So, what shouldn’t you do if you’re the most powerful man on the planet who has blundered into a war that isn’t turning out the way you expected and threatens to melt down the global economy?
Among the answers: Don’t post a grotesque AI generated Christ-like image of yourself miraculously curing a dying man and then pretend it was meant to show you as, er, a doctor.
Don’t launch a war of words with the first American pope in history (it doesn’t play well with the 55million US Catholics, only half of whom voted for you two years ago, many on the basis of your pledge to stay out of foreign wars and prioritise their living standards).
Don’t resort to apocalyptic war talk inviting F-bomb headlines, threatening “a whole civilisation will die tonight” and bomb a nation “back into the stone age where it belongs”. All the while dismissing civilian carnage – including among your allies – with the gravitas of watching a violent video game.
Litte wonder, then, that on Capitol Hill and in the US media, and beyond, there is renewed speculation about invoking the 25th Amendment of the Constitution, the one that enables Congress, the cabinet and the vice-president to forcibly remove a POTUS deemed unfit for office.
In reality, the Republican majority in congress and a cabinet still in thrall to Trump guarantees that won’t happen until after the November mid-term elections when the Democrats could well control both houses of congress.
Heading for a bloodbath?
According to NBC News, more than 70 Democrats in Congress have called for the 25th to be applied now and the figure is growing daily. But it isn’t only Democrats talking the 25th talk.
Firebrand right-wing former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, once one of Trump’s greatest allies, has publicly endorsed immediately invoking the 25th after branding his Iran military action “evil and madness”.
In an interview with The Conversation, picked up by the international media, Greene argued: “I was so shocked by his statement of taking out an entire civilisation of people. To me, that displayed a severe mental state. How can any person that is mentally stable call for an entire civilisation to be murdered? It’s absolute madness.”
Greene, who had already fallen out with her longtime friend over his handling of the Epstein Files issue and resigned her congressional seat in protest, predicted Trump’s behaviour and his Iran War ‘folly’ would result in a ‘bloodbath’ for the Republican party at the mid-terms. She is considering running as an independent.
Trump’s reaction? To suggest Greene is herself a mentally unstable “traitor”. But there is plenty of evidence of other Capitol Hill Republicans privately briefing journalists on their concerns over the president’s “mental state”.
Former Fox News hosts and Trump close confidantes Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly – now both prominent right-wing influencers – have already turned ferociously on the president over the Iran War.
While the former CIA director, John Brennan, has added his voice publicly suggesting the 25th Amendment “was written with Donald Trump in mind”.
A clearly unhinged POTUS, claims ex-CIA chief
Brennan, who headed the CIA during Barack Obama’s presidency, contended in a series of media interviews that Trump’s volatility and dystopian threats during the Iran crisis “merited his removal from office”, adding “this person is clearly unhinged”.
As The Guardian here reported on Monday, Brennan’s intervention is particularly striking given that he is under active investigation by Trump’s puppet justice department, along with former FBI Director James Comey, as part of the president’s obsessive vendetta against his perceived enemies.
The curse of the AI-generated Jesus
But for many Americans, and millions across the world, it is that extraordinary AI generated image the president posted on his Truth Social platform on Monday depicting himself as a Jesus Christ-like figure in robes, with divine light emanating from his hands as he heals a stricken man in a hospital bed with a demon from hell floating in the background that has triggered outrage.
While Trump has since deleted the post, it only came as he faced the wrath of some of his most high-profile and loyal Christian supporters, many of whom, as The Guardian pointed out “have stood by the president through multiple other indiscretions but were unable to contain their righteous fury”.
Ricky Gaines, a Fox News host and influential conservative commentator, posted on X: “Is he looking for a response? Does he actually think this? Either way, two things are true. 1 - a little humility would serve him well. 2 - God shall not be mocked.”
Magan Basham, a writer on the normally Trump cheerleading Daily Wire, accused him of “OUTRAGEOUS blasphemy… I don’t know if the president thought he was being funny or if he is under the influence of some substance or what possible explanation he could have for this.” Before Trump finally took down his post, she had demanded he “must take this down immediately and ask for forgiveness from the American people and then from God.”
Trust me, I’m a doctor not Jesus
But the president wasn’t exactly repentant or humble when challenged by journalists covering the furore. Asked why he’d posted a picture clearly depicting himself as Christ, he countered: “It wasn’t a depiction, it was me… it was supposed to be me as a doctor making people better. And I do make people better. I make people a lot better.”
Away from the religious firestorm, critics pointed out that his ‘doctor defence’ was rather rich coming after he signed off legislation that pulled 12million Americans out of health insurance by gutting Medicaid.
The ‘Jesus’ image made virtually every UK paper on Tuesday as well as figuring heavily on TV bulletins and dominating BBC’s Newsnight programme.
‘Trump repents his Jesus stunt’ was The Telegraph’s splash with a huge reproduction of the image. It also figured on the front page of The Times alongside the main headline; ‘Trump rolls the dice on blockading the Strait’. The ‘i’ featured it on the front with a ‘Trump vs Pope’ headline. The same headline featured on the front of Metro, while the Daily Star with characteristic cheeky irreverence displayed the image with the headline message to Trump: ‘You’re not the Messiah, you’re a very naughty boy’…with an inset image of the pope and a slightly misleading strapline suggesting, ‘Trump backs down in Pope Row’.
(If it hadn’t been for the harrowing Southport child massacre report release, more UK titles like the Sun, Mirror and Mail would have Splashed on the Pope / POTUS /Jesus post eruption rather than featuring it prominently on the inside pages).
No truce in the pope vs POTUS war of words
Not that there is much sign yet of either president or pope backing down in the war of words between them and the extraordinary ‘Christ image’ has only turbocharged it. In the early hours of Wednesday Trump launched a new broadside at both the Pope and NATO.
“Please tell Pope Leo that for Iran to have a nuclear bomb is absolutely unacceptable… NATO wasn’t there for us and they won’t be there for us in future’, the insomniac POTUS wrote.
The conflict began with Pope Leo XIV, the first American pontiff in Catholic history, suggesting (but without naming the president initially), that a ‘delusion of omnipotence’ was driving US foreign policy, particularly surrounding the Iran War and the rhetoric associated with it.
Even without being named, that was red rag to a narcissist bullyboy POTUS already known to be incensed by the pope’s outspoken condemnation of the “carnage and catastrophe” of Gaza. Trump responded by calling the pope “WEAK on Crime” and declaring himself “not a fan of Pope Leo” and accusing the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics of “catering to the radical left”. In another post that betrayed his narcissism, Trump claimed it was only because he’d been elected POTUS that his compatriot had been elected pope.
Pope Leo then adopted a Trumpian touch by holding an impromptu mid-air press conference on the papal flight to his African tour, telling journalists he “did not fear the Trump administration” and would continue to speak out against war.
Whose not afraid of Big Bad Donald?
“I’m not afraid of the Trump administration or speaking out loudly of the message of the gospel, which is what I am here to do, what the church is here to do,” the defiant pontiff declared, knowing he was guaranteed global headlines. Telling NBC News: “We are not politicians. We don’t deal with foreign policy with the same perspective he might understand, but I do believe in the message of the Gospel, as a peacemaker.”
No one is anticipating a truce in the pope v president war of words anytime soon. Or as one member of the travelling Vatican press pack privately quipped: “Trump could find it harder to secure a ceasefire with Pope Leo than another one with the Tehran regime”.
The papal / presidential showdown is particularly tricky terrain for VP JD Vance, a relatively recent Catholic convert, and the man charged with tying to negotiate a ‘peace deal’ with the Iranian regime. It’s no secret that Vance argued against the Iran War in private despite his public displays of support for Trump.
Rumours are rife on Capitol Hill that relations are tense between the pair with suggestions the president has taken to ‘mocking’ his deputy and favouring the more fawning war secretary, Pete Hegseth. Some suggest Trump will ‘blame game’ Vance if the ceasefire collapses. Others that Trump is only too aware that Vance would be the man replacing him should the 25th Amendment eventually be put to the test and suspects that he couldn’t rely on his VP’s loyalty if that happens post the mid-terms.
White House hardliners like War Secretary Hegseth might not be too bothered by Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian opportunistically chipping in by condemning Trump’s “Jesus image” as an insult, saying “depicting Jesus Christ as a vessel for political vanity was unacceptable to any free person and a desecration of Jesus.”
Bishops united against POTUS
But they will be more concerned by the condemnation of Trump’s attacks on the pope from a politician like Matteo Salvini – Italy’s hard-right and close Trump ally deputy prime minister – who branded it “neither useful nor intelligent”. Later his boss, PM Giorgia Meloni, a particular Trump favourite, weighed in herself strongly condemning the attacks on Pope Leo.
They will – or certainly should with the mid-terms looming – fret over US bishops across the religious spectrum teaming up to rally behind Pope Leo, describing him not as a “political opponent” but a “vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel”.
The left-leaning Guardian, not always the most fervently religious UK title, flagged up the irony that Trump’s AI post came one week after Easter Sunday for Catholics and the morning after Easter Sunday for Orthodox Christians. And they did credit one American X user called Mandy Arthur who captured the mood music by posting:’ God, we might have made a mistake and accidentally elected the Antichrist. Send help’.
Inevitably, Trump’s AI outrage and the pope v POTUS war of words is playing into the build up for Britain’s May 7th election campaign.
Farage: America First, not Trump First
In a somewhat uncomfortable interview with Sky Political Editor Beth Rigby, Nigel Farage ducked an outright opportunity to condemn Trump’s Jesus imagery, saying he is “never surprised by anything the president says”. While at a Tuesday Reform campaign press conference Farage was asked if he thinks Donald Trump is Jesus Christ, or if the US president is “suffering from cognitive decline”? Farage responded by saying some people like Trump’s stye while others don’t and adding that “he’ll be 80 in a few weeks time” and that his opponents have unsuccessfully talked up “the 25th Amendment for a decade”.
But behind the scenes in Reform, strategists are only too aware that – while they expect to do very well on May 7th – pollsters suggest the party’s recent slide in the polls is partly down to its leaders well-known history as a Trump pal and cheerleader. Only last month, the More in Common polling and research firm reported that Farage’s Trump friendship with Trump is the biggest threat to Reform’s prospects of power.
As this column has repeatedly suggested, it could yet turn out to be the Achilles heel that hobbles Reform’s high hopes of becoming the party of government at the next general election, fulfilling Farage’s ultimate prime ministerial dream.
It might explain why in his Beth Rigby interview, Farage was at pains to champion the “Special Relationship” while coming up with a timely new mantra: “It’s America First not Trump First”.
For her part, in a Tuesday morning BBC Radio 5 Live interview, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch branded Trump’s Jesus image “childish” and “preposterous”. Although generally pro-Trump and with the Republican party seen as the Conservatives’ ‘sister’ party, Badenoch told the BBC: “If he is saying something that makes sense , we should agree. If he says something that doesn’t make sense, we should disagree.
“I think he’s right to say we need to do more spending on defence… but he’s wrong to make childish remarks. He’s wrong to make these empty threats on Greenland and so on, What he said about Iran and the threat to wipe out its civilisation, that’s wrong as well.”
The Robertson Rocket’s headline explosion
Ah, defence spending. If Labour strategists were hoping that Keir Starmer’s increased willingness to stand up to Trump would continue to marginally boost his personal ratings and mitigate the scale of the party’s May bloodletting, who should enter the debate to Tory and Reform delight and that of the right-wing papers but Lord (George) Robertson, the highly respected former head of NATO and distinguished Blair era defence secretary.
Uncomfortably for the Starmer government, he was also the co-author of its own Strategic Defence Review (SDR) but in a devastating exclusive interview in Tuesday’s Financial Times (ahead of a major Tuesday evening speech), Lord Robertson accused Sir Keir of “not being willing to make the necessary investment” and showing “corrosive complacency” towards defence and accused “non military experts in the Treasury” of “vandalism”.
The FT scoop was quickly seized on by later editions of the UK nationals and dominated much of the broadcast bulletins throughout Tuesday and again on Wednesday.
In a directly political intervention, Lord Robertson’s FT briefing and his Tuesday night Salisbury speech he argued: “We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget.
“We are underprepared. We are underinsured. We are under attack. We are not safe… Britain’s national security and safety is in peril. There is a corrosive complacency in Britain’s political leadership. Lip service is paid to the risks the threats, the bright red signals of danger – but even a promised national conversation about defence can’t be started.”
But sources close to the Labour grandee pointed out that he was also targeting previous Tory governments’ failure to properly fund the nation’s defence and questioning whether Reform’s boasts about boosting defence were realistic amid its other spending pledges.
Recommendations accepted, but where’s the money?
Robertson hit out against the backdrop of his June 2025 review which the government not only accepted but promised all 62 of its recommendations would be implemented. But mounting political controversy surrounds the government’s failure to share how it will be funded.
Sources close to Robertson in the Ministry of Defence hinted that the timing of his intervention was designed to draw attention to a ‘Defence v Welfare’ split in Starmer’s cabinet that he believes is casing the delay. A canny political operator I once knew quite well, he also knows only too well that his action will rocket the defence issue to the top of the May 7th election debate. He was also aware of a new opinion poll putting defence slightly ahead of the NHS in the public’s priority list for the first time.
Lord Robertson’s intervention figured heavily in a feisty PMQs debate with Kemi Badenoch quoting it and taunting the PM with Robertson’s Labour history. Starmer responded by attacking the chronic defence underspending he’d inherited from 14 years of Tory government. To the viewing public, it was more Punch and Judy blame gaming than serious political enlightenment.
Machiavellian twist?
In a Machiavellian twist, some Westminster sources are speculating that the prime minster was effectively ‘in on’ the Robertson plan and has decided to back the defence over welfare lobby within cabinet but politically needed to be seen to be pressured into it. An intriguing theory, if nothing else. But how it would play with left-wing backbenchers another ticking timebomb for Sir Keir.
Meanwhile, one ally of Chancellor Rachel Reeves told me: “Lord Robertson’s apparent suggestion that the government could raise defence funding by cutting welfare budgets offers some consolation for Rachel and explains why she ended up in tears last year when No 10 caved in to a backbench revolt and dumped her sensible reductions in the welfare budget.”
The IMF timebomb lands
But what also didn’t help on Tuesday was a new report by the International Monetary Fund warning that the UK faces the biggest hit to growth from the Iran War of any major economy. The IMF’s headline-grabbing bad news came as the chancellor and Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey were setting off to the US for the IMF’s annual meeting. The IMF report echoed one earlier in the war from the influential Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) delivering Britain with the biggest downgrade of any advanced economy. Politically, no serious economist would argue that the toxic legacy of Trump’s Iran war will haunt whoever wins the next UK general election.
Rachel lets rip at Trump
Rachel Reeves seized the opportunity to attack Trump’s Iran war decision without the president having an “exit strategy” in mind before he did so. A position reflected in Wednesday Daily Mirror splash headline: ‘Reeves Fury at Trump… NO EXIT PLAN. NO IDEA’. It came hours before the chancellor was scheduled to hold tense talks with Treasury Secretary Scott Beasant. Trump loyalist Beasant has hardly endeared himself to Reeves by recently depicting the economic impact of the Iran war as small pain for long term gain.
But it wasn’t a good omen for the chancellor when Trump launched another sweeping attack on Starmer and the UK government. In a late-night phone call with Sky News Washington Correspondent Mark Stone. It included threatening to scrap the US / UK trade deal over our refusal to join the Iran war, condemning our immigration policy and ‘failure’ to drill enough in the North Sea. But he did gush about King Charles and Queen Camilla’s official visit at the end of this month.
What was apparently clear from the conversation is that Trump can’t grasp that the royal couple’s trip is at the request of the government he’s monstering and not out of the king’s perceived personal regard for him! Understandable, perhaps, given millions of protesting Americans have dubbed him ‘King Donald’, accusing him of running the country like an absolute monarch not a democratic president.
At PMQs on Wednesday, the Lib Dem leader cited Trump’s Sky interview and repeated his call for the royal visit to be called off for fear an ‘uncontrollable’ president could ‘publicly embarrass the King’.
But the IMF’s verdict on Trump’s Iran war’s impact on the UK economy leaves the government in dire straits with limited room for manoeuvre on defence, welfare, the cost-of-living et al before the next general election, let alone May 7th. A political ticking timebomb facing Keir Starmer and anyone plotting to replace him.
Playing it strait?
Meanwhile, what’s happening in President Trump’s curious new ploy of opening up the Strait of Hormuz by using US naval might to shut it down is proving chaotic and confusing since it theoretically went into operation from 3pm GMT on Monday.
At least four Iran-linked vessels reportedly crossed the Strait on Tuesday after the US blockade was started. So did three others, according to some other reports. As did a Chinese tanker with the Chinese government raising the temperature by calling Trump’s blockade “dangerous and irresponsible”. It raised the high-risk spectre of Beijing – China is Iran’s biggest oil customer – mobilising its own warships to escort tankers through the strait in defiance of the legally dubious US blockade.
Blockade or bluff?
In a Wednesday op-ed for the Daily Mail, Britain’s former Navy supremo, Lord West, rather debunked the blockade strategy under the headline ‘Trump’s bluff has been called. He’ll either have to back off – or seize ships’. Questioning whether the US could even sustain a protracted blockade, he also stressed the dangers attached to seizing a Chinese or Chinese-bound vessel.
But Wednesday’s Mail devoted its front page to another military Lord – George Robertson. With a headline directly quoting his blistering speech. ‘We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare bill’. Tying it in with the paper’s own long-running ‘Don’t Leave BRITAIN defenceless’ campaign logo.
Whether selectively, or due to practical enforcement difficulties, the US naval blockade appears confused and inconsistent. All the more so when the US confidently denied any vessels had breached it. Begging the question: Who is lying or, as some experts suggest, are captains seeking to embarrass the US fleet by ‘transponder spoofing’ their true positions.
But confusion and contradiction merely par for the course in a golf-hooked POTUS’s whole approach to this war, many would argue.
Away from its front-page story on Trump “rolling the dice” with his blockade, a double page analysis in Tuesday’s Times had posed the pertinent headline question: Does America have the might to keep vital waterway open? The answer too that effectively? Too soon to say.
A bonkers proposal?
But the analysis ended with this: “Britain’s refusal to join the blockade will add to Trump’s grievance against the UK and NATO more generally. On one level, it may not make a difference. Relations are already at such a nadir – that refusal can hardly make matters worse. But it could deepen Trump’s animosity towards NATO and revive threats to punish the alliance for its failure, as the president sees it, to help the US in the Middle East.”
For its part, the Tehran regime is defiantly accusing the US blockade of ‘piracy’ with officials pointing out that it was only a few days ago that the ever-transactional Trump had bizarrely proposed on Truth Social a joint American / Iranian deal to fully open the waterway by charging and sharing transit fees for international shipping going through the world’s most important trade passage. A bonkers proposal that would have outraged the rest of the world.
As one senior Capitol Hill Democrat described it to me: “That idea was so nuts and unrealistic it illustrates just why the two words ‘25th Amendment’ are back on so many lips here.”
Trump declares war on the NYT
Meanwhile, on Tuesday in Washington, Trump launched a ranting attack on the ‘failing’ New York Times over a feature by its chief White House correspondent questioning his mental state and erratic behaviour. At a press appearance, the president ducked any mention of his mental state but accused the NYT of being a “fake news” organisation, enemy of America and pretending Iran was winning the war.
Back in the UK, former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger wrote in his Prospect Magazine column that Trump is “mad” – a viewpoint he vigorously defended in a Sky News discussion on the president’s fitness for office on Tuesday night.
If nothing else, the 25th Amendment is an explosive issue that isn’t going away whatever the final outcome of the Iran war.
A glimmer of hope for a world on the brink?
But there was a note of very cautious optimism in the air on Wednesday after President Trump told the New York Post on Tuesday that fresh negotiations with Iran would take place in a couple of days. The story was picked up globally even though Iran didn’t appear to know anything about it, sparking speculation it was another Trump fantasy. But, later, VP Vance predicted fresh negotiations with Iran in Islamabad could happen on Sunday and that Trump wants to offer Iran a “very big economic deal”. And UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres also declared he believes breakthrough new discussions are upcoming.
But what Vance, who would again lead the US negotiating team, didn’t address in his on-camera remarks was whether there had been any shift in President Trump’s position on Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The apparent numero uno stumbling block at last weekend’s talks.
And while the world holds its breath – and continues to wonder / worry about the mental state of Donald Trump – whether renewed negotiations would represent a victory for the US or Iran remains a very open question as the global economy edges closer to the meltdown cliff.
