The Orange Jesus Thing - by Joe Klein
Okay, this thing is getting pretty weird now. If you haven’t seen the “God Made Trump” ad above, you absolutely must. I thought it was a joke at first—a parody ad you might see on Saturday Night Live. But it’s not. Trump’s campaign is responsible for this satanic heresy. It represents a new level of craziness—the Orange Jesus thing made manifest. Trump is embracing his inner messiah. And it represents a certain reality in the Republican Party: I watched a clip of a Trump voter in Iowa the other day, a woman, who said—calmly, with the utter conviction of a mind-snatched cultist—that the legal cases against Big Orange were a sign from God that Trump had been sent to suffer for our sins. We have entered the Elmer Gantry stage of the Trump candidacy. It’s getting to be overtly religious.
And Trump himself seems to think he can walk on water. He can say any outrageous thing—that he hopes, for example, the economy will crash in the next year—without consequence. This week he had his lawyers affirm in Washington’s District Court of Appeals, that as President he could order Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political opponent and not be prosecuted for it unless he was tried and impeached by the Congress. And then there was the infamous Christmas message, a litany of people and things he hates—”lunatic” Jack Smith, electric cars etc and so forth—and the greeting: May they rot in hell. Merry Christmas.
All of which is made more terrifying by the fact that Trump has hit his stride as a candidate. There is no one who can compare to him as a performance artist…well, there was one, Chris Christie, and he’s gone now. Charlie Sykes, who has been on a hair-on-fire never-Trump roll these past few weeks, gives Christie’s candidacy an appropriate obituary. If you didn’t see the Jersey Boy’s farewell address, you missed the most compelling event on a day full of politics—the Haley/DeSantis debate, the Trump town hall on Fox. Here’s a bit of it:
I want you to imagine for a second that Jefferson and Hamilton and Adams and Washington and Franklin were sitting here tonight.
Do you think they could imagine that the country they risked their lives to create would actually be having a conversation about whether a convicted criminal should be president of the United States?
I can’t tell you how many people in New Hampshire have asked me why isn’t there a law against that?
The answer is because nobody ever thought that someone would have the audacity to run for president as a criminal and they never thought that any American electorate would actually support it.
It’s not their fault that they didn’t put it in the Constitution, along with 35 years old and a natural born American citizen. They didn’t think, let’s throw in here “and not a criminal”.
They thought maybe we’d get that part.
We’re going to show them now whether we do or we don’t in the next ten months.
Do we get it, or don’t we?
I’ve always respected Christie for his willingness to take on the teachers union in New Jersey—an act of true courage, especially after the union methodically bought the Republicans in the state legislature for a bullet-proof majority. He made a fool of himself in 2016, supporting Trump and he copped to it, bluntly, this year. I hope he has a future in national politics. He’d make a great Attorney General. (In fact, here’s a thought: It might be fun if Biden appointed him to replace Merrick Garland before the general election—Christie would be one hell of a campaign surrogate, driving Trump crazy…and the appointment would give a necessary bipartisan crisis-cabinet patina to Biden’s candidacy.)
The more immediate question is about Christie’s open mic comments regarding Haley and DeSantis that, sadly, stepped on his farewell address: He said Haley would get “smoked” by Trump and that DeSantis was “petrified.” Was that resentment or truth-telling? Maybe a little of both. I switched back and forth between Trump’s town hall on Fox and the Haley/DeSantis debate on CNN last night.
Trump seemed entirely in control…and rightly so. As my podcast partner—and Fox alum—John Ellis pointed out on Night Owls: The Murdochs, who were hoping for someone other than Trump as the GOP nominee, have capitulated to Big Orange: the fact that they scheduled the town hall directly opposite the CNN debate is a sure sign, as Ellis says, that they’re “waving the white flag.” Trump is the Fox candidate now.
Which seems a safe bet for Rupert after watching Haley get tangled up in DeSantis hell for two hours on CNN. As I said, I switched back and forth so I didn’t get a full dose, but I did see Haley cite her website DeSantislies.com more than a few times more than was absolutely necessary. It was inevitable, I guess: DeSantis was standing right next to her, doing his usual stuff. Desantislies must have seemed an effective shorthand in debate prep, but it came across—after a while—as concrete harsh. In fact, Haley wasn’t as smooth and commanding as she usually is…and you have to wonder how she’d fare one-on-one with Trump. Because that may be the next big thing in this campaign.
You’ve got to figure DeSantis is toast. He’s even slipped behind Haley in Iowa, according to a couple of polls (the real Iowa poll, by the legendary Ann Selzer, will drop on Saturday night). It is entirely possible that New Hampshire will be Haley v. Trump (plus the ghost of Ramaswamy)…which looks like a tossup at the moment. So, the question: Will Trump, feeling his messianic oats, decide to debate Haley in New Hampshire? I’d guess he would. I'd guess he’s sure he’ll “smoke” her. And I’m not sure he’s wrong: After all, he’s God’s Chosen One. (Although he might insist Ramaswamy be included in the debate as Messiah Insurance.)
Final word goes to H.L. Mencken, quoted by Charlie Sykes:
“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”
A good friend, a charter Sanity Caucus member, asked me: Is it possible that Netanyahu allowed the October 7 massacre in order to have an excuse to pummel Gaza?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but: NO! This disgusting theory seems to be making the rounds among Jew-hating conspiracists. I can’t imagine a more loathsome slander. It ranks up there with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the blood libel—that Jews use the blood of Christian children to make Passover matzohs.
I’ve stated my reservations about Israel’s strategy in Gaza and my disgust with Bibi’s right-wing coalition, but when I’ve wandered over to Facebook, I’ve found the left-wing anti-Zionism vomitous. There is a zeal to Jew-hatred that is primal, almost visceral. It’s like an addiction: once it gets rolling, it just doesn’t stop, it intensifies.
Which leads me to this: Joe Biden’s support for Israel may be the most courageous position taken by a presidential candidate this year. It may cost him Michigan, with that state’s large Arab population. If he loses Michigan, it will probably cost him the election. And then we get the apocalypse—Orange Jesus, sent by God to destroy America.
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