Trump Needs His Own Fool-for-Christ
The president and commander-in-chief needs a spiritual adviser more reliable than Paula White—one with the wisdom of a holy fool.
Of all the murderous tyrants in history’s bloodstained pages, modern commentators still regard Ivan the Terrible as uniquely sadistic. Yet his lukewarm Orthodox Christian faith tempered his worst instincts by providing him with a higher caliber of spiritual advice than leaders in the modern, secular, democratic West will ever receive.
Ivan the Terrible planned to slaughter all the citizens of Pskov during Great Lent of 1570. After Ivan opted merely to sack the city, its most revered saint invited the tsar to dinner and offered him raw meat.
“I am a Christian, and I do not eat meat during Lent,” Ivan objected.
“But you drink human blood,” replied St. Nicholas (Salos) of Pskov, the Fool-For-Christ.
His words cut the tsar to the heart, and he ordered his army to depart in peace.
If only a modern-day fool-for-Christ could stir the conscience of President Donald Trump.
Perhaps by providence, the Orthodox Church commemorates St. Nicholas of Pskov on February 28, the day President Trump launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran. That day, U.S. forces lobbed two Tomahawk missles into Shajarah Tayyebeh, an all-girls elementary school in the village of Minab, killing an estimated 175 civilians, mostly children. A preliminary Pentagon investigation pinned the schoolgirls’ deaths on the United States.
“I’m willing to live with that,” declared President Trump.
Indeed, President Trump threatened full-blown war crimes on the morning of April 5 —Easter morning for Catholics and Protestants (Palm Sunday for the Orthodox). “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” wrote the president. “There will be nothing like it!!! Open the [expletive] Strait, you crazy [expletive], or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.” The president’s capitalized signature indicated he wrote the message personally. Two days later, he reaffirmed, “A whole civilization will die tonight.” He made similar threats on April 19, backed by neoconservative United Nations Ambassador Mike Waltz.
The messages jarred even those of us who recognize President Trump’s use of brinkmanship. Yet the president followed genocide with blasphemy on Orthodox Pascha, posting an AI-generated meme of himself dressed as Jesus Christ and healing a sick man with his touch. Between turns lashing out at Pope Leo XIV, Trump deleted the image and claimed he thought it depicted him “as a doctor.”
The fault for President Trump’s outrageous posts belongs, in part, to his spiritual advisers: the team of doomsday cultists, prosperity preachers, and apocalyptists who puffed up his ego while propounding a theology that dehumanizes Israel’s enemies.
Today’s house prophets are led by twice-divorced female “pastor” Paula Furr Knight White Cain, who has claimed to have “a priestly anointing”, boasted of using Christians’ tithes to rebuild an Israeli city, and compared Trump to Jesus.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who recited a prayer based on a misquotation of Ezekiel 25:17 in Quentin Taratino’s Pulp Fiction. He, too, has compared Trump to Jesus[LINK].
The scion of American spiritual royalty, Franklin Graham, prayed for Trump’s victory over “Islamic lunatics” as he dismissed the blasphemous photo controversy as “a lot to do about nothing”. Graham falsely asserted that the meme had “no spiritual references—no halo, there were no crosses, no angels.” (The image clearly depicted a woman praying, apparently to Trump, as a glowing, winged, demonic-looking figure flies overhead and healing light radiates from Trump’s left hand. Anyone conversant with Orthodox iconography understands the implication.)
Not to be outdone, Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) declaimed President Trump “almost the Second Coming".
Sometimes war is inevitable, though it’s not at all clear that applies to this conflict. When reluctantly waged, war must minimize the loss of civilian life and never target life-supporting infrastructure. Nor should one stir the region’s simmering ethnic hatreds or gloss over them with a thick coat of theological lipstick.
Yet Trump’s spiritual orbit baptizes bloodshed. Mike Huckabee remains ambassador to Israel, despite sparking an international incident after giving the IDF his personal imprimatur to occupy Greater Israel from the Suez to Iraq. Officers in Hegseth’s military reportedly told soldiers, “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark [Jesus’] return to Earth.”
President Trump rightly believes God has a plan for him after sparing his life by a fraction of an inch on July 13, 2024. His coterie of advisers has clearly weaponized his nascent faith by teaching that the Lord raised him up “for such a time as this”: to “bless” the nation of Israel and militarily destroy its enemies.
Trump obeyed by helping Israel put al-Qaeda in charge of Syria and enable anti-Christian persecution, then bombing Iran, whipping up a plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its Palestinian population, sitting inertly as Israel destroys Christian villages and statues of Jesus in Lebanon, then repeatedly threatening Iran with genocide. Netanyahu fed him his 30-year-old canard that Iran stood moments away from acquiring a nuclear weapon and that victory would come swiftly and easily.
Trump’s dispensationalist brain trust can only excuse these civilizational sins by wrapping them in a doubly false theology: that God smiles on every tactic employed by the IDF, and that Trump is a messianic figure for whom standard rules do not apply.
To facilitate Trump’s compliance, they fed his ego—something an Orthodox priest would recognize as the passion of pride, the root of every other sin, including blasphemy and murder of the innocent. This war killed an estimated 1,616 Iranian civilians and counting; that includes 244 children, not including other nations’ casualties. And more death is likely coming. The president says he is deescalating the war, yet he has moved at least 50,000 troops and 15 naval ships to the region and demands $4.5 billion to rebuild our depleted Tomahawk missile stockpile.
President Trump boasts of having a “very good brain”—an assertion that frequently bears itself out. But the most important aspect of a ruler’s training remains the state of his soul.
If only one of the president’s advisers pointed him to Righteous Admiral Theodore Ushakov of the Russian Naval Fleet (1745-1817, commemorated October 2), who cleared the Black Sea of the Turks (apparently Israel’s next target). “His prime task was not to secure victory at all costs, but to do so by preserving the lives of those entrusted unto him,” noted one account, and he “displayed unbelievable clemency towards his enemies.” He never lost a battle, never lost a man to death or imprisonment, and never made a decision without attending Divine Liturgy.
If only one had referred him to St. Constantine the Great, who heeded a divine vision to emblazon his soldiers’ shields with the Chi Rho.
If only one had mentioned Ivan the Terrible who, however reviled by most of history, had spiritual advisers who knew God’s will is not warfare, grifting, and flattery.
If only one of President Trump’s spiritual advisers had the wisdom of a holy fool.
Rev. Benjamin Johnson is rector of Christ the Saviour Orthodox Church (OCA) in Byesville, Ohio. His views are his own. Visit his website and follow him on Twitter.
