Closing act
Trump told a crowd of tens of thousands at a memorial for Charlie Kirk that he “hates” his opponents, despite Kirk’s widow saying she forgives the man charged with fatally shooting her husband.
The president gave the last of more than two dozen speeches at a public event that reflected on Kirk’s impact within the Make America Great Again movement. He said Kirk told a staff member he was not afraid of students who disagreed with him in the crowd at Utah Valley University. “I’m not here to fight them – I want them to know them and love them,” Trump quoted Kirk as saying.
But Trump said he felt differently to the rightwing activist, adding: “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents and I don’t want the best for them, I’m sorry.”
And by “I’m sorry” of course he means sorry not sorry.
You gotta hand it to him, he is good at saying things in public that most adults with functioning brains know better than to say in public.
Trump proves yet again that he’s lying about being a Christian: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew 6:14–15)
As you say, given the audience, most people would at least pretend. But not no-filter Trump. It’s amazing how he continues to be popular with the religious crowd.
I don’t think it’s even no filter, I think it’s central and deliberate. It’s a kind of bastard Nietzsche-ism. A reversal of norms. Carnival. The boring old normies say they forgive their enemies but thrilling rebels like Trump make a point of saying the opposite.
I don’t see why that would make him not a Christian. After all, there are plenty of places you can go to where the opposite is preached, such as Matthew 12:30, roughly speaking, whoever is not with me is against me. Or Luke 19:27, “But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them, bring them here and kill them in my presence.”
His failure to go to church or know the Bible don’t necessarily make him not a Christian, either. Very few of my friends go to church or know the Bible, but consider themselves Christians.
While I am willing to concede that Trump may in fact not be a Christian, I have a habit of allowing people to state their religious belief for themselves. Since there as many ways to be a Christian as there are Christians, I don’t expect they will all follow a single, coherent creed (in fact, I don’t expect coherence from any of the creeds).
The Christian right accepts him, because he is giving them what he wants. As far as I’m concerned, that’s what matters. Many of them belong to a more violent, less serene Christianity than my liberal friends, who live in ways that are pretty identical to being an atheist, except they pray when something is going wrong.
Trump may be “president”, but his personal presence is going to bring down the tone of any apotheosis, even Kirk’s.
The book “Jesus and John Wayne” by Kristin Du Mez helped me understand the appeal of Trump’s rhetoric for some evangelicals. There has been a long tradition of depicting Jesus as a manly man who was a warrior. As iknklast shows it is possible to find new testament passages to support it. The book of Revelations is usually the biggest source.