Christians Cheer 34-Time Felon Trump as He Lies and Attacks People at National Prayer Breakfast

Trump, of course, can be relied upon to make it feel less a church sermon than a knockabout campaign rally. “Good God!” and “Jesus Christ!” are more likely to be exclamations from horrified onlookers than earnest pronouncements from the truly faithful.

In a somewhat slurry tone, the US president, wearing dark suit and purple tie, went on a rhetorical tour of his greatest hits that had nothing to do with either prayer or breakfast.

There was the swipe at “transgender insanity”, a rant against bird-killing wind farms, an account of Greenland as “the biggest piece of ice in the world” and a boast that “we have a military where they all look like Tom Cruise only bigger”.

There were insults too. Thomas Massie, the Republican representative of Kentucky, was dismissed as a “moron”, and there was the eternal dilemma of whether to call Trump’s predecessor “Sleepy Joe” or “Crooked Joe”. Trump described Barack Obama as “divisive” yet also observed: “I don’t know how a person of faith can vote for a Democrat.”

There was the obligatory lie that the 2020 election was “rigged” and some crowing about 2024: “I had to win it. I needed it for my own ego. I would have had a bad ego for the rest of my life. Now I really have a big ego. Beating these lunatics was incredible.”