This week, FBI agents conducted a lawful search of Donald Trump’s mansion in Mar-A-Lago, citing specific evidence reviewed by a federal judge showing probable cause that Trump was in illegal possession of top secret classified documents about America’s nuclear weapons. The search was conducted in accordance with the Bill of Rights and well-established legal precedent under 4th amendment authority.

There was a time when it was commonly understood that when the FBI has evidence that someone is in criminal possession of top secret government documents about America’s nuclear weapons, it’s perfectly reasonable and legal for a search warrant to be obtained to search for and retrieve those documents.

That fundamental level of reality apparently no longer exists for Christian nationalists in America. Prophets of Christian nationalism have spent the week screaming that the use of a search warrant to conduct a legal search to secure top secret documents about nuclear weapons is somehow an example of “tyranny”.

It’s difficult to understand how anyone could make a rational argument that the FBI’s use of a search warrant in Mar-A-Lago is in any way illegal or unconstitutional.

Then again, the rational thinking isn’t something that Christian nationalists believe in.

They consider word salads of bible quotes to be a sufficient replacement for logical arguments.

Take, as an example, the outrage expressed by Christian nationalist preacher Curt Landry:

“Are we putting god’s house first? Understanding as New Testament believers that this temple, our bodies, are the temple of the holy spirit, okay, so consider this: If the 45th president of the United States can have his home invaded by a weaponized FBI, think of the violation of that, just coming in and going through all your closets, your stuff, I mean, it’s, I can’t even imagine. Isn’t it, for the United States, how is it that we’ve lost so much of our rights that, that a government agency can just come on in and pillage and go through our stuff, and so that’s the question here. But then, verse six says, verse five says, ‘Consider your ways,’ and then it says, ‘You have so much, but you bring in little. You eat, but you do not have enough. You drink, but you are not filled with drink.’ Is this not us today?”

Feeling confused? Not sure what the heck Curt Landry is talking about here? You’re not alone.

There isn’t any logical sense in Curt Landry’s sermon about the FBI search warrant executed in Donald Trump’s mansion. Even if you accept the premises that Curt Landry proposes, that human bodies are temples that are visited by invisible spirits, and that the FBI is weaponized, and that Donald Trump’s home was pillaged, and that people don’t have enough to eat or drink, none of these premises fit together in any rational sense. Landry simply spurts out these unrelated ideas one after another, without the ability to bring them together into a single disciplined thought that means anything in particular.

As this babbling portion of his latest sermon shows, Curt Landry has trouble formulating complete sentences. He’s trying to make an argument that relates the search warrant for evidence of Donald Trump’s criminal activity with a mysterious Verse Five. That verse five is from the Old Testament book of Haggai. What on Earth does a complaint written thousands of years ago on another continent, in another language, have to do with an FBI search warrant given to Donald Trump’s lawyers before a legal search of Mar-A-Lago?

Curt Landry never explains. He just gives an incomplete statement about Donald Trump and the FBI, then rambles on to a totally unrelated bible verse.

This is one of the dangers of Christian nationalism that people don’t talk about much: The danger of intellectual incompetence.

Christian nationalist churches teach their followers that the Christian bible has an answer for everything, even though it’s a book from a foreign culture that was ignorant of the existence of most of the Earth’s continents. Their holy book was written by committees of people over centuries, yet Christian nationalists insist that the text is not only internally coherent, but is 100% free from error. The Christian bible, they believe, is a code book full of instructions about how a present-day democracy in North America is supposed to operate, even though its authors didn’t know about either the idea of democracy or about the existence of North America.

Christian nationalism teaches its preachers that there’s an invisible spirit who somehow magically directs them to specific lines from their bible as a coded way of communicating what people should do. So, Christian nationalists jumble together a logically incoherent collection of political arguments by smashing together their emotional reactions to current events with random lines from an ancient text.

In Christian nationalist circles, this is regarded as a perfectly ordinary way to articulate political policies. They observe something they’ve seen in the news, add a random scrap of ancient writing, and pretend that they’re making sense.

That’s how we end up with Curt Landry’s suggestion that there’s some kind of tyranny hidden within a perfectly legal search warrant, because people living thousands of years ago were hungry and thirsty.

It doesn’t make any sense, but then, it’s not supposed to.

The implied argument behind every piece of nonsensical bible word salad sermon from Christian nationalist leaders like Curt Landry is this: A) It’s not valid to interpret current events according to rational arguments or the facts of the current situation because; B) The only thing that really matters is Christianity, which should be granted a power above everything else, and therefore; C) Don’t question the nonsense you’re hearing from Christian nationalist leaders because Christianity has spoken, and your only proper role is to obey.

If you accept this core tenet of Christian nationalism, you’ll believe any nonsense Christian nationalist preachers throw your way.

It’s a good thing that only a minority of Americans are Christian nationalists. So, for the majority of Americans who actually believe that thinking clearly and paying attention to facts matter, let’s take a bit of time to clear up a couple of inaccuracies from Curt Landry’s tirade.

Donald Trump Can No Longer Use The Powers Of The Presidency

“If the 45th president of the United States can have his home invaded…” Curt Landry says, before losing track of his train of thought and mumbling about closets. Let’s be clear about this: The 45th president of the United States did not have his home invaded.

Donald Trump is not the 45th president of the United States.

Donald Trump was the 45th president of the United States. Now, Donald Trump is an ex-president, and the powers that he had as president are no longer his. The minute that Joe Biden took the Oath of Office, Donald Trump could not use any of the powers of the presidency. Donald Trump became just another citizen, like the rest of us.

The crimes that the Department of Justice is investigating Donald Trump for are crimes that took place after Donald Trump lost the powers of the presidency. Donald Trump is alleged to have taken top secret classified documents about nuclear weapons after he became an ex-president.

The record is clear: Donald Trump never went through the necessary procedure of issuing executive orders to declare the nuclear weapons documents that he took. Once Donald Trump lost the powers of the presidency, he lost the ability to declare any documents unclassified.

So, none of the documents found at Donald Trump’s mansion at Mar-A-Lago were unclassified. They were, and they remain, classified top secret. It’s against the law for Donald Trump to have them in his possession. They don’t belong to him. They belong to the American people. Specifically, these documents belong to the National Archives, which the American people has given the task of holding, organizing, and protecting all documents from former presidential administrations.

Specifically, Donald Trump is being investigated for violating the Espionage Act, attempting to obstruct a federal law enforcement investigation, and attempting to destroy evidence of these crimes.

The FBI Didn’t Pillage Mar-A-Lago

Pillaging is what pirates or Vikings did during their coastal raids. They attacked with violence and stole whatever they wanted, without even the pretense of any legal justification. Pillaging is a destructive violent act that takes place completely outside of any law.

That’s not what happened at Mar-A-Lago.

The FBI brought evidence of probable cause to believe that Donald Trump is involved in serious crimes to a federal judge. That judge issued a search warrant authorizing the search of a particular place, Mar-A-Lago, for very specific things, including boxes filled with top secret classified information.

The National Archives had alerted Donald Trump that he had violated the law by seizing and keeping these top secret classified documents. Trump was asked to return the documents, and he agreed to do so. Then, the Department of Justice discovered that Trump had lied, and kept a trove of top secret classified documents for himself. Trump was warned about the consequences of keeping top secret classified documents in defiance of the law, but he still refused to turn over the material that he held in violation of the law.

The FBI obtained a search warrant by following established law enforcement procedures that are in compliance with the 4th amendment to the Constitution, which states, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

There was no raid. The FBI was not “weaponized”. A perfectly legal search took place because Donald Trump is suspected of breaking the law.

So, the FBI search of Mar-A-Lago is not a deviation from American law and liberty. It was a manifestation of American law and liberty.

There is no new precedent by which the FBI can come into your home and search through all your closets.

Of course, if the FBI has evidence that you have stolen top secret classified documents and are keeping them in your home, yes, the FBI can obtain a search warrant from a judge, and use it to search through your home.

That’s because you’re a criminal.

In the United States, the Constitution protects all people from arbitrary police searches. It does not protect anybody from police searches conducted with warrants on the basis of evidence of criminal activity.

And no, criminals can’t simply exempt themselves from a legal police search by opening up an ancient religious text and reading a random line or two.

In America, religious texts have no legal authority. They’re just weird old books with strange magical stories. You can believe them or not, but they don’t give anyone permission to violate the law.