Trump to air prerecorded Bible verse amid Pope feud, Washington event

Donald Trump will send a prerecorded Bible reading from the Oval Office into a weeklong Washington event on Tuesday, a highly visible religious gesture arriving just after a fight with Pope Leo XIV and backlash over a deleted AI image that many Christians found offensive.

Trump’s contribution, a reading from 2 Chronicles 7:11-22, is scheduled to air during the 6 p.m. Eastern hour on April 21 as part of America Reads the Bible at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. Organizers said the president has already recorded the segment, which runs roughly two and a half minutes and highlights 2 Chronicles 7:14, a verse often invoked for humility, prayer and repentance.

The setting is designed to look much larger than a cameo. America Reads the Bible opened April 19 and runs through April 25, with an opening celebration on April 18 at Capital Turnaround. Organizers say the Bible will be read continuously for 84 hours over seven days, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., by nearly 500 readers alongside about 115 to 122 ministries. The event is being framed as a commemoration of 250 years of the Bible in America.

That symbolism matters because Trump’s appearance comes after one of the sharpest recent breaks between the White House and the Vatican. The clash with Pope Leo XIV escalated over the war in Iran, after Trump attacked the pontiff on social media and called him “weak on crime” and “terrible for Foreign Policy.” The pope had criticized the war and urged peace, while Trump suggested Leo had been elevated in part because he was American.

The Bible reading also follows a separate backlash over an AI-generated image Trump posted and later deleted that many viewers interpreted as depicting him as Jesus. Trump said he believed the image was meant to show him as a doctor healing the sick, not as Christ. Speaker Mike Johnson said he asked Trump to remove it. The criticism cut across evangelical Protestants, traditional Catholics and populist conservatives, exposing how quickly religious imagery can turn into a political liability.

That is why the Bible reading looks less like a routine faith appearance than a deliberate reset. Trump won 55% of Catholic voters in the 2024 election, according to AP VoteCast, and the White House has already paired the event with a presidential message citing Christopher Columbus, John Winthrop, the Declaration of Independence, the 1787 Northwest Ordinance and John Adams. The lineup also includes Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Doug Burgum, Brooke Rollins, Doug Collins, Susie Wiles and Paula White-Cain, underscoring how closely the event is tied to Trump’s political and religious coalition.