Chain Email Calls Trump “Natural Born Killer,” Urges Christians to Vote for Him

Today we cover a pro-Trump chain email that is also circulating on Facebook.

A Message For Christians About Donald Trump

Here’s a famous joke about God and how he talks to us.

“A deeply faithful Christian man is stuck on roof at home with massive flooding up to the 2nd floor. Rowboat comes. He says “No, I’m waiting for God. I prayed and I know he’s coming.”  2nd Rowboat. “No, I’m waiting for God.” 3rd Rowboat. “No, I’m waiting for God.”

Water rises. The man drowns. Now he’s meeting God in heaven. The religious man says, “Where were you God? I prayed. I was faithful. I asked you to save me. Why would you abandon me?”

God says, “Hey, I sent you 3 rowboats.”  Did you ever consider Trump is our rowboat?

Or maybe it’s Clinton! Maybe Clinton is the rowboat! Did our anonymous author ever consider that? Of course he didn’t, because he’s the type who has mixed his religion with conservative politics until they are indistinguishable.

What justification does our writer offer have for believing that the Christian God wants his followers to vote for Trump?

Maybe God is trying to tell us something important–that now is not the time for a “nice Christian guy” or a “gentleman” or a typical Republican powder puff. Maybe now is the time for a natural born killer, a ruthless fighter, a warrior. Because right about now we need a miracle, or America is finished. Maybe the rules of gentlemen don’t apply here. Maybe a gentleman and “all-around nice Christian” would lead us to slaughter.

. . . a natural born killer?! Did I really just read that? Let’s look at it again.

Maybe now is the time for a natural born killer, a ruthless fighter, a warrior.

I. What. No. No, we do not need a natural born killer in the White House.

Also, look at this bit again:

Because right about now we need a miracle, or America is finished.

They said this in 2008. Obama was elected anyway. America is . . . oh hey, still here! But no, every election is this hugely important catastrophe waiting to happen. Look, I despise Trump, but I actually do think America would still be around in four years if he were elected. I think the Democrats in Congress would put up the fight of their lives, and that while Trump would do some very bad things—and women and minority groups would suffer the most—he wouldn’t be able to completely dismantle our republic. He might start a trade war. He might tank the economy. But we’d still be here in four years, and we’d have another election.

But returning to conservatives, I’d really like to hear them explain, in detail, why America is facing impending doom. What is this doom? What does it look like? I honestly don’t see it. Our national debt is high, yes, but there are other western countries with higher levels of debt (relative to their GDPs). We’re going to have to figure out how to restructure social security as our population ages, but that’s doable. Our economy is changing, and there are rough spots, but this isn’t anything we can’t get through. If this is about religion, no amount of politics is going to bring the “nones” back to the fold. So, what is it? Why is America at the edge of a cliff?

Anyway, back to our anonymous author’s words:

Or do you want another Mitt Romney, Bob Dole, John McCain, Gerald Ford or Paul Ryan? Did any of them win? Did they lead the GOP to “the promised land?” Did they change the direction of America ? No, because if you don’t win, you have no say.

Hang on, wait a moment. Does our anonymous author not know that the individuals he mentioned did sometimes win, and in fact served collective decades in Congress? Does he think the presidency is all that matters? The idea that the Republicans “had no say” after McCain and Romney lost makes me want to laugh.

The idea that you don’t get any say if you don’t win the presidency is bizarre—we don’t live in a dictatorship.

Note that our anonymous author does not mention Reagan or Bush. I have strong disagreements with both, and Bush started a war in the Middle East, but both played by the rules and won the presidency doing so. Why is our anonymous author only mentioning Republican presidential candidates who played by the rules and lost, and not those who played by the rules and won? You don’t have to be a “natural born killer” to win, regardless of what our anonymous author claims.

Paul Ryan couldn’t even deliver his own state, Wisconsin ! And as leader of the House, Paul Ryan rolls over to Obama like my dog rolls over for a scrap of food, or a steak bone.  Nice, but obedient. I mean Paul Ryan…not my dog. My dog is actually a pretty good defender and loyal.

WTF even is this bit?!

Okay, I just figured something out. Our anonymous writer is pretending he shares his readers’ presumed distaste for Trump, but he actually doesn’t. Actually, he loves Trump, with his “brash” talk and his willingness to “tell it like it is.” He’s only affecting he doesn’t in order to convince concerned evangelicals to vote for a man who boasts openly of committing sexual assault. Now this makes sense.

Maybe God is knocking on your door loudly, but you’re not listening. Maybe God understands we need a “war leader” at this moment in time. Maybe God understands if we don’t win this election, America is dead. It’s over. The greatest nation in world history will be gone. Finished. Kaput. Adios.

And with one last breath, maybe what we need to save us at the last second, is someone different. Someone you haven’t ever experienced before– because you weren’t raised in rough and tumble New York where nothing good gets accomplished unless you’re combative, aggressive, outrageous, on offense at all times, and maybe just a tad arrogant too.

Wait wait wait wait, Trump grew up in “rough and tumble New York”? Where do you think he went to school, the Bronx? Trump was born with a silver spoon in his mouth! He’s used to having everything handed to him. He’s not arrogant and an ass because he’s had to fight for what he has, he’s arrogant and an ass because he’s never had anyone with the seniority to call him on that. If we’re going with childhood analogies, he’s not the scrappy little fighter, he’s the snotty rich entitled bully.

Someone with a personality you’ve never seen on stage at your church. Maybe, just maybe, being a nice gentlemanly Christian would not beat Hillary and her billion dollars, and her best friends in the media who will unleash the dogs of hell upon the GOP nominee.

This guy clearly has a complex with regards to dogs.

I guess you think God is only nice and gentlemanly. Really? Then you’ve missed the whole point of the Bible. When necessary, God is pretty tough. When necessary, God strikes with pain, death and destruction. When necessary, God inflicts vengeance.  Maybe you think God couldn’t possibly be associated with someone like Trump. Trump is too vicious, rude and crude.   When we won WWII, was God “nice?” Were we gentlemanly when defeating Hitler? Were we gentlemanly when firebombing Germany? Were we gentlemanly when dropping atomic bombs on Japan ? Is God ever “nice” on the battlefield? Or does he send us vicious SOB’s like General George S. Patton so the good guys can defeat evil? 

Wait wait wait wait, what does God have to do with WWII? Because if I’m reading that correctly, either God won WWII or we are God, I’m not sure. And apparently General Patton was given to us by God? This is a very very dangerous conflation of God and country. It’s also a very dangerous excusing of all sorts of horrible terrible things. I mean I’m pretty sure, given what this guy has written here, that he would condone the U.S. torturing detainees at Guantanamo. I don’t know whether the things we did during WWII were justified or more effective than other measures might have been. But I do know I’m not going to go around boasting about doing them!

I’m also wondering if our anonymous author and I read different Bibles. Yes, an evangelical reading of the Old Testament suggests that God did some pretty horrible things. However, this is not the only reading of the Old Testament out there, and there’s also the New Testament, and the creation of the New Covenant, which evangelicals are supposed to believe in. And in the New Testament, Jesus tells his followers to turn the other cheek and to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Paul teaches believers to obey the authorities. He doesn’t preach political domination, and when he speaks of war, it is spiritual war he speaks of. Sometime in the last fifty years and more, evangelicals have forgotten that.

It’s pretty clear to me God sends unique people to be “war leaders.” That’s a different role than a pastor or church leader. God understands that.  And maybe it’s time to re-define “nice.” Maybe Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan aren’t nice at all–because they led us to defeat. And losing again would mean the end of America . And God can’t allow that. Maybe Romney and Ryan mean well, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Or maybe they’re just jealous they had their chance and blew it. Maybe they’d rather help elect Hillary than allow a Trump victory that would make them look weak, feckless and incompetent.

If you lose an election you’re not “nice”? I do not think this is how words work. But notice the fixation here on looking strong. Losing is not a thing to be stomached. It makes you look “feckless and incompetent.” What’s important is looking strong. It’s a very masculine framework, and one fraught with anxiety. It’s—dare I say—a very Trumpian framework. People who get captured are weak. Losers are weak. We don’t like losers. We like winners! We’re going to win, win, win! I call bull on our writer having any qualms at all about Trump.

“Even the youths shall faint and be weary, And the young men shall utterly fall, But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.” (Isiah 40:30-31)

Oh, so it’s insert a random Bible verse time? Fun!

God is about miracles. We don’t need a “nice guy” or a “gentleman” right now. It’s the 4th quarter and we’re losing 14-0. We need a miracle.

So let me repeat my message to Christians: “YOU’RE MISSING THE BOAT.”

I believe Trump is our miracle. I believe Trump is our rowboat. Except he’s more like a battleship!

So in other words, it’s all about electing the biggest bully on your side so that he will take a swing at all those guys on the other side. I bet a psychologist would have a heyday with this kind of stuff. Actually, now that I think about it, lots of psychologists have had a heyday with this stuff. This is, again, a very Trumpian framework.

No one is saying Trump is perfect. No one is saying Trump is a perfect conservative. But he is a patriot. He is a warrior. He is a capitalist. He is the right man, at the right time.  Yes, he’s a bit rude and crude and offensive. But that may make him the perfect warrior to save America , American exceptionalism, capitalism and Judeo-Christian values. The choice should be easy for Christians. 

Ah, so boasting about sexual assault makes one “a bit rude and crude and offensive” but nothing more. That’s . . . interesting.

By the way, America is not exceptional except in the same way that every country is exceptional, and there’s no such thing as “Judeo-Christian values”—evangelicals use that term because it allows them to promote their values while pretending those values are something more universal. As for capitalism, that’s not in danger any time soon. Even Bernie Sanders had no plans to get rid of capitalism.

It’s Trump…or it’s the end of the American dream.

Let’s talk about the American dream. Because I seem to remember the American dream being open to everyone—at least, in word. “Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,” wrote Emma Lazarus, “I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Trump wants to close that golden door. That’s not the American dream. It’s a new victory for the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, and the nativism that bore both them and the closing of the golden door for nearly half a century.

I’d rather not go back there. That is not my American dream.

One last thing. Note that our anonymous author never feels any need to explain the utter hatred of Hillary. What exactly is it that makes her so bad? I know, I know, Benghazi!1!!1! Emails!!!!11!!1 But conservatives hated her long before those things. Conservatives hate Hillary with a sort of pure revulsion that is hard to explain—and I’ve tried. I’m honestly starting to wonder if it goes back to the very moment she first burst fully onto the national stage, with her comments about not staying home to bake cookies. It’s as though she became a lightening rod for conservatives’ hatred and distain for feminism and all gender roles new and modern.

But even as we may discuss why she is so disliked, it’s worth remembering that Trump is not as universally disliked as we might wish. Instead, there are those, like our anonymous author, who admire him for being a “natural born killer” and for breaking the rules. There are people who want a puerile bully in the White House. And those people aren’t going to just disappear after the election.

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