Russ Baker 04/20/26 (whowhatwhy.org)
Hope he sticks around and performs some miracles — we’ll need one to clean up the toxic mess Trump has created.
On Saturday, I saw this headline and teaser:
Trump Will Participate in a Marathon Bible Reading
He will read a passage from the Old Testament that his Christian supporters cite as a call to national repentance and divine blessing.
As debate persists over Donald Trump’s appropriation of Jesus for political purposes and over his feud with the pope — and as Pete Hegseth continually invokes Bible quotes (even a fake one from a Tarantino movie) for his holy war — one thing remains unsaid: Religion itself profoundly influences nearly every aspect of our secular lives.
And its status continues to be untouchable.
The New York Times article about Trump’s participation in a weeklong bible reading series — which its organizer labeled “a national reading of God’s law” — was, well, polite and precise, befitting a high-quality news organ. It cites biblical scholars. And notes:
President Trump has a complicated relationship with the Bible. He has often called it his favorite book, has posed with it for photographers outside a church and has sold his own edition for $60. But he has also struggled to name a favorite passage or even pick a favorite Testament between the two.
In other words, the problem is not religion; it is that Trump may himself not be as religious as he would like others to believe.
I get that religion offers solace for many. But we pay a price for our unwillingness to challenge the unscientific bases of those beliefs, and for treating religion as, pardon the pun, a sacred cow.
We nonbelievers are nonetheless thrilled by a pope who stands up to Trump. We see Leo XIV as more of a politician or humanitarian than someone representing an actual religion and its insistence on being the “true way,” complete with ancient and totally unproven specific beliefs, practices, and rituals.
This kind of secular approach to religious figures is not unusual: People can take sides between the state of Israel and various Muslim countries while ignoring the long-held religious beliefs that lie behind much of the current mayhem.
Those who deplore the idea that, in ancient as well as modern times, Jews seized land occupied by others because “God gave this land to me,” need to be aware of how much more land Arabs have seized in the name of Islam. And central Asian Turkic peoples seized what once was Anatolia and surrounding regions for the same reason.
Politicians, public figures, and news organizations will never be frank about this, partly for fear of consequences, and because religious beliefs and language are simply too ingrained in our culture, from “in God we trust” and “so help you, God” to “OMG.” And that especially dangerous expression “thoughts and prayers,” which, for many people, seems to mean that God, not science or gun control or peacemaking, will save loved ones.
None of this is new, of course. The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (161–180 AD), in his Meditations, quoted his mentor Diognetus, who urged him “not to believe the claims of miracle-mongers and charlatans about incantations and the expulsion of demons and the like.”
Cynics know that little has changed in all these millennia when it comes to the appeal of such beliefs. Accordingly, there’s no shortage of political and business interests ready to manipulate religious language and imagery to promote paradoxically demonic policies — policies that threaten the survival of this country and the very conditions that make human life possible on Earth.
For instance, oil companies back politicians who will always blame the mysterious ways of God — not scientifically proven global warming — for major climate-driven catastrophes.
The section of the Bible Trump will read from, presumably without a hint of irony, urges that people “turn from their wicked ways,” after which God “will heal their land.” (One of the others participating in the bible-reading series is a well-known advocate of homeschooling, where one assumes children’s minds are not wickedly poisoned with information about environmental and other scientific matters.)
Until recently, the legacy media treated Trump’s “I’m the Second Coming” act as yet another “there he goes again” novelty. But Trump is not the first apparent nonbeliever to successfully embrace religion to win and keep power.
Years ago, I interviewed George W. Bush’s “faith adviser,” who told me how he had first tried to pitch the faith vote to Bush’s father, with mixed results, then hit pay dirt with the younger Bush — who fully embraced a public pronouncement of his own commitment to Jesus as a ticket to success. (This led to the creation of several unintentionally campy pictures of a pious-faced Bush and Jesus together, and some actually depicting Bush as Jesus, or Jesus as Bush.)
As the younger Bush and his team mapped out a possible path to political success, they struggled with W’s paltry resume and well-deserved reputation as a party boy. The clever solution was to turn his weakness into strength — through a religious epiphany, which served to wipe clean his slate of behavior from before he saw the light, and also to attract a giant, untapped constituency.
It worked like a charm, perhaps because getting people to believe anything when they’re already susceptible to “taking things on faith” is a light lift.
Fast-forward to Trump — another “playboy” with not a hint of religious practice in his pre-political life. Candidate Trump’s wild success with evangelicals, Catholics, and religious Jews can be considered one of the greatest huckster shows of all time. Sadly, the legacy media has had trouble accurately reporting on this travesty because of its long-standing reluctance to look too closely at the intersection of political power and traditional religion.
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But things may be changing. The god-awful reality of Trump’s presidency is ever so cautiously being acknowledged by a legacy media and a half-complicit establishment that grievously let its guard down and helped create our current mess. The state of his mind, the relentless deceit, the world-class danger of this man with his finger on the nuclear button is starting to seep into the headlines. Here’s an example:
Trump tests loyalty of Christian supporters as erratic behavior escalates (The Washington Post)
Here and there, perhaps sensing that even Trump’s more cultish followers are backing away, onetime fellow travelers and bandwagon drumbeaters are standing up to be counted and to say, at long last, “Enough is enough.”
Another bit of hopeful news, not widely reported from what I can see, is the decision by the California Supreme Court to disbar John Eastman, one of Trump’s lawyers who led the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election. It was this initiative that spiraled into the January 6 US Capitol riot.
And here’s yet another sign that a major reset might be coming: The Wisconsin Supreme Court — considered pivotal to the national political equation because Wisconsin is an electoral swing state — as recently as 2020 had a conservative majority. Since then it has been steadily swinging way, way, over. Yet another liberal judicial candidate just won a seat, expanding the liberal majority from 4–3 to 5–2.
Pushing Back Against Corporations
Of course, Trump’s presidency has been a huge gift to the wealthy and the corporations they control. In addition to cutting taxes for the wealthiest, this administration has backed away from regulating monopoly behavior and other abuses of the “free competition economy” that conservatives like to extol.
Which is why it’s great news that a jury has ruled in favor of (mostly Democratic) state attorneys general in deciding that the concert firm Live Nation and its Ticketmaster unit were colluding to drive up event ticket prices to extortionate levels.
Here’s a quick reprise of the players and the action: Trump meddled in a case against the company brought by the Department of Justice under President Biden, resulting in a settlement that went easy on Live Nation.
This did not sit well with state prosecutors. And it’s in the states where the power to defend individual rights resides until this administration is in our rearview mirror.
Similarly, it is state officials who are challenging Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, which includes CNN. Federal agencies tasked with protecting consumers and guarding against anticompetitive monopolies are keeping hands off — reflecting the crony-capitalist allegiances of Trump himself, who loves how his tech billionaire friends, Larry Ellison and son David, are turning CBS, once a showcase of independent, hard-hitting journalism, into a Trump-friendly network.
Meanwhile, more than 3,000 Hollywood pros have signed an open letter protesting the Paramount deal as a threat to creative competition and jobs.
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The assault on honest reporting and journalism’s defense of the public interest continues with an audacious effort backed by the billionaire Peter “Antichrist” Thiel to put news organizations before a “tribunal.”
Related: The Church of Silicon: Peter Thiel’s Gospel of Unfettered Power
The new development is called Objection, a platform offering, for a fee, to judge whether one should believe a piece of journalism. The staff will include ex-intelligence agents who will supposedly dig into the facts behind the story, which will then be submitted to an “AI jury” to give a virtual thumbs-up or -down.
Judicious use of anonymous sources, a necessary normal aspect of investigative journalism, especially during periods of intimidation, like now, would lower the trust score — unless journalists submit their source’s identity for the AI to assess. Riiiight.
Other tools of the public interest are under attack.
Ever heard of the Wayback Machine? It’s a website run by a nonprofit that saves snapshots of websites over time. It has incalculable practical and historical value. Anyone who has ever tried to see some webpage that is no longer findable by standard search methods knows what a treasure the WM is. Journalists, historical researchers, and ordinary citizens alike are huge fans. I am, and have had the pleasure of visiting the headquarters of the parent Internet Archive and taking its public tour, and getting to know the energetic, dedicated director of the Wayback Machine, Mark Graham.
Now, the Wayback Machine is threatened. A growing number of publishers, justifiably concerned about web crawling bots scraping and appropriating their content for use by AI, are blocking them — and this has hit the Wayback Machine’s crawlers too.
I don’t know the solution, but the Wayback Machine is a marvel of unsurpassed value to public discourse and must be allowed to continue functioning. I’m sure there is a way to protect intellectual property and block AI misappropriation while leaving the Wayback Machine free to perform its indispensable service.
RFK JR: We Told You So
Do you remember back when the legacy media treated the then-Democratic presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his views as fringe nonsense to be ignored, little more than a distraction and a laugh? I do! I was worried that this character — like Trump himself — would be dismissed at our considerable peril.
That’s why, in my columns, and at WhoWhatWhy, the independent news organization I founded, we took an early interest.
Related: RFK Jr.’s Panel of Health Hoaxers, Hucksters & Hustlers
Related: But Wait, Folks, There’s More: Anti-Vaxxers and Snake Oilers Are a Team
Related: Building Herd Immunity to Truth: More on RFK Jr.’s Anti-Vax Crusade
Month after month we hammered on the issue of RFK’s largely unfounded health claims, when he was nothing more than an irritant in Democratic primaries. Of course, now we all know how he parlayed his ill-informed rants on serious health issues into becoming the country’s health-policy czar.
This week, the dangerous mess he has created was the topic of congressional hearings. Ever an evasive character, RFK has been busy slip-sliding away from all kinds of assertions. For example, after persuading many parents not to vaccinate their children for measles — with fatal consequences — he now, as The New York Times described,
testified that the measles vaccine is safe and effective “for most people” and agreed it was safer than getting measles. Under questioning, he also allowed that the vaccine might have saved the lives of two unvaccinated children who died of measles in Texas earlier this year.
That Kennedy allowed the vaccine “might have saved two lives” isn’t much of an admission. So far, he has avoided any responsibility for the epidemic of measles raging across America. (This year alone, as of April 16: 1,748 cases.) When lawmakers try to get him to admit it, they don’t seem to know how to respond to his mindless evasions.
Like this excuse: “There’s a world epidemic,” as if the problem is so big he can’t be expected to solve it. No one who’s questioned him so far has pointed out that there’s a world epidemic for the same reason there’s one in the US — no vaccinations. And this world epidemic endangers children in the US — another good reason to get vaccinated!
It’s not like the disease can’t be prevented!
But this is a man who has tried to sell the idea that “nutrition and clean water, not vaccines” prevented measles in Samoa.
Kennedy’s concession that vaccines are “safe and effective for most” is not reassuring. Some suspect it was just for show.
Kennedy may be relying on his close ally Aaron Siri — a lawyer who makes a living suing vaccine manufacturers — to erode the idea that vaccines are safe with new “documentation” of vaccine injury that may be even less reliable than the discredited studies he’s cited in the past.
Siri is petitioning the Health Department to (1) add about 300 conditions to the table of injuries presumed eligible for compensation, and (2) sharply ease scrutiny of claims of injury.
These changes could make it much easier to document false claims of injury, create more lawsuits — and add to the dangerous vaccine hesitancy responsible for the current spread of disease.
The New York Times has suggested Kennedy will “revive his campaign to question the safety and effectiveness of the shots after the midterm elections.” The reaction of Kennedy’s lawyer to Trump’s new four-person team to lead the CDC, including two who support vaccination, offers a clue: Siri immediately attacked one of them, the conspicuously qualified Dr. Erica Schwartz. Siri said Schwartz “would likely be a disaster” and “lacks the basic ethics and morals to lead the CDC.”
Kennedy has turned into a liability for Trump, with high negatives, like — well, like almost all the people Trump appointed.
All that once glittered is revealed as fool’s gold.
SantaCon Actually Was a Con
Speaking of which, I note that SantaCon, the ultimate bro culture event and seasonal Christmas bar crawl, was a scam. Or at least the man behind it was a scammer, according to a federal indictment. He presented the specter of thousands of young drunk men (and women) staggering around Manhattan in Santa costumes as an opportunity to raise money for charity.
But, it is alleged, he ended up siphoning much of the proceeds for his personal use and a lavish lifestyle, featuring luxury vacations, Michelin-starred meals, and a high-end car. He spent $120,000 of the supposedly charitable funds on a fancy apartment, $100,000 at a Costa Rica resort (how do you even do that?), and dropped a bundle on renovating a lakefront property. On and on.
The SantaCon Con seems a perfect metaphor for Trump’s legacy: Find something that makes people feel good, sell them a myth, and scam them for personal ends. The main difference is that Mr. SantaCon might end up in prison, while our Supreme Court, in its wisdom, decided that virtually nothing Trump does can have consequences — for him.
- Russ Baker Russ Baker is Editor-in-Chief of WhoWhatWhy. He is an award-winning investigative journalist who specializes in exploring power dynamics behind major events.