No King of Kings
Trump does Jesus the way Debbie did Dallas
Trump still has no idea why his Ramadan message didn’t go over well in the ungrateful Muslim world. He thought “God bless Allah” had a benign, even generous ring to it. Only the fake news persists in the slander that he doesn’t have a gooey side he can trot out like bubble gum scraped off his heel.
I mean, Jesus, am I wrong? It’s not as if he represented himself as Allah, something he’s been told is a sacrilege in their religion. He thinks that’s a stupid rule, but guesses it takes all kinds to make a world. Not counting everyone he wants to obliterate, but that goes without saying. Or would if he ever stopped saying it.
One difficulty of writing about Trump 2.0 is you can never be sure whether you’re making crazy shit up or just guessing right a few hours ahead of the news cycle. Unless the real clickbait here is the scoop that everybody’s just fucking fed up with him, I wouldn’t have bet on the President of All the Peepholes sharing an utterly endearing AI image of himself dressed up an ever-succoring Messiah to raise this hue and cry. In happier days when the redcap horde was feeling more MAGAminous, it wouldn’t have.
It’s not exactly the first time he’s played in traffic – I mean trafficked, sorry – with such Ultimate Promotional Stunts. The idea that God sent us His only begotten SUV when Trump came down the escalator isn’t new. It is, or used to be, a red-state truism that Trump had somehow been elected by divine right, or anyhow some mighty deft business with the celestial poker deck when You-Know-Who got bored playing solitaire. That impulse went into jackhammer mode when Trump’s survival of a vaguely sketchy 2024 assassination attempt was attributed to Yahweh weighing in, as Dad not so incidentally hadn’t with the O.G. Jesus.
Kill the kid but spare the POTUS, really? Was Einstein sure eternal life’s answer to Ronald McDonald doesn’t play dice with the world? Funnily enough, just this once nobody asked Al if he’d had his research vetted by a peer-review panel. Einstein would still be shocked, shocked to discover gambling goes on in the Big Guy’s fuzzy-wuzzy, harp-plagued establishment.
What made this Tweet different from all other Tweets? All answers beginning with “Everybody’s just fucking fed up with him,” or for that matter ending that way, will sound plausible even if you’re discussing life’s vagaries at pleasant random with the New Jersey Turnpike’s highway patrol. But it was also grandiose enough to be a divagation from Trump’s norm. Let’s take a beat to savor that phrase, shall we?
Another difference was that it was The Base – the religiously minded, kumquat-all-ye-faithful, Holy Ponzi-worshipping base – that did the bulk of the upchucking. If Trump thought reminding them he’s the Prince of Peace in Clark Kent mufti would spackle over the cracks rapidly becoming fissures thanks to Epsteiniran, another of those fickle cartographical novelties the Middle East is famous for spawning, maybe he should have asked John Lennon first about the potential fallout factor of asserting you’re more popular than Jesus.
Too bad Lennon’s unavailable. Shit, maybe Trump shouldn’t have shot him on Fifth Avenue when the unwary ex-Beatle was shopping for suitable Christmas conglomerates for Yoko’s diamond stocking. Don’t misunderstand, people: I know that’s only a rumor. But Trump was in Manhattan at the time, and as Lennon himself sang after seeing Linda Blair in The Exorcist, “Imagine not being possessed – I wonder if you bloody Yanks can.”
Anyway, the backlash was yuuuge enough to get Trump three winding sheets to the wind overnight. (His prototype lasted three conceivably contented days.) Insisting that only the, yep, fake news could have concocted the cock-and-Papal-bull falsehood that he was posturing as Christ, he sonofgodsplained that he saw the image as presenting him as your standard-issue celestial-neighborhood G.P. – a healer, y’know, indifferent to the adulation his Rx abilities provoked among the upturned, shining faces on display. Translation: “I’m no Rex Morgan, M.D., but I cosplay as one in paintings depicting me, your favorite President, as the Christ.”
Me, I’ve gotten so debased I sometimes think Trump’s storm-crackles of dementia are almost worth it for the slew of get-real-shmuck memes they inspire. His Jesus a la (Burger) King rip unleashed some good ones: a pissed-off Only Son of God descending on the stand-in’s vulnerable back to bust him bloodily in the chops and pitch him into the nether regions, like that. As for Trump, he ought to know by now all press is good press so long as your name – INRI, I believe – gets spelled right.
You know who I bet’s really purring, though? Melania. She’s the one whose ultimate fantasy has been gratified, rewarding her for all those scullery years of White House heartbreak in high couture. Whatever you think of her worse half, don’t you just know she’s always seen herself as Mary Magdalene? “Please to let me vash your feet, Don Nazareth. No, no – ignore vot all dose Peters out dere are szaying. Look at me.”