Conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly attacked President Donald Trump for posting an AI-generated image of himself dressed as the pope less than a week after attending Pope Francis’ funeral.
“That was just dopey,” O’Reilly told NewsNation anchor Leland Vittert during Monday’s On Balance. “There was no excuse for that… The guy just died, you know?”
The president sparked outrage among the MAGA faithful with an AI-generated image of himself wearing papal robes and mitre, and joked with reporters that he would like to be the next pope.
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He shared the image on his Truth Social account on Friday, May 2, after attending Francis’ funeral in Rome the previous Saturday.
“He thought it was funny,” O’Reilly said. “Some people do think it’s funny, but he’s the president. I would’ve advised against it had I been consulted, which I was not.”
The former Fox News legend said: “I didn’t think it was smart because it offended a lot of elderly Catholics who voted for him.”
He wasn’t the first Republican strategist to blast Trump’s decision to depict himself as pope. Karl Rove also roasted Trump’s choice during a Sunday interview with Fox News.
“Tweeting out a picture of you as the pope is deeply offensive to a great many people,” he said.
The New York State Catholic Conference had issued a statement earlier in the day, saying, “There is nothing clever or funny about this image, Mr. President. We just buried our beloved Pope Francis and the cardinals are about to enter a solemn conclave to elect a new successor of St. Peter. Do not mock us.”
Trump has nevertheless doubled down on the image, telling reporters on Monday that Catholics who were offended “can’t take a joke,” PBS reported.
“I had nothing to do with it,” he added. “That’s not me that did it.”
Asked if Trump was flailing, O’Reilly told NewsNation that Trump seemed “tired.”
“That leads to statements that maybe you want to take back,” he said, like Trump’s dismissive comments last week about the effects of his trade war with China.
CEOs of American retail giants have warned that prices will spike and shelves will remain empty if the president doesn’t lower the 145 percent import duty he has imposed on goods from China.
“Somebody said, ‘Oh, the shelves are gonna be open,’” Trump told reporters during a Cabinet meeting last week. “Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more.”
Asked about the “strategy” behind the comments, O’Reilly said, “There is no strategy.”
“Donald Trump is not a calculated speaker,” he continued. “He doesn’t sit around with his advisers saying, ‘What should I say?’ He says anything he wants to say. Rich guys say anything they want to say. And since he fits into the category, from the time he’s been 7 years old, he’s said whatever he wants to say.”
O’Reilly said he personally thought Trump was not trying to be an Ebenezer Scrooge and was instead asking Americans to “sacrifice” a little bit in order to “bring China to its economic knees.”
“I think that’s what the comment was,” he said. “But who the deuce knows? The worse thing was the pope picture. That was really beyond the pale.”
