Trump's Bible Reading is More Than Spectacle - It's Spiritual Terrorism

Brad Onishi: Welcome to Straight White American Jesus. My name is Brad Onishi, and it's great to be with you today. I want to talk about the 84-hour marathon Bible reading that is happening at the Museum of the Bible this week, and specifically the passage that Donald Trump read last night. He did not go to the Museum of the Bible. He stayed at the White House. And for me, this is insane for a couple of reasons. He's the most immoral president that's ever lived, one of the most immoral people period who's ever lived. He also knows nothing about Scripture. Here he is in his first presidential run, talking about the Bible.

Interviewer [Clip]: I'm wondering what one or two of your most favored Bible verses are.

Trump [Clip]: I wouldn't want to get into it, because to me, that's very personal. You know, when I talk about the Bible, it's very personal. So I don't want to get into it. I don't want—

Interviewer [Clip]: —it means a lot to you. That you think about or cite the Bible means a lot to you.

Trump [Clip]: It means a lot to me, but I don't want to get into specifics.

Brad: Even to cite a verse. "I don't want to do that." Old Testament guy or New Testament? "Probably equal." But despite the fact that this might be the literal first time that Trump ever reads from the Bible, I think the most terrifying part of this is the scripture that they gave him to read from the White House. Trump is a narcissistic authoritarian with a Messiah complex, and they didn't just give him verses about "God is love" or "God is peace" to read. He'll be reading from Second Chronicles 7, which puts him in the place of a king who rules over his nation.

All right, before we get into it today, I need you to do something. Join us tomorrow night, April 23, Thursday at 7:15 Eastern — me and Sarah Posner, Matt Taylor, Julie Ingersoll — for a live recording of Reign of Error. We're going to talk about Iran and Christian nationalism and holy war. You can find the link in the show notes. Come and hang out. We're raising money for season two of Reign of Error, but all you need to do is show up, and we hope to see you there. Want you to subscribe to our newsletter and our YouTube channel. We would love your help getting the word out about both of those things. Also, the last episodes of One Million Neighbors from Melissa Borja are out now, episodes four through six, and episode six is just stunning, because it really links the resettlement of one million refugees in the '70s to the neighborism and resistance of people in the Twin Cities over the last couple of months in the face of an ICE occupation.

All right, y'all — so glad you're here. Let's talk about Donald Trump and his Bible reading, and how it's more than just a spectacle. It's spiritual terrorism.

This marathon Bible reading is part of the 250th anniversary celebrations in the United States, and other elected officials will be taking part: Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State; Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense; Doug Burgum, Secretary of the Interior; Brooke Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture; as well as the White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles. Some D-list celebrities like Candace Cameron Bure, and typical Christian nationalist leaders — people like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, a raging homophobe who uses hate speech on the regular — and David Barton, the debunked fake historian who evangelicals love to call on to give them a false history of the United States.

But what is truly terrifying, above all else, is the scripture that they gave Donald Trump to read. It's Second Chronicles 7, verses 11 to 22. Now my colleague Matthew D. Taylor said in The New York Times recently that this is a set of verses that evangelicals have been calling on for decades. As we'll see, there's a verse in there about people needing to humble themselves and return to God, lest they lose their country. So evangelicals have been using this verse for a long time to apply to the United States and say, "Look, unless we repent, and unless we return to God — as they say — then our country will disappear."

The most disgusting example of this was Jerry Falwell after 9/11, who blamed the terrorist attacks on, in his words, gay people and feminists, the ACLU and others, who, in his mind, had invited the attacks by disobeying God.

Jerry Falwell [Clip]: I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way — all of them who tried to secularize America — I point the thing in their face and say: you helped this happen.

Brad: The scariest recitation of Second Chronicles 7 in recent years came from Couy Griffin, the leader of Cowboys for Trump. Griffin recited these verses as a prayer at January 6, praying the scriptures over the rioters who were destroying the Capitol, attacking police, and trying to overturn the election in the name of Donald Trump.

But if we want to understand how scary this really is, we need to go verse by verse through the passage in order to understand what Trump is reading and how it puts him and the nation in a very scary place.

Verse 11 says this: "Solomon finished the house of the Lord in the king's house, all that Solomon had planned to do in the house of the Lord and in his own house, he successfully accomplished."

Now Solomon is, of course, the third king of the Israelite kingdom. There was Saul, and then David, and then Solomon. Solomon was considered the wisest of the kings, but he was also somebody who had his troubles at moments obeying God. This passage's context is about Solomon finishing the Israelite temple, and that's why there's this mention of God's house.

In some ways, it's astute for Trump to be reading a passage that puts him in the place of Solomon. After all, Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. He had more mistresses even than Donald Trump, which is saying something. It's also apt because Solomon finished the temple when Trump just destroyed the East Wing of the White House, and there is no construction of it in sight.

But things get worse as we go on. Here is verse 12: "Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him, 'I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people — if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.'"

So this is the money-maker verse for evangelicals. When bad things happen — when God sends the plagues or the pestilence — if the people humble themselves and return to God, well, he will heal the land. And for decades, evangelicals have been using this verse to hammer home why this country is supposedly in crisis all the time. This is why they chose Trump to read these verses. They've been dreaming for decades of the American president sitting in the White House reading this verse, telling the American people to repent, to be good boys and girls, to go back to that old-time American religion. No more of this atheism or humanism, no more of these immigrants who are Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu, no more of this godless society. This has been their wet dream forever, and all it cost them was electing a man who has no interest in Christianity, no sense of the Bible, no sense of being a moral or virtuous person — but sure, he's doing their bidding. And they are over the moon.

But things get really dark as soon as we go to the next verses. Now they've been saying this since Ronald Reagan. Reagan, to Bush, to the other Bush — they've all espoused some version of this idea. Maybe they didn't read these verses from the White House, but the idea of a city on a hill and returning to God, this has been part of Republican politics since Jerry Falwell and Paul Weyrich put the Moral Majority together in the 1970s.

In my mind, this is kind of hot air at this point. Yes, I don't want to listen to it. And yes, I think it's awful, but when I hear it, it's sort of the Charlie Brown voice — blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Sure. Keep saying it. Humble yourself. Return to the Lord. Whatever.

In my mind, what's really dark about this whole thing are the next verses: "Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place, for now I have chosen and consecrated this house so that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time. As for you, if you walk before me as your father David walked, doing according to all that I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my ordinances, then I will establish your royal throne."

What happens in these verses is God goes from talking about the people humbling themselves to talking to Solomon directly. He talks about this place, the temple, being consecrated — talks about making it a holy place forever. But I want you to think about what evangelicals and other Christian nationalists are doing in this interpretation of these scriptures.

In one moment, they want you to apply a covenant between God and Israel to the United States. Well, God told Israel, unless they humble themselves and repent, he would destroy their nation. And it clearly means that God's telling the United States, unless we repent, he will destroy our nation. So if we're going to make that move here, we have to make the same move in the next passage, don't we — if we're going to have a consistent interpretation of these passages.

Well, then here's what we need to think. We need to think that God's talking to the leader of our nation, telling him he's a king, promising to establish his royal line, promising that his house — the White House, which is supposed to be the people's house, supposed to be our house — will be his to rule from forever.

Now I can already hear the white Christian nationalists and the evangelicals saying, "Oh, you're overreacting. Come on, get over it." But here's my thing: if you want me to interpret the Bible like you tell me to, then I'm going to interpret the Bible like you tell me to. If you think that we should read these verses about the nation humbling itself as applicable to us in 2026, then I'm going to do the same thing with the idea of the leader.

You chose this man to read these verses from the White House. You did that on purpose.

What's going on here, to me, is something that has always gone on with white Christian nationalists. They want you to believe that what they're selling is simply an old-time religion — returning to Jesus, going back to the faith that made this country, supposedly. That's what's on the surface. But what's behind it is a different sell. It's a sell that says, look, unless you repent, you'll be punished — that's number one. But number two, we have a king who will impose on you morality and virtue, the sense of right and wrong. We have a king who God will bless to order the nation as he wants, and if that needs to be through force, through power or brutality — well, that's good for everybody, isn't it, because you'll be doing so in the name of God, as the representative of God, as the man that God speaks to directly.

Once again, you can hear people saying, "Well, come on, you're overreacting. Like, get over it, man. I mean, this is not about Trump being some King Solomon figure." Really? Does he know that? Because let's go through a little bit of history, shall we? This is a guy who called himself the king about a year ago in a post about New York City. This is a guy that last Easter posted a picture of himself as the Pope. This is a man who just last week posted a picture of himself as Jesus while he picked a fight with the sitting Pope. You picked this man to read these scriptures — scriptures that put him in the place of a king — and you think we're not supposed to take away the sinister implications of him doing so from the White House.

Now it gets worse. I mean, there's the MAGA movement to seat Barron Trump as Trump's successor. There's the fact that just last week, Pete Hegseth compared Trump to Jesus and called the press Pharisees who don't recognize the miracles that he's doing in the United States.

Pete Hegseth [Clip]: Our press are just like these Pharisees — your politically motivated animus for President Trump nearly completely blinds you from the brilliance of our American warriors. I would ask you to open your eyes to the goodness, the historic success of our troops, the courage of this president, and this historic moment for a deal that could end the Iranian nuclear threat. Rescue missions, miracles, you might say.

Brad: Then there's all these MAGA folks who in the run-up to the election and still now can't stop seeing Donald Trump as a dictator who will put the country back in order, because so many of us have destroyed it through our immorality and our waywardness.

MAGA supporter [Clip]: Would you rather have four years of Donald Trump as a dictator, or four years of President Biden reelected? You know, you don't have to like the words that come out of the man's mouth, but sometimes in life we all need a good paddling from the principal to set our life on the right track. And this country does need a little bit of that. We need a little paddling. I mean, I was a problem child growing up, and it took good leadership to set me straight. Either way, Donald Trump said on his first day he's going to be a dictator for a day.

Interviewer [Clip]: I like that.

MAGA supporter [Clip]: Would you rather have Donald Trump as a dictator for four years, or reelect Joe Biden for four years?

Second MAGA supporter [Clip]: I would rather have Donald Trump. I'd like to see them repeal the Roosevelt law so that he can be president for a lot more than four years. But we — this country — needs a dictator. I hate to say that, but it's the truth.

Brad: Here's the thing: Trump is a narcissistic authoritarian with a god complex. Giving him these verses to read at this moment is a terrible, terrible choice. But it just shows you that so many of the white Christian nationalists who supported Trump in the last ten years are not going anywhere. As long as they get power, as long as they get order, as long as they get access, they are going to stay with him.

Now, they could have given him verses from First Corinthians 13. They could have given him verses from First Corinthians about love, or verses from the Gospel of John about God sending his Son into the world because he loves the world. First John: "God is love." There are so many verses. They didn't.

But here's the thing: the better choice would have been for elected officials to avoid this kind of spectacle altogether. We have a separation of church and state for a reason. We have a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, pluralist democracy. If you are a person of faith and you are elected to office, we don't need you to read Scripture to us. If you want to lead as a person of faith, then demonstrate the virtues — of courage and resilience, of integrity, bravery, creativity. That's what we need. We don't need you to dictate Holy Scripture. We need you to enact the sacred duty of your office.

Thanks for watching today. I'm Brad Onishi. You can catch us at Straight White American Jesus. You can read my book, American Caesar, and my other book, Preparing for War. Hit subscribe, hit like — we'll catch you next time.