Certain rites and doctrines
Gee, who could have guessed – it turns out that Trump is not a devout Christian after all. It was all an act!!! Are you amazed?
The president’s alliance with religious conservatives has long been premised on the contention that he takes them seriously, while Democrats hold them in disdain. In speeches and interviews, Trump routinely lavishes praise on conservative Christians, casting himself as their champion. “My administration will never stop fighting for Americans of faith,” he declared at a rally for evangelicals earlier this year.
But it’s transparently a ploy, given that Trump had never given the slightest hint of religiosity until he decided to become king of Murka.
But in private, many of Trump’s comments about religion are marked by cynicism and contempt, according to people who have worked for him. Former aides told me they’ve heard Trump ridicule conservative religious leaders, dismiss various faith groups with cartoonish stereotypes, and deride certain rites and doctrines held sacred by many of the Americans who constitute his base.
We’re supposed to recoil in disgust at this point but I can’t oblige. I agree with him on this one. If that makes me a trumpish vulgarian on the subject then so be it.
The fraud on the other hand is a whole different matter.
A white house spokeser asked for comment said blah blah plus
The president is also well known for joking and his terrific sense of humor, which he shares with people of all faiths.
Nah. His sense of humor isn’t terrific. He’s not intelligent enough for that.
It helped that Trump seemed to feel a kinship with prosperity preachers—often evincing a game-recognizes-game appreciation for their hustle. The former campaign adviser recalled showing his boss a YouTube video of the Israeli televangelist Benny Hinn performing “faith healings,” while Trump laughed at the spectacle and muttered, “Man, that’s some racket.” On another occasion, the adviser told me, Trump expressed awe at Joel Osteen’s media empire—particularly the viewership of his televised sermons.
It’s very Mark Twain, isn’t it. He’s the Duke and the Dauphin to the life.
The conservative Christian elites Trump surrounds himself with have always been more clear-eyed about his lack of religiosity than they’ve publicly let on.
See? We’ve known that all along. Of course they have – you’d have to be very dense and inattentive to think Trump meant any of it.
It’s all about the ratings. A narcissist needs to have people watching, the more the better. If you’ve got good ratings, you must be doing something right, amirite?
But then people rubberneck while driving by accident scenes. That’s not exactly “doing something right,” it’s just a macabre spectacle that grabs people’s attention. It’s not indicative of love, or popularity, or correctness, just attention.
Speaking of attention that does not indicate love or popularity, I can imagine that there would be good ratings for Trump’s perp walk. I’d watch that.
Not so much symbiosis as mutual parasitism. Each party is knowingly using the other. Republicans did the same thing, but Trump has taken over the brand, and Republican members of congress have nailed their colours to the mast and will go down with Trump’s ship, assuming it does indeed go down, and is not staying afloat because it’s resting on the hull of a Russian submarine.
Sure, you’d have to be very dense and inattentive to think that stupid asshole means anything he says. It’s all a racket to him, the presidency, his tax avoidance, his wanting a 73M refund under the Obama stimulus plan, all of it. He’s a shallow, egomaniacal opportunist, and that’s all he is. I saw this in the 80’s when he was doing talk shows with his smug ‘I’m richer than you’ attitude. He has the money to hire smart tax lawyers, but he himself lacks a shred of mature intelligence of any value. Not to mention his failure to be successful in business without cheating people, the government, defaulting on debts, and so on.
So I predict the debate tonight will go thus; Biden will start out being the adult, the compassionate statesman, the voice of reason and science… Then, Donnie Dipshit will pull out his bag of schoolyard insults and tout his bloated and volatile stock market, and proceed to interrupt Biden and bully him until Biden sinks to Donnie’s level, and then Biden, with no options or quick thinking skills (unfortunately), will resort to retaliatory insults and denigration. This is how Donnie levels the playing field, he brings people down to his level. I hope I’m wrong and Biden can stay on point, but it doesn’t look promising. If Biden remains adult and lucid at all, Donnie is going to pull the piss testing card out of his ass, and try to claim that Biden is on drugs. Pathetic. It will be more like an overly dramatized Donnie Dipshit adolescent, reality TV spectacle. Ratings! And the Trumpies will still vote for him. I really hope this isn’t the way it goes, but we have see how Donnie Dipshit operates, and he has all but telegraphed his whole strategy anyway, the fucker.
(sorry if too off topic) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’d be surprised if it makes much difference to the Christian right. They just want someone to do the things they want, like getting rid of Roe v. Wade and bringing conservative Christianity back into the schools, both of which Trump has proven willing to do (of course. It has no real impact on him).
The president is also well known for making shit up, saying horrible things, and calling it jokes once he is called out on it and his terrific sense of his own self, which he shares with people of all faiths, and people of none, because there are narcissists in every one of those groups.
Debate, huh. Just as I suspected, Donnie Dipshit, true to form, massive interruptions and bullshit accusations. So Biden was not able to get his message out because Donnie resorts to making it an insulting shouting match, even getting the “moderator” (who also resorted to impotent whining) into the act. Trash TV at it’s finest, what a joke. Of course Biden joined in, “worst president ever”, “liar”, “clown”… I’m going to call that a win for Mr. Dipshit, he made the debate into exactly what he wanted, and Biden and Wallace protesting, yet powerlessly playing along. Disgraceful, I’ve seen better debates on middle school playgrounds.
Presidential debates are worthless, and worse than worthless. They have zero relevance to what presidents actually have to do. It’s ridiculous that we take them so seriously and put so much emphasis on them here.
You’re right of course, I should not have missed my bedtime for that stupidness.
You’ll know better next time!