When Thomas Dewey went to sleep on election night in 1948, he was the president-elect. The Chicago Tribune already had sealed the deal with the headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman.”
But early in the morning as the election results were tabulated, Truman defeated Dewey.
A reporter went to the hotel where Dewey was staying and told one of Dewey’s security men, “I need to talk to Dewey.” The security guard replied, “The president-elect is asleep and can’t be disturbed.” The reporter allegedly retorted, “Well, when the president-elect wakes up, tell him he ain’t the president-elect anymore.”
Rodney Kennedy
The story comes to mind in contemplating the long decade of evangelical preachers going on and on until doomsday about Donald Trump being God’s anointed. Someone has to tell Trump, “You ain’t God’s anointed.”
You can have the anointing, and you can have it taken away from you. I am not saying Trump ever was God’s anointed — I’m saying at least 84% of evangelicals believe Trump was anointed by God to be president. They have believed it since the night Lance Wallnau dreamed up the idea.
The signs of Republican leaders and MAGA frustration grow daily. More voters are saying, “This is not what I voted for.” These hesitant cries have not reached a crescendo so far.
Nothing sticks to Trump; he’s the Teflon president. As leaders around the world — such as royals in England and Norway and corporate billionaires in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia — face disgrace, removal and perhaps prison for involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, Trump remains above the fray.
A major factor of Trump’s staying power is the original claim of anointing. Evangelicals have voted for Trump three times. The myth has become Trump dogma. The claim of evangelicals anointing Trump as “God’s strong man” has now colored everything about the Trump administration.
The administration is locked into a testosterone-fueled epidemic of hegemonic masculinity. A recent New York Times article, “Bench Presses, Pull Ups … Kid Rock? The White House Had a Very Manly Week,” shows how deeply traditional masculinity is woven into the Trump administration.
“We are either one invasion short of nuclear war or one measles outbreak short of another pandemic.”
We are treated to media performances of reverence for physical force, military power, familial patriarchy, frontiersmanship and heterosexuality. Whether Pete Hegseth is more dangerous than Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is at this point a toss-up. We are either one invasion short of nuclear war or one measles outbreak short of another pandemic.
The story of King Saul makes clear God’s anointing can be rescinded. In 1 Samuel 15:11, God says, “I regret that I made Saul king.” From Saul’s anger at the women of Israel singing, “Saul has killed his thousands and David his ten thousands,” to Saul’s desperate gambit to recover the anointing in the cave of the witch of Endor, the tragedy unfolds.
Trump doesn’t give up power or share it. This is not about anointing — it is about winning. He doesn’t play well with others or share the spotlight. He has an insatiable desire for every award, as in his embarrassing campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize, his acceptance of the prize from the actual recipient and his announcement he will “test the law” to present himself the Congressional Medal of Honor.
What’s next? Trump presents himself with the Presidential Medal of Freedom? With narcissism on steroids, Trump sounds like the man described by my graduate school professor Andrew King as “kissing his own lips to keep all the pleasure to himself.”
Trump embraced this authority and claimed it as his own. He toys with the notion of being the Messiah. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu has encouraged this delusion. After the assassination attempt, Trump pushed the idea of God saving him so he could save America.
In attacking the Supreme Court decision striking down his tariff authority, Trump responded, “I can do anything I want to do.” He denigrated the justices: “I’m ashamed of certain members of the court, absolutely ashamed for not having the courage to do what’s right for our country.” He accused opponents of his tariffs of being “obnoxious, ignorant and loud,” and accused the justices of acting out of fear of critics. He called the plaintiffs in the lawsuit “sleazebags.”
“Trump embraced this authority and claimed it as his own. He toys with the notion of being the Messiah.”
Our emotionally driven president, for example, admitted he raised tariffs on Switzerland to 39%, from 31%, because the Swiss president “rubbed me the wrong way.”
Anointing is not permanent. The person anointed can fail to keep a covenant with God and lose the anointing. Look at Trump. The man with all this wealth and power acts in the most anxious, insecure and irrational ways.
At a rally in Rome, Ga., you hear the alleged anointing slipping away.
“A month ago, two months ago, I said, ‘I don’t think I’m going to make it to heaven,’” Trump said, calling back to his previous comments about the subject. Moments later, he added, “I don’t think I’m going to make it to heaven. I’m doing a great job for a lot of people, but I don’t think so. I’m just not worthy of heaven. I’m not going to make it.”
Trump’s anxiety and fear often lead to self-destructive decisions that go against his and America’s own needs. Rhetorical scholar Patricia Roberts-Miller says, “Trump has already shown he will enact policies that harm his base, and they have shown they don’t care.”
In 2016, evangelical Christians declared a vulgar, thrice-married, self-proclaimed philanderer and serial liar as God’s anointed. A decade later, Trump has accumulated a moral rap sheet: offensive and dehumanizing rhetoric against women, immigrants and Democrats, gross personal misconduct, conspiracy theories around the 2020 election and the Epstein Files, 34 felony convictions and numerous lost cases in federal court.
Evangelicals can’t grasp how the person they thought was God’s anointed has become a garden-variety political cipher of authoritarian delusions. Who among the evangelicals will tell Trump the anointing has been revoked?
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.
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