On Easter Sunday, Christianity’s holiest day celebrating the resurrection of Jesus three days after his crucifixion, the President of the United States posted the following on his social media channel, for all the world to read: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.” It was meant, I suppose, to instill fear in Iran, with whom he is engaged in an ill-conceived war. But what it mostly did was irritate and repel American Christians who thought it distasteful to talk that way on such a holy day. It inspired some of Trump’s recent defectors, who were once his biggest supporters, to publicly condemn the uncouth remarks. “How dare you speak that way on Easter morning to the country,” an indignant, pearl-clutching Tucker Carlson said on his podcast. “Who do you think you are? You’re tweeting out the f-word on Easter morning.” Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene also criticized Trump and those around him. “Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshiping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness. This is not making America great again, this is evil.” Coming from these two, it’s easy to dismiss their sudden revulsion as political expedience or something even less noble. And people like Carlson and Greene (and Candace Owens, Alex Jones, Megyn Kelly, Joe Rogan, Nick Fuentes and others who propped up Trump’s ugly and un-American garbage for years because it was fun and profitable) should not be trusted on anything, let alone to make a distinction between good and evil. But they’re hardly alone, and they do represent a voting block that Trump very much needs to stay supportive and intact to help Republicans in the midterms and 2028. And it feels inexplicable that Trump wouldn’t know this. But in the weeks since Trump’s profane Easter invective, he’s only made matters worse inside the religious right. Two days after the Easter post, he threatened Iran: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” Trump’s admission that he “probably” will commit war crimes and genocide against an entire civilization unsurprisingly didn’t sit well with folks either, least of all the Catholic Church. When Pope Leo XIV, America’s first pope, condemned Trump’s threats as “truly unacceptable,” saying “God does not bless any conflict,” Trump responded by calling the Pontiff “WEAK on crime,” among other things. He’s lashed out at the Pope for being “naive” and “catering to the Radical Left.” And then finally, the coup de grace, Trump posted an AI-doctored photo of himself as Jesus healing the sick.
When, well, nearly everyone on the planet expressed their outrage with the sacrilegious image, he took it down and comically asserted he thought it wasn’t depicting him as Jesus but as a doctor. Which somehow also made sense to him. If it seems odd that this – a dumb AI photoshopped image of Trump – would be the thing to offend so many that he actually took it down and has attempted some version of damage control since, it is and it isn’t. Whatever your religion, Trump’s list of offenses is long – fraud convictions, sexual assault rulings, an insurrection, infidelity, illegal wars, un-Christian rhetoric about the disabled, immigrants, women and children. And of course there’s the Epstein files. Why did Trump feel so unconstrained when he leashed out at the leader of the Church and then posted a clearly sacrilegious image that violates no fewer than three of the ten commandments? It’s simple. Because Trump – who doesn’t know faith or religion intimately or even cursorily – thought evangelicals and Catholics are the same. And they’re really, really not. If Trump thinks Catholics are just like the evangelicals he’s come to know as his staunch defenders, he is getting a rough lesson in the distinctions between the two sects of Christianity, both of which are powerful voting blocks in this country. Trump turned an evangelical base that once thought Mitt Romney insufficiently Christian into his unlikeliest supporters in part by appealing to that sect’s interpretation of salvation. Evangelicals and born-agains believe that getting into heaven is achieved by being saved, or acceptance of Jesus as their Lord and Savior. As detailed in Ephesians 2:8-9, for evangelicals, faith alone and not works – or good deeds – is how one attains salvation. It’s no surprise this version appeals to Trump and those who like him – it absolves him of all his bad deeds and requires no new good ones to change his fate. It’s this belief that also helps pave the way for prosperity theology, in which some evangelicals – think Mega Churches – believe in material success as a sign of divine favor, or that material wealth is a reward for faith. It’s how those pastors can justify living in multi-million dollar homes and asking their congregants for money. Again, it’s not hard to see why Trump likes this – he’s had no shame asking his own supporters, many of whom are not wealthy themselves, for their hard-earned money to help line his own pockets. And, much like in mega churches, they do. For Catholics, however, this is in direct contradiction to their interpretation of salvation, which comes through sacraments and works. In other words, living their faith. For Catholics, their religious leaders are meant to be pious and humble, and the Mega Church pastor is seen as an unseemly and heretical grifter. This is why, unlike most evangelicals, many Catholics, including clergy and theologians, criticized Trump’s USA Bible, which he had made in China and sold for between $59.00 and $99.00, as a sacrilegious blending of nationalism and consumerism. And, importantly, it’s perhaps why Trump’s Bible uses the King James Version (KJV), which omits seven books found in the Old Testament and is not used by Catholics. Catholics and evangelicals also do not vote the same way. Catholics are considered swing voters, frequently splitting their votes between parties in presidential elections. In 2012, for example, Catholics backed Barack Obama by 15 points. In 2016, Catholics backed Trump by 52% to Hillary Clinton’s 45%. In 2020, they went for Joe Biden, himself a Catholic. In 2024, Catholics voted for Trump 55% to 43% for Kamala Harris. But evangelicals are not swing voters. They reliably vote Republican, and the margins also explode. In 2016, Trump won 81% of evangelicals, to Clinton’s 16%, and in 2024 Trump won 81% again to Harris’s 17%, almost a direct replay of 2016. Trump has without question captured the evangelical base, even growing it from earlier cycles. It’s not hard to imagine that Trump thought Catholics were as supportive and reliable a voting block for him as evangelicals, and likely made no distinction between the two. It’s also likely he believes himself a more powerful figure than the Pope, even among America’s Christians, because for evangelicals, he (Trump) certainly is. He might not think he needs them to help get Republicans elected in midterms or to get a Trump acolyte elected in 2028, but he will. Having lost so much of the coalition he built in 2024 – including independents, Hispanics, and young voters – he and Republicans will need every last voter to turn out for them, not a small ask in a midterm. If Catholics, who voted for Trump two out of three times, decide the Jesus image or his fight with the Pope are too much to stomach, they’ll vote Democrat in the next cycle to be sure. And they could just turn out to be the swing voter that matters most. |
