What happens when fools are elevated into highest power?

April Fools’ Day is a time for jokes and pranks and hoping your kids, partners or coworkers don’t take things too far. The goal is to have a few laughs while making it through the day relatively unscathed.

There are multiple theories about the origin of April Fools’ Day. Some suggest it began after France exchanged the Julian calendar for the Gregorian calendar, which moved New Year’s Day from April 1 to January 1, with not everyone paying attention enough to get the message.

One theory is an April Fool’s joke itself because a professor from Boston University told a journalist in 1983 it originated in the Roman Empire when jesters mocked Constantine. Although the Associated Press had to retract the story, this is still a theory believed by many.

Another theory connects it to the Feast of Fools, a Medieval parody of church hierarchy where the celebrants would elect fake bishops, archbishops and even a pope, or where the church hierarchy would reverse, with the church officers who held the most power being at the bottom, and those who held little power being at the top.

Whatever the true story, many of the theories revolve around the theme of power, which begs the question: What happens when fools are elevated into the positions of highest power?

Proverbs 10:23 — “Doing wrong is like sport to a fool.”

We should’ve known Donald Trump was a fool no later than October 2016 when the Access Hollywood tapes came out with Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women.

“I don’t even wait,” he gloated. “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

Not only were women’s bodies treated like a ball he could grab and bat around, but he explained it away like an athlete would as “locker room banter.”

Proverbs 12:23 — “The mind of a fool broadcasts folly.”

One reason white evangelicals say they overwhelmingly voted for Trump in three general elections is they claim he “tells it like it is” and “speaks his mind.” He tends to do this on social media and in his speeches.

But while Trump may share his opinions in a blunt manner unlike any U.S. president we’ve had in modern memory, his followers don’t seem to recognize that most of what he posts is folly.

Similarly, Proverbs 29:9 says with fools, “there is ranting and ridicule without relief.” If that doesn’t describe Trump’s social media usage, then I don’t know what does.

Proverbs 26:12 — “Do you see people wise in their own eyes? There is more hope for fools than for them.”

Trump always says “There’s nobody who” does something like he does. In fact, VICE News put together a list of “24 Things Nobody Does Better Than Trump (According To Trump).

For example, he has said no one is stronger than him, has better toys than him, is better at the military than him, loves the Bible more than him, builds better walls than him, helps the disabled more than him, fights for veterans more than him, promotes equality more than him, supports Israel more than him, is more conservative than him, respects women more than him, is tough on ISIS more than him, gets crowds more than him, understands nuclear horror more than him and — wait for it — is more humble than him.

Proverbs 12:15 — “Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to advice.”

Because nobody knows more than Trump supposedly does on anything, there’s no reason to listen to anyone but him. After firing 17 qualified experts from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during an interview, “We need to stop trusting experts.”

He said this less than two months after he was criticized for swimming with his grandchildren in Washington, D.C.’s, Rock Creek, which is contaminated with feces and sewer water.

Perhaps the reason our secretary of health is engaging in such foolishness is that Trump prioritizes loyalty over wisdom. As Donald Trump Jr. told Fox News when his dad was choosing who he was going to nominate to his cabinet, “The people who don’t think that they know better than the duly elected president of the United States, I want to make sure that those people are in his cabinet.”

Proverbs 13:20 — “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools suffers harm.”

Because Trump has been able to escape his legal troubles thanks to white evangelicals voting for him en masse, he’s been able to cast himself among his supporters as a victim of a corrupt justice system. But even if Trump were presumed innocent, despite being found guilty, why are so many of his friends fools?

Trump’s friends who have been sentenced to prison include Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, Roger Stone, Rick Gates and Allen Wisselberg. He’s also pals with the likes of My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, who has so much legal debt his law firm announced in October 2023 they had to stop representing him due to financial constraints. And of course, his most famous close friend was Jeffrey Epstein.

Proverbs 14:16 — “The fool throws off restraint and is careless.”

As conservatives on social media pile on and mock the “No Kings” rallies from last weekend, they seem to forget it was Trump who posted an image on social media of himself as a king and wrote in all caps, “LONG LIVE THE KING!”

Entrepreneur Curtis Yarvin has been promoting a unitary executive theory that would turn the president into a CEO and even named Trump in 2011 as “one of two figures who seemed ‘biologically suited’ to be an American monarch.”

And Trump has been operating with such careless lack of restraint that The Century Foundation’s United States Democracy Meter has downgraded their evaluation of the U.S. democracy from a mediocre 79/100 score to a 57/100 after just one year of Trump’s second term.

Proverbs 10:21 — “The lips of the righteous feed many, but fools die for lack of sense.”

Although critiques could be made about the Western “white savior” impulse, the fact remains that millions of the most vulnerable people in the world were dependent on U.S. food and medical services to survive. By providing these services, we also made the world a safer place for ourselves because our presence kept violent extremists at bay.

But cutting USAID has led to a rise in violent extremism and, according to Boston University epidemiologist Brooke Nichols, “the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children.”

Proverbs 10:8 — “Lying lips conceal hatred, and whoever utters slander is a fool.”

No one has been on the underside of Trump’s foolish slandering more than immigrants. For years, Trump has invoked terms and phrases like “animals,” “vermin,” “poisoning the blood,” “infest,” “rapists and criminals,” “invaders,” “snakes” and “shithole countries.”

During the 2024 presidential debates, he spread lies about immigrants eating cats and dogs. And he continues lying about immigrants voting by the millions in the 2020 election, which he lost.

Proverbs 26:1 — “Like snow in summer or rain in harvest, so honor is not fitting for a fool.”

Just as Trump lost the 2020 election, he continues losing his bid to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Perhaps that’s because he released and pardoned 1,600 January 6 insurrectionists, unleashed into our cities thousands of ICE agents who have killed people with no accountability, threatened Greenland, the Panama Canal and the entire hemisphere for that matter, encouraged ethnic cleansing in Gaza, kidnapped a president, aided in the assassination of another and continues to allow Pete Hegseth to use the U.S. military for his authoritarian Christian Holy War.

Still, Trump continues demanding to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, intimidated FIFA into creating a new FIFA Peace Prize just to give it to Trump, and pressured the actual winner of the Nobel Peace Prize to present hers to him in hopes that Trump would support her taking over leadership in Venezuela after Trump kidnapped former Venezuelan President Maduro.

Proverbs 26:11 — “Like a dog that returns to its vomit is a fool who reverts to his folly.”

You’d think we’d get the point after decades of seemingly endless wars overseas. In fact, one of the reasonable points Trump has made for years has been his opposition to getting involved with wars in the Middle East. But with Hegseth at the helm, and men like Franklin Graham at the Pentagon suggesting God is a “God of War,” we’re back to yet another war.

Now Hegseth and Trump have bombed an elementary school filled with innocent girls. And they’re threatening to commit war crimes by bombing Iranian power plants, which would cause unimaginable suffering to civilians.

Proverbs 30:32 — “If you have been foolish, exalting yourself, or if you have been devising evil, put your hand on your mouth.”

Anybody with an ounce of common sense knows Trump is all about himself. Ironically, despite warning us for years about the coming antichrist, evangelicals have opted for a man of lawlessness who exalts himself over everything.

If they were actually following the Bible, they’d know such a man should put his hand over his mouth and be silent.

Proverbs 26:10 — “Like an archer who wounds everybody is one who hires a passing fool or drunkard.”

On Nov. 5, 2024, the United States hired a fool. Since Inauguration Day two months later, the Trump administration has been aiming its arrows at all of us. As Trump said in a White House social media post during the summer of 2025, “I was the hunted — now I’m the hunter.”

As a result, our most basic rights are crumbling all around us, our institutions are failing, and hundreds of thousands of people are being wounded and are dying.

Yet still, white evangelicals overwhelmingly support Trump. Since it’s clear from Scripture that Trump is a fool, what does that make white evangelicals? Since they’ve voted for him in three general elections despite all his foolishness, are they an archer who is wounding everyone with the arrows of Trump?

Or each time they go into the voting booth, are they like dogs returning to their vomit?

 

Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a bachelor of arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and is the author of a forthcoming book, Weapons of Worship: How the Songs of Evangelicalism Form the Soundtrack of Extremism. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.