Dear God

Okay, I fully admit it – I did not have “sacrilegious” on my “What will tear apart Trump’s base” Bingo card.  The angry reaction to Trump’s Jesus-like AI-generated graphic has been so strong -- not just overall, but most notably among the MAGAverse – that Trump was forced to take the tweet down the very next day. 

How bad must the reaction be?  Trump posted a lunatic rant a week ago threatening to destroy the Iranian civilization – which is literally a war crime – and it’s still online.
 
(The added problem for Trump is that, this being the Internet, such things do not disappear just because you delete something.  The graphic lives on, as people have kept reposting it relentlessly in continued, harsh criticism.)

What surprised me about the MAGA response is that they are not only so deeply outraged by it, but that they are outraged at all.  It’s not like ever-since Trump first ran for president back in 2016, a full decade ago, that there should have been any question that Trump didn’t have a religious bone in his body.  When someone running for president -- and is aggressively trying to court the religious vote -- is asked the most basic softball religious question of “What is your favorite verse in the Bible?” and he refuses to answer it because – as has abundantly been made clear over time since he’s never answered it every subsequent time he’s been asked – he doesn’t have a clue what’s in the Bible, then it should not remotely come as a shock as at least a starting point that this is a con artist who doesn’t care in the slightest about religion. And further, that if someone is courting the religious vote who shows he doesn't care about religion, then it's a good bet he disdains you.
 
But far more to even that point, this isn’t the first time Trump has posted an AI-generated graphic of himself in a religious setting suggesting that he was God-like.  He’s posted dozens – usually reposts of graphics that his adoring supporters have made and posted.  Furthermore, Trump’s most loyal MAGA fans have long praised him devoutly and cult-like as being sent here on Earth by God.  Being God’s messenger.  Being near-divine.  Pointing to so many of his actions as proof of God intervention through him.   Praise almighty that the MAGA regularly chant at rallies, praise almighty that they carry with songs, praise almighty that they write online. Praise that Trump has gladly reposted relentlessly. 
 
Indeed, it’s this long-held divine connection that Trump and his MAGA base have made with one another that has entrenched his support with the Religious Right so deeply.

For goodness sake, during his first term Trump even stood on the White House lawn and actually said out loud to the world, "I am the Chosen One"!!  How on earth is anyone -- including his blind, loyal, cult-like base -- taken by total shock and surprised when they see Trump post yet another image of himself as being like Jesus??  Or being Jesus?!

How do you miss that?  It has not only been right in front of Trump's proclaimed devout base, it's right there in the Good Book that they insist they and Trump live by:  "Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not."  Jer. 5:21.

This is who Trump is.  Let us say that again, in case his shocked base missed it the first time...and for the past decade:  This is who Trump is.  And still is -- just today, a mere two days after taking down his sacrilegious picture of him as being Jesus-like (or Jesus), Trump reposted an AI-generated picture of Jesus embracing Trump, with a note saying that he was Jesus's Trump card.  It's a tweet whose biggest idiocy is not so much the image itself, but that it can only serve to remind everyone of the image that was so sacrilegious that even Trump was convinced by others that he had to take it down.  This is who Trump is.  And has been for the past decade, at least.
 
And yet so many MAGAs are so “disgusted” (as one Trump supporter put it) by their shock at Trump’s Jesus-like picture that it’s created a fissure in the base.  A small fissure, to be sure (for now), but any fissure for any reason in a cult is stunning.  But a fissure over outrage for something his base itself has long promoted is almost shocking.

That said, there are two things at play that perhaps pushed the critical MAGA reactions over the edge, I think. 
 
The first is that it came on the heel of Trump making his ranting personal attack against the Pope.  There are 70 million Catholics in the United States.  And most take their religious leader very seriously and devoutly.  Catholics may not be the core of Trump’s religious base, that would be evangelicals, but they’re no small part of it.
 
And the second is what I’ve been writing – that if your poll numbers are high and you screw up, people are more inclined to forgive you, because they like you.  But if your poll numbers are low, and you screw up, then it confirms to people why they hate you.  And I think that’s some of what we’re seeing with Trump and his 34% approval -- exacerbated by starting a war he promised his base he never would, and then his Iran War going so disastrously,  and gas prices skyrocketing to galling, problematic heights. 

As consumer prices keep rising, as well.  And negative approval for his signature issue handling immigration.  Losing court cases, including in the Supreme Court.  And his dementia, which is degenerative, worsening and making his cognitive decline harder to ignore -- from falling asleep during public meetings, to ranting about Sharpies at a Cabinet meeting on his Iran War and deadly snakes at family Easter party and Autopens at a table of little children, literally tearing down the White House structure, plastering his name on facilities he has zero connection to, and proclaiming his intent to build massive ego-maniacal monuments to himself.

Still, though, for all that and much more, even a small fracture (for now) among his cult-MAGA base is not at all what I expected.  Especially over something that they themselves helped create.

The Lord works in mysterious ways.