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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   16409 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026

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Trump deletes post depicting him as Jesus-like figure after backlash

Faced with growing backlash, US President Donald Trump appears to have removed a controversial Truth Social post depicting himself as a Jesus-like figure.

The AI-generated image, which showed Trump appearing to heal a sick man in a hospital bed, sparked fierce backlash from both sides of the US political spectrum, including from some of Trump's most ardent supporters. (...)

The now-deleted image showed Trump, wearing a white robe, with a glowing hand on the forehead of a sick man, which critics said was similar to religious paintings showing Jesus healing the infirm.

The background of the images included the Statue of Liberty, a large US flag fluttering, fighter jets and an eagle, as well as a nurse, a woman praying and what appeared to be a soldier in uniform. (...)

Criticism of the image came swiftly, including from figures considered close to Trump and the administration.

"This should be deleted immediately," wrote Sean Feucht, a Christian activist who is working on a series of faith-based events to mark the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence this year. (...)

Riley Gaines, a prominent conservative activist, wrote that "God shall not be mocked".

Much of the criticism also came from faith-based US news outlets.

"This goes too far. It crosses the line," wrote David Brody, a journalist with the Christian Broadcasting Network. "A supporter can back the mission and reject this."

If the image had been satirical, people would have dismissed it as too over the top. But Trump's taste is such that he posted this thing unironically.

Any Trump supporters care to steelman this? To me, the most parsimonious explanation is that Trump is a narcissist with a god complex.

Any Trump supporters care to steelman this?

I don't like it, and I'm disgusted by it, but he's still a better pick than Kamala or anyone else the Dems have (or theoretically might) put forward as a candidate on any and all issues I care about. So yeah, the Dems are still so awful that Trump can blaspheme Christ and he's still better than the opposition ("Hey Jamie, pull up that clip of God being booed at the DNC").

Trump doesn't support the mass importation of Muslims and Hindus, though he definitely is only doing token opposition to things like H1B visas where it would really make a dent in stopping them. And yet I can't imagine the Dems doing anything other than increasing the amount of Muslims and Indians coming in.

So yeah, Trump is far from perfect, but he still manages to better serve my interests as both a Christian and an American than the opposition.

The counterpoint is that it's not just "Trump vs a Dem." The more reasonable expectation is that the Republican primary is where Republicans would be expected to offer better options to a right-leaning voter. Trump won that by a mile.

The Republicans have been putting forward milquetoast RINOs for decades, and I (and most Republicans, though for the record I'm not a Republican I'm a member of the Constitution Party) grew tired enough of it that they didn't trust any establishment candidate the GOP put forward.

But once the shape of the 2016 primary became clear, Trump was running against Cruz, so "I want a real Republican and not a RINO" doesn't point to a Trump vote.

I know a lot of people who thought that way did vote for Trump over Cruz, and it sounds like you were one of them. I would be interested to hear what the logic is - was it simply that Trump was hated by the GOPe even more than Cruz was, or was it a specific policy or issue? (The small number of non-Mormon conservative Americans I know all voted for Cruz, although they thought of it as a 2 good options scenario rather than holding their noses and voting for the lesser evil).

I would think a lot of them probably thought that since all the RINOs lined up behind Cruz once it became clear that Jeb, Rubio and Kasich were not gonna beat Trump, that a Cruz administration would just become RINO central, even if that's not what it would have been in a counterfactual world where Trump didn't run and Cruz beat Jeb, Rubio and Kasich.

Did the RINOs line up behind Cruz? My memory is that Kasich went the distance until it was mathematically impossible to beat Trump and the RINOs supported him in doing so.

I just checked and yeah, Kasich dropped right after Cruz, but his campaign was very dead way ahead of that, with Cruz being the last credible obstacle to Trump's nomination. The reporting at the time was indeed that the establishment had lined up behind Cruz. Bush and Rubio endorsed Cruz.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/23/ted-cruz-is-the-republican-establishment-candidate-thats-absolutely-insane/

I don't think the counterfactual Cruz that won without Trump being in the mix would have been a bad president (if he had any chance in the general, which I doubt), but a Cruz that won the nomination as the GOPe's last stand against Trump would have had a different mandate.

Thanks. The UK media had lost interest at some point before then once it was clear to anyone who wasn't wishcasting that Trump would win.

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