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Who are these people? Nine percent of US adults think it was okay for Donald Trump to post an image depicting himself as Jesus Christ. Oh Lord!
The good news: eighty-seven percent of respondents to the Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll believe Trump’s Jesus post was bonkers.
After critics charged Trump with blasphemy, he deleted the image of himself as Jesus with a bright light shining from his left hand blessing a sick man.
That was a very un-Trump move. His usual response to criticism is to double-down.
The president should just stay out of the religious lane. Forget the Jesus stuff.
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Trump is losing his crazy PR fight with Pope Leo. And losing very badly as the president might say.
The WaPo poll found that two-thirds of respondents support Pope Leo’s call for Americans to contact Congress to work for peace and reject war.
Fifty-seven percent disagree with Trump’s statement that Pope Leo thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
Shamefully, the president lied about the pope’s nuclear weapon position.
Pope Leo, who is not one to step away from a tussle set Trump straight on May 6. “If someone wants to criticize me for proclaiming the Gospel, let him do so truthfully,” he said.
The mission of the Church is to proclaim the Gospel, to preach peace, according to the pope.
“For years, the Church has spoken out against all nuclear weapons, so there is no doubt on that point,” he added.
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, offered a face-saving solution to Trump’s Pope Leo mess.
He said the pope would be open to talk directly to Trump. The president should give him a call and then close the books on religion.
It’s hard to shed a tear for a billionaire, especially one with a thin skin like Citadel chief Ken Griffin.
The hedge fund chief spent $238M for a 24K sq. ft. penthouse on Manhattan’s Central Park South, a record for the highest-priced home in the US.
He’s upset that New York mayor Zohran Mamdani used it and him as unwitting props to gain support for his pied-a-terre tax.
The mayor shot a video in front of Griffin’s building, and said the levy would apply to properties worth more than $5M with owners who don’t live full time in the city. He name checked Griffin.
The Citadel boss tore into Mamdani at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills on May 5.
“Mamdani is making it really clear: New York doesn’t welcome success,” he said. He suggested that Citadel would “double down” on investing in Miami vs. the Big Apple.
“Looking at what Mamdani just did to me, and more broadly is doing to the City of New York, is triggering the trauma I went through in Chicago,” said Griffin. Citadel moved its headquarters from Chicago in 2022 because Griffin was frustrated with the city’s politics and crime.
Mamdani’s office claims the pied-a-terre tax is designed to fix a broken system that rewards the wealthiest and punishes working people.
Note to Ken: Before pulling the plug on NYC, you might want to read the Wall Street Journal piece called “Florida’s Population Boom Fizzles as High Costs Drive Away Middle Class.”
Who is going to supply services demanded by the Miami high-rollers who fled hellholes like Chicago and New York?
Undoing Musk’s damage. A Republican group called Campaign for America First International Assistance plans to spend $8M in the mid-terms in support of GOP Congressional candidates who support restoring foreign aid that was cut by Elon Musk’s DOGE outfit.
The goal is to regain funding “for the life-saving, evidence-backed programs that are run and funded by the US to save tens of millions of lives around the world,” Nate Soule, CAFIA executive director, told the Financial Times.
A CAFIA poll found that 72% of Trump voters and 77% of Evangelicals support international assistance.
Meanwhile, Team Trump wants to divert $2B that Congress allocated for global healthcare to pay for the final shutdown of USAID.
That means shifting funds intended for programs dealing with malaria HIV/AIDS, nutrition and child/maternal healthcare to cover USAID legal fees, outstanding invoices and asset sales.
That’s unconscionable.
Momentum is building for nuclear power but public support is not guaranteed, according to a survey conducted by Ruder Finn... America First PR founder admits to assaulting a woman in a London tube station... If they knew their presence would disrupt the lives of thousands of people, neither Barack Obama nor George W. Bush would have attended the NBA Finals. They were not narcissists-in-chief. 
Ukraine struck PR gold as its launches drone attack on St. Petersburg oil depot ahead of 'Putin's Davos' designed to put a positive spin on Russia's economy that is reeling under the 'special military operation' that has cost the lives of more than 500K soldiers... Defense Secretary Hegseth ups war against reporters... Extremist government ministers marching in NYC Israel Day Parade further hurts the country's image. 
Cuba will make or break Secretary of State Marco Rubio's bid for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination... Ballard Partners and BGR Group push for justice for the family of Robert Levinson, who was abducted and vanished in Iran 19 years ago... Robert Daley, the pistol-packing larger-than-life PR guy who was PA chief for the NYPD, dies at 96.
Pope Leo's encyclical on dangers of AI has JD Vance rethinking his justification for Trump's war with Iran... Software tools remove guardrails on Google, Meta AI models that aim to protect against biological war, child sex abuse, stealing credit card info, reports the Financial Times... US tech sector drops nearly 100K jobs during first four months of the year.
The audacious autocrat who occupies the White House has achieved what was thought to be impossible. He has united the Hatfields and McCoys of the editorial world in opposition to his $1.776B slush fund... Sign of these sorry times: George Soros' Open Society Foundations plans to spend $300M to promote democracy and economic security in the US... PR play of the week goes to Steven Rosenbaum, author of “The Future of Truth."
