The Great Trumpkin returns!
It had been divine inspiration, even for a very stable genius. Beset by boundless woes, the Great Trumpkin had turned to religion. Not to God, mind you. But to one intriguing notion about faith. Somewhere or other, the Trumpkin had come across a quote from Voltaire (whoever he was): “Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool.”
Why, that had been the very business plan for Trump University! And for his Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election having been stolen! The Great Trumpkin realized he needed to tap this higher religious power, for despite his braggadocio, he was worried about his political resurrection. Yes, Chris Sununu had contorted himself into a pretzel explaining why he was now going to vote for him after previously portraying the Trumpkin as nuttier than a squirrel’s nest. But others weren’t coming back around. Not Nikki Haley, or Birdbrain, as he called her. Nor Mike Pence. Nor Susan Collins. Nor Lisa Murkowski. Nor, it seems, a slice of rational suburban Republicans.
The Trumpkin had read some strange theories as to why. Some apparently didn’t think it was in the best tradition of American democracy to scheme to overturn a presidential election. Others didn’t view it as properly presidential to lie to a MAGA mob and send them up to the Capitol while Congress was certifying the Electoral College votes. Still others looked askance at him for suggesting the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be executed. Some were apparently bothered by the four sets of criminal indictments that three very different jurisdictions had handed down against him.
To the Trumpkin, all that seemed trivial indeed, but it had bedeviled some of the less faithful Little Trumpkins, who were forced to resort to ridiculous rationalizations to justify supporting him again.
But not, wondrous to relate, the Biblethumper Trumpers! For them, having character flaws bigger than the Grand Canyon and a litany of self-created woes were proof the Lord had put the Great Trumpkin on Earth to fight for them.
Initially, this had been a surprise, for the Trumpkin had never been particularly religious. Despite the evangelicals’ emphasis on seeking the Lord’s forgiveness, he himself had never sought God’s absolution, not even for his (alleged) extramarital joining of the flesh with Stormy Daniels, whom he had now taken to calling “Horseface,” in the very manner an unchristian cad might when lust had lost its luster.
But to the Heaven-headed, none of that mattered.
“He’s definitely been chosen by God,” one such supporter recently told the New York Times. “He’s still surviving even though all these people are coming after him, and I don’t know how else to explain that other than divine intervention.”
The actual explanation was due process of law and a bevy of highly paid lawyers plying every pettifogging ploy to postpone his trial, in the hope that he would win re-election and quash the prosecution.
Still, the Great Trumpkin had leaned into the evangelicals’ blessed perceptions. He’d added declarations of Christian solidarity to his rallies. And a Paul Harvey-esque video intoning that “God gave us Trump.” (Heaven’s second prize: two Trumps.) He’d even started peddling Bibles.
“The left is trying to shame Christians,” he had taken to proclaiming. “I’m a very proud Christian.”
Pride aside, when it came to talking the talk, the Great Trumpkin hadn’t made it particularly far along the road to Damascus. Take, for example, his holiday greetings. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t an entirely Christian message to use Easter to blast “THOSE MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE.” Or to offer as his Christmas message the wish that his foes would “ROT IN HELL.”
But such was the nature of the special evangelical logic loop that the expression of unchristian sentiments only made him seem more of a holy soldier in their eyes. Why, deep down, the evangelicals liked his ire and brimstone.
He had reinforced the bond between them by asserting he had been indicted for their sins.
“They want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take your freedom,” he proclaimed. “They’re not after me, they’re after you, and I just happen to be standing in the way.”
This was such an obviously false formulation that the Great Trumpkin could barely utter it with a straight face. But his crowds regularly greeted his farfetched pronouncements by holding up their index finger, the universal sign of adherence to QAnonsense, so he knew they wouldn’t be hard to dupe.
In their devotion, they demonstrated what George Orwell (whoever he was) once observed of intellectuals: “There are some ideas so absurd that only an evangelical could believe them.”
Thinking of them, the Great Trumpkin whispered a truly heartfelt prayer: ”May the Lord preserve them forever in their blessed, childlike innocence.”
But such was the nature of the special evangelical logic loop that the expression of unchristian sentiments only made him seem more of a holy soldier in their eyes. Why, deep down, the evangelicals liked his ire and brimstone.