Thank You, Christianity Today

by Tom Shafer

December 23, 2019

Thank you, Christianity Today.  A prominent Christian voice has finally spoken from the wilderness, indicting Trump’s serial lying, immorality, and degradation of others.  And it’s about time.  Will any others step up??  Would you like some reminders as to why?  Thought you’d never ask:

“Just kiss (women).  I don’t even wait.  And when you’re a star, they let you do anything.  You can do anything . . . grab them by the pussy.  You can do anything” – recording of a conversation with then Access Hollywood host Billy Bush in 2005.  Just the first of many ways that Trump shows his regard and reverence for women.

$130,000 – payment made to silence porn star Stormy Daniels, which, not surprisingly, did not stay silent.

 “I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her” – statement Trump made about his daughter on The View.  If this isn’t bad enough, he also rhetorically queried Miss Universe (while watching a sixteen-year-old Ivanka host the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant), “Don’t you think my daughter’s hot?  She’s hot, right?”

“. . . shithole countries” – a reference to poor African countries and Haiti, when confronted with a bipartisan plan to cut visa lottery numbers by half but focusing on bringing in more refugees from those areas.  Trump commented that he would like more immigrants from Norway instead.  BTW, Norway is 83% white, making it one of the whitest countries in the world.

Trump University – a now defunct real estate training program that utilized misleading marketing practices and aggressive sales tactics to bilk millions of dollars from unassuming students.  Though Trump insisted that he would never settle lawsuits brought against the organization, he did (as he always does), to the tune of twenty-five million dollars – after winning the presidency in 2016.

Trump, during a stump speech, mocking and jerking his arms, “Now, the poor guy, you ought to see this guy, ‘Ah, I don’t know what I said, I don’t remember, I don’t remember, maybe that’s what I said’” – about Serge Kovaleski, New York Times reporter who suffers from the disability arthrogryposis, which visibly limits the functioning of his joints.  And charity for all . . .

Kids in cages – how Trump’s immigration policy affected border policy.  Detention centers, at the direction of the White House, erected wire cages to contain immigrants seeking asylum along our Mexican border – including children and babies. Is that how Mary and Joseph would have been treated by Trump’s America when they were looking for a place to give birth? Imagine the rebel Jesus, as a baby, living in a cage.

“You had people that were very fine people, on both sides” – stated during a press conference about the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally over the proposed removal of a Robert E. Lee statue.  During a standoff between protesters and white supremacists, James Fields deliberately drove his car into a crowd of people, killing Heather Heyer and injuring nineteen others.  I suppose to Trump, James Fields is a “fine person.”

“He’s not a war hero.  He was a war hero because he was captured.  I like people who weren’t captured” – explaining to the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa during the 2016 presidential campaign why he didn’t think John McCain was a war hero.  McCain, a former Navy pilot, spent five plus years in a notorious North Vietnamese prison, the Hanoi Hilton, during the Vietnam War.  BTW, Trump received five deferments during the war, four for education, one for bone spurs.  Remarkably, his debilitation doesn’t keep him from the golf course: as of the beginning of December, 2019, he has played 241 times since his inauguration, or approximately twenty-two percent of his days in office.  And remember, as a candidate, Trump claimed that he would be too busy to play golf – an obvious condemnation of President Obama, who played 333 rounds in his eight years, or approximately three percent of his presidency.  Oh, and in case you wanted to know, 37% of Trump’s rounds have occurred on the Sabbath. By comparison, Trump has attended church services less than five times.  I love raw numbers!

3 – the number of marriages for Trump.  Just counting, not judging.  Remember, I love the numbers.

“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters” – statement made at a Sioux Center, Iowa, campaign rally in January, 2016.  What Christian talks this way?

Model Heidi “no longer a 10” Klum; actress Rosie “fat ugly face” O’Donnell; New York Times columnist Gail “face of a pig” Collins; Miss Universe winner Alicia “Miss Piggy” Machado; media mogul Arianna “unattractive” Huffington; adult film star Stephanie “horseface” Clifford (better known as Stormy Daniels); and former Hewlett-Packard CEO and once presidential candidate Carly “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?” Fiorina – just a few of the terrible (and may I note, non-Christian) things he has said about women.

“My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy.  I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy” – a fine statement if you are Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film Wall Street, but not necessarily a good one for a presidential candidate – in 2019!

“Teenage mothers [shouldn’t] get public assistance unless they jump through some pretty small hoops. Making them live in group homes makes sense” – after a statement like this one, I hope he gets an opportunity to live this way pretty soon, perhaps in his own individual cell – er, I mean room.  You can really feel his compassion for the poor and struggling here.

Campaign finance, ISIS, Facebook, drones, construction, technology, the economy, border security, Cory Booker, TV ratings, taxes, football, nuclear arms, trade, the courts, infrastructure – all of the subject matters/things of which Trump claims to be an expert, as in “I know more about Cory than he knows about himself.”  Oh, and this is a condensed list.  Hyperbole aside, you just can’t make this stuff up!  Humble is not a word that comes to mind here.

15,413 – the number of lies delivered by Trump (inauguration through December 16, 2019), according to fact checkers at The Washington Post.  So, given that there have been 1060 days in that time, he is prevaricating at a rate of 14.5 per day.  I’m not sure what the record is, but this has got to be close – especially for an adult.  I’m sure the overall record is currently being held by a twelve-year-old boy in San Fernando, California (and please, no insensitive comments here – I was going for a joke and chose San Fernando out of thin air.  I should have written Springfield with no state).

“I am the chosen one” — OMG!  Literally. This statement is okay if you are Harry Potter and are joking with your friends in the library at Hogwarts (HP and the Half-Blood Prince), but no President should say it – even if he is defending his stance on trade with China. Ah, the humility!!!

Oh, and if you Christians have been counting here, Trump has broken only nine of the Ten Commandments.  I am giving him the benefit of doubt with regard to honoring his mother and father.  I truly hope he has at least done that.

I leave you two biblical verses that I think best support and speak truth to that Christianity Today editorial:

2 Peter 2:1-3: But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words.

And,

2 Timothy 3:1-5: But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.

This heathen wishes that you Christians would reclaim your Christianity and reject the false idol who is Trump.  Merry Christmas.