What do you get the man who has everything (or at least claims to)?
President Donald Trump will be expecting a packed stocking this year. After all, he thinks he’s been a very VERY good boy. He’s making good on the deal he cut with Religious Right leaders in order to get their election support, giving them lifetime federal judges whose horribleness is beyond even their fondest imaginings.
Trump has also given corporate America and the billionaires who fund the GOP and its tea party wing a truly YUGE tax cut while gutting the ability of the federal government to regulate corporate behavior.
And, yes, he has finally helped America throw off the fascism of “Happy Holidays” greetings, so that after so many years of year-end silence and secularism, the joyful strains of Christmas carols can be heard once again in America’s shopping malls.
So Santa and his elves — no living wage for them! — have a lot of work to do if they’re going to meet Trump’s expectations.
Now, most of these items would be too big for an average Christmas stocking. But there’s nothing average about Trump. His stocking is the biggest, most beautiful stocking ever. Here are some of the goodies it could be jammed with on Christmas morning, courtesy of his entrepreneurial right-wing fans.
“The Founders’ Bible.” Trump understands the value of having a Bible handy to wave around from a podium. The beauty of the Founder’s Bible is that religious right political operative David Barton helps explain away those troublesome verses about taking care of the poor. In Barton’s clever hands, the parables of Jesus can be reframed as teachings against progressive taxation, estate taxes, unions and the minimum wage. Don’t let Paul Ryan have all the fun distorting Catholic social justice teaching!
“The Real Red Pill.” Drawn from the movie “The Matrix,” the term “red pill” is used by the alt-right to describe the internalization of the movement’s worldview. Trump’s favorite conspiracy-theory spouting radio host, Alex Jones, hawks these InfoWars-branded supplements. Trump might be attracted by the Red Pill’s promise of promoting “healthy aging and cognitive function.”
But I wouldn’t put much stock in claims made by Jones. After all, he’s said the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was staged by the federal government using actors and has suggested that the world may be secretly run by lizard-like aliens. Still, Trump praised Jones’s “amazing” reputation when he appeared on his show.
“Everyone Who Hates Me is Ugly” T-shirt from fellow Bannonite bad boy Milo Yiannopoulos. Yiannopoulos is no longer officially part of the Breitbart family. But his lust for self-promotion, disgust for “political correctness,” and contempt for critics — not to mention his effectiveness at bringing white nationalist viewpoints from the far fringes and into the political arena — mark Milo as a forever soulmate of Trump, who he adoringly and campily refers to as “Daddy.”
Jim Bakker’s “Super Grocery Store” Food Bucket Pallet. Jim Bakker — the disgraced and convicted televangelist and huckster — has found redemption hawking disaster prepper products to cope with the End Times he keeps telling his viewers are coming soon. Bakker could be right, with fellow End Timers having persuaded Trump to kick the Middle East hornet’s nest by announcing that he’s moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. The White House is well-stocked for an emergency, but it would only be prudent for Trump to stash away a pallet of Bakker’s misery-meal in the basement of every Trump golf property. Where is he more likely to be when the End Times comes?
I don’t think President Trump reads books, but he’d surely love to stock Oval Office bookshelves with fawning books by his adoring fans. A Trump Narcissism Collection could include: “God’s Chaos Candidate,” the pre-election book by “prophet” Lance Wallnau, who declared Trump anointed by God; “Trump and God,” by Pentecostal media magnate Steve Strang, which explores Trump’s “miraculous” victory; “The Day Christians Changed America: How Christian Conservatives Put Trump in the White House and Redirected America’s Future,” by evangelical pollster George Barna, who says Trump won because “God did a miracle for us”; “The Trump Prophecies: The Astonishing True Story of the Man Who Saw Tomorrow … and What He Says Is Coming Next” by “firefighter prophet” Mark Taylor; and “Trumpocalypse: A God-Called President, an End-Times Revival, and the Countdown to Armageddon,” by Paul McGuire and Troy Anderson, who warn that “the globalist elite and Deep State will stop at nothing — assassination, military coup, staged economic collapse, or worse” to overthrow Trump.
