About

Trump Pope, also known as AI Donald Trump As The Pope, refers to an AI-generated image of U.S. President Donald Trump dressed in traditional papal attire, sitting on a gold-colored throne. Trump first posted the image in early May 2025 following the death of Pope Francis, sparking widespread memes, parodies and debate across platforms like Instagram, X / Twitter and TikTok.

Origin

On May 2nd, 2025, President Donald Trump shared an AI image via Instagram^[1] and Truth Social^[6] featuring him in full Catholic ceremonial attire resembling a pope. The Instagram post (seen below) amassed over 1.4 million likes in two days.

A few days before the AI image was posted on social media, on April 30th, 2025, Trump^[5] notably joked that he would like to succeed Pope Francis, who died on April 21st, 2025, at the age of 88.

Spread

The Trump Pope AI image gained significant attention quickly in early May 2025, especially after the official White House X^[2] account posted the same image on May 2nd, garnering more than 87 million views and 191,000 likes in two days.

On May 3rd, 2025, New York Governor Kathy Hochul^[3] reacted to the Trump Pope meme posted by the White House, writing that the image "is deeply offensive to me and to my fellow Catholics around the world as we continue to mourn our beloved Pope Francis." The post (seen below) received more than 2.8 million views and 10,000 likes in a day.

On the same day, the YouTube^[4] channel Forbes Breaking News posted a video about the backlash and criticism the Trump Pope meme sparked online. The video (seen below) amassed roughly 197,000 views and 1,900 likes in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References