The Guilty Devils in Donald Trump’s Trials

Donald Trump wants his followers to see him in the role of Jesus, introducing angels, demons, and even crucifixion into his fictionalization of his New York State trial. Of course, no witnesses in any of Donald Trump’s trials have been literally crucified. They have been asked questions. They have been asked to tell the truth.

Is mere questioning of Donald Trump’s version of reality now to be accepted as a form of crucifixion?

In the religious movement that powers Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, truth telling is interpreted as an act of demonic wickedness. Facts and evidence, Christian Nationalists believe, are the work of the Devil.

Partial transcript:

Welcome to Stop Christian Nationalism, a podcast that stands in the way of those who want to replace the equality of democracy with the totalitarian fundamentalism of Christian theocracy.

COUNTRY MUSIC AGAINST CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM song:

34 Times Guilty

When you cheated on your wife.

You should have confessed.

You could not lie to save your life.

You should have confessed.

Now we can all see

what you tried to hide.

We are not stupid.

We know you lied.

You know you’re not a new messiah.

You’re just a plain social pariah.

Don’t go blaming devils for mistakes you made.

Don’t tell me god showed you his plan after you prayed

Don’t give me piss and tell me that it’s lemonade.

It’s time to fess up.

You know you messed up.

No matter how you dress up

This pig I am not kissing it.

You’re guilty,

Donald Trump.

You’re guilty!

34 times, you’re guilty.

Donald Trump, you’re guilty.

Guilty, guilty.

Guilty, guilty, guilty.

You were not crucified,

Donald Trump.

You know you just lied,

Donald Trump.

Oh yeah,

and you’re bad at lying.

Yes, the big news is that Donald Trump is a convicted criminal, a felon. A jury of 12 everyday Americans unanimously found Trump guilty of a conspiracy to use illegal means to alter the presidential election of 2016.

When you cheated on your wife, you should have confessed. In all the talk about Donald Trump’s character, the moral implications of the value of confession haven’t been explored. People focus on the moral failure of having an extramarital affair because that kind of character flaw is literally more sexy.

The more troubling flaw in Donald Trump’s moral character, however, is his inability to admit when he has made a mistake. If Trump had been willing to admit to being an imperfect person, no crime would have been committed. He would not have directed Michael Cohen and the National Enquirer to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels, and he would not then have orchestrated an illegal campaign contribution and criminally altered business records to cover it up.

If you admit that you’re not a perfect person, there’s no need for a cover up. There’s a kind of strength to that. It brings to mind the lyric from the Billy Joel song, Shameless:

“You know, it should be easy for a man who's strong, to say he's sorry or admit when he's wrong.”

The interesting lyrical turn in Billy Joel’s song is that Joel is shameless because he admits to his flaws. He has no shame in acknowledging that he needs another person, and that he’s powerless to resist that need. Billy Joel is strong enough to acknowledge that he has made mistakes, that he has been wrong, because he cares more about another person than he cares about maintaining a vain image of perfection.

Donald Trump’s shamelessness is the opposite of Billy Joel’s. People refer to Donald Trump as shameless because Donald Trump will break any rule and hurt any person to prevent appearing to be weak. Donald Trump never says that he’s sorry or admits when he’s wrong. He couldn’t go to Melania Trump and admit what he did, and he couldn’t tell the American people that he made a mistake, because Donald Trump believes that if he isn’t the greatest person who ever lived, he’s a nobody, worthless.

Donald Trump broke the law 34 times because he doesn’t believe in himself. He doesn’t believe that people would like him if they knew the kind of person he really is. Donald Trump is a man who hides from himself, and selfishly is willing to brutalize the entire nation in order to keep hiding.

This same character flaw is what leads Donald Trump into the remarkable act of denying the reality of the criminal trial that he was the center of. Even when a jury of 12 of Donald Trump’s peers unanimously has agreed that he is 34 times guilty, Donald Trump can’t admit to his guilt, because to do so would be to make him feel vulnerable and weak, just like all the rest of us. His own personal godhood would shatter.

Thinking of Donald Trump this way, I start to feel sorry for him. I think of how it must have been, growing up in the house of a multimillionaire, being taught that the only way to be okay is to be perfect. I can sense the toxic theology of Norman Vincent Peale’s power of positive thinking just dripping off of Donald Trump, like a cold sweat.

So, in order to counter the cognitive dissonance between his public persona of perfection and the reality of his many mistakes, Donald Trump immediately claimed that nothing that happened in his trial was real. Right after he walked out of the courthouse, Trump gave a speech claiming that the entire trial was rigged somehow. That’s the only acceptable interpretation for him, even though the entire nation saw the substantial evidence that his crimes were real.

There is absolutely no evidence, on the other hand, that the trial was rigged. There is no document, no photograph, no audio or video recording that even hints at any corruption of the trial process.

The facts are plain. Donald Trump is now a convicted criminal. He was convicted of 34 felonies, and contrary to his complaints, it wasn’t Joe Biden who found him guilty. Joe Biden had nothing to do with the trial, which was in a New York court, not a federal court. As President, Joe Biden has no control over the judicial branch, other than to nominate judges who then have to be confirmed by the United States Senate.

There is no reasonable basis for believing that Judge Juan Merchan is politically corrupt in any way. Because he has authority over a state court, not a federal court, he wasn’t nominated to his seat by any US President. He was appointed to his seat 15 years ago by another New York State judge. So, he has no connection or obligation to Joe Biden. Besides, in Donald Trump’s trial, it wasn’t even Judge Merchan who issued the verdict. It was a jury of 12 everyday Americans who issued a unanimous verdict finding that Donald Trump was guilty of every crime he had been charged with.

Donald Trump wants you to believe that somehow, these 12 ordinary Americans who had no connection to each other before the trial and no special elite status in society, somehow were all corrupt and worked together to rig the trial. Trump wants you forget that he himself approved of each and every one of the jurors before the trial began. Trump’s own lawyers agreed that the jurors that found him guilty were capable of deciding his case fairly.

In spite of the total lack of evidence that the trial was rigged, Donald Trump’s followers believe in that idea with all their hearts. Does that pattern sound familiar to you?

One of the most dangerous aspects of Christian Nationalism is that it brings the low standards of religious models of reality into the powerful machinery of the US federal government. Imagine what it would be like if the government were controlled by people who believed that reality is nothing more than an evil illusion that was created to separate us from our rightful place in a supernatural realm where we can live forever and ever. That’s the disastrous level of delusion that Donald Trump and his Christian Nationalist followers want to bring to the White House.

Christian Nationalists have been trained, ever since they were children, to distrust facts and logical reasoning in favor of the fantasies of their faith. They have been taught to believe in things they cannot see, and have been told that ancient stories from the far side of the planet are the key to understanding what’s happening in America today.

It should be no surprise, then, that the Christian Nationalist reaction to Donald Trump’s criminal conviction has been to interpret his trial as a kind of apotheosis, a religious ordeal of suffering that transforms a human into a divine being. Donald Trump himself has led the way in describing the New York trial as a sacred passion play of transformational Christian suffering. Trump claimed that witnesses called by his lawyers were “literally crucified” and accused Judge Juan Merchan of being “a devil”, not an angel.

Donald Trump wants his followers to see him in the role of Jesus, introducing angels, demons, and even crucifixion into his fictionalization of his trial. Of course, no witnesses in any of Donald Trump’s trials have been literally crucified. They have been asked questions. They have been asked to tell the truth.

In the religious movement that powers Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, truth telling is interpreted as an act of demonic wickedness. Facts and evidence, Christian Nationalists believe, are the work of the Devil.

In a separate communication shortly after his conviction, Donald Trump depicted himself as a soldier in an Army of God, in a divine war against the Democratic Party. On social media, Trump posted a strange prayer about himself, to the Christian god, in the third person. Trump’s prayer for himself begged for a heavenly military intervention to save him from legal peril, saying, “Send legions of angels to protect him, father… Cause his enemies to stumble and fall into confusion and panic.”

A legion, of course, is a military unit. The term is derived from the military terminology of the Roman Empire. The Republican Party’s estrangement from the basic reality of America’s system of justice and government is so extreme that the Republican presidential nominee is now calling for a supernatural being from ancient western Asia to send military units of magical spirits to overturn his criminal conviction by a New York state court.

That’s just not how the law works in America. Christian Nationalists, however, believe that American law must submit to the divine will of Jesus. They believe that Jesus, though he has been dead for 2,000 years and never visited America, is on the side of Donald Trump.

These beliefs are ridiculous. Yet, the more absurd their beliefs seem, the more fervently Republican voters cling to those beliefs. It’s as if they believe that their religious faith itself is being tested by Donald Trump’s convictions. Christian Nationalists are casting the New York state trial of Donald Trump as the equivalent of the non-judicial condemnation of Jesus by Pontius Pilate.

Of course, there are almost no similarities between the two cases. In the biblical story of the condemnation of Jesus there was no trial. There were no jurors. There was no due process of law. Decisions were made by Pontius Pilate on a whim, as he had the broad authority to do as he saw fit to serve the needs of the Roman Empire.

The trial of Donald Trump was the exact opposite of the condemnation of Jesus. The judge and prosecutors were tightly constrained by the law. Donald Trump was represented by lawyers, and was given a long time to defend himself, to cross examine witnesses. His guilt was determined by jurors, who were themselves constrained to rely on the facts of the case rather than their opinions.

Yet, Donald Trump’s supporters see none of that. As with Donald Trump, his Christian Nationalist supporters cannot bring themselves to admit that they were wrong. Their faith demands that they ignore reality when it disagrees with their beliefs. They interpret the criminal conviction of Donald Trump in religious terms, not legal terms.

This religious framework was purposefully constructed by the Trump campaign. In January of this year, the Trump campaign held an online event in which people would pray for Donald Trump, sending magical energy to summon divine intervention to prevent Donald Trump from being found guilty in any of his criminal or civic cases. At this event, Eric Trump took to the microphone to explain his belief that his father’s actions are guided by the Christian god.

“I really do believe that there’s divine intervention there. I think somebody was guiding him. He’s a remarkable father. He did a remarkable job for the United States of America, and I truly pray to the Lord that he wins again, he sorts out this country.”

The implications of Eric Trump’s claim that Donald Trump’s actions are the will of Heaven are mindboggling. If the Christian god is really guiding Donald Trump, that would mean that it was the idea of the Christian god for Donald Trump to cheat on Melania Trump with Stormy Daniels. It would mean that it was the Christian god’s idea for Donald Trump to pay Stormy Daniels to stay quiet about their sexual affair.

What kind of god would endorse that kind of behavior?

At that same event, right next to Eric Trump sat Alina Habba, who has become one of Donald Trump’s more visible lawyers. Habba took Eric Trump’s claims to the next level

“I think that there is a plan. There’s God’s plan, and then there’s a demonic plan, and the demonic plan is very easily confused with real life, what, there is an orchestrated plan going on here. Don’t get it twisted… Their demonic plan is so obvious.”

Pollsters have been puzzled by Republican voters’ refusal to be swayed by any information to abandon their fervent devotion to Donald Trump. Political opinion and affiliation, after all, should be altered according to changes in context.

What conventional interpretation of the 2024 presidential election fails to grasp is that Republican voters’ support for Donald Trump is largely religious in nature, not political.

Christian Nationalists don’t need any evidence of a trial or an election being rigged, because they don’t regard Donald Trump as a conventional political leader. To them, Trump is a religious prophet. To them, what Donald Trump says is the very definition of truth. The truth of what Donald Trump says is not just an opinion they hold. It is the central tenet of their faith, a core belief that they will follow wherever it leads.

The fundamental question of the 2024 presidential election is not about government policies or proper legal procedures. The question that will determine the course of this election has to do with the role of religion in American government. Is the United States a nation of facts or of faith? Should American government be founded upon reality or religion?

The faith of Christian Nationalists in Donald Trump is maintained not just in spite of the facts, but in direct rebellion against facts, against reality, against the world that can be directly experienced and measured and managed. Christian Nationalists are willing to sacrifice it all for the sake of their faith. They believe that belief itself is more important than the earthly reality we live in.

This pattern is reflected in surveys that demonstrate that Donald Trump’s strongest base of support is among Americans who pay no attention to news about politics. A recent survey conducted by a team of Republican and Democratic pollsters found that Americans who don’t pay attention to political news support Donald Trump by a two-to-one ratio.

Facts cannot persuade people who don’t pay attention to facts. What’s more, people who refuse to acknowledge basic facts cannot be reasoned with. Logical decision making can’t even begin without reliable information.

The potential consequences of the religious character of Donald Trump’s movement are difficult to overstate. In 2016, many people supposed that the zealous extremism of the Trump campaign was just political theater, a tactic that would be abandoned once Trump took office. We know better than that now.

In 2024, Donald Trump is campaigning with the promise that, if elected, he will refuse to bring any Republican moderates into his presidential administration. Only true believers who are willing to acknowledge Donald Trump’s absolute authority will be allowed to hold positions of leadership in the US federal government. Every government department will be expected to submit to the religious agenda of Donald Trump’s Christian Nationalism, with its cult of personality upheld as the new holy-of-holies.

An American government that is administered through faith rather than facts will eventually destroy itself. It will not fall apart peacefully, however, and its demise may only occur after it has managed to destroy every scrap of freedom and enlightenment along the way.

A movement that believes that its enemies are demons and that facts are not real is capable of anything.

Nothing less than reality itself is on the line in 2024. This is no time for apathy. We cannot afford to look away.

For more insights into the movement of Christian Nationalism that threatens to overturn American democracy this year, get yourself a copy of the new book Donald Trump’s Army of God, now available on Amazon…

…and come back next week for another episode of this podcast, Stop Christian Nationalism.