Donald Trump won between 55 and 59 percent of Catholic voters in 2024, the strongest performance by a presidential candidate with that group in decades. He is now feuding with the first American pope, posting what critics across the political spectrum are calling a blasphemous AI image of himself, and refusing to apologize.
The political math here is not complicated.
What Trump Did
Late Sunday, Trump posted a lengthy attack on Pope Leo XIV on Truth Social after the pope criticized the US war with Iran. In the post, Trump called the pope “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” claimed Leo was only elected pope “because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump,” and told him to “stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.”
Forty-six minutes later, Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself in a white robe, glowing hand outstretched over a sick man, American flags and military planes in the background. The image was widely interpreted as depicting Trump as a Christ-like healer. Critics from across the political spectrum, including the Knights Templar International, labeled it blasphemous.
Trump deleted the post and later told reporters he thought it depicted him as a doctor or Red Cross worker.
“I don’t know too many doctors that have glowing hands,” Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest, told CNN.
His Own Allies Pushed Back
Bishop Robert Barron, a member of Trump’s own Religious Liberty Commission, called the Truth Social attack on the pope “entirely inappropriate and disrespectful” and said “the President owes the Pope an apology.”
Conservative commentator Erick Erickson wrote on X that Christian Trump supporters “who have stood with him through Iran” are “waking up to his blasphemy.”
Even Trump ally Tucker Carlson weighed in critically, pointing to a White House event just one week earlier in which Trump’s spiritual adviser Paula White-Cain openly compared the president to Jesus Christ.
Trump’s response to calls for an apology was straightforward. “No,” he said. “Because Pope Leo said things that are wrong.”
Who Pope Leo Is
Leo XIV is the first American pope in the history of the Catholic Church, elected by the College of Cardinals last May. He is a Chicago White Sox fan who speaks in unaccented English. He has been direct in his criticisms of Trump on both immigration and the Iran war, more so than his predecessor Pope Francis, who tended toward oblique rebukes.
On Monday, aboard the papal airplane during a visit to Africa, Leo told reporters he had “no fear of the Trump administration” and would continue preaching the Gospel.
The contrast in polling is stark. An NBC News survey conducted in late February and early March found Leo with a 42 percent favorable rating and just 8 percent unfavorable, a net positive of 34 points. Trump in the same poll was viewed favorably by 41 percent and unfavorably by 53 percent, a net negative of 12 points.
The Political Stakes
Catholics were not just important to Trump in 2024. They have held on longer than most groups. Pew Research Center data from January showed Catholic support for Trump’s agenda dropping less steeply than it did among evangelicals, other Protestants, and the religiously unaffiliated.
But that cushion is eroding. Trump’s approval among white Catholics has dropped from 59 percent to 52 percent. Among Hispanic Catholics, it has fallen from 31 percent to 23 percent.
This feud is unlikely to help.
In 2016, Trump clashed briefly with Pope Francis over immigration and border walls. Within a day, he backed down, praised Francis as a “wonderful guy,” and insisted they had never really been fighting. He went on to win the presidency.
This time, neither side is backing down. Leo is on a four-country trip through Africa, telling reporters he is not afraid. Trump is doubling down and refusing to apologize. And the image, even deleted, has already circulated widely.
Trump called Leo a politician. Leo called for peace. A majority of American Catholics know who their pope is. Whether they decide it matters at the ballot box is the question the midterms will answer.