Hour 1: Trump’s “Jesus Style” Image | Jonathan Tepper on Shooting Up
Podcasts > Shake It Off with Mert & Lucas Live
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Monday, April 27, 2026
Episode 94 opens with a breakdown of Trump’s AI‑generated “Jesus style” image — the white robe, the glowing hand, the hospital‑bed tableau — and the political, religious, and cultural shockwaves it set off. The hour tracks the fierce reactions from supporters and critics, who argued over false prophets, messianic symbolism, and whether the imagery is strategy, sacrilege, or something far more destabilizing: a moment when the line between faith and power appears to be dissolving in real time. The hour concludes with Jonathan Tepper, author of Shooting Up, a memoir rooted in his childhood in Madrid’s heroin‑ravaged San Blas neighborhood, where his parents founded a drug‑rehabilitation center and the addicts he grew up with — nearly all HIV‑positive — became his closest friends and deepest losses. Moving between a book‑saturated home life and the brutal realities of AIDS, grief, and survival, Tepper traces how a boy shaped by death, loyalty, and literature ultimately finds purpose and resilience on the path that leads him to becoming a Rhodes Scholar.
