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There’s a typical pattern when Donald Trump does something outrageous: His critics get angry, his defenders are belligerently inflexible, and everyone walks away mad—except for Trump, who breezes through to the next news cycle. But this weekend, when Trump went on a posting spree about the pope and Jesus, Trump’s defenders went off script. Instead of taking a stance of trollish defiance, they condemned the president.

The two posts, published Sunday night on TruthSocial, hit different nerves. The first, a wall of text, responded to Pope Leo’s criticism of the war in Iran by blasting Leo as “WEAK on crime.” In the post, Trump told the pope to “get his act together,” and suggested that Leo should be grateful to him because if Trump “wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.” The second post, which he published an hour later, was an A.I.-generated illustration of Trump as a Christ figure in robes healing a man on his sickbed while surrounded by troops, medical professionals, fighter jets, bald eagles, and praying Americans in a state of awe.

Almost immediately, a number of conservatives on social media expressed shock. Some, including conservative Catholic bishops, bemoaned the assault against a major religious leader. But it wasn’t just Catholics who were affronted. Sneako, a Muslim and far-right streamer with more than 1 million followers, for example, called for people to “condemn this evil” and expressed solidarity “with the Pope and the beautiful religion of Catholicism.” But most of the outrage from Trump’s most faithful fans was directed at the A.I. Trump-Christ image, which several people described as blasphemy. One prominent Christian nationalist, musing on the illustration, speculated that Trump was “demon-possessed.” Another wondered aloud whether Trump was showing signs of the “Antichrist spirit.” Riley Gaines, the anti-trans activist, expressed bewilderment. “Seriously, I cannot understand why he’d post this,” she wrote. “God shall not be mocked.” (Trump appears largely unchastened by the backlash, as his Tuesday late-night posting spree included yet-another swipe at the pope—albeit a more tepid one than his earlier missives.)

Even a few months ago, Trump’s posts would likely have been defended, at least publicly, by his hardcore supporters. He once before put out an........

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