So God Made Trump

Sorry to be late - we've been busy reliving our glorious, bear-spray-tinged Jan. 6 triumph - but good news from on high about our beloved leader's tireless efforts to make us great again and avoid prison. Even as he resolutely persists in declaiming his Truths - Jan. 6 was all FBI, the real insurrection is by migrants, wet magnets don't work, the Civil War was unwarranted, he puts on his own kingly pants - God has now chosen him as our "caretaker" to "work all day, fight the Marxists, shape an axe." Oh God. Save us.

Three years after an unholy insurrection that's seen over 1,230 yahoos charged with federal crimes from assaulting police to seditious conspiracy, Joe Biden wisely chose Jan. 6 as the frame of reference for his first major campaign speech. Standing at Valley Forge and citing George Washington's belief in democracy as a "sacred cause" worth fighting for even as his troops lacked food and blankets, Biden recalled the day "we nearly lost America, all of it," asked voters if democracy is "still America's sacred cause," and argued that question is what "the 2024 election is all about." "America made a vow: Never again would we bow down to a king," noted Biden, yet here we are with a lying, crooked, twice-impeached, Hitler-quoting rapist charged with 91 felonies who still aspires to absolute power and is up-front vowing "a full scale campaign of revenge and retribution" in its name. "An assault on democracy isn't just part of his past," Biden warned. "It's what he promises for the future."

Meanwhile, implausibly, it turns out his past was even worse than we knew. Alas, we're so used to hearing awful things about The Former Guy - who we've decided to rename Bad Orange Guy, or BOG - that awful, newly emerging snippets have gotten criminally little coverage. To wit: The House's recent "White House For Sale" report showing he brazenly raked in at least $7.8 million from foreign governments, mostly China, a figure that reflects just two years of his reign and four of his over 500 businesses; it also ignores the cool $3 billion Jared and "the great Ivanka Trump" got from the Saudis even as BOG sneered about Biden's corruption in China. There's also the new studyshowing that, amidst the first wave of COVID and his first national crisis, Dr. Person Woman Man Camera TV may have facilitated the deaths of some 17,000 people by touting hydroxycholoroquine as a "miracle cure," albeit an evidence-free one, blithely babbling to millions of Americans, "What do you have to lose? Take it."

Then there's Jan. 6. New evidence from Jack Smith, reported by ABC News, reveals a "shockingly derelict" president refusing to act to stop the carnage because he was "just not interested" and glued to Fox News. Finally corralled by a Grand Jury subpoena, his own staffers said BOG's response to Pence being in danger was "So what?", for hours he sat silent, arms crossed, eyes "locked" on the TV: "It was very unsettling," and only after everyone present had freaked out did Jared get him to issue a video: "This was a fraudulent election (but) we have to have peace...We love you. You're very special." As to his claims of "a lot of love" that day, NBC got new video, shot by a rioter, of the screaming chaos. Facing guns aimed at them, the mob yells through shattered glass as they try to breach the House: "Coming for you Pelosi you socialist c**t! We own this house, fuck you! Fucking pedophiles, we know about your pedophilia! Freedom is at hand! Hang that motherfucker Mike Pence!" (Also, our fave, "I never had a ticket in my life!")

Former Capitol cop Michael Fanone, beaten and tasered by the mob to within an inch of his life, marked this Jan. 6 by urging every American to take seriously "the responsibility for upholding democracy" to ensure "the MAGA movement is extinguished." For now, it still oozes and spreads. In that Jan. 6 video, GOP Texas Rep. Troy Nehls confronts rioters, yelling, "You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!" He went on to vote against certifying Biden's election, and will be a witness for Trump in his 14th Amendment case. Rep. and House GOP leader Elise Stefanik just declined to commit to certifying the 2024 results: “We will see if this is a legal and valid election." Trump attorney Alina Habba went blatantly beyond saying the quiet part out loud when, asked about the odds of SCOTUS saving Trump from his 14th Amendment case, she cited the kind of pay-to-play loyalty so key to her Machiavellian client. "I have faith in them," she said. "People like Kavanaugh, who the president fought so hard for...He’ll step up."

Shamelessly leading the goose-stepping-up is - new name alert! - the Fanta Fuhrer, a prattling, yapping sociopath facing so many legal and political threats - moral or spiritual don't enter the equation - he'll veer as far into the indefensible or incoherent as needed to escape. Registering in Illinois' state primary, he refused to sign a pro forma oath not to try (again) to overthrow the government. Raving after Letitia James' called for a $370 million fine in his fraud case and a lifetime ban from New York real estate, he (again) went ALL CAPS: "NO VICTIM, CORRUPT A.G., WITCH HUNT!" To the bewilderment of Seth Meyers, he boasted about putting on his pants each day. Still "relentlessly stupid," he evidently confused magnetic with electrical fields and claimed magnets don't work when wet (don't ask). After a(nother) shooting, he tsked-tsked and told grieving residents to "get over it." No longer pretending, he said he hopes the economy - which he did his best to wreck - crashes in the next 12 months to make him look good.

Prepping for the first caucuses, he campaigned last weekend in Iowa, viewed by some as "the heartbeat" of both old-school evangelicals and new-guard Christian nationalists for whom religion is a means to Mike-Johnson-style power. Without mentioning the date, he said of Jan. 6, "There was Antifa, there was FBI - there were a lot of other people leading the charge," as ads for My Pillow popped up. "All of that stuff is gonna be written out on Day One." On "the J6 hostages": "Nobody has ever been treated in history so badly as those people. (Umm, slaves?) They've suffered enough. Release the J6 hostages, Joe. You can do it real easy." He deemed migrants on the southern border the real villains: “When you talk about insurrection, what they’re doing, that’s the real deal. Not patriotically and peacefully." He attacked Biden as "the real threat to democracy - be very careful, Joe" - Nikki Haley as a "globalist" - “Nikki will sell you out just like she sold me out" - and, one more time 'cause Grudges 'R Us, the late John McCain.

Alongside ads for a "free" Trumpbook.com, he also blundered and drug-sniffed through a memorable take on the Civil War, which he could have prevented: "It was so horrible but so fascinating. I dunno, it was just so different, I'm just so attracted to it. See, there was something that could have been negotiated...You had so many people die. No legs, no arms...Nothing nice about it...But Abraham Lincoln, you probably wouldn't even know who Abraham Lincoln was, he wouldn't have been the Abraham Lincoln, he would have been different, but that would be okay. It woulda been a thing...Uh...I know it very well. The whole process they went through...It was a hell of a time." (Kinda like now, maybe?) Often, he signed hats - and at least one Playboy with him on the cover - for fans. Dick Green wept after BOG autographed his "Trump Country" hat and shook his hand; a pastor in Brighton, Iowa, Green prayed for four years to meet Trump. "It'll never get sold," he said, gesturing tearfully to his sacred hat. "It will be in my family."

On Tuesday, BOG got a wee reality check when judges at D.C's Appeals Court seemed skeptical of what legal experts deem his "utterly unsustainable" claim of immunity from prosecution for trying to overturn the 2020 election results. While his lawyers argue it was part of his job as president, judges suggested it was "paradoxical" to say his Constitutional duty to ensure that laws are obeyed allows him to violate those laws - especially when his lawyers waffled awkwardly when asked if a president could, say, sell military secrets or "order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival." Unhappy to see his megolomania and delaying tactics questioned, he later doubled down, resorting to the usual "most people" who in this case "agree we're entitled to immunity" because he was "working for the country." For his trial, he reportedly still has plans, "outlandish and feral," to stage a "MAGA freak show," from dragging in Nancy Pelosi to "unmasking" the nefarious lawyers hounding him to blaming it all on Hezbollah. (Sure, ok.)

Despite....everything, MAGA-ites stay true. It's what cults do: See Sunday's chilling spectacle of hundreds of Italian fascists, here in the year of 2024, giving the "Roman salute." America's fascists, Jordan Klepper finds, are much more ludicrous, like the BOG fan holding a goofy, stoned-looking little dog and wearing an "I Could Shit A Better President" hat who says today's Trump is "more elevated, more mature." Others insist Trump is still president, "this Biden person doesn't have the presidential seal - it's pretty obvious," Trump is in charge of the military but just the good one, and "God has plans for Trump he doesn't even know about yet." "We Elect Presidents, Not Kings," read a protester's sign outside court today. But what about (shitty, profane) sons of God? We regret to inform you we have now arrived at the truly messianic, batshit-crazy, low-as-you-can-go end-times of America, wherein a sick, crass, moronic TV has-been and wannabee tyrant is heralded, per Paul Harvey's "So God Made a Farmer," as God's chosen one, with "arms strong enough to wrestle the deep state and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild" (WTF?!) who's "willing to go into the den of vipers." Go. Please. Right now.