Fake Trump post ordering Catholic Church probe spreads amid pope spat
- Published on April 17, 2026 at 22:46
- 3 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
An image purporting to show Donald Trump calling for the top US prosecutor to "investigate the Catholic Church" amid his row with Pope Leo XIV is spreading across platforms, but the supposed post is fake. While the president did criticize the pontiff as "weak" on Truth Social, the message allegedly ordering a probe of the church does not appear on his X or Truth Social accounts.
"It's no coincidence that this Pope is from the same city as that liberal dog Obama," says the supposed X post from Trump, dated April 15, 2026 in an image shared on Threads.
"He wants to do is humiliate Trump when the only reason he has the job is because I gave it to him," the text continues. "Wish he would take his little biscuits or Wafers or whaterver the hell it is you people eat and go somewhere else. JD Vance has it right the Pope needs to stick his finger somewhere else besides America. Ordering Todd Blanche to investigate the Catholic Church immediately I'm sure he can find something."
The apparent screenshot spread across Facebook, Threads and X -- including in Spanish and German -- as Trump heaped criticism on the Chicago-born pontiff in April 2026, taking issue with the pope's vocal opposition to the war in the Middle East.
In an April 12 Truth Social post that escalated his hostility toward the head of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics, Trump attacked the pontiff as "WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy" while also claiming credit for Leo's elevation to the role in May 2025 (archived here).
"He wasn't on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump," Trump wrote. "If I wasn't in the White House, Leo wouldn't be in the Vatican. Unfortunately, Leo's Weak on Crime, Weak on Nuclear Weapons, does not sit well with me."
Leo had earlier in the month branded Trump's threat to destroy a "whole civilization" in Iran as "truly unacceptable." He has also previously criticized Trump's mass deportation campaign as "inhuman."
After Vice President JD Vance -- a Catholic -- urged the Vatican to "stick to matters of morality," Leo on April 16, 2026 said the world was "being ravaged by a handful of tyrants."
But the supposed X post from Trump ordering acting US Attorney General Blanche to investigate the Catholic Church is fabricated.
No such message appears on Trump's X or Truth Social accounts -- or in archived captures of them. Trump has not posted on X since March 2, when he shared footage of a speech about Operation Epic Fury, the military campaign against Iran.
Searches of Faceba.se and Trump's Truth, two interactive databases tracking the president's social media activity, yielded no match for the quotes in question. AFP found no credible news reports attributing any such statement to Trump, either.
One additional sign of the post's inauthenticity is the presence of a blue checkmark beside Trump's name.
The blue checkmark, according to X, is reserved for paying accounts subscribed to X's premium services (archived here). Trump's account, which X owner Elon Musk reactivated in November 2022, carries a gray checkmark used for governments and government officials (archived here).
The various posts sharing the fake also all show the same view and interaction numbers, which would be unlikely were they genuine screenshots of an authentic publication.
Blanche, the Republican's former personal lawyer, assumed the role of acting attorney general after Trump fired Pam Bondi from the position April 2.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about US politics here.
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