‘Jesus, terrific guy! People say he learnt a lot from me...’
Donald Trump: Christian, or opportunist? Over in the US, it appears to be a matter of lively debate. This week, the President attempted to calm a fearful nation by posing in front of a church while brandishing a Bible. His opponents, however, have dismissed the move as nothing more than a cynical stunt designed to shore up his support among evangelical Christians ahead of November’s election. Some critics also recalled a televised interview from 2015, in which Trump claimed the Bible was his “favourite book” – and yet, when asked to cite a favourite verse, appeared strangely reluctant to answer.
Today, however, it’s time to set the record straight. Exclusively in this column, I can reveal the president’s top three favourite passages from the Good Book.
Genesis
“I love the bit where God creates the heavens and the earth in six days. Unbelievable, right? Six days. That’s something I’ve always liked about God: his tremendous work rate. It’s terrific, it really is. You ask God to do a job for you, you know He’s going to get it done, on time and on budget. I don’t know how big of a budget He was given for that particular construction job, you’re probably talking many billions of dollars, because building the heavens and the earth is not cheap, I can tell you that for a fact. But however much it cost back then to build the heavens and the earth, the place is easily worth three, four, maybe five times that now. Tremendous investment.
Easily one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in this solar system, maybe the galaxy.”
Matthew 19:16-30
“I’ve always been a big, big fan of Jesus. Very smart guy. This young man comes up to Him, very successful young man, rich entrepreneur, and he says to Jesus, do you have any lessons for me? And Jesus tells him to sell all his possessions. And that’s a really great lesson, because once the guy’s sold all his possessions, he’ll have made a fantastic profit, which he can then reinvest in a new business, maybe build a luxury five-star hotel by the Sea of Galilee, or convert the garden at Gethsemane into a state-of-the-art golf resort. That’s the great thing about Jesus: always thinking one step ahead, always looking at the next big move.”
John 2:13-16
“Another thing I like about Jesus: the guy knew how to cut a deal. Never let anyone push Him around. If He was in a temple with the money-changers, and He wasn’t happy with them, He would just turn the table over and walk out. People say He learnt that from my book The Art of the Deal. I don’t know if that’s true, I’ve never discussed it with Him personally, but that’s what a lot of people say.”
Rip up your Radio Times. There’s been a late change to your television schedules. Because this weekend, for the first time since the crisis began, there will be no news conferences from No10. From now on, news conferences will be held only on weekdays. And the reason?
According to a Downing Street spokesman, it’s because the weekend news conferences were getting low viewing figures.
Seriously. That’s the justification they are giving. Low viewing figures. As if the news conferences were not an essential means for the Government to update the nation about a deadly pandemic, but an underperforming television talent show.
Frankly, if that’s the way the Government looks at it, you’d think they might have done what TV bosses normally do with a big-budget Saturday-night flop – and try giving the format a revamp, in a bid to boost the ratings.
For example: replace Chris Whitty as Chief Medical Officer with someone younger and more glamorous, such as former One Direction star Harry Styles, or a member of the Pussycat Dolls. Get Dermot O’leary to present the slides showing the latest hospital admission figures and graphs of public transport use. Install a big red button on the minister’s lectern, so that each time Robert Peston’s question goes over the three-minute mark, a bucket of gunge gets tipped on his head.
And, crucially, add a Strictly-style panel of judges to give each minister a mark out of 10 for his performance.
“Matt, my darling, what a fabulous display. At the start of the series you looked so nervous, I was sure you were on your way out. But tonight you danced around those questions beautifully. I really hope it’s enough to keep you in.”
No doubt about the worst part of
the average journalist’s job. Transcription. Quite apart from the sheer, mind-bending boredom of it, there is the agony of having to listen to your own voice. How wrong it sounds – surely there is something wrong with the audio. And then, even worse, the shame of discovering how often you have interrupted your interviewee in the middle of some crucial revelation, and how clodhoppingly ill-phrased your questions are.
A great boon of recent times, therefore, has been the advent of the transcription app: a piece of technology that takes this miserable chore out of your hands, and does it all for you.
What a relief. On the other hand, though, these apps aren’t infallible. In fact, they are prone to unfortunate mishearings – as a colleague found the other day, when he used his app to transcribe a news conference held by Boris Johnson.
At one point, the Prime Minister had said, “Let’s go to Beth Rigby, Sky News.” Yet the app transcribed this innocent remark as, “Let’s go to bed. Three beers. Good news.”
I can’t decide whether the app is unreliable – or telepathic.