President Trump showed his signature sense of humor when he told the hilarious story of First Lady Melania Trump’s reaction to the viral AI-generated image of the president as the pope, which became a lightning rod for controversy, which Trump said was due to the fact that some people “can’t take a joke.”
For context, Pope Francis passed away on April 21, 2025, and a few days later, on May 2, the White House X account posted an AI-generated image of President Trump dressed as the pope. The post was subsequently viewed over 100 million times on X, and many of the over 44,000 comments were highly critical of the edginess of what President Trump later said was a joke.
A few days after the viral image was shared, President Trump took questions from reporters during a May 5 press conference and responded to the controversy. When one reporter said, “Catholics were not so happy about the image of you looking like the pope,” the president replied, “Oh, I see you mean they can’t take a joke. You don’t mean the Catholics. You mean the fake news media, not the Catholics.”
In addition, regarding the creation of the image, President Trump said that he “had nothing to do with it,” adding, “Somebody made up a picture of me dressed like the pope, and they put it out on the internet. I have no idea where it came from. Maybe it was AI, but I know nothing about it. I just saw it last evening.”
Continuing, the president said that when First Lady Melania Trump saw him depicted as the pope, she “thought it was cute,” adding that Melania said, “Isn’t that nice?” He went on to say that if he were the pope, he “would not be able to be married, though, that would be a lot. To the best of my knowledge, popes aren’t big on getting married.”
Furthermore, President Trump argued that the controversy surrounding the meme was the work of the “fake news media,” adding, “you know they’re fakers, though.” A journalist replied, “Sir, it was about the fact that it was put out on the White House account, even though it was AI-generated, it was a joke, it was a meme, does it at all diminish the substance of the official White House account to have it go out on it?”
In response, President Trump, clearly tired of talking about the controversial viral image, insisted that the picture was created for the sake of humor and did not merit the backlash it had received. He added, “Somebody did it in fun.” He added, “It’s fine. You have to have a little fun, don’t you?”
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When a clip from the press conference was shared on X by the ALX account, a commenter with the handle Betsy Ross replied, “Exposing the Left as humorless scolds has been one of President Trump’s greatest achievements. They’re just so bitter and unlikeable.” They added, “Who would want to be anything like a Democrat? They’re unappeasable and always looking for reasons to be angry. Crabs in a bucket mentality.”
Watch the clip:
Featured image credit: @WhiteHouse via X