(RNS) — On Easter Sunday (April 5), President Donald Trump shared a profanity-laced message for the people of Iran on his Truth Social platform, capping a Holy Week filled with both sacred and profane messages from the White House.
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell,” the president posted early on Easter. He then added: “Praise be to Allah.”
The post repeated Trump’s threat to destroy power plants and other infrastructure in Iran if the country did not lift a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane for the world’s oil and gas.
Two days earlier, on Good Friday, Trump hosted an Easter lunch for a group of pastors, including Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Bishop Robert Barron, Marilyn Rivera and White House faith adviser Paula White, who compared the president to Jesus. Like Jesus, White said, Trump was “betrayed and arrested and falsely accused.”
“Mr. President, no one has paid the price like you have paid the price,” White said before leading a prayer for Trump. “It almost cost you your life.”
White went on to say to the president that, “Because of His victory, you will be victorious in all that you put your hand to, amen, because God is with you and God is using you.”
In his prayer, Graham compared the current conflict with Iran to the biblical book of Esther, in which a Persian leader threatened to kill Jews living in that country — only to be thwarted by a young Jewish woman named Esther. Graham said that God had raised up Trump, “for such a time as this,” a well-known quote from that book of the Bible.
“We pray for the people of Iran, who want freedom, to be set free from these Islamic lunatics,” he prayed.
Later that day, Trump posted a video message wishing the nation a Happy Easter and quoting John 3:16, a familiar passage. He also seemed to claim credit for a …
