Out CNN host Anderson Cooper could not contain his shock as he listened to a former Trump official defend the president’s bizarre post depicting himself as Jesus Christ.

Numerous MAGA Christian conservatives criticized it as blasphemous. On Monday, Trump deleted the post and, when asked by reporters, claimed that the image was supposed to depict him as a Red Cross doctor.

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Cooper asked Matt Mowers, who helped spearhead the Trump-Pence presidential campaign in 2016 and later became a White House advisor to the State Department, if he bought Trump’s explanation. Mowers replied, “I’m gonna take him at his word.”

“Really? You are?” Cooper asked, clearly flabbergasted.

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“Yeah, because as a Catholic, I’m glad he clarified. I’m glad he took it down,” Mowers replied.

But Cooper did not let him off easy.

“Do you worry that the president of the United States can’t identify what a doctor looks like and thinks it’s a man in Biblical robes with celestial light pouring from his hands?” he asked.

Mowers said clearly Trump posts things pretty quickly to social media – “especially memes that others generate” – and that the president probably doesn’t look at all of his posts “overly closely” before publishing them.

He then went on a long diatribe about how it’s normal for tensions to exist between political and religious leaders.

In 2022, Mowers was accused of voting in two states during the 2016 primaries, a violation of federal law.

Trump posted the AI image after publishing a rant against Pope Leo XIV for repeatedly criticizing Trump’s illegal war in Iran.

On Saturday, Leo denounced the “delusion of omnipotence” that he said is behind the U.S. and Israel’s attack on Iran. “Enough of the idolatry of self and money!” he said. “Enough of the display of power! Enough of war!”

Trump then posted a long and rambling rant on his social media network, Truth Social, late Sunday night, attacking the pope for being “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign policy.” He also criticized the pope’s opposition to Trump’s invasion of Venezuela and raged at the pope for meeting “With Obama Sympathizers like David Axelrod, a LOSER from the Left.”

In response, many anti-LGBTQ+, pro-Trump Christian influencers issued social media messages condemning the image and telling Trump to delete it, including racist pastor Joel Webbon (who called Trump “demon possessed”), transphobic Daily Wire contributor Michael Knowles, accused evangelist Sean Feucht, Pete Hegseth’s pastor Douglas Wilson, and anti-trans activist Riley Gaines.

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), a former Catholic who became a Protestant in the early 2010s and who had a big falling out with the MAGA movement, said that Trump’s image was “more than blasphemy,” that “it’s an Antichrist spirit.” Greene was one of the most anti-LGBTQ+ members of Congress during her tenure at the Capitol.

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