Vice President JD Vance was mocked online after he directly contradicted President Donald Trump's defense for why he posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ.
Last week, the Pope criticized Trump's widely unpopular war in Iran and called on the world "to reject war, especially a war which many people have said is an unjust war, which is continuing to escalate and is not resolving anything."
Trump later took to Truth Social in an attempt to discredit Pope Leo, saying he doesn't "want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon." Among other things, Trump said the Pope should "stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician."
Trump also posted an image—that he deleted following MAGA backlash—of himself as Jesus Christ healing the sick.
@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social
When asked about it, he claimed he thought the image "was me as a doctor":
"It wasn't a depiction. I did post it and I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with [the] Red Cross as a Red Cross worker which we support and only the fake news could come up with that one."
"I just heard about it and I thought, 'How did they come up with that?' It's supposed to be me as a doctor making people better and I do make people better. I make people a lot better."
You can hear what he said in the video below.
But when asked about this during a Fox News interview, Vance contradicted Trump, said the image was posted as a "joke," and blamed people “not understanding his [Trump's] humor”:
“I think the president was posting a joke and, of course, he took it down because he recognized that a lot of people weren’t understanding his humor in that case."
“I think the president of the United States likes to mix it up on social media and I actually think that’s one of the good things about this president, is that he’s not filtered – he doesn’t send everything through a communications professional. He actually reaches out directly to the people.”
"When it comes to the disagreements with the Vatican, we're gonna have disagreements from time to time. I think it's a good thing that the Pope is advocating for the things he cares about but we're always gonna have disagreements on matters of public policy."
"I should say 'sometimes' we're gonna have disagreements on public policy. The Pope has been critical of our immigration policy but ultimately the immigration policy of the United States is set by Donald Trump. The Pope is gonna have disagreements on other issues."
"We can respect the Pope, we have a good relationship with the Vatican, but we're ultimately gonna disagree on substantive questions from time to time. I think it's a totally reasonable thing. It isn't toally newsworthy."
You can hear what Vance said in the video below.
People were not buying what Vance was selling.
It's not exactly comforting to know the government is in the hands of a social media troll.
