Google “Trump and Zeus” and you’ll be online for a while. On websites where you can instruct AI to generate images, there’s a whole trend of images depicting Donald Trump as Zeus. On one site, a user typed in the following instructions: “President Donald Trump dressed as the Roman god Zeus, wielding a lightning bolt, ultra-realistic”. On another site, someone wrote: “Trump as a modern Zeus, throwing golden lightning bolts.” A third user entered the prompt: “donald trump as a Greek god. A new Olympian”. Instagram user @promptdodo shared “a stunning digital illustration of Donald Trump, in the air, transforming into the ancient Greek god Zeus.” Zeus looks more like an archangel with a flaming sword than Zeus here. Finally, someone on another site wrote extensive instructions: “‘President Donald J Trump as a Greek god, detailed face, gorgeous, amazing, muscular, fit, very muscular masculine body, Caesar victorious, proud emperor’. So yeah, it’s a trend.
The AI President
These are some examples of the strange genre of AI images of Trump as Zeus. You might think, so what, why are they important. But from these instructions we can infer a number of things about what kind of president these AI users want, and from the images themselves we learn how AI interprets these prompts based on existing online information. In other words, we learn what information patterns exist online about both Trump and Zeus that lead to these images.
First, Trump is almost always depicted with a lightning bolt, and he wears red robes and gold jewelry. Trump’s hair always has a dynamic quality, which lends him both a youthful appearance and wisdom. His muscular, often half-naked upper body – and the description “gorgeous” in the instructions – even gives him some (sorry) mature sex allure. Sometimes he makes stern eye contact with the viewer. Other times he looks into the distance, with his arm raised in a dominant and threatening pose: shoulders back, fists clenched, lips tightly closed. Moreover, Trump is always extremely muscular. His abs and arm muscles resemble those of a bodybuilder, or of a modern superhero, with strong biceps and a red cloak.
Not all instructions describe Trump’s body in detail as “attractive” or “very muscular”, but AI programs nevertheless interpret the instructions in this way. Although it is possible that some images are intended as satire – on social media the line between glorification and parody is sometimes wafer-thin – we can still infer from the instructions that these images are meant positively. This is fan art, presumably created by Maga supporters. By romanticizing Trump with the Greek god Zeus, the people who generate the AI images and the social media users who view them are presented with a leader as they want him to be: a powerful, virile, authoritative, and heroic leader, who can overcome his enemies through a combination of physical strength and strategy.
Fictional president
But the glorification of the hyper-muscular and heroic President Trump does not exist in a social vacuum: Trump has never explicitly compared himself to Zeus, but a romanticized idealization of the president can also be seen in official communications from The White House. Incredibly, they too use AI to portray Trump as heroic. On May 4 of this year, Star Wars Day, the White House shared a controversial AI image on Twitter: Trump as a rebel leader in the Star Wars universe (although fans immediately responded that only the evil Sith Lords in Star Wars carry red lightsabers). It’s fascinating how much this official Trump propaganda resembles the fan art. In addition to the glorification of Trump’s sexy, muscular body, the lightsaber even resembles Zeus’ lightning bolt visually. To explain why the official White House Twitter page finds it okay to share such computer-generated images of Trump, we also need to look at Trump’s past as a TV star.
Specifically, his role in professional wrestling for the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). This is wrestling as American drama and entertainment: scripted and rehearsed! Although Trump never had a hyper-muscular physique, American TV viewers have associated him with such male bodies over the years. This is also part of AI’s obsession with Trump’s muscle mass, as his public persona has long been associated with violent machismo in an entertainment setting.
Zeus the Tyrant
It is amusing to some extent to analyze fan art of Trump as Zeus. However, the comparison between Trump and Zeus is not entirely unfounded. Zeus is referred to as the king of the gods throughout classical literature, and Trump also has autocratic and royal aspirations. He makes no secret of this. In February of this year, Trump used the phrase “LONG LIVE THE KING” to refer to himself on his social media, Truth. Despite the democratic system of the United States, some Maga supporters also revere Trump as a divine king, as T-shirts with the inscription “MAGA KING” suggest.
The comparison with Zeus is a clear warning against tyranny. After all, the Iliad describes Zeus primarily as a despot who rules with an iron fist. He tolerates no contradiction, and when his wife Hera confronts him about his problematic leadership, he threatens her (Iliad 1.564-69):
‘Shut your mouth, sit down and submit to my words,
otherwise all the gods of Olympus
cannot save you from my merciless hands.’
And she became afraid, the goddess, the cow-eyed mighty Hera,
she sat down, held her mouth, suppressed her anger.
And it does not stop at threats. We see that in Zeus’ treatment of Hephaestus. When Zeus tells Hera to keep her mouth shut, Hephaestus agrees and explains to his mother why that is the best response (Iliad 1.573-93):
‘I advise my mother, although she knows best,
to submit to Zeus the father, so that the father
will not reprimand her again…
He is simply the strongest…
Once I wanted to save you from him, then he grabbed my foot and
threw me down over his heavenly threshold.
I kept falling for a whole day and then, the sun was already setting,
I crashed on the Greek island of Lemnos, and almost lost my life.’
Hephaestus is a weak figure among the Olympian gods: as a half-paralyzed god he is low in the hierarchy and is laughed at and humiliated by them (Il. 1.599-600). But the reason for his low status is Zeus’ violent behavior towards him because he resisted him. Since Hephaestus had already been punished once, he now knows better: Zeus uses violence as a strategy, because it puts rebellious subordinates back in their place. By crushing resistance firmly and quickly, what sociologists call ‘anticipatory obedience’ occurs: the phenomenon in which individuals or institutions proactively adjust their behavior to align it with what they think a leader will want without him having asked, so that they can avoid violence and the threat of it.
That does not mean, however, that Hephaestus and the other gods agree with Zeus’ tyrannical behavior. Years before Zeus threw Hephaestus off Olympus, there was even a real rebellion of the gods against him! Hera was tired of Zeus’ tyrannical behavior, so she hatched a plan together with Poseidon and Athena. They even managed to chain Zeus to Olympus, and it was only with the help of Thesis and the hundred-handed giant Briareus that Zeus was able to thwart the coup. Zeus later brags about this (Iliad 15.18-24):
Don’t you remember how high I hung you with anvils at your feet, and an unbreakable golden cord around your wrists? That’s how you hung there in the ether among the clouds.
The gods on high Olympus were furious,
but they could not reach you to help you.
Whoever I caught, I threw off the threshold, so that he fell to the
earth, gasping for breath.
Autocratic leadership is considered the norm in classical mythology: someone has to lead. But the fact that Hera, Hephaestus and other gods resist at various times does mean that Zeus’ leadership can indeed be contested. Moreover, even Zeus does not have total power in classical mythology: he must adhere to divine law and fate. In ancient times, Zeus was therefore worshipped by people as the god of justice and law. He was also the protector of hospitality and oaths.
The wannabe autocrat
I suspect the similarities between Trump and Zeus are obvious. In Greek myth, Zeus is represented as an autocrat, and Trump behaves as a wannabe autocrat. This antidemocratic desire for kingship explains why Trump refuses to acknowledge the two branches of government that limit the president’s power: the legislative branch of Congress and the judicial branch of the courts. His desire for authoritarian power explains why he thinks it’s okay to want to annex neighboring Canada or Greenland, or to run for president a third time.
Threats have become a strategy, a normal part of Trump’s leadership. He seeks to broaden and prolong the power of the presidency by, like Zeus, threatening and punishing his so-called enemies where possible. He bombards the critical press with lawsuits, academia and social security with scrapping subsidies, and international trading partners with his famous tariffs. He tolerates no opposition or rivals, and strikes cruelly and indiscriminately when he retaliates.
At the beginning of his second term, it seemed that the democratic United States was no match for his heavy-handed measures. There was also immediate anticipatory obedience as we saw with Hephaestus: universities, for example, capitulated to his demands because they would otherwise lose their subsidies; law firms stopped lawsuits against his supporters because they would otherwise be threatened or punished, etc. In the meantime, we see that resistance does indeed help. Because Trump is of course not a divine king like Zeus.
However, accepting limits is where Zeus’ kingship and Trump’s wannabe kingship diverge: Zeus was revered as the god of justice and law and in mythology he also wants to abide by the laws, while Trump has shown time and again that he does not care about laws and truth. He is a chaos-bringer and a liar. Not only does he think there is nothing wrong with accepting a plane from the Qataris, for example. In his second term, he has already lied about so many things, including that Ukraine started the war with Russia and that he won the 2020 elections. While Trump’s behavior mimics Zeus’ menacing and violent kingship, he lacks Zeus’ righteous side and his words carry no weight, no value, no truth. But this is apparently exactly what his Maga supporters want. This is why there is a trend for AI-generated images depicting Trump as Zeus: what we see as negative in Zeus’ role model, certain Trump supporters see as positive. Trump became president because a certain percentage of American voters have a vision of “strong” male leadership that aligns with his.
A MAGA antiquity
It is not illogical that Trump fans portray him as Zeus. Trump is crazy about antiquity, and has also been identified by his supporters with the Roman Caesar and emperor Augustus, for example, because they are seen by fans as powerful leaders. Trump’s right-hand man Musk is also obsessed with antiquity, and said a while ago that he thinks about the Roman Empire every day. He has an unhealthy obsession with gladiators and emperors.
We see the same obsession among MAGA supporters. Some of the rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, called themselves ‘Spartan warriors’, referring to the ancient Greek city of Sparta, which was known for its ‘spartan’ living conditions and strong army.
We see an obsession with an idealized image of power and masculinity among both MAGA leaders and supporters, with which they want to legitimize their ideas. For them, of course, it does not matter whether such references are correct, and their romanticization of antiquity is nonsense. Greek gods were not only seen as wise but also as capricious and cruel by the population, political leaders such as Caesar and Augustus were also feared as dictators, and gladiatorial existence was often short and violent. Antiquity is not as romantic and amazing as they think, but it gives them a visual aesthetic of muscular male bodies with togas and swords that they can share on social media: a shortcut to a heroic story with good guys and bad guys. For Trump supporters, this heroic narrative lifts their lives out of everyday banality into the mythical.
At least in part, this use of antiquity is therefore a deliberate political strategy: they use a visual aesthetic to create identity, loyalty, and uniformity. Under the guise of humor in memes and AI images, the anti-democratic message about Trump’s leadership is nevertheless spread – online via memes, at rallies via symbols. In this way, supporters are encouraged to join the story and take action as a ‘hero’ themselves. But as we have seen, Trump and his supporters like to mix classical myth with history and modern fiction like Star Wars. In this way, Trump creates his own ‘multiverse’, an addictive TV show with the world as the set and himself as the hero. We see this, for example, in what he said about his meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky in the Oval Office: ‘This is going to be great television’.
On social media and in politics, references to mythology are not just fossilized references to irrelevant cultural background noise, but a powerful tool to help shape contemporary political discourse in an informal and symbolic way. AI and social media help Trump to informally blur the boundaries between reality and fiction, between truth and lies. People who love antiquity (like me) can be happy that antiquity is trendy these days; but Trump’s antiquity that has now become mainstream is not my antiquity, and so we also have a responsibility to push back, to share a different narrative about both antiquity and our future. Because we are partly responsible for developing modern myths: with every click and like on social media, we contribute to the collection of data, the feeding of algorithms and the learning of AI. Today, we do not only consume myths; we recreate them in real time with every mouse click.
Read more about myths in contemporary debates in my recent Dutch-medium book (to be published in English by Routledge later this year), Leidraad door het labyrint: de macht van mythen in onzekere tijden.
