Texas Republican congressman and unabashed Trump supporter Troy Nehls described the president as being very close to Jesus Christ resurrected.
Nehls, 58, spoke to CNN’s Manu Raju on Thursday about the president’s feud with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran war, and he didn’t seem bothered by it at all.
“I believe that Donald Trump is better than sliced bread. I think he’s almost the second coming, in my humble opinion,” Nehls, a Christian, said, days after Trump depicted himself as Christ in a Truth Social post. “I think he’s done a fantastic job. He’s got a very difficult job. The pope’s got a tough job, you know—got issues in the church. But Donald Trump has a very, very difficult job to do—the toughest job in the world.”
After the pope called Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilization “truly unacceptable,” the president accused him in a Truth Social post of being “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,”
On Thursday, Trump tried to downplay the conflict.
“I’m not fighting with him,” he told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins outside the White House. “The pope made a statement. He says Iran can have a nuclear weapon. I say Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon... So, I can disagree with the pope. I have the right to disagree with the pope.”
However, as noted by Collins and later by CNN’s Daniel Dale, the pope never said Iran could have a nuclear weapon.
Whether it was concerning to Nehls that the 79-year-old president is making up statements by the pope wasn’t clear; his office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
Nehls is the same lawmaker who said after Trump’s reelection nearly two years ago that he and other House Republicans should “embrace... every single word” of Trump’s agenda.
“There’s no question he’s the leader of our party,” Nehls told reporters then. “So now he’s got a mission statement. His mission, and his goals and objectives, whatever that is, we need to embrace it. All of it. Every single word.
He added: “If Donald Trump says, ‘Jump three feet high and scratch your head,’ we all jump three feet high and scratch our heads, and that’s it.”
