President Donald Trump on Wednesday shared another possibly AI-generated image, this time depicting him being embraced by Jesus in front of an American flag.

“The Radical Left Lunatics might not like this, but I think it is quite nice!!!,” Trump wrote on his social media platform.

The president’s post included a screenshot of another user’s post, which contained the image of Jesus with his arm around Trump’s shoulder.

The post comes after Trump continued to criticize Pope Leo XIV overnight and shared online what appeared to be defenses of his now-deleted social media post that depicted him as Jesus Christ — a characterization that Trump rejected on Monday.

In one instance, Trump shared a post from a user on X showing old posts from an X account that belonged to the pope prior to his papal election, when he was Robert Prevost — including some criticizing Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

“It’s fascinating to see what social media reveals about a person before they become the Pope,” the shared post read. “Before he became Pope Leo XIV, Cardinal Robert Prevost was on Twitter trashing Trump, criticizing Vance, calling for open borders, promoting COVID vaccines, endorsing stricter gun control, and tweeting after George Floyd.” 

“Not good!!!” Trump wrote in his own post. 

Vance on Tuesday also spoke about the pope, saying at conference of young conservatives in Athens, Georgia, that the pontiff should “be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”

“If you’re going to opine on matters of theology, you’ve got to be careful, you’ve got to be sure it’s anchored in the truth and that’s one of the things that I try to do and that’s certainly something I would expect from the clergy,” Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, said at the event.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Wednesday spoke out against Vance’s comments.

“When Pope Leo XIV speaks as supreme pastor of the universal Church, he is not merely offering opinions on theology, he is preaching the Gospel and exercising his ministry as the Vicar of Christ,” Bishop James Massa, the chair of the conference’s Committee on Doctrine, said in a statement.

Vance’s criticism followed a back-and-forth earlier this week between the president and the first American pope, who has called for an end to wars, including the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

“Enough of war,” Leo said on Saturday during a peace vigil in St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.

Trump on Sunday described the pope as “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.”

The pontiff on Monday responded, saying he had “no fear” of the Trump administration. “That’s what I believe in,” Leo added. “I am called to do what the church is called to do.”

When the pope’s old social media account surfaced, shortly after he was elected pope in May 2025, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt brushed it off, saying, “The president made his reaction to Pope Leo’s announcement yesterday very clear. He is very proud to have an American pope.”

Leo has been a strong messenger for global peace since the start of his papacy.

He has repeatedly called for the parties involved to engage in negotiations, including saying on March 1 that he was making “a heartfelt appeal to all the parties involved to assume the moral responsibility of halting the spiral of violence before it becomes an unbridgeable chasm.” He has said that “God does not bless any conflict.”

Trump said in a social media post on Tuesday that the pope needed to be informed that Iran had killed tens of thousands of protesters, and that it was “absolutely unacceptable” for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. 

“Will someone please tell Pope Leo that Iran has killed at least 42,000 innocent, completely unarmed, protesters in the last two months, and that for Iran to have a Nuclear Bomb is absolutely unacceptable,” Trump wrote.

The AI-generated image posted by Trump on Sunday depicted him as a Jesus-like figure in red-and-white robes with light coming out of his hands. The president removed that post on Monday amid criticism.

Trump on Monday denied that the deleted post had any connection to Jesus at all, and was, in fact, supposed to be him as a doctor. 

“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, which we support. And only the fake news could come up with that one,” he said.

Vice President Vance claimed Trump was joking when he posted the image.

“I think the president was posting a joke and, of course, he took it down because he recognized that a lot of people weren’t understanding his humor in that case,” Vance said in an interview on Fox News’ “Special Report with Bret Baier.”

ABC News’ Claire Brinberg and Hannah Demissie contributed to this report.