Trump as Jesus or Doctor or Magician or Father Christmas or Whomever

Friday, May 01, 2026

Journalist: “Mr President, did you post that picture of yourself depicted as Jesus Christ?”

Trump: “… I thought it was me as a doctor.”

We shall probably never find out what the prompt had been for the AI image that Trump posted, or what the LLM used—perhaps quite arbitrarily—as source images. Is Phantom Circuit alone in having been reminded of Pamela Coleman-Smith’s design for ‘The Magician’ in the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck?

composite image of: a portrait of Jesus; the infamous image posted by Trump; the ‘Magician’ tarot card; montage by Phantom Circuit; ‘So hot right now’ still from ‘Zoolander’

In the top row above: an example portrait of Jesus in red and white; the infamous AI image posted by Trump; the ‘Magician’ tarot card by Coleman-Smith.

The montage created (not AI-generated) by Phantom Circuit for Phantom Circuit #468: Into a Trump Chic? reused elements from: ‘The Magician’, the Trump AI image and an AI image published by Entre_Humos (used under licence).

By the way, the “demonic” figure in the sky in Trump’s AI image looks as though it’s simply the result of the AI having included too many eagles!

Read more posts from the Phantom Circuit blog...