From here I make the leap into Trump and Jesus and then to Trump and phallic symbols:
Donald Trump’s “Believers and Ballots Faith Town Hall” in Zebulon, Georgia, on Wednesday was very short on words about believers, ballots or faith. In the closing days of past campaigns, the Republican Party and its Christian right allies made strong appeals to these voters to get out to the polls in huge numbers to save “Christian” America and “biblical” values. On Wednesday, though, Trump’s perfunctory appearance at Christ Chapel Church in the battleground state punted on an opportunity to make such a plea inside a church. The abbreviated, uncomfortable charade showed how Trump, in his third presidential run, has dispensed with the GOP’s farcical claim to being the party of religious Americans, relying instead on his status as a messiah figure to mobilize his loyal base of white evangelical voters.One of the town hall participants asked Trump about a survey released earlier this month by the evangelical pollster George Barna and Arizona Christian University, claiming that 32 million regular churchgoers may not vote this November (this is not the first time Barna has made such dire pronouncements, including in 2016, when Trump won). Asked to “share a final message to those Christians to encourage them to go to the polls,” Trump could not even bring himself to offer such a message. He did not acknowledge or thank the voters who helped propel him to the White House eight years ago and stood by him throughout his scandalous presidency and insurrection. Instead, he said, “Christians are not tremendous voters,” and then rambled for nearly three minutes on themes of religious persecution by “not nice” and “stupid” people, guns and COVID restrictions, without completing coherent sentences or thoughts.
The article, which I find an extraordinary example of how unprecedentedly bizarre this campaign has become, begins:
In all fairness, the latest installment of our phallocentric presidential politics began with Barack Obama’s taunt of Donald Trump’s fragile manhood at the Democratic National Convention last summer.
With one deft move, Obama combined a humorous observation about Trump’s preoccupation with the size of his rallies with hand gestures the raucous crowd interpreted as a reference to the former president’s brag about his penis size during the 2016 Republican primary.
In an exchange with then rival Sen. Marco Rubio, Trump denied that the size of his hands bespoke any sexual inadequacy on his part. “Look at those hands, are they small hands?” Trump said to a stunned, but thoroughly titillated nation watching the debate on television. “And he referred to my hands — ‘if they’re small, something else must be small.’ I guarantee you, there’s no problem. I guarantee.”
It was a puerile insult that a bigger man — and certainly every woman — would’ve ignored as too stupid and self-demeaning to engage, but not Trump.
The GOP frontrunner was more than willing to become the first presidential candidate in history who was insecure enough to assure voters he possessed enough ‘big penis energy’ to lead America into whatever post-coital future it could imagine.
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