At this point Trump is pretty much the Anti-Christ.

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
      14·
      12 hours ago

      It is not. There’s a reason he didn’t post an image with himself as a demon instead. He thinks he’s Jesus. Why would I discard that as “random”?

      • Monument@piefed.worldEnglish
        11·
        11 hours ago

        In the last little bit, I’ve noticed he’s had several weird ‘off script’ bits he’s been doing.
        Commentators have picked up on it and have discussed them at length to highlight how cooked his brain is.

        I think it’s part of an intentional effort to seed a mythos around him. Some true information, some false information. Overrepresent some of the fantastical stuff, especially through media channels to your low-information fans. Get a couple idiot commentators to start parroting a Jesus narrative for him. Pick a fight with the pope, maybe. See if you can dear-leader yourself into becoming the god king while your oligarch buddies fuck with the media and informational landscape.

        Seems to be tracking.

        (Editing to add: I want to be explicit that I don’t think this is a super-well executed plan. In terms of plans, This one seems to be written in crayon. But shit is definitely happening .)

    • abbiistabbii@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      27·
      12 hours ago

      The Sparknotes:

      • Pope made speech saying that war was bad and we should move to diplomacy and dialogue.
      • Trump believed it was about him and started scream tweeting at him calling him a “weak on crime”.
      • Pope said “I’m not afraid of Trump.”
      • Trump posted an AI pic of him as Jesus healing someone in a hospital bed flanked by troops and an American flag and all the accoutrements.
      • This was picked up by the media, Evangelicals were horrified and called it Blasphemous, showing they don’t actually see Trump as Jesus. Everyone else memed on him.
      • Trump took it down, saying “he didn’t know anything about it” and “it was meant to show him as a Doctor”.
      • Despite him taking it down, most of the front pages of the Newspapers today here at least.
      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        6·
        10 hours ago

        Evangelicals were horrified

        Yeah I don’t believe this for a moment. Some of them may have acted horrified.

          • zikzak025@lemmy.world
            1·
            4 hours ago

            Wow they literally had AI redraw it to different proportions, too, it’s not just a crop. There are different visual elements, like the building in the background in front of the flag.

            Edit: just noticed the guy in the bed also has a beard in the wider image but not in the slimmed one.

            • pticrix@lemmy.ca
              4·
              3 hours ago

              Have you noticed the guy in bed is now Epstein? Probably why it was redrawn regenerated.

              • zikzak025@lemmy.world
                1·
                3 hours ago

                I assumed the Epstein resemblance was accidental (well, maybe not for the unpaid intern that generated it, but for everyone else) give that that’s the version I’ve seen shared more by the MAGA crowd. Like the other person above, I had no idea there was a wider (original?) version.

              • zikzak025@lemmy.world
                1·
                2 hours ago

                I’ve seen the jokes about the Epstein resemblance, I guess I may have just been out of the loop on the possibility that the Epstein version of the image was an intentional edit.

                I’ve seen mostly that version being shared, even by MAGA degens, so I had assumed it originated unironically from the MAGAsphere. Kinda takes part of the fun out of it, if that was not the case.

      • Monument@piefed.worldEnglish
        6·
        11 hours ago

        At this rate, I just assumed he posted it with the captions. (I mean, I would probably figure out why, but my first impulse was a ‘sure, why not?’ kind of acceptance.)

        Which is the goal of hypernormalization, right?