By Joel H. Cohen
NEW YORK — It’s not widely known, but President Trump has been listening to – and been emotionally moved by — accounts of such Biblical events as the plague of darkness, the Flood, and the sun and moon standing still for Joshua to annihilate his enemies.
Trump reportedly has been inspired by those stories to the point of interpreting seemingly parallel recent-days occurrences – notably the eclipse and Hurricane Harvey — as divinely inspired signs of heavenly approval of his actions. “I don’t like to brag, but what else could it be?”
For instance, he said, “I wanted the most people possible to hear the announcement of my pardon of Sheriff Joe, a great patriot, who was wrongly convicted just for doing his job. It was so incredibly important that a gigantic audience of Americans hear the announcement. And, bingo, Hurricane Harvey hit, and I knew all Americans would be glued to their TV sets to find out about the storm. So it was the perfect time for announcing the Sheriff Joe pardon.”
He said he would have made use of that same event for his announcement about banning transgender people from serving in the military. “But one of my generals wants to go through the motions of discussing the idea first.”
There was a chance the hurricane and the flooding it brought would have helped apprehend undocumented immigrants, who would have had to show ID to enter an evacuation shelter, and risk deportation. But Texas Governor Greg Abbot declared, “That is not an issue.” The President’s only comment was “America for Americans.”
The recent eclipse reminded President Trump of two Biblical accounts: the plague of darkness that covered Egypt for three days, and the time the sun and moon stood still to enable Joshua to eliminate his enemies.
The hours of the recent eclipse, he said, would have been “the incredibly perfect time to demonstrate to the North Koreans, in no uncertain terms, that I meant what I said about everything being on the table.” But, again, his generals intervened, he said, seemingly disappointed.
Trump added he tried to “have a little fun” with the eclipse with a photo of himself “eclipsing” President Obama. But, he said, “The crooked media insisted on putting out fake news,” pointing out that, unlike his photos, in which the light eclipsed the dark, in the real eclipse, the opposite was true.
None of these perceived setbacks dampened the President’s enthusiasm for Bible history.
According to three witnesses present at some of the readings but not authorized to discuss them, the stories from the Bible were read to the President by Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and adviser Kellyanne Conway, to relax him between tweets.
“Very moving,” Trump said, after hearing the Bible stories. “Great people, those Hebrews.”
He included Moses in that evaluation, but added a note of caution. “They say that, as an infant, he was taken from near the Nile in Egypt. But has anyone ever seen his birth certificate? Believe me, I wish we could see it. It would put a lot of people at ease.”
Trump quickly moved back to Hurricane Harvey, declaring that even experts have said they’ve never seen a storm like this, and that it was the biggest catastrophe any U.S president had ever experienced. “Obama never had a storm like this, not even Lincoln.
“When people look back, they’ll see that, when it comes to disaster, no administration in U.S. history can come close to mine.”
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San Diego Jewish World assures readers who are new to freelance writer Joel Cohen’s “Just Kidding” columns that they are satirical and should not be taken seriously.