Connoisseurs of political campaign ads have been enjoying a fun few weeks beginning back on 5 January when Donald Trump posted a three-minute video to his Truth Social account. The video was made by the Dilley Meme Team, a group of content creators for the MAGA movement, and became known as the “God Made Trump” video. If you’ve not seen it, you should, if only to help orientate yourself into the headspace of many pro-Trump evangelicals.
The video is striking for several reasons beyond its rather strained theology. First, it’s a direct copy of Paul Harvey’s famous “So God Made a Farmer” speech, a rightly celebrated piece of conservative rhetoric that advocates in favour of rural life and the devotion of the farmer to the soil and family. It is full of traditional messages in the way the old Republican Party used to advocate for a way of American life that didn’t involve 24-hour gorilla-themed cable channels, hush payments to porn stars, or overt support of the Russian state.
