Just a warning to my sensitive readers, this post mentions accusations of sexual abuse.
Time and again, I find myself speechless about what’s going on in the Trump Administration.
I have written so many thousands of words over the past ten years, all trying to get people to see that this man is evil and nobody Christians should celebrate. And now, nearly a year into his second administration, I’m stammering to even come up with the words.
If you haven’t caught up on the story of the newest Epstein emails, well, here’s an article to catch you up. The general rule with allegations of a conspiracy is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence– and, the more extraordinary the claims, the more evidence you’ll need. Drip by drip, we’re getting an extraordinary pile of evidence. We’ve got three more, extremely incriminating, pieces of evidence that the President of the United States is a pedophile and has sexually abused teenage girls– and that he was deeply involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s crime ring and knew all about it.
Then again, is it really so extraordinary a claim?
Has he ever pretended to be anything else?
Is it Trump Derangement Syndrome to insist that a man who has taken great pride in being a philandering cad who uses his celebrity to force himself on women, is exactly who he says he is? That an adjudicated sex abuser is, indeed, a sex abuser? That someone who was found guilty in a court of law of committing fraud to cover up the time he pressured an adult film star into sex, traumatizing her, is indeed someone who traumatizes the people he has sex with and lies about it? That if he’s been photographed and filmed palling around with a pedophile, and there’s a birthday note to that pedophile with Trump’s distinctive signature scribbled like pubic hair on a drawing of a young girl, that maybe Trump was friends with a pedophile and shared his attraction to young girls?
He’s never pretended to be anything else. He’s proud of his vices, right up until he faces consequences, and only then does he claim they never happened.
The obvious explanation is that he’s guilty as sin.
That has ALWAYS been the obvious explanation.
I don’t know how a reasonable person could come to any other conclusion.
Authoritarian Christians placed their hope in this man and made him an idol, the same way they are time and again placing their hope in sexually abusive pastors and priests– but at least in the case of the pastors and priests, they pretend to be virtuous. There was none of that with Trump. He blustered onto the political scene a notorious thrice-married cad who played a cameo role in a porno, and he’s never changed. I still can’t fully understand that.
I’m sorry for everyone he’s hurt in any way.
I can’t imagine anyone who was abused by Trump or Epstein would read these words, but if you ever happen to see them: my heart goes out to you. I can’t imagine what it’s like to see your abuser rise to the most powerful position on earth, twice. I can’t fathom what it’s like to see his face every day and know that so many people love him. I’m sick at the thought of having the story of your abuse become a household word and a punchline like this.
If anyone reading this has been sexually abused by some other powerful person, I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how this story is triggering your agony. I hope you’re doing what you can to protect yourself from the news.
I don’t want this to be the world we live in. I want a world where abusers are brought to justice and despised by people of conscience. I wish I hadn’t had to write about such terrible things.
I am still committed to doing everything I can to fight this evil and make the country better.
I hope that we all will.
Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In