Former President Trump condemned the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games amid outrage over a scene that critics say parodied Leonardo da Vinci’s acclaimed painting “The Last Supper.”
“I thought that the opening ceremony was a disgrace, actually,” Trump told “The Ingraham Angle” on Monday. “I thought it was a disgrace.”
The scene depicted dancers and dancers in drag surrounding a table of what appeared to resemble the last dinner between Jesus and his disciples.
Delegations arrive at the Trocadero as spectators watch French singer Philippe Katerine performing on a giant screen during the Opening Ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games. (Ludovic Marin – Pool/Getty Images)
The French Bishops’ Conference said the ceremony “included scenes of mockery and derision of Christianity.”
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House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., also condemned the scene in a post on X, writing, “Last night’s mockery of the Last Supper was shocking and insulting to Christian people around the world who watched the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.” “The war on our faith and traditional values knows no bounds today. But we know that truth and virtue will always prevail,” he wrote.
Thomas Jolly, the director of the opening ceremony, told French TV station BFMTV over the weekend that “The Last Supper” was not his inspiration for the highly-criticized scene.
“It’s not my inspiration,” he said. “There is Dionysus who arrives on this table. He is there because he is the God of celebration in Greek mythology. The god of wine who is one of the jewels of France. And the father of Sequana, the goddess who is connected to the river, the Seine. The idea was to have a pagan celebration connected to the gods of Olympus.”
“You will never find in me a desire to mock and denigrate anyone. I wanted to make a ceremony that repairs, that reconciles, and also that reaffirms the values of our Republic: liberty-equality-fraternity,” Jolly continued.
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Trump said if he were at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games and could influence the organizers, there wouldn’t be a portrayal of “The Last Supper.”
An LA28 presentation and meeting show images of Los Angeles in Paris, France Tuesday. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
“We won’t be having a Last Supper as portrayed the way they portrayed it the other night,” he told Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
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“I mean, they can do certain things. I thought it was terrible,” Trump said. “Look, I’m for everybody. I’m very open-minded… but I thought what they did was a disgrace.”
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