Donald Trump and the Desecration of Easter

On this past Good Friday the self-professed evangelical journalist, Ruth Graham, wrote in the New York Times:

President Trump is using this week to make a dramatic gesture to the conservative Christians who heard his campaign promise last year to “bring back Christianity.”

This week, the White House issued an extraordinary statement – a presidential Easter greeting that was more directly evangelistic than those in the past. Trump and the first lady said they were celebrating “the living Son of God who conquered death, freed us from sin, and unlocked the gates of Heaven for all humanity.”

The White House spent much of this week celebrating, including at a live-streamed Easter prayer service and a dinner attended by the president. Trump told attendees he hoped it would be “one of the great Easters ever.”

I hate to invoke the profane in a discussion of such a sacred subject, but this is all bullshit. Trump is possibly the most profane, irreligious, morally generate person ever to (dis)grace the Oval Office. The rotten fruits of his manifest evil torment and befoul the ground of human life more every day. Yet Ruth Graham, a dedicated evangelical Christian, dared to laud this evil being in the sacred solemnity of Good Friday even as he hatefully crucified, if you will, an innocent young man by declaring him a criminal, even a terrorist – a young man he knew was innocent – to keep him in a hellhole prison wrongly sent there in the first place by Trump’s evil designs. The irony is astounding.

Despite Graham’s glorifying of Trump for his public extolling of “the living Son of God who conquered death” and his supposed desire to “make this one of the great Easters ever,” Trump has never shown any interest in or the most rudimentary knowledge of the meaning of Easter. I’ve written of this before in an earlier Substack posting and at greater length in my book, Christians Against Christianity, but it bears repeating in the face of this pernicious propaganda. When asked in 2016 what Easter means to him, incredibly Trump made no mention of God, crucifixion, atonement, resurrection or even of Jesus himself:

Well, it really means something very special. I’m going to church in an hour from now and it’s going to be – it’s a beautiful church. I’m in Florida. And it’s just a very special time for me. And it really represents family and get-together and – and something, you know, if you’re a – a Christian, it’s just a very important day.

That’s not an anomaly. Here is Trump’s response when asked by the columnist, Cal Thomas, what Jesus means to him:

Jesus to me is somebody I can think about for security and confidence. Somebody I can revere in terms of bravery and in terms of courage and, because I consider the Christian religion so important, somebody I can totally rely on in my own mind.

No mention of salvation. No mention of Jesus as his Lord and Savior. Again, no mention of Jesus’ atoning death or even Jesus’ overarching love ethic. Apart from his pandering reference to “Christian religion,” Trump could easily have been describing a cartoon strongman or a military platoon leader -- that is, if he were not a draft dodger.

But it gets worse. For Christians, repentance and seeking forgiveness for their transgressions is fundamental to their faith and a precondition for salvation that is so essential that its significance cannot be overstated. But when pollster Frank Luntz asked Trump if he had ever repented for his sins – ever, meaning ever in his entire life -- Trump replied that he didn’t know: “I am not sure I have … I don’t think so. I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.” In other words, he repents -- that is, answers – to himself alone.

That is obvious. If he gave half a damn about the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus and cared even a dime’s worth for the Gospel message Jesus died delivering, how could he commit such odious, monstrous acts against everything that is just, decent and loving? He could not. He has proven again and again that he is governed by his own interests and appetites and nothing else. In Trump’s mind he is his own god and his own savior.

Donald Trump is as close to an anti-Christ as anyone we have seen in our lifetimes. To mention his name in the same breath as Easter, when the resurrection victory of Jesus over structural evil and oppression is celebrated, is a most grievous, unconscionable desecration of Easter. It demonstrates that evangelicals like Ruth Graham care nothing about the evil Trump commits, as long as he advances their agenda of dominating American society and governance in order to force us all to bow at the altar of their loveless christo-fascist agenda.

So let us be clear. You cannot rightfully celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, he who was the ultimate embodiment of love, righteous justice and uncompromising care for all those in need of care, while also supporting a person and a movement that, with malice aforethought, systematically opposes everything Jesus stood and died for. It is that person, that walking embodiment of the Seven Grievous Sins, that hate-sick liar and conman, who is their messiah. If Jesus were to appear today and Trump, with his practiced lies and gaslighting, declared Jesus the enemy of his cult, no doubt his followers would crucify Jesus again. For them, ultimately Jesus is merely a place holder and figurehead for their ideology of domination. They do not take his teachings seriously. They trot him out only as a limp caricature of his Gospel persona, and only as it serves their interests. But, if it means anything, the Easter resurrection means this: they cannot win. No hate-filled policy, no defiance of lawful courts, no spitting in the face of justice, and no Project 2025 can in the end hold truth and love-fueled justice-making in a crypt of hate. Just as the tomb could not hold Jesus, neither will it long hold in bondage truth and justice and love for the common good. As the world has seen so many times before, truth crushed to earth will surely be raised again.