CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

How Fascism Works Now: A Note about Trump as the Healing Christ

Artist unknown (AI generated), Untitled (Trump as Healing Christ). TruthSocial.com@realdonaldtrump, April 12, 2026.

Hidden in plain sight

The image of a youthful Donald Trump, laying his hand on the forehead of a sick or dying man has by now been interred in the meme graveyard. By the time you read this, another will have taken its place, and then another, and so on. That’s one purpose of the AI barrage:  misdirection. By attending to obvious outrages – the supposed blasphemy of an image of Trump as Healing Christ — the public is more likely to overlook bigger, but less promoted ones, like weakened pollution standards, cuts to disease research, and of course, war. But there’s another, equally important communication strategy at work, and it’s hiding in plain sight: insipidness or kitsch. That’s the language of fascism now.

For all the controversy it generated, the meme is barely coherent. Trump wears a loose-fitting white toga beneath a red poncho, though the latter equally resembles a kimono (it has sleeves) and a golf sweater casually draped over the shoulders. Rays of light emanate from the head of the recumbent man, suggesting he’s the holy figure, and Trump only a nurse or nurse’s aide checking the patient’s temperature. The president holds a ball of light in his left hand, like Disney’s “Never-fairies” who catch and hold sunbeams.

Surrounding the sick or dying man are four other figures. Clockwise from upper left, a middle-aged man with baseball cap and neatly trimmed white beard and moustache – in queer parlance a “wolf” or “daddy”; a youthful, clean-shaven marine; a young nurse –miniscule compared to the gargantuan Trump; and another young woman of no evident occupation, with auburn hair parted in the middle.  Middle-aged or older women were not invited to this party — unsurprising given the host. Craggy, right-hands at lower left and right suggest two other men apparently kneeling, their heads below the level of the hospital bed. Are they orderlies cleaning the floor with their other hands?

Finally, there are the soldiers floating in the sky, like Napoleon’s troops entering Valhalla in the famous painting from 1801 by Girodet-Trioson. The one in the middle appears to be in retreat and in drag, wearing a crown like the Statue of Liberty and carrying two standards. Also in the busy sky are a pair of bald eagles and three jet fighters risking mid-air collision or bird-strike. Beneath are the Statue of Liberty, Lincoln Memorial and another classical-looking building in the left background – possibly an AI scrambled U.S. Capital.

The reason the image was controversial is because it was understood by some Christians to be blasphemous. According to the four canonical gospel books, Christ regularly healed the sick: “And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people” (Mathew: 4:23). His patients suffered from dropsy (edema), paralysis, blindness, and leprosy. Jesus also raised the dead.  To represent a politician – even a president – as Christ is not kosher. The first of the Ten Commandments reads: “Thou shalt have no other........

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