God made Trump, apparently

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. 

Naturally, making Donald Trump fit the model of the “hard-working farmer” did require more effort than squeezing a dromedary through the eye of a needle. The result is a video that stretches a few facts beyond credulity, such as when it suggests that Trump has “arms strong enough to wrestle the Deep State, but gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild”. In the original, the farmer was praised for his strength but gentleness around animals. 

Note: neither midwifery nor animal husbandry are high on Trump’s list of achievements. At least, not yet.

For all of that, the video is artfully made. “I need somebody who can shape an axe, but wield a sword” intones the narrator, his voice layered into a soundtrack that has an echoing quality, full of hiss and pops, to convey the notion that this is a historic recording as if the past were validating the Here and Now. Yet even this is a fiction. Harvey was one of America’s most trusted radio voices on the conservative right, but he only gave his speech in 1978 and the audio taken from an echoing hall is clear. 

The result then, is a clever conceit, expertly constructed, extremely well written (thanks largely to Harvey’s original), and packs quite the punch. Even this atheist finished watching it and found himself thinking that perhaps God did make Trump. 

Possibly in his image. 

Just with better hair…

Thankfully, just to balance it out, The Lincoln Project has this week come out with their own version of Harvey’s original.

“God Made a Dictator” makes a more cogent case that should also be less offensive to those Christians who might – for some reason – object to the deeply secular Donald Trump exploiting their faith to sell little red hats. The video copies the look and feel of Trump’s but to very different ends. Where one wanted us to believe that the former President is a modern saviour here to fulfil some heavenly prophecy, the Lincoln Project’s video argues that he is “a cruel man, who will use his power and position to punish and harm his opposition”. The video is even more effective in the use of repetition and images, having more of a grounding in the real world (and Trump’s stated aims should he win power), whereas we’ve yet to hear from God as to his ambitions for the Donald. 

What we have, then, is two videos that bookend the two extreme positions of the 2024 election: Trump as the saviour of America or Trump as the Last American President.

Will either prove to be relevant 12 months from now? I’m going to go out on a limb and make a prediction. I’m more than happy to be called out if I get my prediction wrong, but I don’t believe we’ll be seeing any diving intervention in the US presidential election of 2024. No burning bushes. No miracles. Not even God asserting a copyright claim should Trump regain the White House.

I am less certain about the dictatorship, though even there I have my doubts. If Trump did achieve his ambition to become a tyrant, powers would very quickly revert to the states until the federal system could be restored. That’s not to downplay the threat – not least that the absence of a functioning US government would have in geopolitical terms – but those involved in the 6 January Insurrection have been prosecuted as much for their ambitions than achievements. Rioters never got anywhere near real power. 

So, did God make Trump?

Did God make a dictator?

As an atheist, I think it’s my duty to say that God didn’t make either. Both are of our own making and our unmaking.

@DavidWaywell

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