The Gospel According to Trump

A prime-time war address, an Easter luncheon turned into a self-worship rally, and a final reminder that the real story of this era is cruelty made routine.

Good morning! This essay is coming to you under less-than-ideal conditions, with my connectivity acting like it has one hand tied behind its back and me doing my best to wrestle order out of chaos before the hardware store opens and I can go see whether a new 20 amp breaker saves the day. Unfortunately, the news remains fully operational even when the internet is not, and last night Donald Trump gave us yet another reminder that the most dangerous people in this country can still be spectacularly unimpressive while doing enormous harm.

Trump’s prime-time address turned out to be exactly what many suspected it would be: a tired, reheated plate of talking points served with extra self-congratulation. He declared victory, insisted the mission was nearly complete, threatened even more destruction over the coming weeks, and somehow managed to sound bored by his own script while doing it. The whole thing had the unmistakable feel of a man stumbling back into his greatest-hits routine because there was nothing new to say and not much energy left to say it with.

The reaction was about what you would expect when a president calls a prime-time address and then uses it to say almost nothing. It was widely described as a rehash with no real new announcements. Hopes for a swift end to the war only seemed to dim further afterward. If the goal was to reassure the public, calm the markets, or convince anyone that there is an actual endgame here beyond vibes, threats, and delusions of grandeur, it failed spectacularly. Oil prices jumped as he spoke and kept climbing afterward, which is a pretty blunt way of saying that the markets listened to the speech and immediately decided it was time for a stiff drink.

If Trump seemed oddly flat during that address, it may be because he had already spent a good chunk of the day burning through his available energy at the White House Easter luncheon, where he turned what was supposed to be a religious observance into a one-man pageant of self-worship, war talk, and political grievance. He dispensed with the usual Easter, resurrection, gratitude, or even a half-hearted “He is risen,” and opened with a reminder that he likes this crowd better than the people he normally has to stand in front of. From there he veered straight into Iran, bragging that the United States was “winding that up,” boasting about bombing campaigns, and talking like the Easter lunch had been accidentally double-booked with a Pentagon fan-fiction workshop.

He mocked NATO, sneered at allies, took shots at Macron, the UK, and Biden, and generally turned the opening stretch into a geopolitical chest-thumping session with a side of personal grievance. At one point, bragging about how little he thought of allied help, he said, “We blasted the hell out of them out of Iran,” before dismissing NATO as “a paper tiger.” Very Bethlehem. Only after all that did he seem to remember the event was, in fact, about Easter. Around six minutes in he finally arrived at “Happy Easter,” which is roughly the amount of time it takes a normal person to butter a second dinner roll, not detour through Iran, NATO, and fantasies of global humiliation. Even then he could not stay on script for more than a few seconds before wandering off to tell Erica Kirk, who has recently been trolled by a comedian for her theater of grief, she should “sue their ass off.” Nothing says Holy Week like turning the White House into a legal-advice kiosk run by a man who thinks vengeance is a spiritual gift.

From there the speech became the usual Trump buffet: self-congratulation, campaign strategy, authoritarian whining, and the compulsive urge to turn every topic into a mirror so he could admire himself in it. He praised his political allies for knocking on “10 million” doors, then bluntly reframed the Easter gathering as a midterm mobilization pitch: “Now we got to do it for the midterms. Hate to tell you, otherwise they’re going to take it all away.” He even managed to reduce JD Vance to a human warranty policy, joking, “If it doesn’t happen, I’m blaming JD Vance. If it does happen, I’m taking full credit.” And when he drifted back into his favorite sulk about the courts, the message was the same as ever: institutions are only legitimate when they kneel correctly, which is why he complained that Republican judges try too hard to show “their independence” and called them, flatly, “stupid people.”

He wandered through the usual sludge of resentment and conspiracy, launching into attacks on immigrants, judges, Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, supposed fraud, education, and whatever else floated past his line of sight. Minnesota, in particular, got the full fever-swamp treatment, with Trump ranting, “They come from Somalia… they’re all crooked in Minnesota,” before calling Omar “a stone-cold crook.” It was the standard mix of racism, grievance, and made-up certainty, delivered with the casual confidence of a man who thinks saying something loudly is the same as proving it. Then, because no Trump event is complete without real-estate braggadocio, he launched into another loving riff about building a lavish White House ballroom, bragging that it would cost “anywhere from 300 to 400 million dollars depending on finishes,” and musing that they could always use “Home Depot tile” to save money. As if the Easter story had really been missing a Mar-a-Lago banquet hall.

To be fair, there was an Easter segment buried in there somewhere. He did eventually mention Palm Sunday, the crucifixion, and the resurrection. He spoke briefly about faith, charity, and Holy Week. But even there he could not resist dragging himself into the center of the theology. Recounting Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, he quipped, “They call me king now. Do you believe it? … I’m such a king. I can’t get a ballroom approved.” Then, pivoting to Christ’s arrest and betrayal, he added, “He was really betrayed. We know the feeling. Many of the people in this room know the feel.” It was less reflection than spiritual identity theft, with Trump wedging his own martyr complex into the holiest week of the Christian calendar. Once that brief hostage situation involving Christianity ended, he snapped right back into culture-war mode, boasting that he is “bringing back religion,” that he “saved Christmas,” and that “woke is gone,” before tumbling into one of his usual ugly, obsessive rants. By the time the prayers began and his religious allies were effectively presenting him as a divinely chosen instrument in an apocalyptic political struggle, the whole thing had curdled into something beyond parody. Easter, in this telling, was no longer about Christ conquering death. It was about Trump surviving criticism and demanding applause for it.

And that, really, is the larger problem with this moment. The performance is ridiculous until you remember that the consequences are not. The speechifying is empty until you remember that empty men can still order bombings, inflame wars, destabilize economies, and normalize cruelty at industrial scale. Trump’s prime-time address was low-energy nonsense. His Easter luncheon was grotesque self-worship dressed up in religious pageantry. Both were ridiculous in form, but neither was harmless in substance.

Which brings us to the story that should bring this whole morning into focus. U.S. border agents left Nurul Amin Shah, a 56-year-old Rohingya refugee who was visually impaired, outside a Tim Hortons in Buffalo on a freezing night. He later died from complications of a perforated duodenal ulcer, worsened by hypothermia and dehydration, and his death has now been ruled a homicide. After surviving genocide, persecution, and displacement, Shah was discarded in the United States like he did not matter. He did matter. He had a name, and we owe it to him to say it.

So that is where we leave things this morning: with the usual mess, the usual madness, and a reminder of what is actually at stake beneath all the noise. I’m still doing battle with the connectivity gremlins here at home, and my iPhone has been pulling extra duty as a hotspot for the desktop, which is admirable in a pinch but no proper substitute for a fiber optic connection that actually behaves itself. Marz and I will make the pilgrimage to the hardware store, where he will no doubt enjoy himself immensely despite their cruel and shortsighted decision to stop offering treats. That has never stopped him before and he will still plant his front paws on the checkout counter and ask anyway, because hope springs eternal. Honestly, that is about where I am too at this point, standing here with crossed fingers and a new breaker in my future, hoping to restore a little order to the house before the next round of chaos arrives.