Maddowblog-Already in a ditch, Trump digs deeper in defending image depicting him as Jesus

[LetMyPeopleVote]

The president asked Americans to pretend they didn’t see what they obviously saw.

I don’t know what kind of medical facilities the president has visited, but I’ve met quite a few physicians over the years, and not one of them ever wore a white robe and a red stole while bright lights emanated from their hands.
www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-04-13T19:21:30.988Z

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/already-in-a-ditch-trump-digs-deeper-in-defending-image-depicting-himself-as-jesus

Offered an opportunity to apologize, or at least to walk back his rhetorical offensive, the president refused, insisting again that the pope “said things that are wrong.”

Whether the Republican pays a political price for this odd and unnecessary broadside remains to be seen, but it was his other religio-political controversy that seems to have created an even bigger mess.

And Trump posted an image of himself as some sort of American Jesus healing people.

— Brian Kaylor (@briankaylor.bsky.social) 2026-04-13T02:02:10.235Z

.....The item that he published to his social media platform was removed on Monday morning, but just as notable was the way in which Trump tried to defend the image during a brief Q&A with reporters at the White House.

BREAKING: President Trump says he thought the controversial image he posted on social media that appeared to depict him as Jesus Christ was "supposed to be me as a doctor."

— MS NOW (@ms.now) 2026-04-13T17:03:39.339Z

When a reporter asked, “Did you post that picture of yourself depicted as Jesus Christ?” he replied, “Well, it wasn’t depiction. It was me. I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with Red Cross, as a Red Cross worker there, which we support, and only the fake news could come up with that one. So I just heard about it, and I said, ‘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, make people a lot better.”....

The public is apparently supposed to believe Trump saw an image of himself in a white robe and a red stole, with a bright light emanating from his hands, and he concluded that this was an image of him “as a doctor.”

I don’t know what kind of medical facilities the president has visited, but I’ve met quite a few physicians over the years and not one of them ever wore a white robe and a red stole while bright lights emanated from their hands.....

What’s more, while Trump complained that “the fake news” concocted the idea that he promoted an image depicting himself as divine, the truth is the online item generated significant pushback, not from journalists, but from Christian conservatives, many of whom are generally aligned with the White House.

In other words, it wasn’t news organizations, or even his detractors on the left, that pushed back against Trump’s apparent sacrilege, it was many of his own allies, who characterized the image as offensive and blasphemous.

Finally, the Republican concluded the image was defensible because he “makes people a lot better.” His administration’s record on health care policy tells a very different story.

[QueerDuck]

1. As a doctor??!! 😂🤣😂🤣🙄🤯

[Whyisthisstillclose]

2. He is so used to masses of stupid people believing everything he says

he doesn't realize that even stupid people have an occasional limit. They will forgive and forget but there might be a day or two of less adulation.

[struggle4progress]

3. "Hey! Don't worry about me killing people: I'll probably raise some of them from the dead"

[sop]

4. His response to the reporter's question is so quintessentially Trump: the guy lies, lies and lies...he's relentless.

From 'Trump’s Lies vs. Your Brain':

"Our brains are particularly ill-equipped to deal with lies when they come not singly but in a constant stream, and Trump, we know, lies constantly, about matters as serious as the election results and as trivial as the tiles at Mar-a-Lago. (According to his butler, Anthony Senecal, Trump once said the tiles in a nursery at the West Palm Beach club had been made by Walt Disney himself; when Senecal protested, Trump had a single response: 'Who cares?') When we are overwhelmed with false, or potentially false, statements, our brains pretty quickly become so overworked that we stop trying to sift through everything. It’s called cognitive load—our limited cognitive resources are overburdened. It doesn’t matter how implausible the statements are; throw out enough of them, and people will inevitably absorb some. Eventually, without quite realizing it, our brains just give up trying to figure out what is true."

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/donald-trump-lies-liar-effect-brain-214658

[Goonch]

5. ;-{) Things Get Better With Coke

[LetMyPeopleVote]

6. MaddowBlog-Trump confronts a public conversation he hoped to avoid over his mental stability

One observer argued, “The American people must not look away … They must pay attention to the president’s deterioration.”

Is Trump’s mental stability getting worse or has he always been this way? It’s tough to say with confidence.

What’s easier to say is that the intensifying public conversation about his mental fitness is getting louder, which is a disaster for the White House.
www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-04-14T20:56:03.629Z

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-confronts-a-public-conversation-he-hoped-to-avoid-over-his-mental-stability

Last week, after Donald Trump issued genocidal threats toward Iran and made strange comments at the White House Easter Egg Roll, Rep. Jamie Raskin decided to contact the president’s physician, seeking a “comprehensive cognitive and neurological evaluation.”

This week, the Maryland Democrat, who serves as the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, took another step down the same path, unveiling a proposal to establish a Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of Office. The measure, which was unveiled with 50 Democratic co-sponsors, would be responsible for determining whether the president is incapacitated “either mentally or physically” and unable to discharge the powers and duties of office, as called for in the 25th Amendment.....

Indeed, the day before Raskin unveiled his proposal, The New York Times published a striking report with an unsubtle headline: “Trump’s Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate.” From the article:

President Trump’s erratic behavior and extreme comments in recent days and weeks have turbocharged the crazy-like-a-fox-or-just-plain-crazy debate that has followed him on the national political stage for a decade.

A series of disjointed, hard-to-follow and sometimes-profane statements capped by his ‘a whole civilization will die tonight’ threat to wipe Iran off the map last week and his head-spinning attack on the ‘WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy’ pope on Sunday night have left many with the impression of a deranged autocrat mad with power.

The Times highlighted a lawyer who used to work with Trump, who described the president as “a man who is clearly insane.” It also noted a recent comment from Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary who worked for Trump in his first term, who wrote online last week that her former boss is “clearly not well.”.....

Indeed, I remember the Times publishing a front-page report in October 2024, about a month before Election Day, that highlighted a variety of situations in which the Republican “seemed confused, forgetful, incoherent or disconnected from reality.” The same article added, “He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought — some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical. He voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth. He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own ‘beautiful’ body.”

A year and a half later, is Trump worse? It’s hard to say with confidence.

What’s easier to say with certainty, however, is that this entire line of inquiry is a disaster for the White House. Trump is woefully unpopular; he has no idea what to do with a struggling economy; and the destabilizing war he started in Iran for reasons he’s unable to explain clearly isn’t going according to plan — to the extent that the president even had a rudimentary plan at all.

It’s against this backdrop that the conversation about his mental fitness is getting louder.