Donald Trump is in his messianic era.

Trump has surrounded himself with conservative Christian carnival barkers ever since his first term, using them first as validators among a coveted voting bloc and later as champions of his mythical quest to overturn the 2020 election.

But after surviving the Butler, PA assassination attempt last year, Trump has cranked up the Messiah rhetoric and now seems to almost…believe it?

Politico breaks it down:

“I’m supposed to be dead,” Donald Trump said, the day after he got shot at his rally last summer in Butler, Pennsylvania. “I’m not supposed to be here,” he said four days after that. “But something very special happened. Let’s face it. Something happened,” he said two days after that. “It’s … an act of God,” he said the month after that. “God spared my life for a reason,” he said in his victory speech at Mar-a-Lago in November. “I was saved by God to make America great again,” he said in his inaugural address at the Capitol in January. “It changed something in me,” he said in his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton in February. “I feel even stronger.”

This language echoes what many of his most ardent Christian followers have believed for years: that somehow his election victories and terms in office have been ordained by God and that, as Politico compiled, “Trump is ‘chosen,’ or ‘anointed,’ or a ‘savior,’ or ‘the second coming’ or ‘the Christ for this age.’”

Except as Politico notes, now Trump himself is talking like this too.

And while it often has felt as though Trump’s embrace of Christianity has been one big troll (take the bonkers “God Made Trump” video he played at campaign rallies last year) or one big grift (Trump Bible anyone?), Trump’s latest contribution to the genre, a meme he posted to Truth Social last week announcing that he is “on a mission from God,” is turning heads. It’s a disturbing escalation in his messiah complex messaging.

Not that we should be surprised that Trump’s political rhetoric has led to this place. As David Livingston Smith, professor of philosophy at the University of New England, reminds us,

“The authoritarian leader presents himself as a divine or messianic figure who is uniquely able to vanquish the forces of evil and make the world safe for the faithful. As God incarnate, the leader is by definition omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent.”

And really, isn’t this just a logical extension of the Donald Trump we’ve always known? Per UNC history professor Molly Worthen:

“He’s a nihilist for whom the only source of meaning is the amassing of personal power, turning his will into personal, political, financial and territorial domination, and that’s totally compatible with a messiah complex. I don’t see the recent turn in his language as a deviation from past patterns, but the fuller realization of those patterns.”

But Trump’s sharing this meme to Truth Social at the moment he did was a deliberate choice. And whether or not Trump himself believes he is literally “on a mission from God,” it’s worth diving into what the meme represents and what his amplifying it means within the context of the political moment we are in.

From QAnon To The White House

The meme itself comes straight out of the QAnon white supremacist “Groyper” movement. QAnon, of course, is the formerly fringe far-right conspiracy theory that originated on the 4chan message board in 2017, which first cast Donald Trump as a quasi-savior figure.

Per The Independent,

the “mission from God” meme parrots the long-running belief among QAnon adherents that Trump has been given a calling to secretly root out a cabal of cannibalistic pedophiles from within the government and liberal ruling class, and that soon the “storm will be coming” that will see the mass arrests of prominent Democrats and celebrities.

As Professor Mia Bloom, a QAnon expert, told The AP:

“These are people who have elevated Trump to messiah-like status, where only he can stop this cabal. That’s why you see so many images (in online QAnon spaces) of Trump as Jesus.”

Looking more closely at the meme, we can see from the watermark that it originates from Truth Social user @FruitSnacks, whom The Independent describes as “a ‘groyper,’ otherwise known as a supporter of notorious white supremacist Nick Fuentes.” Fuentes, a Holocaust denier who according to the American Jewish Committee, is “best known for his roles in the 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville, VA, and the insurrection at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,” also famously dined with Trump and fellow Hitler lover Ye at Mar-a-Lago in 2022.

The meme also features an image of Pepe The Frog in the background, which AJC’s Translate The Hate website describes as

a symbol of the alt-right, namely, the Groyper movement, a group of far-right activists, internet trolls, and white nationalists. Its followers, known as the “Groyper Army,” seek to bring white supremacist ideas and content to a mainstream audience.

According to The Independent, Trump’s post also led to a rush on the $PEPE meme coin, named for the alt-right symbol (and notably held by as many as 50 of the more than 200 meme coin investors invited to a recent dinner hosted by Trump.)

The meme’s message ends with the QAnon-coded threat: “Nothing can stop what is coming.” That is a reference to the “storm” QAnon adherents believe will ultimately come for their imagined evil liberal cabal.

According to Brandeis University’s Janet McIntosh,

“The ‘storm is coming’ is shorthand for something really dark that he’s not saying out loud,” McIntosh said. “This is a way for him to point to violence without explicitly calling for it. He is the prince of plausible deniability.”

This tracks for Trump. It is a classic tactic of his to sort of call for violence without calling for violence, such as telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during his 2020 debate with Joe Biden or telling his Stop the Steal rally supporters “If you don't fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore.” In each case, the intended audience heard precisely what he wanted them to hear.

Trump has a history of sharing QAnon memes to his Truth Social account, a habit that reached an apex in 2022, including a “re-truth” of a meme that cast Trump as the “second greatest” only to Jesus Christ. But Wednesday’s post, which notably was shared natively to his account, not re-truthed from another, seems to have inched him up a notch to at least on the same level as Jesus, appropriate for the new, more Jesus-y Trump of his second term.

But why post this meme now?

A Christian Nationalist Call To Arms

Trump posted the meme on Wednesday, May 28th at 10:32pm, which is not insignificant.

As Politico reports:

Late Wednesday night, in the aftermath of the latest significant setback in the form of the decision of a federal court to overturn the tariffs at the heart of his economic program, Trump took to Truth Social. Among the barrage of his posts was a meme of Trump striding down a darkened city street.

“HE’S ON A MISSION FROM GOD,” read the words. “NOTHING CAN STOP WHAT IS COMING.”

This connection between the Court of International Trade’s Wednesday decision invalidating Trump’s tariff orders rooted in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act was not lost on The Independent either. Further, Trump posted the meme announcing himself “on a mission from God” just one minute after another he’d shared, which declared that “Trump was right about everything.” Taken together, the memes are a message to his supporters to rally behind him in this moment because he’s under siege by the globalist cabal that is trying to thwart his “mission from God.”

There’s more here. Trump is not just under threat by the usual suspects of his perceived enemies, such as judges who don’t rubber stamp his every policy whim. He is facing threats from among some of his most ardent supporters, including those in the QAnon/Alt-right world, even FruitSnacks himself, who has become increasingly disillusioned with Trump’s refusal or inability to fulfill the promises he had made to the movement.

As The Independent notes:

At the same time, in recent months, it appears that FruitSnacks has grown increasingly jaded with the president following Trump’s return to the White House, echoing Fuentes and other far-right MAGA supporters who have sounded off over the administration’s perceived lack of action on their pet conspiracy theories.

“There will be no arrests or tribunals. It would have happened by now. Trump is in office, so... what is he waiting for?” FruitSnacks wrote on Truth Social earlier this month, adding in another post about the FBI files on deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein: “Soooo... how about that Epstein client list?”

On X, FruitSnacks has been regularly railing against Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” reposting tirades about J.D. Vance, and even accusing Trump of being part of the globalist cabal he once thought Trump was sent to vanquish.

No wonder then, that Trump and his team would deploy this Christian nationalist dog whistle—even co-opting a meme created by a now-detractor—to rally the troops and remind them that he’s one of them and that he’s fighting for them. He knows where his bread is buttered: with his White Christian nationalist base.

As Robert P. Jones, Executive Director of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) reminds us in a recent interview with Salon:

White Christians are still largely supporting Trump. If you look at the voting and polling patterns there is a stunning dichotomy between predominantly White Christian groups and everyone else. A recent PRRI poll shows that Trump's favorability among white evangelical Protestants is 73%. Trump also has majority support among other white Christians too. White Catholics 53% favor Trump. White non-evangelical Protestants: 52% favor. The LDS church, sometimes called the Mormons: 51% favor. Non-white Christian groups, non-Christian religious groups, atheists, agnostics, and unaffiliated all hold unfavorable views Trump…

And his “mission from God” rhetoric is precisely the message they want to hear.

At this point, a decade into his rise to power, it’s clear that Trump's relationship to white Christians is transactional. Now it is more common to hear white Christians instead claiming that he is a tool of God and prophecy. Ultimately, white conservative Christians are trying to find a theological justification for what is really a political transaction that gives them the power they want in American society.

Copycat Jesus Lovers

This special relationship between GOP leaders and white evangelical Christians would help explain another phenomenon we witnessed this past week, this time by Christian nationalist Iowa Senator Joni Ernst. She found herself in hot water for cruelly dismissing a constituent’s concerns that the GOP budget bill’s Medicaid cuts would kill people, saying in exasperation at a town hall,

“We’re all going to die.”

Instead of apologizing for such a ghoulish comment, Ernst released a bizarre video, shot from inside a cemetery. In it, she doubled down on her comment and reminded viewers not only that we all will die one day, but that

For those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

The whole spectacle was very much out of the Trump playbook: A) Never apologize; B) Troll the libs; and C) Rally your Christian base behind you by reminding them you are under siege.

As Chris Cilizza rightly notes:

Unfortunately, it will probably work, politically speaking. Because we can’t simply all agree that Ernst shouldn’t have been glib, shouldn’t have let her anger get the better of her. It will turn into a conversation about the left being out to get her or something. And that will rally the MAGA base behind her.

Ernst’s callous stunt may still have backfired, however. For one, it gave Democrats a memorable and viral message to run, not just against Republicans in next year’s elections, but even now as they work to defeat Trump’s budget bill. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has now rhetorically renamed it the “We’re All Going To Die Act.”

It also inspired a top-tier Democratic challenger, Iowa State Rep. J.D. Scholten, to jump into the race against Ernst in her 2026 reelection campaign.

As The Des Moines Register reported,

Scholten said Ernst's comments were "pretty instrumental for me." He said he heard about the remarks while he was on the way to a funeral.

"And just sitting there, contemplating life like you do at a funeral, I just thought I need to do this," he said. "And so then when she doubled down on Saturday with her, I felt, very disrespectful comments, I was like, 'OK, game on.'"

Scholten’s entry into the race sparked Sabato’s Crystal Ball to shift the race from “Safe Republican” to “Likely Republican.” Scholten is clearly banking that the decency and sense of shame among Iowa voters in the wake of Ernst’s comments, plus a more favorable electoral environment in 2026 (Ernst won by just 7% in 2020) will win out in the end.

Ernst on the other hand, like Trump, is banking that her white evangelical Christian base will perceive that she is under assault by the libs and the media elites who are out to slash the power of white Christians in society. By publicly claiming Jesus as her savior, she is promising to be their champion in that battle provided they help return her to office next November.

“A Bulwark Against The World’s Evils”

This is precisely the same message Trump had for white evangelical voters during last year’s election as he increasingly courted anti-democratic Christian nationalist supporters who are ever more tuned into his message of grievance.

As John Queally of Common Dreams wrote last February:

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump delivered a speech to right-wing broadcasters Thursday night in which the former president vowed to hand power over to the Christian nationalist movement on an unprecedented scale.

Striking a Christ-like pose at one point with his arms outstretched as if on a cross, Trump mentioned his legal struggles, including multiple criminal indictments and civil judgments, and said, "I take all these arrows for you and I'm so proud to take them. I'm being indicted for you."

Phillip Bump reported on the same speech for The Washington Post and framed Trump’s meta campaign message this way:

One of the main pitches he makes when selling himself is to present Donald Trump as a bulwark against the world’s evils…

To a religious audience, this presentation is more potent. A struggle between good and evil over the fate of the world is essential to many religious traditions and certainly to the right-wing evangelical Protestants to whom Trump most often tries to appeal. So when speaking to Christian conservatives — as Trump did on Thursday evening — the apocalyptic rhetoric and warnings of imminent doom carry an additional weight. Especially when Trump’s focus is on the threat to Christianity itself.

Ultimately, as Bump put it, his message was focused on rallying the Christian right to support his candidacy.

In this case, he’s telling a group that feels as though it is losing cultural power that it is right and that he will ensure that it doesn’t.

It worked in 2016 and 2020. Why shouldn’t it work now?

And indeed it did work in 2024, too. But now in 2025, Trump is no longer running an election campaign, nor will he ever again, assuming constitutional norms hold. Yet Trump remains in constant battle mode, whether against falling poll numbers, against Democratic opposition to his legislation, and against any attempted rehabilitation narrative of the Biden presidency. So he must constantly remind his supporters that he is that “bulwark against the world’s evils” as Bump put it.

That’s what the “On A Mission From God” meme was meant to do,

Like every Christian nationalist authoritarian, Trump casts himself as the only one who will protect the nation from all the threats, real or fully imagined and amplified. As the meme claims, Trump is the anointed Savior, on a mission from God, and he is unstoppable.

None of that is remotely true, of course. To all rational, sane people, these assertions are laughably absurd. But this doesn’t mean they aren’t extremely dangerous. Truth has never been an obstacle for Trump, and we have long had to concede that half the electorate has gone fairly mad to reelect him to a second term.

And as Voltaire is credited as having warned, if you can get them to believe absurdities, you can get them to commit atrocities.