Poll: Even Trump voters reject his Jesus post
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President Trump bows his head in prayer during the 74th annual National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton on February 5, 2026 in Washington, D.C. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
President Trump's own voters overwhelmingly rejected his social media post depicting himself as Jesus — a rare break in today's tribal politics, a new poll finds.
Why it matters: The backlash underscores limits to how far culture-war politics can stretch inside his own coalition.
- A new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll finds that Trump's religious messaging, especially his Jesus post, is overwhelmingly rejected by Americans. The poll was first reported by the Washington Post.
By the numbers: 80% of 2024 Trump voters and 79% of Republicans reacted negatively to Trump posting an image depicting himself as Jesus, the poll found.
- Overall, 87% of Americans had a negative reaction to Trump posting an image portraying himself as Jesus.
- 69% of Americans had a negative reaction to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's prayer at the Pentagon, invoking "violence of action."
Flashback: Last month, Trump shared an image that showed him in white and red robes with one hand resting on the forehead of a sick man while the other emanated light.
- It was swiftly labeled "blasphemy" online and was deleted from the president's account the next morning.
- Trump later told reporters he thought the image depicted him as "a doctor" and "had to do with" the Red Cross.
- There was no reference to the Red Cross or a clear depiction of a "Red Cross worker" in the image.
Context: It's not the first time one of Trump's AI-generated photos has rankled Christians.
- Weeks after Pope Francis' death, he shared a fake image of himself as the pope, a move that earned him condemnation from even the typically friendly Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
Zoom in: Trump's Jesus post triggered widespread discomfort across the political spectrum, including among his base.
- That kind of cross-partisan rejection is rare in modern polling, where attitudes typically split along party lines.
Zoom out: The reaction comes amid broader shifts in American religion and politics.
- More Americans are identifying as religiously unaffiliated.
- Pope Leo XIV, who has clashed with Trump, is viewed favorably by 41% of Americans, versus 16% unfavorable, with many still unfamiliar, the poll found.
- 66% reacted positively to Leo's urging Americans to work for peace.
Between the lines: Trump has long framed himself as a defender of Christianity.
- "There has never been a greater president for Christian Americans than President Trump, and his strong record proves it ... On the other hand, Democrats shamelessly weaponized the full weight of the federal government against people of faith," White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told Axios in a statement.
- But the data suggests voters, including supporters, draw a line between advocacy and imagery they see as inappropriate or extreme.
- At the same time, disapproval of his broader rhetoric tied to religion and war signals potential vulnerabilities beyond a single post.
The bottom line: About 9 in 10 white evangelical Protestants viewed the Jesus post negatively.
- Yet roughly 7 in 10 still approved of Trump's overall job performance.
Methodology: The Washington Post–ABC News–Ipsos poll was conducted April 24 to 28, 2026, among a nationally representative sample of 2,560 U.S. adults using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel®, a probability-based online panel recruited through address-based sampling. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish.
- The margin of sampling error is ±2 percentage points for the full sample.
