Trump selling bibles 'sends a message' to non-Christians: Bradley Onishi

First it was sneakers and perfume, now Donald Trump's latest adventure is a God Bless the USA Bible priced at $59.99 plus tax and shipping according to the website. It's the only Bible endorsed by Trump that says he wants to make America pray again, but skeptics will remember that. When asked what his favorite Bible verse is, the Bible means a lot to me, but I don't want to go into details, or even mention a verse that you like. No, I don't want to do that as an Old Testament guy or a New Testament guy. It's probably equal to two Corinthians, right? 2 Corinthians 3:17, that's the whole game, of course, it's second Corinthians.

Trump also carried a Bible as he forcibly removed peaceful protesters from a church. Christianity has become a centerpiece of his re-election campaign and this backs it up. The Bible he is now

selling

combines Scripture with the law of the land. This Bible is the King James Version and also includes the documents of our Founding Father, yes, the Constitution. So is there irony or cause for concern about Trump Hawking? A Bible that includes the Constitution since the The first lines of the First Amendment prohibit the government from creating an official religion or favoring a religion. Join us now Bradley Onishi host of The Straight White American Jesus podcast and MSNBC contributor and columnist Charlie Sykes Dasha Burns is here with me on set Charlie, see? any irony or concern about Trump

selling

the Bible Well, I see the irony of Donald Trump, uh, scamming by selling the Bible during Holy Week, a book he's obviously never read and I guess wouldn't recognize The Sermon on the Mount, but The other irony, of course, is that here is Donald Trump, the great defender of Christianity, who is selling his $60 Bibles as he prepares to appear in court to press criminal charges for having sex with a porn star at the same time. which then had to pay off, so once again we have irony upon irony that anyone would think that Donald Trump is somehow the King David of our times.

Well, Bradley, the website says, as I said, that this is the only Bible endorsed by Donald Trump, who just a few days ago again compared his own challenges to those of Jesus Christ. He is known for autographing a copy of the Bible. Does any of that cross any lines for evangelical Christian voters? Well, I think there are a couple of takeaways here, there are people who are going to eat this. Trump is clearly appealing to white evangelicals, as many people know, white evangelicals voted for Trump in large numbers in 2016 and 2020, he needs every one of those votes in 2024 to return to the White House, so he is appealing to a specific basis and some of They will see this as someone conflating their faith with patriotic elements like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Now there are others, including evangelicals and other Christians, who will see this as nothing less than blasphemous, when I was in Sunday school as a child. I was taught that the word of God was something that Christians needed to obey and humble myself at the thought of a former president saying this is the only Bible supported by me is the biggest idolatry I think one can come up with, especially as uh We We are approaching Easter in a few days. Yes, in fact, in the questions and answers on the website, that is the first question. Is this the only Bible endorsed by Donald Trump?

So Dasha, what do we know if we're going to look at this in a bigger picture about Trump's momentum both among evangelical Christians but also about the number of his supporters who believe in Christian nationalism. Well, this is what's interesting for Chris, because in the primaries he made a big push among evangelical voters and he leaned heavily on this idea that Christians and Catholics that, uh, religious people are under attack by the mob. woke left, right, uh, but evangelical voters are at his base, these are people who have remained loyal to him through you talked about crossed lines like several lines have been crossed if you're a traditionally. religious person, but they have stuck with him because of everything he has touted that he has done for them, he made the Supreme Court a conservative majority, the TSA frequently overturned Rorow v.

Wade, but the fascinating thing is that it is now an election generals, so it's funny that he's now leaning toward the evangelical vote and they seem to have been behind him. An interesting report came from our colleagues at tundo who talked about the evangelical vote in the Hispanic community and how there are leaders in those communities who are trying to get out the vote in record numbers there, so it could be a play for the religious Latino vote . We also know that he has several organizations that support him, like the Center for American Renewal or his former director of the Office of Management and Budget uh Russ VA is the head of that organization that he has been putting a lot of pressure on, people believe who would be his chief of staff under the new administrator, there is much speculation about his role.

He's known to talk to Trump quite frequently and he's been pushing for sort of Christian nationalist values ​​that bring them back into the fold in terms of policy, so there's a lot of pressure from the religious right, the question is. , You know? in a general election, why, why, why lean so much on that when those voters you seem to have blocked. So, Bradley, the Bible sales were a great option for the evening. I laughed a lot at what Liz Cheney posted on X Donald. Instead of selling Bibles, you should probably buy one and read it, including Exodus 2014.

It refers to the verse that says You. You shall not commit adultery. I wonder if you can add a little more to what Dasha just said and that you yourself being raised in the Christian tradition did not mean setting aside the Constitution, it did not mean a Christian nation that excluded other religions. it does not mean adopting the Constitution as part of biblical teaching, so if we are talking about white evangelicals, we are talking about the group in the country that scores highest on the nationalist ASR. 2-thirds of white evangelicals score as Christian nationalists and, to Dasha's point, a large number of Hispanic Protestants also score highly in Christian nationalist surveys.

What does that mean? When asked if the federal government should declare this nation Christian, many of them say yes. When asked if being a Christian plays a role in being a true American, many of them say yes, so when we talk about Christian nationalism we're not talking about people who say well, I'm a Christian and I'm a patriot, I'm a Christian and I love To the United States, we are talking about people. that they are talking about imposing a certain vision of Christianity on the rest of us in our public square and then when we think of a former president selling Bibles that he has endorsed, it

sends

a

message

to the 25 or 30% of people in the country who identify as Non-religious

sends

a

message

to those who are of other religions that you are a second-class citizen, that you are something less than a true American.

I will also say that this is a moment that I think will be thought-provoking. for many Christians of all stripes, we've been down this road before, when are evangelicals, conservative Christians, conservative Catholics, going to abandon Trump, but this is something that was first proposed in 2021 and then abandoned? Trump has brought it back here, in 2024, but This was not something that evangelical leaders liked a couple of years ago and I think Jes doesn't like it if they will like it now, so let's talk a little, if we can, Charlie on ethics. The Trump Bible website says this.

He is not a politician, he has nothing to do with any political campaign. Having said that if you read the fine print, what it doesn't say is that the money from this could go towards, for example, fund payments to lawyers for any of his countless court cases and also his 2023 financial disclosure shows that he earned more of $5 million speaking through cic Ventures, which is what this Bible is licensed for, so let's talk about the financial side of this Charlie. Well, first of all, all of these other concerns about Christian nationalism are completely legitimate, but but I think what really stands out here is the over-the-top scam that is so consistent with everything else that Donald Trump, do you know the Alpha and the omegas?

Can you make money with it? I could have given these Bibles away. uh, during Holy Week, he said we should make America pray again, so here's my gift to my followers. He said he said he's promoting them. He is trying to get more money from his followers, so I think this is it. a legitimate question: are you really going to sell Bibles and use the profits to defend against hush money for a porn star case? Are you going to pedal this? God bless the US Bible with the Constitution and use it to defend yourself against charges. which in fact undermined and violated the Constitution, so again, it seems that Donald Trump is not only incapable of separating church from state, but also his incredibly relentless need for cash from his political agenda and I mean, this is again, I don't know.

If this is a breaking point I think it's very unlikely, it's just the crudeness of the scam, you know, he basically goes on air as a low-rent televangelist who sells an expensive Bible and then uses it to pay his lawyers . I mean there has to be a certain subset of evangelical Christians who will cringe at that Charlie Sykes Bradley and Dasha Burns

onishi

. Thank you all. Hello everyone. MSNBC has a new and improved app where you will receive real-time alerts and analysis of live BL Vlogs. -In-depth essays, video highlights and the best coverage of the 2024 election.

Download the new MSNBC app. Here we explain how to do it. Tap the App Store on your phone. Press search in the lower right corner. Write MSNBC. You click on the MSNBC app. in get or cloud icon and enjoy it