Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 20,000 daily subscribers and over 8,000 archived posts.
Jon Queally: Just Hours After Anti-Semitic Remarks, Trump Promotes Himself as ‘King of Israel… Second Coming of God’
“The President is a raving lunatic,” responded Florida Democrat Andrew Gillum. “He is not well.”
After the #DisloyaltoTrump hashtag went viral overnight in response to President Donald Trump accusing any person of Jewish faith who voted Democratic of being disloyal to the United States, the president sparked fresh concerns about his mental health Wednesday morning after he tweeted quotes from one of his right-wing supporters who said Trump was like “the King of Israel” and compared Trump to “the second coming of God.”
Thanking radio host and self-described “warrior conservative” Wayne Allyn Root for his “very nice words,” the president tweeted:
“Thank you to Wayne Allyn Root for the very nice words. “President Trump is the greatest President for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world, not just America, he is the best President for Israel in the history of the world…and the Jewish people in Israel love him….
….like he’s the King of Israel. They love him like he is the second coming of God…But American Jews don’t know him or like him. They don’t even know what they’re doing or saying anymore. It makes no sense! But that’s OK, if he keeps doing what he’s doing, he’s good for…..
….all Jews, Blacks, Gays, everyone. And importantly, he’s good for everyone in America who wants a job.” Wow!
.
Reactions of disgust and worry quickly followed online. Rabbi Andy Kahn responded:
This thread, not a full day after calling American Jewish Democrats disloyal, is eschatological antisemitism from a right wing extremist. It draws a line between good (right wing and/or Israeli) and bad (liberal) Jews. This is stochastic terrorism.
Jeet Heer pointed out:
Trump is quoting someone who calls him “the King of Israel” on par with “the second coming of God.” Two things: 1) it’s weird & offensive to say, in effect, “Jews love him like he’s Jesus.” 2) Christians should see this as blasphemy but many, especially in USA, won’t.
Most responses on Twitter were more pointed, for example, Mike Elk’s:
Trump just described himself as the King of Israel – holy shit
“The President is a raving lunatic,” Democrat Andrew Gillum, who ran for governor last year in Florida, tweeted just after Trump’s tweets. “He is not well.”
First published in Common Dreams. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.
Discover more from Vox Populi
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I don’t know why Trump’s Evangelical followers are not screaming about idolatry.
Perhaps Trump should, for a moment, consider Reinhold Niebuhr, who, in his “Nature And Destiny Of Man”, defines not simply idolatry but sin itself as, “the vain imagination by which man hides the conditioned, contingent and dependent character of his existence, and seeks to give it the appearance of unconditioned reality” (Vol.1, 178).
Or perhaps Trump should simply consider The Shema. “Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Eḥad: Hear, O Israel: the LORD is our God, the LORD is One” (Deut. 6:4). Trump would do well to also consider that Jesus, when asked in Luke 10 about the highest commandment, began with The Shema, then concluded, “And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
But then I suppose Trump would have to read …
LikeLiked by 1 person
“I am the chosen one.” My favorite psychoanalyst wonders — and she is hardly alone in this speculation— if Trump is psychotic.
LikeLiked by 1 person