Trump says in his social media he was a doctor, not Jesus. A Catholic school alum weighs in
The general consensus is that President Trump his social media site dressed up, after a busy weekend in which he booed Pope Leo and attended an award ceremony while the Iran peace plan was collapsing, was an attempt to impersonate Jesus.
But Trump says we are wrong.
“It should be me as a doctor, who makes people better,” he said.
As who graduated from St. Peter Martyr elementary school in the San Francisco East Bay area, and as someone who has seen a lot of different doctors, I feel uniquely qualified to weigh in.
In a Catholic school, holy cards are a big deal. You've seen a few hundred by the time you're in second or third grade, so you're familiar with the muted ethereal light, heavenly gaze and godly look. A common feature is the halo, a sharply defined sphere that sits like a buttered bonnet on the saint's head.
Let the record show that in his posts on his Public Truth, which is not always true, Trump has no halo.
So to be honest, the president may not have been lying when he said he should have been a doctor.
On the other hand, having seen a lot of cardiologists and surgeons and orthopedists, I don't remember any doctor wearing flowing robes while being bathed in heavenly light, with a flock of eagles coming out of their ears and a Navy SEAL team bursting from the roof of the hospital.
Then there's the fireball coming out of Trump's right hand. All of this begs the question: If Trump thinks the doctor looks like this, what disease is he treating, and shouldn't the public be advised?
There is also the question of nature – not of human life, but of the existence of a social network like this from the president of the United States during wartime. It's described as an AI-generated image, but who was at the computer?
Did the president sit down at the end of a long day and pull out a picture of himself playing doctor, if not Jesus Christ? Or do you have a group of employees doing this kind of thing, and if so, how could Elon Musk miss them when he said the government is bloated and out to fire half of the workforce?
You would at least hope that the president would have the courage of his convictions. But as criticism of his position mounted, Trump removed it on Monday morning.
I think he should have stuck to the story — he was presenting himself as a doctor because he is a therapist. The next day, he might have been wearing a New York Jets uniform and told us he was a linebacker. Then he could take a picture of himself in the Artemis space capsule and tell us he's an astronaut, and he's thinking of building a chain of Trump hotels on the moon. Ask yourself this: Would anyone be surprised?
The guy who only knows how much money he has to make, and who always doubles down when things go wrong, has to stick to his guns or the whole shtick unravels. I would have more respect for Trump if he walked around the White House with a stethoscope for a week or two, or maybe performed brain surgery on Pete Hegseth, to see what's going on there.
What's going on in Trump's head, if I may volunteer a bit of armchair psychology, is that failure creates a sense of grandeur rather than humility.
Things aren't going well at the moment, so he explodes. The price of things was supposed to go down on Day One, but because of his instability in the country's economy, prices went up, and now they're going up because he helped start a war that didn't make sense.
The war condemned by Pope Leo, who pointed out that while the Trump administration said there was a religious imperative to the attack on Iran, and Trump promised to send the country back to the “Stone Age,” Jesus may not be on board.
Trump, who said last year that he wanted to “try to go to heaven, if possible,” now realizes that he will not get papal approval.
So the man who once took out the national call to prayer, said that the Bible was his favorite book, who joked after the death of Pope Francis that he wanted to be the next pope, and now he has taken out his holy card, attacking Pope Leo for being too liberal and “weak on crime and very bad on foreign policy.” In fact, he has anointed himself as holier than the pope himself.
Even Trump's staunchest supporters have worked hard for this. They are falling for Trump, as if his criticism of the pope and his self-identification as Jesus Christ are shocking.
My fellow Americans, some words have been made meaningless in describing the current state of affairs. Among them are shocking, surreal, unbelievable, unprecedented and unexpected.
If Trump really thinks he is Jesus, let his conversion begin with 100 Our Fathers, 500 Mary Marys and 1,000 Acts of Penance.
If he really thinks he is a doctor:
Moon, heal yourself.
