Grifters gonna grift, and con men stick together to bail each other out in times of trouble and, of course, to make a buck.
In case you haven’t been following Donald Trump on Twitter, today is a special day for the nation’s evangelical flock, who have set out to distract from increasing calls for Trump’s impeachment by holding a big MAGA prayer fest.
“I think if people would just pray—for our president, pray for this nation—that god will hear those prayers and answer those prayers,” one of the organizers, Franklin Graham, told Fox News. “The president is the president. He won the election. It’s been very difficult for his enemies to accept that. Just pray for the president.”
Uh, no.
Fox said that 250 Christian leaders planned to join Graham on Sunday, including Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr.—who used Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen to cover up a scandal involving “personal photographs”—and wackadoodle almost-billionaire televangelist Kenneth Copeland, who owns five jets and was recently obliterated in an interview with investigative journalist Lisa Guerrero.
White evangelicals are among the biggest segment of Trump’s base, and this isn’t the first time they’ve bailed him out. In 2016, Vice President Mike Pence, also a religious fanatic, spoke at Liberty University during the presidential campaign. This was just after the infamous Access Holllywood tape dropped, in which Trump bragged about committing sexual assault. Yet in the eyes of many so-called Christians who support Trump, sexual assault is just fine, apparently. After Trump became president, he repaid the favor by choosing Liberty University as the site of his first commencement address.
While Trump does benefit from this so-called “Special Day of Prayer”—with pressure mounting for lawmakers to impeach him following an important statement this week by Special Counsel Robert Mueller—let’s not forget that the real reason for this pseudo-religious PR stunt is for evangelical grifters to make even more money.
Frank Schaeffer, a reformed evangelist whose family was friends with Graham’s family when Schaeffer was growing up, laid this all out Sunday morning on MSNBC’s AM Joy with Joy Reid.
This “Special Day of Prayer,” Schaeffer said, is merely a fundraising opportunity for “evangelical con artists.” “It’s a triple irony,” Schaeffer said, adding that, “religion is a fiasco in America today.”
Schaeffer also pointed out that Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg, who Graham attacked on Twitter last month for being gay and happily married, is more in line with the Christian teachings of Jesus Christ than Graham is. Buttigieg also is certainly more Christian than the adulterer Trump, who doesn’t even know how to properly cite Bible passages.
So, if we’re going to be praying for anything—if you believe in that sort of thing—let’s ask for an end to this Trumpian nightmare, one in which the country has been hijacked by right-wing Republican charlatans whose only god is represented by more money, more abuse, and more power. I’m pretty sure there’s a Bible quote or two about that.
Or, alternatively, we could just turn up XTC really, really loud.