Reporting the Truth.
Restoring the Church.
By Mark Wingfield
Franklin Graham appears in a TV interview in 2025. (Video screengrab)
Once again, Franklin Graham has come to the defense of President Donald Trump, but this time former GOP Congressman Adam Kinzinger isn’t having it.
After the evangelist and Trump supporter posted a defense of Trump sharing an AI-generated image of his as Jesus Christ healing a man, Kinzinger let loose on Graham and other evangelical leaders whom he says keep “laundering this president’s behavior through the language of Scripture.”
It took four days, but Graham on Thursday came to Trump’s defense for posting the image other religious leaders called “blasphemous” on Sunday.
And that defense is predictable as anything, said Kinzinger: “There is a specific tell that shows up whenever Donald Trump gets caught doing something theologically indefensible. It isn’t contrition. It isn’t reflection. It is a statement dressed up as a sermon, delivered by one of a small roster of evangelical leaders who have spent the better part of a decade laundering this president’s behavior through the language of Scripture.”
Kinzinger, a fellow evangelical, fell out of favor with Trump supporters after he voted to impeach the president for his part in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. At the time, Graham compared Kinzinger to Judas, saying he wondered “what the 30 pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal.”
On May 1, 2019, President Donald Trump greets Franklin Graham, left, son of Billy Graham, during a National Day of Prayer dinner gathering in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
But when responding to questions asked of him about how to understand Trump’s recent Truth Social post, Graham struck a softer tone. He said it would not be possible for Trump to have committed blasphemy by comparing himself to Jesus Christ — even though the president had done just that during Holy Week when he compared himself to Jesus being called a “king.”
“I do not believe President Trump would knowingly depict himself as Jesus Christ; that would certainly be inappropriate,” Graham said.
Then, apparently believing Trump’s claim that he thought the post showed him as a doctor, Graham said: “I’m thankful the president has made it very clear that this was not at all what he thought the AI-generated image was representing — he thought it was a doctor helping someone, and when he learned of the concerns, he immediately removed the post.”
In reality, Trump did not “immediately” remove the post. It took 13 hours. And Speaker of the House Mike Johnson claims he was the one who urged Trump to remove it when he didn’t want to.
Graham says he just didn’t see a problem with the image anyway.
“When I looked at the illustration, I didn’t jump to the same conclusion as some. There were no spiritual references — no halo, there were no crosses, no angels. It was a flag, soldiers, a nurse, fighter planes, eagles, the Statue of Liberty, and I think this is a lot to do about nothing. There is so much ill-intended speculation. I think his enemies are always foaming at the mouth at any possible opportunity to make him look bad.”
An AI-generated image that President Donald Trump shared on social media. (Screen grab)
What Graham liked even better, he said, was a Wednesday image Trump reposted of Jesus whispering in his ear — another in a series of fawning portraits that portray Jesus as speaking directly through Trump.
“I must say that I like the fact that this is a picture of Jesus whispering in his ear, or at least his hand on his shoulder, guiding him,” Graham said. “We all need that — we all need to be listening to Jesus. Again, I think there is an attempt to spin this into something that it isn’t. Remember, President Trump didn’t draw this, he didn’t create it, he reposted it on his social media because he thought it was nice — I would have to agree.”
And by the way, Graham said, “I appreciate how President Trump has defended religious freedom for people of all faiths, including millions of evangelicals and Catholics in the U.S. and around the world. He is the most pro-Christian, pro-life president in my lifetime, and he doesn’t shy away from it.”
That comment came the same week Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission met for the last time amid vast criticism that its work has been to repeat the grievances of evangelical Christians. Its chairman, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, said at this week’s meeting the idea of separation of church and state in America is a lie.
On Sept. 8, 2025, President Donald Trump delivers remarks on religious liberty at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. (Photo: White House)
In a lengthy rebuttal to Graham, Kinzinger also noted Graham ended his message — also sent to the president in letter form — by hoping that Pope Leo would one day “have the opportunity to thank the president for his efforts to protect religious liberty.”
Trump, Vance and Johnson have been at war with the pope, who refuses to bless their war in Iran and their mistreatment of immigrants.
Yet according to Graham, Kinzinger observes, Bottom of Form “The Vicar of Christ, in Graham’s framing, owes Donald Trump a thank-you note. This is what religion as a mask looks like in 2026. Not faith as a discipline, not faith as a mirror held up to power, but faith as a costume — one that gets pulled out of the closet when it flatters the wearer, and stuffed back in the moment a bishop, a pope or an ordinary pastor dares to say something inconvenient.”
Of Graham’s defense of Trump, the former Congressman said: “The pattern with this administration is by now so well-established it barely needs describing. When a policy needs a halo, the White House summons one. Executive orders on ‘religious liberty’ are announced with bishops arranged behind the Resolute Desk like props. Cabinet meetings open with prayer circles that somehow always end up on camera.”
Kinzinger continued: “The phrase ‘Judeo-Christian values’ gets invoked to justify everything from immigration raids to tax cuts to tariffs. And any time Trump himself needs rehabilitation — after an affair, an indictment, a cruel post, an AI image blurring the line between a president and the Son of God — a familiar cast of pastors materializes to explain that critics are ‘foaming at the mouth’ and that the real scandal is that anyone noticed.”
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., speaks as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, on July 21, 2022. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
“What the Trump administration has built, and what Graham and a handful of others have spent years theologically dressing up, is not Christianity. It is Christian nationalism — the belief that America is uniquely chosen, that a particular strain of conservative Protestantism should be privileged in law and culture, and that the strongman in the Oval Office is, in some sense, divinely ordained to deliver it.”
He concluded: “This is why Trump can post an image of himself being guided by Jesus and face no serious pushback from the movement’s clergy. Within the logic of Christian nationalism, it is not blasphemy. It is branding. The president is the vessel. The nation is the covenant. Anyone who objects — a Catholic bishop, a Mainline pastor, a pope — is not a fellow Christian offering correction. They are an enemy of the project.”
Speaking as a Christian himself, Kinzinger declared: “Real faith makes demands on the powerful. It does not flatter them. It does not airbrush their reposts. It does not send the pope a bill for his gratitude.
“If the administration wants to invoke Christianity, it should be prepared to be judged by it — by the parts about the poor, about the stranger, about truth-telling, about humility, about the log in one’s own eye. And if its defenders want to keep calling this man the most pro-Christian president of their lifetimes, they should at least be honest that the word ‘Christian’ is doing some very heavy lifting in that sentence.”
The Roys Report contributed to this article, a version of which was first published by Baptist News Global and is reprinted with permission.
Mark Wingfield, who is based in Dallas, Texas, serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global.
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Comment by Truth Uncensored Afrika: Please read articles on Christian Nationalism and Judeo-Christianity on this site.
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