Trump Responds to Brouhaha Over Fake Pope Photo

President Trump is shrugging off criticism about a fake photo that emerged over the weekend depicting him as pope. The image surfaced on Trump's Truth Social account, then got further circulated by the White House itself.

• "I had nothing to do with it," Trump told reporters Monday in the Oval Office when asked about it, reports NBC News. "Somebody made up a picture of me dressed like the pope, and they put it out on the internet. That's not me that did it, I have no idea where it came from—maybe it was AI."
• Trump rejected the idea that Catholics were offended, blaming the "fake news media" for being unable to take a joke. "The Catholics loved it." He cited first lady Melania as a prime example: "My wife thought it was cute," he said. "She said, 'Isn't that nice?'"

• Still, the New York Times notes that the image did draw criticism from prominent Catholics, including Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, currently in Rome for the papal enclave. "I hope he didn't have anything to do with that," said Dolan. He called the image a "brutta figura," suggesting it left a bad impression, per the newspaper.
• Vice President JD Vance, however, was not among those Catholics in the offended camp. "I'm fine with people telling jokes," he tweeted.
• A Reuters report predicts that other politicians around the world will copy the idea. "I think we are seeing a new phenomenon—the merging of social media and AI power, organized for political power and narrative dominance," said John Wihbey of the AI-Media Strategies Lab at Northeastern University in Boston. "He's exploiting this uncharted territory," Wihbey said of Trump. "I suspect politicians around the world will begin to use generative AI and social together in newfound ways."

(More President Trump stories.)