With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud
~ Leonard Cohen, "Anthem" (from The Future, 1992)
Mark your calendar for May 17, Year of Our Lard
2026. For that is the day that #neverwasmypresident Donald John Trump, aka Cheeto
Jeezus, aka Mango Messiah, aka Cantaloupe Caligula, has declared
that he shall lead a "National Jubilee of Prayer,
Praise, and Thanksgiving" on the
National Mall to "rededicate America as one nation under
God."
Trump first announced this momentous event back on February 5,
2026 at the National Prayer Breakfast as he boasted about his
regime's efforts to force religion back into the public arena,
whether the public arena likes it or not. (When you're a
celebrity savior, they let you do it.)
The upcoming National Jubilee is intended to be part of the
greater celebration of America's 250th birthday. And the MAGAts
who consider themselves People Of Faith are beside themselves
with joy; they've been all over social media with words of praise
for the Orange Overlord. They practically wet themselves with
reverent joy over the fact that their idol sat at his desk and droned out a few passages from the
Old Testament during a marathon Bible reading on April 21. But this May event has had them really psyched for months.
I have written a lot on this Whirled over the years about the
cynicism and hypocrisy of Christofascist leaders who suck up to
Trump, and about the gullibility or naivete or willful blindness
or (in some cases) the stupidity of his followers who have apparently swallowed his
religious shtick. And many millions of other words have been
written by others about Trump's utter lack of biblical virtues. So I don't
need to go over those points in detail; they speak for
themselves.
But I do feel a need to reiterate another oft-repeated point: the
idea of Trump as any type of savior or religious leader is funny
on one level, but dangerous on another -- at least it's dangerous
if you actually believe in the First Amendment and are worried
about the crass and unprecedented politicization of religion that we're seeing from the Turd Reich. That politicization began during Trump's first reign and has
accelerated alarmingly since he slithered into office again.
In an April 27, 2026 editorial on The Hill, opinion contributor Svante Myrick wrote that April has
been a strange month for American Christians whose religious
identity is not bound up with the adoration of Trump. For
instance:
We watched a president who postures as a defender of the faith pollute the holiest days of the Christian calendar by invoking God while making profane threats to commit war crimes and annihilate an entire civilization.
The same president offended Christians of all stripes by sharing an AI-generated image of himself appearing as a Christ-like figure, surrounded by prayerful and adoring supporters and carrying out a miraculous healing. Oh, yeah, and he responded to the pope’s calls for peace by rudely insulting the spiritual leader of the world’s Catholics.
We also had Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, our self-proclaimed “secretary of war” and bloodthirsty crusader wannabe, treating the U.S. attack on the Iranian regime as a holy war to be waged without mercy and with “overwhelming violence.” Meanwhile, he urged Americans to pray for American victory “in the name of Christ” — or was it in the name of Quentin Tarantino?
Religious MAGAts will brush all of that off, saying the important issue is that Trump is returning America to the Christian roots in which it was founded. Oh, good lord, how many times have we heard that lame rationalization? Here's Svante Mryick again:
It has indeed been a rough year for Americans who support the religious freedom and pluralism that thrive here thanks to the constitutional separation of church and state.
Trump’s devotees claim that he was anointed by God to carry out a divine mission to save America from people they see as their enemies — secularists, feminists, gay and transgender people, non-white immigrants — and to ensure that America remains, or returns to being, their version of a “Christian nation.”
But that’s more fantasy than history. If our country’s founders, who were unhappily familiar with Europe’s state churches, wanted to create a “Christian nation,” they could have written Christian dogma into the Constitution. Instead, they included a ban on any official national religion and an explicit ban on any religious test for public office.
So no matter what George Washington or some
other Founding Father did or didn't say about faith and God and
all of that stuff, the brand of Christian nationalism that Trump
is enabling is running roughshod over all of our freedoms, and
not just our religious freedoms.
And Trump himself as a leader of a national prayer event? Gimme a
break. The man who has spent a lifetime worshiping at the altar
of his own ego is now calling on the rest of us to bow our heads
in reverence. It’s a level of hypocrisy so dense it could bend
light.
Those of us -- and there are many millions of us -- who don't
have orange-stained noses from spending so much time up Trump's
ass can see what this event actually is. It’s not a spiritual
awakening; it’s a campaign rally with a gospel soundtrack. It
is the ultimate branding exercise. By wrapping himself in the
flag and holding a cross, he is trying to sell himself as the
divinely appointed savior of the nation
Of course he has a lot of support for that
branding from the evangelical "leaders" who regularly
infest what my favorite foul-mouthed pundit, Jeff Tiedrich, calls the Oval Bordello, where said "leaders" gather 'round
their orange savior and pray while he slumps at his desk with
eyes closed and hands folded, looking properly humble and
reverent. (Actually, his eyes are most likely shut because he's
snoozing yet again. Tiedrich has often referred to him as a
"narcoleptic fart factory.") Also lending support to
the con is the Christofascist wing of the GOP, which actually is
much more than a wing; it's practically the whole big fat turkey.
And naturally there are the gullible MAGAts who take everything
that their Cheeto Jeezus says at face value.
And that prayer jubilee? It’s classic political theater,
designed to keep Trump's base energized and the rest of us
shaking our heads in disbelief or disgust. It's all just another
way for the career grifters to prey on the gullible. In fact I can already see the merch
table now: "Make America Pray Again" hats, gold-plated
Trump Bibles and gaudy, overpriced jewelry (he's an old hand at that), and maybe some commemorative holy
water bottled straight from the tap at Mar-a-Lago.
Rededicating America to God is a lovely sentiment for those who
are religious, though not so much for those who aren't, or who
are of the "wrong" religion by Christofascist
standards. In any case, having a rededication ceremony led by a
man whose entire public persona is built on pride, greed, and
wrath feels less like a holy moment and more like a rejected
movie script for a third-rate political satire.
So on May 17, as the crowd of the faithful gathers
on the Mall to watch the spectacle, and while the holy carnival
barkers stand in the spotlight oozing their religion, I'll be
here in the corner, longing for the day that America is delivered
from the ersatz saviors who urge us all to pray while they
continue, endlessly, to prey.
