This Trump 'agent of chaos' first showed him 'blasphemous' Jesus meme at Mar-a-Lago: Axios

President Donald Trump consulted with a controversial administration official about a widely criticized social media post showing himself as a Christlike figure.

The 79-year-old president's Sunday night post set off a firestorm of criticism, and two advisers who spoke to Trump about the image told Axios it had been brought to his attention by housing finance chief Bill Pulte over the weekend at Mar-a-Lago, although it's not clear whether he showed the image on his phone or sent it to the president.

"Everyone thought it was a joke," one of the advisers said.

The backlash was so fierce that Trump eventually took down the post from his Truth Social page, and the timing of the controversy was particularly sensitive.

"It was Easter Sunday for Eastern Orthodox Christians," Axios reported. "The Sunday before, on Easter Sunday for Catholic and Protestant Christians, Trump had posted a vulgarity-laced threat to destroy Iran's infrastructure that ended with, 'Praise be to Allah.' Hours before posting the meme Sunday, Trump lashed out at Pope Leo XIV over the pope's criticism of war, calling the pontiff 'WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,' and accusing the U.S.-born pope of 'catering to the Radical Left.'"

The 37-year-old Pulte has been described as an "agent of chaos" for allegedly pushing for a Justice Department criminal probe of Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell, although he's denied that, and he has been the driving force in an unsuccessful effort to criminally charge New York Attorney General Letitia James, who won a civil fraud case against Trump in 2024.

The image was originally published in February in a since-deleted X post by MAGA influencer Nick Adams, although the version posted by Trump was seemingly run through another AI filter that altered images of military services members to appear like mysterious demonic figures in the heavens above his head.

Despite deleting the post widely condemned as "blasphemous," Trump shared a similar image Wednesday showing Jesus embracing him, and the account that initially posted that image included a caption that read "I was never a very religious man ... but doesn't it seem, with all these satanic, demonic, child sacrificing monsters being exposed ... that God might be playing his Trump card!"