The Gospel According to Trump: Lies, Lust, and “Liberty”

From Bible-thumping at dawn to Epstein’s birthday note at dusk, the adjudicated sexual predator asks America to pray while proving once again that deceit is his only true religion.

Donald Trump spent his morning bathing in applause at the Museum of the Bible, framed by stained glass and sycophants. “We are one nation under God, and we always will be,” he proclaimed, before launching into the kind of overwrought sermonette you’d expect from a televangelist trying to fill a jet-fuel budget.

He told the faithful: “To have a great nation, you have to have religion. I believe that so strongly.” He promised that his Department of Education would issue “new guidance protecting the right to prayer in our public schools. And it’s total protection.” He vowed to defend “the Judeo-Christian principles of our founding” and thundered, “We have to bring back religion in America. Bring it back stronger than ever before.”

All this while he basked in the glow of his “Trump family Bible” now placed on display, “used in both my inaugurations,” he said proudly, as if the fingerprints of a con man elevated the Word of God.

The man who bragged about gutting the Johnson Amendment, declaring, “We got rid of it. You have got because you’re the people we want to hear from,” stood at the podium promising to return America to piety, purity, and prayer.

For anyone unfamiliar, the Johnson Amendment is a 1954 provision in the federal tax code that bars churches and other tax-exempt nonprofits from explicitly endorsing or opposing political candidates. In other words, if you want to keep your tax-free status, you don’t get to double as a campaign PAC. Trump keeps insisting he “got rid of it,” but that’s pure fiction, Congress never repealed it. What his administration did was signal that the IRS would look the other way, a wink-and-nod invitation for pastors to stump from the pulpit without fear of enforcement. The law still exists, and no, he did not smite it into oblivion from on high.

And then the afternoon happened.

The Wall Street Journal dropped the receipt he swore didn’t exist: a birthday note Donald Trump signed for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th back in 2003. The note wasn’t just a friendly scribble, it was printed inside the outline of a naked woman and concluded, “Happy Birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump had called reports of such a note a hoax. He lied. Again. Congress now has the copy. And in the meantime, he even filed suit against the Journal and Rupert Murdoch for reporting on it, an effort to gag the messenger while the evidence, in his own hand, was making its way into the record.

It’s hard to overstate the stench of that juxtaposition. Morning Bible thumping, afternoon proof of a long-running, intimate friendship with a convicted pedophile that he still pretends never happened. The spectacle of Trump wrapping himself in prayer while we can all now see, in his own hand, that he cavorted and joked with Epstein about “wonderful secrets.” You have to ask: which religion is this, exactly, the one where the first commandment is “thou shalt lie, constantly, and about everything”? Because Trump doesn’t just fib; he lies on a biblical scale, weaving falsehoods into scripture while his flock nods along as if deceit were a sacrament.

And if that weren’t enough irony for a single day, there’s the reminder that Donald J. Trump is already an adjudicated sexual predator. Two separate juries ruled that he sexually abused and defamed writer E. Jean Carroll. An appeals court just upheld the $83.3 million judgment against him. That comes on top of the $5 million verdict from the first trial. The court explained why punitive damages had to be so high: Trump “continued to repeat the statements that a jury had already found to be defamatory…within 48 hours after the verdict at a CNN town hall.” He couldn’t stop himself. He still hasn’t.

So here we are: the man who led a hallelujah chorus at the Museum of the Bible, “As our country grows stronger and stronger…good things happen for our country. It’s amazing the way it seems to work that way”, is the same man who signs leering tributes to Epstein and owes Carroll nearly $90 million for sexual abuse and lies.

His supporters, of course, roared with approval as he thundered, “We will never apologize for our faith. Ever, ever, never, never. We will never surrender our God-given rights. We will defend our liberties, our values, our sovereignty, and we will defend our freedom.”

But the reality is that his “glorious heritage” is one of sexual assault, deceit, and friendship with a pedophile. The Trump family Bible now sits under glass at the Museum of the Bible. The Trump birthday letter to Epstein sits in the hands of Congress. And E. Jean Carroll sits vindicated by the courts.

That is the gospel according to Donald Trump. And may every day, for his dwindling flock, be another shameful secret revealed.