Trump’s unholiest alliance: a business deal with God
Donald Trump, the libertine, has a tricky relationship with the Lord. But politically it has proved to be a fruitful one. And now he hopes for some financial gain by flogging his own version for $59.99.
“He’s obviously never read it and my guess is that he wouldn’t recognise the Sermon on the Mount,” said Charlie Sykes, a moderate Republican commentator, soon after the cash-strapped former US president had announced his latest grift.
“But the other irony, of course, is that here is Donald Trump, a great defender of Christianity who is peddling his $60 Bibles at Easter while he is getting ready to go in front of a court to face criminal charges for having sex with a porn star who we then had to pay off.”
But for some, hard sell and Christian nationalism go together like high streets and rifle shops.
“The new American far-right is powered by grifterism,” says David Faris, a political scientist at Chicago’s Roosevelt University. “The weird podcast ads, the doomsday prepper stuff, so a former American president hawking bibles doesn’t even seem that odd when we’ve become so inured to it.”
The website flogging the “God Bless America Bible” notes that it is the only version endorsed by Trump, a man who has been known to autograph the odd copy of the Good Book.
The latest Pew Research Center data suggest that white evangelical Protestants continue to have the most positive opinion of Trump. Overall, two-thirds of that demographic has a favourable view, including 30 per cent who have a “very favourable” opinion of him.
Recent polls suggest that incumbent Joe Biden might be making slight inroads into Trump’s large share of the evangelical vote.
However, Thomas Gift, director of the Centre for US Politics at University College, London, says “the evangelical community remains a key demographic within the Republican electorate”. He adds: “Although many remain reluctant supporters given concerns over Trump’s morals, they’re unlikely to abandon him.”
The reason for that is his record on supporting social conservatism, Gift explains, saying: “Trump delivered three conservative judges in his first term, who helped to overturn Roe v Wade. That alone is enough to earn their support.”
Patricia Crouse, a political scientist at the University of New Haven, says: “Trump’s support among Christian evangelicals has remained relatively strong for a few reasons. One is that many of them view him as the ‘chosen’ one.
“They believe he has been ordained by God to lead them and the country. It isn’t that they don’t acknowledge his transgressions, they just believe that those are things for God to judge, not them.”