On Thursday, Franklin Graham, son of the late evangelist Billy Graham — and a longtime prominent ally of Trump — took to X to vehemently defend President Donald Trump for posting an AI-generated image that depicted him as a Jesus-like figure earlier in the week. Graham said that he didn’t believe Trump would “knowingly depict himself as Jesus Christ.”
He also said he was “thankful” that Trump had since made it “very clear” that he believed the AI image depicted him as a doctor “helping someone,” not Jesus.
“When he learned of the concerns, he immediately removed the post,” he said.
Deepak Sarma, inaugural distinguished scholar in the public humanities at Case Western Reserve University, said that Graham’s statement “highlights how certain expressions of MAGA Christianity have drifted, both conceptually and ethically, from the core of the Christian tradition.”
“What emerges is not a sustained engagement with moral reasoning, but the repetition of a narrative that privileges loyalty over discernment and even permits/celebrates blasphemous behavior,” they said.
