The emerging political feud between former President Donald J. Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis echoes the era of theological disputation.
A political ad hyping DeSantis invokes the name of God ten times in 90 seconds — and has inspired Trump to dub the Florida governor as “DeSanctimonious.”
Trump himself frequently invokes God’s name. Google “Trump-blasphemy” and you will get about 1,970,000 results in 0.32 seconds. Is it any wonder that many on the religious right regard Trump as “God’s anointed one”?
The Washington Post reports the opening salvo in the competition between the two likely Republican presidential candidates:
“Trump’s ‘DeSanctimonious’ barb was an angry reaction to a new ad from DeSantis, which presents the Florida governor as a divinely anointed figure.
“’On the eighth day,’ DeSantis’s ad intones, ‘God looked down on his planned paradise and said: “I need a protector.” So God made a fighter.’ [DeSantis’s script writer apparently doesn’t know that God’s “planned paradise” was completed on the sixth day.]
“…Trump’s anger…shows the former president grasps the religiously inspired nature of large swaths of his support, and why DeSantis might pose a real threat to him.”
According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump, in anticipation of DeSantis’s presidential run, threatens [2]: “I will tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering. I know more about him than anybody other than perhaps his wife….”
Does the former president have proof that DeSantis, like Trump himself, has broken at least six or eight of the Ten Commandments?
Andrew G. Bjelland, Salt Lake City