Last week, Donald Trump and company shared a messianic video about God sending the former president to save the world. Upon seeing this latest egocentric and propagandistic video about Donald Trump and his “true” believers, there have been at least three kinds of reactions.
As the Peabody Award-winning television producer and founding editor of Mediaite, Colby Hall, has written, his “creepy and messianic bit of messaging” has caused “many to cringe but others to fall to their knees in supplication.”
Many people, however, have also found the video to be comical if not satirical.
Perhaps many more persons have found it to be crazy, irrational or senseless.
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So why would Trump and company post a “satirical” version of Paul Harvey’s famous “So God Made a Farmer” video in which Trump, whose religious bona fides are dubious at best, is playing the role of God’s son?
It all goes back to 2015 when political pundits, social commentators and just about everybody else, for that matter, were all surprised to learn that the lifelong amoral, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual Democratic campaign contributor had become the beloved favorite of the evangelical community.
This inversion of Trump’s personal biography involved a lot of hard effort and energy on the former president’s part, not to mention his promise to appoint conservative judges to low and high courts alike, and to do his best to fight against abortion, gender, civil and human rights for all.
But, ultimately, it also came down to arguably one of Trump’s greatest con jobs.
It all occurred on the 25th floor of Trump Tower in a meeting arranged by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer and presently one of Trump’s leading antagonists. Cohen had called in an IOU from Jerry and Becki Falwell. At this meeting, Trump was able to play to the desires and vanities of some of the nation’s celebrity evangelicals, including Jerry Falwell Jr., Pastor Darrell Scott, and the Rev. Robert Jeffress. Trump convinced them that he had experienced a moment of conversion.
As some of those in attendance such as Johnnie Moore — the unofficial leader of Trump’s evangelical advisory board — had been quoted, “I absolutely believe he’s a born-again Christian.” Or, as the Rev. Franklin Graham, faith adviser to Trump’s White House and son of the late Billy Graham, stated, “I think there’s no question that he believes.”
As Cohen writes in his first book on Trump, Disloyal: A Memoir, a few minutes after all of the evangelical leaders had ritualistically laid their hands on Trump’s germophobic body and were descending from Trump Tower, Donald popped into Cohen’s office and had this to say, “Can you believe people believe that bulls—?”
In other words, Trump had learned that even though he never made a pretense to being a religious person before running for office beginning in 2015 that he was still able to establish an ardent support from evangelical voters both in 2016 and 2020. He even enjoyed more support than traditional conservative Republican candidates and presidents such as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush had, vis-à-vis what we can only refer to as the “conversion” con.
Religious scholars tell us that this has less to do with the qualities of the candidates/presidents themselves and more to do with the changing identities of evangelical voters, per the New York Times.
In the past, being evangelical “suggested regular church attendance, a focus on salvation…Today, it is often used to describe a cultural and political identity” in which “Christians are considered a persecuted minority” and “traditional institutions are viewed skeptically,” including church.
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Enter Donald Trump, “the savior” for those new white American voters who had become evangelical Christians during his presidency, according to a 2021 Pew Research Center analysis.
Relatedly: Trump, who understands the polls perhaps as well as most pollsters do, also understands the social construction of “alternative realities.” He’s also a master of the “art of the con,” or the interplay of three characteristics — gullibility, absurdity and believability — that he uses to captivate his cultish followers.
For instance, Trump knows that according to polls from November 2023 that more Republicans believe Trump is a person of faith compared to Joe Biden — a church-going Irish Catholic who has worn religion on his sleeve for most of his 81 years.
Trump also understands that throughout U.S. history the most successful con men have all relied on these three characteristics of their victims They range from Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith II in the mid-19th century to Charles Ponzi in the 1920s to Bernie Madoff and Donald Trump himself more recently.
Ironically, even when the “jig is up” with 91 felony counts pending against the former president across four criminal cases, most of his “marks” (or victims), who have been deceived with the exception of those who may have been financially or emotionally ruined or imprisoned because of their fraudulent experience, will tend to excuse this fraudster-in-chief rationalizing or excusing his behavior one way or the other. Trump will fashion himself a victim of persecution by Biden and the imaginary Deep State, and most of his most ardent supporters will agree.
Meanwhile, there is the sardonic underside of Trump’s messianic messaging playing out in real time. I am referring specifically to the ongoing threats and violent crimes against agents of law enforcement, including the doxxing and swatting of those “enemies” of the savior Donald Trump, such as special counsel Jack Smith and Judge Tanya Chutkan.
All of which underscores that the upcoming criminal trials — whenever they finally occur — will not only be about various “crime scenes” surrounding Trump and his associates’ attempts to steal an election or engage in fraud from the past. They will also be about various “crimes in progress” such as obstructing justice or intimidating witnesses.
The only thing that will break this spell, as Trump fully knows as well from the polls, will be his inevitable criminal convictions by juries of his peers.
Ergo, the Trump legal team’s one and only procedural strategy or legal defense has been to delay, delay and delay these trials from occurring until after the November 2024 presidential election.
But with prosecutors pushing for swift justice and courts seemingly receptive to relatively speedy trials, Trump will need a serious prayer to get his wish.
Gregg Barak is an emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice at Eastern Michigan University, co-founder of the Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime, and the author of Criminology on Trump (2022) whose sequel, Indicting the 45th President: Boss Trump, the GOP, and What We can Do About the Threat to American Democracy will be published April 1.
