Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called Tucker Carlson a “deranged, leftist psycho” who “loves sharia” law after the right-wing pundit’s media network penned a newsletter condemning President Donald Trump for sharing an AI image of himself depicted as Jesus.

Cruz fumed in an X repost responding to an essay from Tucker Carlson Network, where it defended Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian for condemning the image as a “desecration of Jesus, the prophet of peace and brotherhood.”

Carlson Network’s newsletter read, “The people in charge don’t want you to know this, but Muslims love Jesus.” Then it added that “Islam reveres” Christ “as a major prophet and messenger of the Lord.”

Tucker has turned into a deranged, Leftist psycho. Who loves sharia. https://t.co/vD2FpFRYjB

The newsletter then claimed that Muslims believe Jesus “performed miracles, and states that He will return to Earth to defeat the Antichrist,” likely meaning Pezeshkian apparently saw Trump’s AI image as an “attack on his religion as well as Christianity.”

The furor over the president’s post comes while Trump has been attacking Pope Leo XIV for criticizing the U.S.-Israel war against Iran.

Trump posted and then deleted the AI Jesus image this past Sunday, but later defended himself by saying he thought the computer-generated illustration showed him as a “doctor.”

Carlson, who aggressively lobbied for Trump during his 2024 bid to reclaim the Oval Office, previously upbraided the president for an explicit Easter Sunday post where he threatened to bombard Iran if it did not heed his demands to open the Strait of Hormuz.

“Who do you think you are? You’re tweeting out the f-word on Easter morning,” Carlson wrote at the time, also claiming that “no decent person mocks other people’s religions.”

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