All the administration’s public prayers and religious memes are meaningless when that same administration discards historic Christian teaching and reviles Christian leaders — all in the name of supporting the policies of a brutal, dishonest man, a man who can’t even articulate a legitimate basis for the deadly war he launched on his own command.
Some other things I did
My Sunday column focused on Trump’s blasphemy. Rather than simply highlight and condemn Trump’s decision to post an apparently A.I.-generated image of himself as a Jesus figure, I wanted to explore a different aspect of the controversy: “How much is Christian zeal for Trump damaging America, and the world?”
As a thought experiment, ask yourself how a president would behave if he believed he was clothed with divine purpose. Wouldn’t he try to expand his power beyond all previous limits? After all, he’s on a mission from God. Or maybe he thinks he’s like God? It’s hard to type those words, but that’s exactly the meaning of the image Trump shared.
Wouldn’t he feel free to start wars based on his judgment alone, based on his command alone? What is Article I of the Constitution compared with the will of the Almighty?
And wouldn’t such a man be jealous of his religious rivals in the battle for the hearts and minds of American Christians? I don’t think it’s possible to separate Trump’s public fight with Pope Leo XIV and the Catholic Church from his own sense of divine authority.
My Saturday round table with Michelle Cottle and Michelle Goldberg focused on JD Vance. We covered a lot of ground — from the meaning of Viktor Orban’s defeat in Hungary to the vice president’s political prospects. In Vance’s recent failures I can perhaps — perhaps — see the beginning of the end of MAGA itself:
Look, political eras do end, parties do reform, so when it comes to when will this era end, I feel confident it will at some point. I just don’t know when and how much damage will be done before it does. And that’s very much an open question. And I do think in JD Vance’s failures, we’re beginning to see maybe how this political era ends. Because the question has always been: Who is getting the baton from Donald Trump? Who is the next standard bearer?
And for a long time it’s been JD Vance. JD Vance is sort of the heir apparent, and he has been face-planting time and time and time again.
And one way to think of his phase as a leader of the Republican Party is that he’s got all of the toxicity of Trump and none of the real charisma that Trump has. It’s charisma that I don’t fully understand. It’s never landed with me. Although I will say, early on I did enjoy “The Apprentice.” But it has never really landed with me, this hold, this charisma that he has. But one thing I know is that JD Vance does not have it. He just doesn’t have it.
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