In April and May 2026, numerous rumors circulated online that U.S. President Donald Trump called a series of notable people — including celebrities, royals and religious figures — "offenders of Jesus."
For example, on May 3, a Facebook page dedicated to the Kansas City Chiefs posted such a claim (archived) about the NFL team's chairman, Clark Hunt, that read:
D.o.n.a.l.d T.r.u.m.p thought he could score easy political points by labeling Kansas City Chiefs' chairman Clark Hunt an "offender of Jesus," simply because he openly spoke about compassion, second chances, and the belief that love should never come with conditions. But he picked the wrong target.
The post went on to say Hunt "delivered a moral lesson" that Trump would "never forget."
The same claim circulated on Facebook with near-identical text but featuring other public figures, such as:
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Broadcaster David Attenborough (archived)
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Businessman Warren Buffett (archived)
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Actors Rowan Atkinson (archived) and Bette Midler (archived)
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Musician Taylor Swift (archived)
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British Prince William (archived)
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Tennis player Carlos Alcaraz (archived)
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Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally (archived)
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Musician James Taylor (archived)
Snopes readers also contacted us to ask whether numerous versions of the rumor were true.
We first used search engines such as DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo (archived, archived, archived) to locate possible evidence from credible sources about Trump calling anyone an "offender of Jesus." If any of the claims were true, journalists with reputable news outlets, such as The Associated Press or Reuters, or entertainment news outlets would have widely reported on them. That was not the case.
A search for "offender of Jesus" on Trump's Truth, an online archive of the president's Truth Social posts, returned no results. Trump is a prolific poster on Truth Social and would have likely made at least some of the purported remarks using this platform.
In short, the rumors were all fictional. Each of them originated from Facebook and blog pages that use artificial intelligence tools to create inspiring or shocking stories about public figures.
It is likely there are more iterations of this claim on social media, particularly Facebook, that also can be dismissed as false. Snopes will address each of them on a case-by-case basis when readers show an interest. For now, this rating applies only to the public figures listed
Creators of such content capitalize on social media users' willingness to believe and share the made-up stories, profiting from advertising revenue on external websites to which the posts link. (Snopes has previously reported on the business strategy.)
We contacted managers from pages that posted three of the most popular posts we viewed (about Hunt, Mullally and Midler) to ask why they created the false stories about Trump and the notable people without a disclaimer to note their inauthenticity. We will update this article if we receive a response.
The original source of each rumor was not always clear. Though the posts we viewed featured near-identical text, the pages that shared the rumors did not appear to be related or part of one specific network.
The paragraph we cited above from the post about Hunt also appeared in other claims Snopes viewed, swapping out only the notable person's name.
The claims also attributed near-identical responses to many different celebrities, claiming they said:
"The President of the United States just said I offend Jesus," [NAME] began, calm but firm. "You want to know what actually offends Jesus? Turning your back on the poor, the sick, and the forgotten while protecting the rich and powerful."
It is unlikely Trump would have accused so many different people of being "offenders of Jesus." It is even more unlikely that they all would have offered the exact same response.
The posts spreading the false rumor about Trump's alleged accusation included links in the comment sections to articles on ad-filled blogs. The comments promised more details about Trump's alleged insults and his targets' alleged reaction in the links.
Those articles and social media post captions had several indications of featuring AI-generated text. Many social media captions stylized the president's name as "D.o.n.a.l.d T.r.u.m.p," which authentic news media outlets would not do. This could be a way to circumvent moderators that scan for political speech on the platforms the pages shared their posts.
The articles also attempted to obscure their content by replacing the Latin letter "n" with the Cyrillic letter "п." This can make the text harder to search for and analyze with digital tools, making it more difficult to verify its origin and find other versions.
GPTZero, a tool that aims to detect AI-generated text, determined with high certainty that the text in the Facebook post about Mullally, the archbishop of Canterbury in the U.K., was generated using artificial intelligence. The same tool said it was "moderately" confident the headline and two first paragraphs of the ad-filled article about Mullally were generated using AI.
Let us note here: These types of AI detection tools are fallible. Snopes cautions people against using them for definitive answers on media's authenticity without supporting evidence.
Aside from their unusual style, the Facebook posts and articles did not report when or where Trump made his accusations. This type of detail would have featured in authentic news reporting.
Snopes has debunked similar rumors before. For example, we we've previously investigated a series of rumors about celebrities and political figures allegedly suing each other.