From the time that Republican Donald Trump announced his campaign for the U.S. presidency, in mid-2015, until he exited the White House on January 20,2021–a period of about 5.5 years–I posted on my Kermit Zarley Blog regarding Trump the politician about 350 times. Yeah, you could say I was obsessed! But it was largely because of the Bible. I often cited biblical proverbs or wisdom sayings of Jesus that were prophetic and applied them to Donald Trump. After his presidency, I selected 200 of these posts and made them the core of my book, Bible Predicts Trump Fall, published March 8, 2022. On the book’s front cover, underneath its image of Trump, the following caption appears: “‘Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall’ (Proverbs 16.18).” The book is available on amazon.com. It’s caption there says before the book’s description, “WHAT DOES THE BIBLE’S WISDOM LITERATURE SAY ABOUT MEN LIKE DONALD TRUMP? THEY ‘FALL.'”
I was taking a calculated risk in constantly citing this biblical literature, which makes such predictions, and applying it to Trump. But I believe in God and therefore in his written word in the Bible. Thus, frankly, I don’t see how these evangelical leaders who were so adamant in supporting Donald Trump really believe in the Bible. I think this whole, political episode calls into question the spiritual legitimacy of evangelicalism, which has become the most prominent segment of Christianity in the U.S. And while Trump was president, I was saying this too. Thus, the Kirkus Reviews review of this book says, “A persuasive, well-argued case against Trump by a prominent evangelical.”
This practice of me applying such biblical texts to Trump made me look like an anomaly since I am an evangelical Christian and evangelicals have been such a significant portion of Trump’s political base. The majority of comments on my blog about these Trump posts were negative, and some were hostile. Frankly, it began to wear on me. It also caused the readership of my blog to decline about half, for which it still suffers. It’s largely because Trump’s political base consists heavily of older white men like me, and, like Trump, a lot of them play golf and therefore were attracted somewhat to my blog.
Why did I do that? I believed strongly that our nation was in a political crisis with Trump as president and that it was a serious threat to our democracy. We have not fully survived it yet. However, I had been saying all along of the U.S. that “this is a nation of laws.” I meant that I expected our legal system–long being the envy of the world–would bring us out of this crisis. It looks like it is doing that right now.
Ex-President Donald Trump’s legal woes due to his politics are increasingly becoming overwhelming, and it appears that this is only the beginning of them. Trump–whom the House of Representatives unprecedentedly indicted twice–has been indicted for many alleged financial crimes by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and by Special Counsel Jack Smith of the Department of Justice for taking and retaining classified government documents, thus both state and federal. Smith is expected to issue another indictment soon for Trump’s efforts in trying to overturn the results of the presidential election in 2020. And Fulton County district Attorney Fani Willis of the Atlanta, Georgia, area is about to issue her indictment of Trump next month for election interference. Plus, last week Trump was declared a rapist by the judge in the E. Jean Carrol defamation case. And the Stormy Daniels case for election campaign violations is set to go to trial as well. This Trump story of legal woes just gets worse and worse, and it appears that it will not stop in a long time. A mounting number of legal experts and former prosecutors allege that Donald Trump will wind up in prison.
My book begins, even before its title page, with two pages of excerpts from the book, and therefore from the blog posts, which are proving prescient. Here are the first four:
“I think Donald Trump is a big bag of hot air ready to blow up like the Hindenburg blimp if he becomes U.S. president.”–May 20, 2016.
“I think he’ll bring America down, not Make America Great Again.”–June 1, 2016.
“The arrogant, egotistical Donald Trump, . . . is constantly trumpeting his own self. Biblical wisdom says, ‘Let another praise you, and not your own mouth’ (Proverbs 27.2). It also says, ‘When pride comes, then comes disgrace’ (Proverbs 11.2).”–June 12, 2016
“I think Trumpgate will make Watergate look like a Sunday school picnic.”–July 21, 2018
This last excerpt has come to the fore this past week. Prosecutor Jack Smith added three more counts of alleged coverup and obstruction of justice to his indictment of Trump in the documents case. These allegations concern security video at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate where he has retained most of the documents. Smith got the Florida grand jury to issue a subpoena for this video footage. It shows Trump’s employees moving boxes of documents the next day in violation of the subpoena for the purpose of a coverup. After that, Trump had his employees try to take the video evidence, probably to destroy it. But the main employee asked to do that refused, and he may have now flipped on Trump in cooperation with Smith’s investigation. The video is installed and operated somewhat by an outside company.
This Mar-a-Lago video evidence appears to have emerged this week as a “smoking gun” comparable to the so-called “Butterfield tapes” of Watergate. Mr.Butterfield was asked in Congressional hearings about The Watergate episode if there was a taping system in the Nixon White House. After a lengthy pause, he admitted that there was, which became public knowledge for the first time. This system, ironically, had been installed at the sole insistence of President Richard Nixon for the purpose of retaining all Oval Office conversations for the sake of posterity. These taped conversations became a smoking gun when they revealed Nixon’s orchestrated coverup of the very stupid Watergate break-in of Democratic headquarters. In this case, the coverup became greater than the crime. Thus, the Butterfield tapes were a precedent that may be compared to the Mar-a-Lago video surveillance system.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In