Americans Overwhelmingly Agree Trump’s Jesus Pic, Hegseth’s Prayer For Violence Terrible Ideas
A poll released Wednesday showed that the vast majority of Americans reacted negatively to multiple religiously charged actions by President Donald Trump and his administration during the war in Iran.
Nearly nine in 10 American adults — including an overwhelming majority of Republicans, Catholics and Protestants — had negative reactions to Trump’s widely criticized April 12 post on Truth Social, in which he appeared to describe himself as Jesus Christ healing a sick man, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released Wednesday. The same poll found that nearly seven in 10 American adults opposed War Secretary Pete Hegseth praying during a Christian service at the Pentagon on March 26 for “crushing violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”
Seventy-nine percent of Republicans said they had negative reactions to the image Trump posted showing him wearing a white robe and red sash with one hand on a man’s head and the other with a burst of light or energy appearing to come from it, the survey found. For comparison, 88% of independents and 95% of Democrats said they had negative reactions to the post.
Additionally, 90% of Catholics, white evangelicals and white Protestants have a negative opinion of this image, according to the poll. Trump won all three of these religious groups by double-digit margins — and carried white evangelicals by 65 percentage points — in the 2024 presidential election, according to the Pew Research Center.
Less than a day after it was posted online, Trump took the rare step of deleting his post depicting the image that conservatives, including many of the president’s current and former supporters, had widely lambasted at the time. Pressed by reporters, the president said he believed the image, which had circulated online for weeks before he posted it on Truth Social, depicted him as a “doctor” and not Jesus Christ, adding that he thought it “had to do with the Red Cross.” (RELATED: Conservatives Slam Trump for His Christ-Like Image, Lose Their Minds Over the Pope)
Notably, Trump posted his April 12 message hours after posting a lengthy speech on Truth Social lambasting Pope Leo
Newly elected Pope Leo (Photo by ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images)
The Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll that found 69 percent of American adults had negative reactions when Hegseth publicly prayed for “overwhelming violence” while on duty at the Pentagon in March was conducted less than a month after Operation Epic Fury began. Conversely, only 27% of those surveyed had a positive reaction to war prayer.
“May each round find its mark against the enemies of justice and our great nation,” the secretary prayed. “Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the test ahead, unbreakable unity and crushing violence in action against those who deserve no mercy.”
Hegseth clearly belongs to a network of evangelical congregations widely described as “archconservative.”
“Secretary Hegseth, along with millions of Americans, is a proud Christian. The Christian faith is deeply woven into the fabric of our nation and shared by America’s wartime leaders like President George Washington, who prayed for his troops at Valley Forge, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who gave Bibles to American soldiers during World War II and encouraged them to read it,” Acting Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a press release.
“Despite the left’s efforts to remove our Christian heritage from our great nation, Secretary Hegseth is among those embracing it. Prayer services at the Pentagon are 100% voluntary and are absolutely not mandatory,” Valdez added. “It is not illegal to worship Christ voluntarily anywhere in the United States. The Secretary’s monthly prayer services undoubtedly improve the morale of those who choose to attend and are protected by the Constitution. We are proud to host these services and will continue to do so.”
U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth answers questions during a press briefing at the Pentagon May 5, 2026 in Arlington, Virginia. Tensions remain high in the Strait of Hormuz as the United States and Iran exchanged gunfire Monday after Trump said the U.S. military would open the strait to shipping. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The release of the survey comes a day before Secretary of State Marco Rubio meets with Leo at the Vatican to foster partnership between the Catholic Church and the United States, amid clashes between the president and pontiff during the war.
“There has never been a greater president for American Christians than President Trump, and his strong record proves it,” White House Press Secretary Taylor Rogers told DCNF in a statement, responding to a question about the poll results. “President Trump ended the federal government’s militarization against people of faith, proudly defended and expanded our religious rights, pardoned pro-life activists, ended the chemical mutilation of our nation’s children, and protected the rights of parents. »
The Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll surveyed a total of 2,560 U.S. adults online from April 24-28. The survey question about Trump’s image of Jesus was asked to a sample of 1,268 respondents. The survey has a margin of error ranging from plus or minus two percentage points to plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.
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