by Rodney Kennedy

Rodney Kennedy has his M.Div from New Orleans Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in Rhetoric from Louisiana State University. He pastored the First Baptist Church of Dayton (OH) – which is an American Baptist Church – for 13 years, after which he served as interim pastor of ABC USA churches in Illinois, Kansas, New York, and Pennsylvania. He is now a full-time writer, and lives in Louisiana. His eighth book, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit, was the focus of this rightingamerica interview. And there are more books to come!

Preface

This post is not sarcasm, hyperbole, fiction. What is below are direct statements from Trump’s speeches. My only contribution here is framing Trump Truth as a sermon. We need to read Trump, not as a politician with policies but as evangelical preacher with parables.

His speeches ramble along like those of a poorly educated country preacher. In my childhood, such preachers would run out of something to say and they would pause, make a beeline to the cross and then fill us with graphic, physical descriptions of the death of Jesus. Trump’s sermons invariably return over and over to illegal immigrants.

The sermonic form of Trump’s speeches is an attempt to lead America out of weakness, defeat, and failure. It’s an altar call from a tent revival. The President-cum-preacher lambasts America as a failing nation (sinful), a nation in need of salvation that only Trump can provide, a nation filled with enemies almost supernatural and powerful, a nation that needs to be made great again (sanctification). He even includes a “personal testimony” of how he had been spared the assassin’s bullet by God and now is the chosen vessel to lead the people to a new birth. You can’t get more evangelical than this. 

For the past ten years I have mistakenly believed that if you provide fellow Christians with the evidence that Trump is a serial liar, they will no longer support him. I was wrong. 

MAGA believe his “lies” are the truth. A MAGA Facebook friend told me, “Trump has never told a lie.” 

Trump’s lies, and here is the magic, are transformed into “Trump truth.” MAGA doesn’t believe the media, the fact checkers and the politicians are telling the truth. Trump tells the truth. 

And to the MAGA disciples, Trump sounds like he is telling the truth. He is a fearless, frank speaker. He says things no other politician would dare say. He makes accusations so mind blowing people think they must be true because otherwise they would be absurd. 

Trump has the major characteristic of the Greek word parrhesia – frankness. The word means “to say everything that which is said.” Read enough Trump speeches and you know he says everything he has in mind; he does not hide anything, but opens his heart and mind completely in his speeches. 

A Trump speech is a series of claims not backed up with evidence. He makes assertions without offering proof. Trump truth is easy, simple, emotional, and raw energy. Once you believe something Trump says, you are soon capable of believing everything he says. What Trump says, MAGA believes. This is “Trump truth.” 

Trump Truth is a sermon intended for MAGA believers. Maybe South Park was on to something when they called the opening episode of their new season, “The Sermon on the Mount.” So I have composed what I call “Trump’s Sermon on the Mount.” The content here has been gleaned actual quotes from his speeches at Pennsylvania rallies in the 2024 campaign. The composite sermon I have produced are direct words from Trump speeches in Harrisburg, Latrobe, Philadelphia, Erie, Johnstown, and Reading, Pennsylvania.

Here is what Trump Truth looks like in one sermon.

Trump’s Sermon on the Mount 

When Trump saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he took the stage, his disciples came to him. And he began to speak and taught them, saying:

• It’s a great crowd. There’s a lot of people, so massive, as far as the eye can see. And the crowd when I preached on January 6 was the largest crowd I have ever spoken to, larger than Martin Luther King and Barack Obama. 
• You are the greatest people in the world – patriotic Americans who love America. And we are going to make America great again. God bless you. 
• Blessed are the rich, for they are the smartest people in the world. 
• Blessed are those who mourn for our country. It’s in a helluva of a mess. I can fix it and you will be comforted. I alone can fix it.  
• Blessed are the tough guys, for they will inherit the earth.  I said to Dana White UFC, he’s got a big fight going on right now. He’s a good friend of mine. You know what he said the other day? They said, “Who’s the toughest person you’ve ever met?” He said, “Definitely Donald Trump.” He said, “Donald Trump.” How about that? 
• Blessed are those, like you, who are persecuted for your tremendous Christian faith, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.
• Blessed are you when the radical, extreme, evil Left reviles you and persecutes you and utters all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. They have done it to me. No one has ever been as persecuted as me, not even Lincoln. 
• And Kamala Harris is the most extreme liberal candidate in the history of our country by far. She’s an extreme radical left lunatic. 
• She’s a communist. She will totally destroy health care and Social Security. Believe me she is awful. 
• She voted in favor of deadly sanctuary cities numerous times. She supports open borders and defunding the police. 
• But, you know, although she is going to kill social security, because by putting all of these illegal aliens into Social Security, it’s dead. It’s dead. She opposes even saying the words illegal alien and radical Islamic terrorists. She backs mass amnesty, mass amnesty and citizenship for all illegal. She supports mandatory gun confiscation. Believe me. 
• She wants government intervention to slash consumption of red meat. That means they don’t want your cows. Get rid of your cows.
• Now we’re laughed at all over the world. They’re laughing at us.
• The radical left Democrats rigged the presidential election in 2020, and we’re not going to allow them to rig the presidential election of 2024. And they will not steal this election from me. We’re going to be too big to rig, right? Too big to rig, too big, too big to rig.
• But you know what’s crazy? The craziest thing. So you don’t mind if I go off teleprompter all the time. It’s such a shame. I have these great speech writers. And I hardly speak about this, but I could read the most gorgeous speech. But I tend to — I tend to go off about 75 percent of the time 
• Under Kamala’s policies, criminals, rapists and vicious gang members are pouring in from South America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, from prisons, from jails, from mental institutions and insane asylum. You know, insane asylum is a step above, right?
• These illegal immigrants are monsters, murderers, rapists. They are Hannibal Lector. They are eating the dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio. They are poisoning the blood of Americans.
• I heard, after I was almost assassinated that Trump is going to be a nice man. And I really agreed with that for about eight hours or so. And then I realized they were trying to put me in prison for doing absolutely nothing wrong. They went to judges who are crooked judges. They went to judges who are fake. They had prosecutors who are Democrat, radical lefts, and always in areas where it’s like three percent Republican or less. And I said, you know, these are bad people. So I was nice for about …. three, four or five hours. And then I said, these are bad people. We have to win this battle. 
• When you are attacked like I have been attacked, you don’t turn the other cheek. You screw’em five, ten, fifteen times harder than they screwed you. You get even. 
• And every time the radical left Democrats, Marxists, communists and fascists indict me, I consider it a great badge of honor. Thank you very much, because I’m being indicted for you. You like my mugshot. Did you like the mugshot? Love you.
• It’s the number one selling mugshot in history. It beat Elvis and it beat Frank Sinatra. And I’m proud to admit it and I’m proud to tell you that you have made mine bigger than both of them by a lot. 
• When they want to try and say he’s cognitively impaired, you know, I stand up here for two hours and I speak without a mistake.
• Meanwhile, our crime rate is going up. How about where they say our crime rate is going down? We just had one hundred and seventeen people shot. You could take just Chicago and the whole nation’s Congress crime rate. Look, these are bad people. They’re phony people. They’re liars. They cheat on elections. They do a lot of bad things.
• You can’t believe the crime statistics. They are made up by Biden’s people in the White House. Believe me, crime is going up. 
• And every single day you read about one of these horrible monsters from parts unknown who raped a young girl, killed her, cut her up, uses knives, not guns because it’s a slower death. These are monsters.
• And we have them in our country. We’re going to get them the hell out of our country. Because we have become a dumping ground for the world and we’re not going to take it anymore. We’re going to get rid of these liberal lunatics like Kamala.
• Believe me, I’m really rich. I have many treasures – golf courses, resorts, motels, real estate – all over the world. No one knows as much about wealth as me. “He who has the gold makes the rules.”
• Don’t listen to the fake media. Israel wouldn’t have been attacked if I were president. Putin would not have attacked Ukraine. The recent hits on Israel wouldn’t have taken place. We wouldn’t have had inflation. You wouldn’t have had that horrible disaster in Afghanistan. None of these things would have happened. America would be respected again.
• Never forget our enemies want to silence me because I will never let them silence you. And in the end, they are not after me. They’re after you. I just happen to be standing in their way and I will continue to stand in their way. I will always be here. I’ll be here. I don’t know. I’m getting tired of protecting you, but I love it.

Now when Trump finished saying these words, the crowds believed him, for he taught them as one having authority and not as a normal politician.