Why so many Christians now believe Trump’s been possessed by a demon – or worse: A goat-headed devil image… a bizarre ‘blessing’… and now the ‘Anti-Christ’ signs are revealed by FREDDY GRAY

Donald Trump has a strange habit of adding insult to injury. About 40 minutes after publishing a hostile post against ‘WEAK’ Pope Leo on the Truth Social platform on Sunday, he decided to post an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ, laying his miraculous healing hand on a hospitalized patient.

A minute later, he posted a photo of the Golden Trump Tower on the Moon, as if to signal that he was just having fun, but no one seemed to care.

His gratuitously blasphemous ‘work of art’ deeply offended much of his Christian support base, prompting calls for him to remove the post and apologise.

“I beg you, repent,” said Father Joseph DeMarzo, a conservative Catholic priest. ‘We are Christ first, not Maga first.’

Michael Knowles, a very popular Catholic expert, also weighed in on this issue. ‘I think someone has already told him that, but whatever his intention, it behooves the President both morally and politically to delete the picture,’ he said.

But Trump never apologizes for his online antics. Instead, he told reporters that his eyes were deceiving them and that he did not claim to be Jesus.

‘This was not a description. “I posted this and thought it was me as a doctor and it was about the Red Cross,” he explained, eventually deleting the post.

Online sleuths quickly discovered that the AI ​​image first appeared in February, courtesy of Trump superfan Nick Adams, who is now the Special Presidential Envoy for American Tourism, Exceptionalism, and Values.

But oddly enough, the copy Trump shared had a disturbing change from Adams’s original: An ethereal soldier figure in the clouds had been replaced by a horned creature; some say it may be a demonic representation of Baphomet, a goat-headed figure from the occult.

A photo of Trump wearing a white papal robe appeared on the Truth Social account after attending Pope Francis’ funeral last year, but Trump later insisted he “had nothing to do with it.”

This has fed a growing paranoia in some sections of America’s religious right that their old hero Trump, whom they once supported, has become the exact opposite of the Christ-like, now an evil force. “This is more than blasphemy,” said Marjorie Taylor Greene, the mag darling-turned-stern Trump critic. ‘This is an Anti-Christ spirit.’

On election night in 2024, Trump said: ‘Many people told me that God spared my life for a reason [following an assassination attempt at a campaign rally]and that reason was to save our country and restore America to greatness. But now he seems almost deliberately demeaning himself in the minds of many Republican Christians.

This isn’t the first time Trump has engaged in controversial religious depictions of himself.

A photo of Trump wearing a white papal robe appeared on the Truth Social account after attending Pope Francis’ funeral last year, but Trump later insisted he “had nothing to do with it.” In one of his 2023 fraud cases, he reposted a fake court sketch showing himself sitting next to our Lord and Savior.

This is not the first time he has criticized a High Pope. The then Vicar of Christ called Pope Francis ‘disgraceful’ when he criticized his strict immigration policies. But for some, Trump’s latest AI insult, combined with his decidedly un-Christian rebuke of Pope Leo and the Catholic Church, represents a new low in bad faith.

Trump’s spiritual advisor and plastic-faced TV personality Paula White-Cain gave a bizarre Easter blessing to the President and his war

And it is remarkable that Trump’s harshest critics are not Democrats who are not surprised, let alone horrified, that Trump sees himself as God. No, the angriest voices are coming from the same Right-Wing Republicans who once admired Donald.

Figures like Taylor Greene and conservative commentator Candace Owens have felt increasingly betrayed since last year, when the White House tried to cover up the Jeffrey Epstein story; some Maga elements actually see this as evidence that the world is controlled by a cabal of Satanic pedophiles.

Taylor Greene and Owens are also obsessed with the extent of Israel’s influence on America’s foreign policy, and are outraged that their President has launched a war on Iran, apparently at the behest of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

For America First purists, the problem isn’t just that the President is making bad mistakes. This is because he was chosen by evil, anti-religious forces who are trying to hasten the apocalypse by starting a nuclear war.

In fact, Trump has become an almost uniquely divisive figure, drawing praise and criticism from across the religious spectrum.

A surprisingly large number of evangelical Maga fans, including Christian Zionists, for example, believe that the Commander-in-Chief is doing God’s work by eliminating the evil Ayatollahs in a joint effort with the holy nation of Israel. Meanwhile, a growing number of Catholic, Orthodox and Episcopal believers believe Trump’s actions are not only regrettable but evil.

Maga darling-turned-stern Trump critic Marjorie Taylor Greene believes the US President is the exact opposite of his Christ-like presence, now a demonic force. ‘This is beyond blasphemy,’ he said. ‘This is an Anti-Christ spirit’

When Trump warned the world that ‘an entire civilization will die tonight and will never be brought back’, his old friend, influential podcast host Tucker Carlson, was outraged: ‘Christians need to understand where Trump is taking us,’ he said

The fact that the president chose Easter Sunday morning, of all days, to deliver an aggressive message to Tehran only confirmed to them that Trump’s faith had morphed into something threatening.

On the joyful day of our Lord’s resurrection, he said, ‘Open the F****n’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you will live in Hell.’ ‘Praise be to Allah.’

Two days later he warned the world that ‘an entire civilization will die tonight and will never be brought back.’

Trump’s more nihilistic fans chuckled at his provocative bartending. But his old friend, influential podcast host Tucker Carlson, was furious: ‘Disrespecting Easter was the first step towards nuclear war,’ he said. ‘Christians need to understand where Trump is taking us.’

Carlson drew particular attention to Trump’s spiritual advisor, plastic-faced television evangelist Paula White-Cain, and her bizarre Easter blessing and war on the President.

‘Mr President, you have been betrayed, arrested and falsely accused,’ he said. ‘This is a familiar pattern that our Lord and Savior showed us, but it didn’t end there for Him and it didn’t end there for you either.

‘And I believe the Lord wanted me to tell you that through His victory you will be victorious in everything you put your hands to.’

Carlson had a different approach. ‘How can a Christian watch this and not feel disgusted?’ he asked, condemning what he described as the “spiritual warfare” being waged in the White House and the distortion of the New Testament.

Did the criticism get under Trump’s skin? Last Thursday — the same day his wife, Melania, made a rather confusing statement about Jeffrey Epstein — the President published an angry 372-word Truth Social post attacking Tucker Carlson and another former supporter-turned-critic Megyn Kelly, as well as Owens and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, calling them “stupid people” and insisting that “no one cares about them.”

But in his desperation to offend Maga critics, the President may alienate large numbers of God-fearing Americans.

There are approximately 53 million Catholics in the United States, and the so-called Catholic vote is often said to be the deciding ‘volatile’ factor in elections. It is an interesting fact that Trump won a majority of the Catholic vote in his successful campaigns in 2016 and 2024, but not in his defeat against the Irish Catholic Joe Biden in 2020.

As with so many other Trump stories, voters may soon forget about the time the President posted a Jesus-like image of himself. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s escaped online excess.

But there is broader concern among Republicans that the 79-year-old is starting to fall badly short of the mark amid the tensions of his second term.

His boast of killing Iranians left many decent people cold. In February, when film director Rob Reiner and his wife were brutally murdered in their home, Trump made a surprisingly rude and disrespectful statement praising Reiner as suffering from ‘Trump derangement syndrome’.

And when Robert Mueller, who investigated Trump’s ties to Russia during his first term, died late last month, Trump responded: ‘Good, I’m glad he’s dead.’

Although the vast majority of Americans do not believe that their President has been possessed by the Antichrist, they do know that speaking ill of the recently deceased is a bad thing.

Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator