break with Trump. Several of them had already begun to distance themselves as early as last June, during the first intervention in Iran. The most prominent of these secessionists is Candace Owens, the former communications director of Turning Point, the ultra-conservative NGO of Charlie Kirk, who had previously campaigned for Trump. She had already violently criticized the first intervention in Iran in June 2025 and admitted then that she was now “embarrassed to have voted Trump.” Now, she describes the Trump administration as satanic, denouncing the “occupation” of the White House by “satanic Zionists.”
From the beginning of the catastrophic sequence that began on Easter Sunday, many former MAGA supporters announced a definitive break with Trump.
Another former heavyweight to have campaigned for Trump in 2024 is Tucker Carlson. As early as last autumn, he began strongly condemning the unwavering support of the United States for Israel, even presenting Christian Zionism as a “heresy.” In a new episode of his Tucker Carlson Show, viewed more than two million times, he denounced Trump’s tweet concerning Iran as a profanation of Easter Day: did Trump not trample all Christian morality by mocking Islam? By using an infamous swear word in his tweet? By seizing Venezuelan oil? Why did he not swear on the Bible during the inauguration ceremony? Does all this not constitute an attack against Christianity? The host concluded that this was pure Evil; even if he did not pronounce the word Antichrist, everyone could guess it. Several major media outlets, such as CNN or International Business Times, echoed it.
Alex Jones, founder of the far-right conspiracy site Infowars, criticized the intervention in Iran in June 2025 in a similar way. He highlighted the gap between Trump’s isolationist promises and the reality of his governance, but he was more cautious than the others: Trump is probably not the Antichrist, he explained, but he acts in the spirit of the Antichrist. This is a very old trope, traces of which can be found throughout the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and beyond: the legend of the Antichrist is so malleable that it lends itself to all kinds of interpretations. By speaking of the spirit of the Antichrist, one produces a powerful attack without actually identifying one’s adversary as the Ultimate Enemy. This is also the line chosen by Marjorie Taylor Greene: “The image [of Trump as Christ] is more than a blasphemy,” she states. “It is the spirit of the Antichrist.” Nick Fuentes, finally, the neo-Nazi influencer of America First, added another layer with the delicate irony:
Tucker says that Trump is the antichrist? Well, it’s really good that he found that out now and not in 2024, when Tucker spoke at the Republican convention in support of Trump’s candidacy. It’s a good thing that he found that out […] when we’re in the Armageddon battle.
These examples are significant: among these ex-MAGA voices, everything happens as if the religious dimension had taken precedence over any other consideration, whether political, economic, social, or international. Moving to the rhetoric of the Antichrist is an undeniable sign of radicalization: who would agree to negotiate with the Enemy of humankind? The MAGA sphere has thus de facto collapsed: if the President still benefits from massive (if declining) support among evangelical voters, he has lost the support of part of the post-liberal bloc, owing to the increasing salience of antisemitism within it.
Donald Trump has no doubt become aware of this danger. In a long, furious tweet published on his Truth Social network, he insulted the secessionists: according to him, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly (a journalist who, however, did not speak of the Antichrist), Candace Owens, and Alex Jones were people who were pleased that Iran possessed nuclear weapons; he called them losers, failures, and idiots.
The Antichrist entering the mainstream?
The Disaffection of the Catholics
This problem is not limited to evangelical circles; the messianic reversal is also visible among Catholics. It is an understatement to say that American Catholics have faced terrible trials in recent years, especially as the repugnant cases of pedophilia within the clergy have continued to make headlines. American Catholicism is a community specifically shaped by post-liberalism, a theory very much in vogue in the United States. They have prompted many Catholics to rally to Trumpism while rejecting secularism and political liberalism. According to Laura Field, these theories aim to impose “an interweaving of Church and State, allowing religion to assert its authority over the political.”
The development of these new doctrines has sparked vocations but has also caused serious tensions between their political orientations and respect for the authority of Rome. Although they are hardly enthusiastic about Trump as an individual, Catholics voted massively for him in 2024: they represent 22% of his electorate according to the Pew Research Center. However, since the beginning of Trump’s term, they have been shaken in their faith: how can they accept the excesses of ICE and the violence they have inflicted on migrants? The sight of Catholic priests in Chicago entering ICE detention centers to offer the Eucharist to migrants on Ash Wednesday in 2026 struck a chord with many. And of course, Trump’s attacks against the Pope do not go over well at all.
The sight of Catholic priests in Chicago entering ICE detention centers to offer the Eucharist to migrants on Ash Wednesday in 2026 struck a chord with many. And of course, Trump’s attacks against the Pope do not go over well at all [with Catholic voters].
Certainly, there are staunch defenders of Trump who are ready to renounce their faith, abandoning Catholicism for Trumpism. This is the case of the Fox News commentator Sean Hannity, who explained on television that, from that day forward, he no longer considered himself Catholic. He then attacked “institutional corruption at all levels” and “the scandals” that lead to Rome. The Pope became a target, notably because he refused to recognize the sacred character of war against Iran.
This should provide grist to the mill of those who accuse the American President of wanting to create a new religion or at least of exploiting faith to impose his policies. Without going that far, the Vice President J.D. Vance, who converted to Catholicism and whom many consider to be a key ideological figure of Trump’s second term, also attacked Leo XIV and criticized his pacifist remarks: “I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology” The Vice President’s theology lesson is unlikely to please many Catholics: when one proclaims oneself of that faith, one knows that the dogma of papal infallibility exists.
For a great majority of Catholics, deep divergences with the President have come to light, and some have gone so far as to liken Trump to the Antichrist. The Lamp, a right-wing Catholic journal with decent visibility in the United States, provides a perfect illustration. In an April 13 article, its editor-in-chief, Matthew Walther, openly asked the question: “Is Donald Trump Antichrist?” Going through in detail the tradition of the Antichrist, the journalist violently attacks the image of Trump as Christ. For him, “it not only blasphemous but idolatrous. It is an invitation to worship our 47th president.”
Walther is careful, however, not to be too assertive: as a good Augustinian, he knows that one must not play with accusations of Antichrist. He therefore evades the issue in a rather subtle way at the end of the article, by referring to Henry Newman, a major figure of British Catholicism in the 19th century, a recognized theologian and respected philosopher, and a bishop and a cardinal. He was proclaimed a saint in 2019 by Pope Francis. Newman interprets the Antichrist not in literally but metaphorically: the Antichrist would be a universal liar. He would push people to accept a spiritual revolution, “a rejection of all existing bonds, duties, affections, obligations, pieties, a reduction of all moral reasoning to a crude calculus of gain.” Even if the text does not formally identify Trump with the Antichrist, its straightforward attack against the President is surprising, especially coming from a Catholic accustomed to turning the other cheek. It is no doubt revealing of the shift of a part of Catholic opinion.
The Controversy with the Pope: an Eschatological Confrontation?
As if that were not enough, the Pope has also decided not to let himself be pushed around. While he had responded in a rather discreet manner to the President’s first attacks, merely affirming that he did not fear the Trump administration, it seemed that the time of angelic gentleness eventually passed. Then, Leo XIV launched a powerful offensive against Trump. In the eyes of some analysts, this was no longer a simple critique; it represented an unprecedented confrontation. Even if Leo XIV has not directly called Trump the Antichrist, he nevertheless has used a discourse that evokes it. In his speech at Saint Joseph Cathedral in Bamenda, Cameroon, the Holy Father blessed the peacemakers. By contrast, he cursed those he called the “lords of war.” Later on, he evoked a world ravaged by “a handful of tyrants.” It was difficult not to see an allusion to the American billionaire. Yet, his most significant attack declared:
Woe, on the other hand, to those who divert religions and the very name of God to their own ends—military, economic, or political—dragging what is holy into what is most sordid and darkest.
The precision concerning the use of the very name of God for personal ends referred back to the famous image of Trump as Christ. Diverting religion for purposes of power is already a rather transparent allusion to the first Beast of chapter 13 of the Apocalypse: “And there was given to him a mouth speaking arrogant words and blasphemies; and it was given to him to act for forty-two months.” The end of the sentence is even more striking, since dragging what is most holy into what is most sordid echoes the despot of the Book of Daniel, the one whose troops “shall profane the sanctuary, the fortress, they shall put an end to the perpetual sacrifice, and set up the abomination of desolation.”
This reference solidifies the Pope’s comparison, since the Antichrist is traditionally presented as the Ultimate Tyrant. The details matter: the accusation is not yet open, but the sovereign pontiff has clearly scattered a certain number of clues suggesting the identification of the American President with the Antichrist. The dispute is thus worsening and risks leading to an open conflict. The Pentecostal pastors of the White House, who know their theology like the back of their hand, must be fuming and contemplating terrible reprisals.
Social Networks Catch Fire
Another serious source of concern for Trump’s supporters is that the rhetoric of the Antichrist is no longer limited to religious circles: it is spreading far beyond it. It seems to be infiltrating everywhere, not only in political circles, but also in all strata of American society. Certainly, one recalls that all American presidents, since Franklin D. Roosevelt, have suffered comparisons with the Antichrist. More recently Obama was a significant target of such accusations. But never has this type of discourse been so popular and so visible in public space.
The rhetoric of the Antichrist is no longer limited to religious circles: it is spreading far beyond it.
On social networks, the theme of the Antichrist is experiencing a strong surge. Few made the association between Trump and the Antichrist before the spring of 2026. Certainly, one could find a few clips, like one posted on X on Christmas Day depicting Trump kissing a horned demon and addressing a crowd of zombified followers wearing MAGA caps. It exceeded 250k views but the case was unique.
With the beginning of the war against Iran, however, comparisons of this kind began to proliferate. On March 5, the X account The Patriot Voice, which boasts around 185,000 followers and is particularly critical of Trump’s actions, posted the following message:
I used to think there was NO WAY Trump could be the Antichrist, but especially more recently since the “Board of Peace” and Iran war, it seems quite likely. That, and he said he didn’t think he was going to heaven, multiple times. He ticks A LOT of the boxes.
The author of the tweet presents himself as a dissident of the NWO wrestling league and a Navy veteran. He displays “Christ is King” on his profile, which situates him as a supporter of Christian nationalism and America First. This tweet of an eschatological nature is symptomatic of the definitive split within the MAGA sphere.
On April 13, the Christian influencer Mandy Arthur posted a video, achieving around 20,000 views, with a clear message: “My God, we may have made a mistake and accidentally elected the Antichrist. Help!” The idea of having accidentally elected the Antichrist is amusing, and this did not escape other opponents of Trump, who hold radically different ideas. Thus, one finds the same idea in a sarcastic tone in an Instagram post by the singer Jack White, in which the star attacks evangelicals:
Hey evangelical Christians? Remember that anti-Christ you been squawking about all these years and how he’d present himself as Christlike and bring about the end of days with a final war in the Middle East involving Jerusalem? Well…check out your boy now!
The post gained more than 220,000 views. This interaction testifies to a surprising communion of ideas between a representative of the Christian right and a musician notoriously known for his opposition to Trump.
The Antichrist theme is reiterated in a viral video—with over one million views—posted by the Iranian embassy in Tajikistan. It is an animated version of the famous image of Trump as Christ. Suddenly, Jesus appears in the sky and descends toward Trump shouting “What is this?” Christ then delivers a violent punch to the President, who in turn screams before being hurled into the lake of fire. This is the fate reserved for the two Beasts assimilated to the Antichrist in chapter 19 of the Apocalypse of John: “They were both thrown alive into the burning lake of fire and sulfur.”
Even more striking, the media outlet HQ compiled comments from Trump followers after he posted the image of himself as Christ. Comparisons to the Antichrist abound there, and the HQ post is now approaching two million views. Whatever the platform—X, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, etc.—social networks are flooded with systematic comparisons between Trump and the Antichrist.
The Left Lying in Wait
A final, more surprising element makes it possible to grasp the extent of the eschatological crisis into which Trump has plunged the United States and the entire world: a part of the liberal left now seems receptive to the rhetoric of the Antichrist.
That such a powerful progressive organization as Call to Activism thus begins to use theological arguments to counter the President is symptomatic of the spread of eschatology to the entire political sphere.
Already, in January 2026, on the first anniversary of his inauguration, the organization Call to Activism posted an incendiary tweet against the President. Accusing him of having committed the seven deadly sins, the tweet was explicit: “Trump is the anti-christ.” The somewhat doubtful spelling showed that the authors of the tweet are probably not experts in theology, but the idea is there. This is not at all an insignificant tweet: it was then seen by more than 350,000 people. Above all, Call to Activism presents itself as one of the most influential activist organizations in favor of Democratic policies; its leaders claim a cumulative audience of 550 million views per month. They boast of having reduced Donald Trump’s influence on Facebook during the 2020 campaign. That such a powerful progressive organization as Call to Activism has begun to use theological arguments to counter the President is symptomatic of the spread of eschatology to the entire political sphere.
With the war in Iran, the eschatological storm has grown even stronger. Other Democrats have in turn crossed the line and accused the President of being the Antichrist. This is notably the case of LeftyWinter, a social media personality who presents herself as an independent Democrat. She says her political beliefs are close to those of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; that is to say, she is part of the more or less Marxist political culture associated with the Democratic Socialists of America, where one does not really expect to find eschatology. And yet, in a tweet on April 4, LeftyWinter gives a (rather basic) definition of the Antichrist as the ultimate opponent of Jesus and concludes, “Trump literally fits the definition of antichrist.”
The message has been viewed more than 100,000 times. In a rather astonishing mixing of genres, LeftyWinter echoes the post cited above by Candace Owens denouncing the satanic administration of Trump. One must use every means! Undeniably, some of the left has understood the windfall represented by the spread of the rhetoric of the Antichrist and has seized it without too much caution or remorse.
Frederick II
It is difficult to think of a historical moment being described by contemporaries in such eschatological terms, where a President, or the leader of the most powerful country in the world, finds himself in the position of becoming the Ultimate Enemy of humankind. If there is one point of comparison, it is no doubt to the Middle Ages that one must turn, and more precisely the 13th century, which witnessed the violent confrontation between Emperor Frederick II and the papacy. Wishing to be recognized as the Dominus mundi, the master of the world, Frederick II, already excommunicated for having taken the cross too late, launched a vast offensive against the Throne of Saint Peter. Like Trump, he believed that he was God’s chosen one, an instrument in the hands of providence. He saw himself as an incarnation of a king-priest, and his supporters did not hesitate to compare him to King David, another reference dear to Trumpists. Among the Emperor’s supporters were Franciscans in open conflict with the Pope who considered him the Emperor of the last days. He himself, skillfully mixing messianism and millenarianism, did not hesitate to mount the pulpit in 1239 in the cathedral of Pisa to preach the approach of “the kingdom of peace.” When he marched on Rome, various rumors arose: some hailed him as “Caesar, Emperor, and Savior.” Others, however, compared him to the Antichrist, all the more so since part of his formidable army was composed of Saracen warriors, who were considered Infidels. In that troubled time, wrote the historian Ernst Kantorowicz, “the agitated world then truly awaited an imperial Messiah, similar to Christ.”
Some courtiers went so far as to directly liken the emperor to Christ. Over about ten years, between 1239 and 1250, the spiritual conflict between the Empire and the papacy took on almost cosmogonic proportions. The Pope managed to depose the emperor; civil wars followed. Frederick II experienced a turbulent end to his reign, punctuated by numerous battles and betrayals. Owing to weariness from his incessant conflicts and the propaganda put out by the Vatican, he was gradually seen less as the universal savior he claimed to be than as the Enemy of humankind. The eschatological reversal, from the rhetoric of the Messiah to that of the Antichrist, required ten years.
Of course, the comparison stops at eschatological considerations. A skillful general, peerless negotiator, and extraordinary scholar, Frederick II possessed exceptional qualities that are lacking in the American President. One need only think that Frederick obtained, in 1229, the liberation of Jerusalem through the power of his diplomacy, whereas Donald Trump is stuck negotiating the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before his intervention! Nevertheless, this is the only real comparison of such an eschatological reversal: if one takes into account the 2016 campaign, when Trump began to present himself as a universal savior, and the current war in Iran, during which he appears increasingly as the Antichrist, one sees that this reversal also unfolded over a decade.
Danger in the House: Assassination, Impeachment, or a Coup D’état?
To conclude, when Paula White compares the Trump to Jesus, when the President himself relays an image of himself disguised as Christ, there is not the whiff of clumsiness or error. It is a concerted strategy, pursued over about ten years, that is reaching its end as a resounding failure. Messianic rhetoric is a dangerous weapon. In this case, it has turned against the American President, who is now far less considered as the Second Coming than as an Antichrist, even the final Antichrist.
This assimilation is more than problematic, on several levels. Obviously, his life is in danger. The billionaire has escaped several assassination attempts in the past, but it would not be surprising if religious fanatics, presenting him as the primary source of Evil and an immediate danger for all humanity, continued to try to eliminate him. The recent attempt on his life by Cole Allen, even if it is still dubious what his intentions really were, illustrates this risk. But beyond his person, the political risk is immense. The MAGA sphere has collapsed, no doubt definitively. Increasingly numerous voices are calling for the President’s impeachment. One can hardly imagine the chaos that would result, and the prospect of an interregnum under J.D. Vance is not reassuring. Finally, the midterm elections will likely be disastrous, and one may wonder whether Trump truly intends to respect the Constitution. On several occasions, he has hinted that the midterm elections might not take place. That is precisely the threat of a coup d’état, and when one recalls the purges that Pete Hegseth has just organized in the army, it becomes clear that is not an empty threat. Thus, Trump’s messianic propaganda has failed; the results are the opposite of his expectations, and the President is regularly linkened to the Ultimate Enemy. In this catastrophic situation, he appears increasingly isolated at the head of power. His volatility, his megalomania, and his lack of morality logically give cause to fear the worst.
Joël E. Schnapp is a French historian, holding a PhD in Modern History from the University of Paris-X Nanterre. He is a research associate at University of Grenoble and a specialist of Apocalyptic Traditions in the Renaissance and the Christian Polemics against Islam. He has written several articles about the Turks and Islam in the Renaissance, including his 2017 book called Prophéties de fin du monde et peur des Turcs au XVe siècle: Ottomans, Antichrist, Apocalypse. In 2023, he published an essay called Chroniques de l’Antichrist: Crises et Apocalypses au XXIe siècle, in which he reflects on medieval apocalytic traditions applied to contemporary history. He has also written numerous articles for Le Monde, Le Média, Le Nouvel Observateur, Le Point, and Lundi.am.
Image made by John Chrobak. All assets used are in the public domain.
