A picture generated by artificial intelligence depicting Donald Trump as a healing Christ has been reposted on the American president’s account, sparking both fascination and outrage.
Far from being mere kitsch, this composition follows a strict aesthetic and ideological logic inherited from American evangelical chromolithography.
With a mix of tongue-in-cheek humor and a well-honed communication strategy, Trump occupies both the position of prophet and showman.
The garishness. For many of us, that’s the first word that comes to mind when looking at such an image. We can also think of the term “kitsch,” but it’s almost the same thing. What is certain is that we are captivated by an aesthetic on the border between a motel poster and the cheap religiosity of a fair. In short, something exciting, distressing, and incredibly American.
Nothing goes right in this composition, yet everything is rigorously in place. The “made in AI” painting seems to draw inspiration from the works of painter Jon McNaughton – a fervent Trump supporter, if there ever was one – and I wouldn’t be surprised if his name is involved in the creation of this astonishing representation.
The radiant Christ and the laying on of hands. President Trump, dressed as a prophet, is shown laying a hand on the forehead of a bedridden man while his other hand generates a kind of globe, a sphere of pure energy. We are between self-generated luminescence and “Dragon Ball.” This motif of the “radiant Christ” became standardized in devotional chromolithography in the late 19th century before reaching its ultimate form in the work of Warner Sallman – his “Head of Christ” reproduced in over 500 million copies. This became the archetype through which several evangelical generations literally saw Christ.
Moreover, the laying on of hands is a practice often found in evangelical cults and a marker of American Pentecostalism. So, even if a good part of Christians around the world may feel offended, too bad.
At the center of the composition stands President Trump, recognizable at first glance even if the somewhat ungraceful markers of age have disappeared miraculously. At 79 years old, this former real estate developer and two-term president dons an eternal maturity – mature but not senile, avoiding any resemblance to a “Sleepy Joe.”
In the foreground, an array of figures – the nurse, the US Marine veteran, the soldier in fatigues, the bedridden patient, the featureless young girl – all correspond to the conventions of artistic photorealism in its popularized and commercialized form. As for the third and final plane, it’s time for a patriotic showcase: soaring eagles, F-16 fighter jets, the Statue of Liberty, fireworks… This heterogeneous gathering still makes sense. Each plane monopolizes a distinct ideal aspect: the “ordinary” characters prompt immediate recognition (“these people are like us”), the idealized Trump establishes a necessary distance (“this man is greater than us”), while the excessively patriotic background mobilizes the nation (“we belong to this story”).
“The image possesses no out-of-frame element to escape. The composition is closed: sink into the hell of the image-world. There’s nothing to see outside the symbol.”
The semi-officiality as a strategy. This allegorical pastiche probably wasn’t produced by Trump himself – it’s hard to picture him drafting the prompt, but who knows? – yet it was reposted on the president’s account, by the president himself. This subterfuge allows him to engage – it’s his account, his act of publication – while delegating the creation’s paternity to an anonymous third party.
This dissociation is at the core of his politics: it simultaneously authorizes the adoption of a concept (“the image circulates under his name”) and its denial (“I didn’t say that”). The image is neither fully claimed – it was deleted – nor entirely disavowed: it exists in a regime of semi-officiality.
Irony as an aggravating circumstance. Let’s avoid, if possible, a reading that would attribute to Trump a naive and unrestrained adherence to the image he reposts. There’s nothing to suggest he actually believes in his own deification. Since the 1980s, Donald Trump has built himself on an undeniable mastery of media irony. He doesn’t love things despite their exaggeration but precisely because of it. What’s artificial, flashy, always on the verge of absurdity pleases him. And in tweeting an image of himself as a healing Christ surrounded by eagles, F-16s, and ghostly soldiers, there’s a blatantly assumed enormity. He is well aware that the image is excessive; his supporters know it too. But this approach allows communion through excess.
However, be cautious: this ironical awareness is not a mitigating circumstance. On the contrary, humor multiplies the effectiveness of the device rather than neutralizing it – there are those in on the joke and those who take offense at face value. Moreover, the second degree doesn’t dissolve the ideological content but, on the contrary, reinforces it.
Trumpian irony isn’t the flip side of seriousness, but merely its possibility. It allows him to simultaneously occupy the position of prophet and showman. God and the jester in the same person – because it’s all a game and nothing truly matters.
