Christian liars

 

(4.5-minute read)

            On  Saturday, October 12, 2024, Christian Nationalists descended on Washington DC like a biblical plague of locusts, spewed a lot of hate and called for the election of the rapist criminal Donald Trump to reclaim America.[1]  (Reclaim America is a white supremacist slogan that’s showing up on Trump rally signs now.)[2] 

17 And now I make one more appeal, my dear brothers and sisters. Watch out for people who cause divisions and upset people’s faith by teaching things contrary to what you have been taught. Stay away from them. 18 Such people are not serving Christ our Lord; they are serving their own personal interests. By smooth talk and glowing words they deceive innocent people. (NLT, Romans 16:17–18)

“I am the Chosen One!”  Donald J. Trump[3]

 15 Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? 17 In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will know them by their fruits. (NRSV, Matthew 7:15–20)

Perhaps evangelicals would benefit from some bible study.

Do they know who Trump is?

            The rapist criminal Trump has enjoyed the support of Christian Nationalist evangelicals from the very beginning.  People should wonder if they know who Trump the man is?  Have they ever been to a MAGA Trump rally or heard him speak?  The man is an egocentric narcissist pathological lying veritable fountain spewing lies, hate and violence.  That’s their “Chosen One.”  Their Chosen One just recently referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as being “retarded.”[4]  Trump is a man that has never asked God for forgiveness.[5] 

            What they want from Trump has nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with power.  They need and want Trump to implement their Project 2025 on America.  Trump is willing.  His MAGA Supremes will either back him or he’ll do away with them now that they’ve given him absolute power.  (How long will it take them to figure that out do you reckon.)  Flattery and pandering to the vain Trump will get them all that they desire. 

They understand him all too well.

But do they really understand?

18 Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. 22 Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. (NIV, 1 John 2:18, 22)

            I don’t know if Trump fully qualifies as being the antichrist but he certainly qualifies as being an antichrist.  I did comment previously on that here when he and Melania refused to say the Apostle’s Creed at the funeral of George H W Bush. He certainly has the liar bit down pat.  For him lying is as easy as breathing.  It’s fundamental to who he is.  This scholar certainly makes a good case for Trump being the antichrist in a deep dive of scripture.[6]  Deeper than I care to go. 

            Next we have some shepherd scripture.  Trump is indeed a shepherd of his MAGA cult.  He is currently shepherding them to violence and attacking brown and black people. 

15 Then the Lord said to me, “Take again the equipment of a foolish shepherd. 16 For I am going to raise up a shepherd over the land who will not care for the lost, or seek the young, or heal the injured, or feed the healthy, but will eat the meat of the choice sheep, tearing off their hooves.  NIV, Zechariah 11:15-16

            The next scripture could very well have been talking about the rapist criminal Trump.  Christian Nationalists have him well on his way.  It hasn’t occurred to them yet that their flock will follow Trump not them. 

25 He will cause deceit to prosper, and he will consider himself superior. When they feel secure, he will destroy many and take his stand against the Prince of princes. Yet he will be destroyed, but not by human power. NIV, Daniel 8:25

3 Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness[a] is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. 4 He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.  NIV, 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4

            These people are the reason that those like me are leaving the Christian faith.  It’s hard to justify a faith that shows so much hate and intolerance and makes a man like Trump possible. 

They are worshiping Trump.

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[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/christians-swarm-washington-pray-america-turn-god-electing-trump-rcna175162

[2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2024/10/12/white-supremacist-slogan-waved-trump-campaign-event/75627814007/

[3] I am the Chosen One, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JsAQj36gCU

[4] https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-used-shocking-slur-about-kamala-harris-at-fundraiser-report

[5] Never asked, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKLVIm7Q0IQ

[6] https://www.benjaminlcorey.com/could-american-evangelicals-spot-the-antichrist-heres-the-biblical-predictions/

End all be all polls.

(3-minute read)

Nope.

At his rallies the rapist Trump claims that he’s winning in all the polls.  Is he?  Nope.  Not even close.  Out of the last 85 national polls that I checked Trump was ahead only in 3 of them by 1 point and 5 had them even.  There are LOTs of polls and various interpretations as to what they all mean.[1] 

            As we get through the last month before the 2024 election, polls are currently showing a tightening of the increase in support for the Harris Walz ticket.  According to 538 the Harris/Walz ticket is consistently running over 2.5% over the Trump/Vance ticket. 

            Just briefly a note about the 538 polls.  Nate Silver sold 538 a couple of years ago and is no longer involved with 538.[2]  Silver took his polls with him.  ABC now owns 538.  Those that staff 538 use a variety of criteria to establish the weight/accuracy of all the polls that they aggregate together.  They simply provide a snapshot of potential outcomes in various races. 

            Keep in mind that poll aggregators lump low quality polls with those that do a much better job like the New York Times/Siena College polling.[3]  538 says they weed those out but that still leaves mixed quality polls factored together.  At best the trends are what prognosticators look at.  

            A man named Allan Lichtman doesn’t use polls at all for his election predictions.  Lichtman has been doing this for 40 years and 10 races.  He uses something he calls keys to predict outcomes and has been consistently right with the exception of Gore v Bush.  (He actually predicted that result correctly except for the interference of the Supreme Court).[4]  He predicts that VP Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will win.[5] 

            Harris and Walz trended upwards when they became the nominees of the Democratic Party and finally stabilized around an aggregated 2.5% lead in the national polls.  While leading in some battle ground states they are behind in others.  In red states independent voters appear to be breaking for Trump.  I do think that Trump’s support is being underestimated. 

            The red battleground states are why MAGA Republicans will never go for eliminating the electoral college.  It’s where their strength is; that and being willing to overturn votes and ignore their oath of office.

            There are a lot of unknown factors in polling.  Newly registered voters are not being polled but there are educated guesses about which way they might break.  Red state MAGA Republicans have purged a few million voters from the rolls nationally.  The leftist candidate Jill Stein could pull a few hundred thousand votes nationally and enough votes in battleground states to throw the election to Trump.  Some Muslim and Arab voters will withhold their votes from VP Kamala because they’re upset about what’s taking place in Gaza.  They could also be the deciding factor in getting the rapist Trump elected.  The phrase cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face comes to mind. 

            Here are a couple of takeaways.  Polls in past elections leading up to this one have been notoriously wrong in picking winners and losers.  Pollsters will argue about the “wrong” part because they always have the caveat that they’re just making educated guesses.  The main takeaway is this.  It’s going to be close.

Every vote counts.

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[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4889632-latest-polls-white-house-race/

[2] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/05/fivethirtyeight-hires-g-elliott-morris-loses-nate-silver.html

[3] https://www.newsweek.com/kamala-harris-pennsylvania-poll-lead-donald-trump-1968067

[4] https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2024/09/29/allan-lichtman-election-prediction-system-explained/75352476007/

[5] https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4920904-allan-lichtman-kamala-harris-october-surprise-2024/

Final stretch

 

(9.5-minute read) 

Even though the publicity was almost entirely negative, there was a great deal of it, and that drew a tremendous amount of attention to Trump Tower. Almost immediately we saw an upsurge in the sales of apartments. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, and in truth it probably says something perverse about the culture we live in. But I’m a businessman, and I learned a lesson from that experience:  good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells.

Trump: The Art of the Deal, pages 175-176[1]

~

            Trump recognized that his support was perverse back in 1987 when he published this book.  His need for publicity is purposeful.  Trump wants publicity, good or bad.  Corporate media helps Trump pound in the lies with wall-to-wall coverage.  It worked then. 

It works now.

Finally got here

            As we enter the final stretch the rapist DonOLD Trump is visibly deteriorating before our very eyes.[2]  He shows up at rallies looking disheveled.  He’s low energy.  Really, he’s just a fraction of his former 2016 self.  He calls countries and leaders by the wrong names.  He gives non-answers to questions that are at times literally world jumbles.  He says that he will accomplish things within days or weeks that he didn’t accomplish when he was president.  Sometimes he just glitches out entirely on words.  He can barely hold onto a coherent train of thought.  His rhetoric is becoming even more vile and threatening.  He has dreams/concepts of committing violence against people.  Like Nixon Trump has an enemies list.[3] 

“One rough hour.  And I mean real rough.  The word will get out and it will end immediately.  It’ll end immediately.”[4] –DonOLD Trump

            If President Biden had said even a fraction of what Trump is spouting, corporate media would have given it wall to wall coverage and been calling him for him to step down.  Seriously.  Trump confused North Korea, Iran and Iraq multiple times.[5]  If they report Trump’s malfunctions at all they usually sane wash what he says or does.  Trump’s surrogates will jump through hoops to try and sane-itize Trump and claim that he talks in abstracts or doesn’t really mean what he says.  They portray Trump’s incoherency as being intellectual when in reality he speaks at the 4^th grade level.[6]  (That’s being charitable, others say 3^rd grade.)

No.  Mr. inject-some-bleach-ex-President the rapist Trump means the crazy shit he says and does. 

Trump has the depth of a shallow man.

Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?

            Of course we are.  For fuck’s sake, people, we were in a pandemic and thousands of people were dying and being hospitalized every day.  MAGA either likes to forget about the last year of Trump’s administration or their brains are as fried as his.  Trump was in office for 4 years not 3.  That last year still counts.  And Trump botched it bad.

Why isn’t Trump running on his actual record as President?  I mean besides saying that everything was the greatest in the history of the United States if not the world during his administration.  Trump utterly failed in his handling of the pandemic.  A few hundred thousand people died needlessly.  Naturally Mr. inject-some-bleach doesn’t accept responsibility and blames everyone else. 

& During Trump’s time in office a record number of guns were sold.[7]  & The murder rate went up.  & There were 1707 mass shootings in his 4 years.[8]  (Mass shootings continue to increase.  More guns.  More shootings.)  & Trump got rid of Roe v. Wade.  & He still claims that everybody wanted him to do that.  & The longest government shutdown in American history happened.  (He tried again during this 2024 election cycle but was unable to get enough MAGA Republicans to go along with it.)  & He withheld $400 million in aid to Ukraine.  & He is estimated to have made over $160,000,000 off of foreign nations while he was in office.[9]  & The Saudis gave Jared and Ivanka a couple billion dollars to play around with.[10]  & In spite of saying that he wouldn’t have time to play golf when he was President taxpayers paid $141 million for him to golf 279 times while he was President.[11]  & I’ll stop with a short list this time. 

            There are a couple of points that I’ll make early in what will be a lengthy piece.

            & Trump will lose the popular vote even if he gets elected again because of the electoral college. 

            & At a rally Trump said that when he gets reelected, he’ll change Ft. Liberty’s name back to Ft. Bragg.[12]  The crowd went wild.  White racists eat this stuff up!  Ft. Bragg was named after a Confederate General that was relieved of his command by Jefferson Davis for being a poor commander. 

& That so many cheered renaming a fort back to a racist General that helped try to overthrow our democracy sums up why so many racists support the racist Trump. 

This is the MAGA ideology and morality.

Things to come.

            Trump’s dominant policies are playing the perpetual victim, lying, hate, and revenge.  He wants to stop people, not just media, from being able to say anything bad about him.  He wants his political opposition tried and jailed.  He wants people hurt.  Physically hurt.  He talks about having a day of violence when President and the MAGA Supremes have given him immunity.  (If Vice President Kamala loses should President Biden have a day of real rough violence against MAGA leadership?  Would he have the same immunity that Trump claims?)

            And this is as good place as any to interject that yes, Trump’s being tried in multiple courts.  He along with some of his supporters and associates committed multiple state and federal crimes when he tried to overthrow our democracy.  Yes, usually it’s innocent until proven guilty but then Trump keeps bragging about the crimes he committed. 

            Prosecutor Jack Smith is doing document dumps of the evidence that he has gathered, 165 pages so far with several hundred more to be released.  The evidence Smith has gathered came from MAGA Republicans not Democrats or political opposition.  Cabinet members.  Aids.  Advisors. Assistants.  Appointees.  Lawyers.  People from his inner circle.  People that were with him almost every day.  They are uniform in their opinions of what kind of man Trump is.  Over 70 witnesses have testified so far before Grand Juries.  Republicans. 

            The only reason that all this is taking place now right before the election is because Trump dragged the procedures out every step of the way in every criminal case that he’s involved in.  You know why? 

Trump knows he’s guilty.

Immigrants are the new Jews.

            Like Nazis scapegoated the Jews MAGA scapegoats immigrants.  Trump uses the same playbook that the Nazis did.  Practically every question that Trump’s asked he responds with the evils of immigrants.  Whether the question is about crime, the shortage of housing, economics, hospitals, childcare, hurricane relief, you name it MAGA blames immigrants.  Trump throws around numbers that are at best misleading and often wholly inaccurate.  Like when he mentions crime statistics that cover 40 years as if they all belong to the Biden Administration when in fact they come from lots of administrations, including his. 

            Before I go any further Trump did not have a copy of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”[13]  He was given a copy of “My New Order” by a friend.  His ex-wife said that he read from it.  Trump said that he didn’t.  His running mate JD Vance once called Trump “America’s Hitler.”[14] 

            What Trump is doing mirrors what Nazis did during Hitler’s rise to power.  Because Trump, like the Nazis, lumps in LGBTQIA people and the disabled with his comments. 

That didn’t end well for Germany or the world.

Guardrails will be gone

            If the rapist Trump wins this time there will be NO guardrails to stop him from executing any of his dark impulses for vengeance and taking government apart.  He will be surrounded by sycophants and enablers.  Trump is a billionaire dilettante buffoon that can’t be believed and is easily manipulated.  The dictators that Trump admires aren’t afraid of him.  All they have to do is sit back and watch MAGA take the country apart without ever having to fire a shot.  Look at the damage that MAGA has already done already to our nation since they slimed upon the scene.  Thanks to the MAGA Supremes and their take on “presidential immunity”, Trump will be free and unfettered to execute his policies of revenge and hate.

            Trump will be free to round up Hispanics.  When Trump first started running for office in 2015 he made racist remarks about Mexicans that got him fired from his show the Apprentice.[15]  There are a lot of Hispanics citizens that will be caught up in Trump’s violent raids to be sent to camps.  Yet there are Hispanics that support his racism.  If you support MAGA and Trump you support racism. 

MAGA won’t stop with immigrants.

Stiffing people.

            Trump has been stiffing working people most of his adult life.  He learned it from his racist daddy.  I’m not going to do another list here because the list would be too long.  Trump stiffs or grifts municipalities, vendors, employees, lawyers.  Good grief, he even stiffed Rudi Giuliani on $2 million in legal fees![16] 

            What Trump says he’ll do and what he actually does can be two entirely different things.  President Obama had passed a rule increasing the number of people eligible to receive overtime pay to 4.2 million people.  Trump cut that back to 1.2 million people with his rule that reduced the number of new people eligible to receive overtime.[17]  Trump and MAGA Republicans opposed increasing people eligible to receive overtime.  So now the man that bragged about cheating workers out of overtime pay says that he’ll eliminate the tax on overtime in order to curry union votes.[18]    

Trump’s actions say otherwise.

Same 2020 threats

            Trump is making the same claims about Harris that he made about Biden in 2020.  An economic collapse didn’t happen.  Instead President Biden, with VP Harris at his side, put our nation’s economy back together.  Not an easy feat but Biden pulled it off. 

            Trump made a lot of dire predictions about what would happen in 2020 if Biden was elected.[19]  Trump said that the stock market would collapse.[20]  It didn’t.  Instead it has achieved record highs.  Trump claimed would be a depression, the auto industry would be eradicated, there would be a total locked down, there wouldn’t be any Christmas or other holidays, guns would be confiscated, religion would be gone, oil would be taken away, We’d have to learn to speak Chinese because China would own the United States, the suburbs would be destroyed, police departments across America would be defunded, and on and on. 

None of his predictions came true.

https://yadayadayadablahblah.blogspot.com/

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump:_The_Art_of_the_Deal

[2] Deteriorating, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0vdmf_cIsU

[3] https://exhibits.lib.unc.edu/exhibits/show/watergate/nixon-s-enemies-list

[4] https://www.c-span.org/video/?538747-1/president-trump-campaigns-erie-pennsylvania

[5] Confused, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0vdmf_cIsU

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/06/us/politics/trump-speeches-age-cognitive-decline.html

[7] https://www.factcheck.org/2021/10/trumps-final-numbers/

[8] https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/

[9] https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/10/trump-foreign-business-deals-1020

[10] https://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-addresses-2-billion-given-saudis-1869757

[11] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/278-years-golf/

[12] Ft. Liberty back to Ft. Bragg, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFXk6qAGM6U

[13] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-hitler-mein-kampf/

[14] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-hitler-vance-quote/

[15] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fired-the-apprentice/

[16] https://www.newsweek.com/rudy-giuliani-doesnt-collect-trump-money-election-georgia-defamation-1966289

[17] Trump overtime rule, https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/aug/20/tim-walz/fact-check-tim-walz-misleads-about-trump-and-overt/

[18] Hated overtime, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nYSghlnIjyA

[19] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/apocalypse-delayed-trump-promising-doom-never-comes-rcna170151

[20] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-stock-market-prediction/