The Divine Right of … Presidents?

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David French

The Divine Right of … Presidents?

April 19, 2026,

6:00 a.m. ET

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Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

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By

David French

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In January, 2024 Donald Trump supporters made a video called “

God Made Trump

.” It was in the style of Paul Harvey’s famous speech “

So God Made a Farmer

.” It even included a simulation of the legendary broadcaster’s voice, and it began like this:

“And on June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker.’ So God gave us Trump.”

For more than two minutes, the video waxes eloquent about Trump’s alleged virtues, and then it declares that he’s a “shepherd to mankind who won’t ever leave nor forsake them.”

Trump liked the video so much he

shared it

from his Truth Social account.

At a White House event

on April 1, a few days before Easter, Paula White-Cain, an evangelical Christian pastor and the president’s chief spiritual adviser, told him to his face that he was the “greatest champion of faith that we’ve ever seen in a president,” and then she compared his story to Jesus Christ’s. “You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused,” she said, “It’s a familiar pattern that our Lord and Savior showed us.”

“And sir,” she continued, “because of his resurrection, you rose up.”

I’ve picked out two prominent examples of Trump supporters’ comparing him to Christ, but they’re drops in an ocean of similar analogies. As my friend Skye Jethani, a Christian writer and former pastor, said

on the Holy Post podcast

, for the last 10 years Christians have been comparing Trump to various biblical figures.

So it should have come as no surprise to anyone that last Monday he finally made the comparison himself. He

posted an image

on Truth Social that depicted the president as Jesus healing a sick man, with worshipers looking on in adoration, a flag of the United States waving in the background and mysterious figures floating in the sky.

The image was clearly blasphemous, and I was gratified to see a number of people whom I’d consider MAGA Christians

strongly criticize

the president. For example, a popular right-wing commentator, Cam Higby,

posted

: “I support Trump, and I spend 8 hours a day defending him. I will not defend blasphemy.” Riley Gaines, a college swimmer turned conservative podcaster,

tweeted

to her 1.6 million followers on X: “Why? Seriously, I cannot understand why he’d post this. Is he looking for a response? Does he actually think this?”

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