Politics can be funny
So let’s laugh a little while we have the opportunity
The image Donald Trump posted on social media Monday. Most people thought it equated Trump with Jesus, but he said he thought it made him look like a doctor.
The last few days have provided some great political humor. I hope you can both laugh at and learn from these episodes.
They say they’re protecting elections. The joke is on them.
President Trump and his Republican party have been trying to pass legislation that would limit voting by mail and make voter registration more difficult. They say they are trying to prevent fraud, even though most observers believe the occurrence of election fraud is limited and has not affected any election results.
Probably the best-known case of election fraud occurred in my home state of Colorado, where Tina Peters, a county clerk of elections, was convicted by a jury of her peers for granting ballot access to a Trump supporter. She is currently in a Colorado state prison.
This past weekend, Colorado Republicans met to select their candidates for state office and US Senate races. One of the candidates for governor promised to free Tina Peters on his first day in office.
When assembly leaders began to count the votes, they found that the number of votes cast exceeded the number of people eligible to vote by 80. So did they go looking for fraud? Of course not. This group of Republicans committed to election integrity decided to just count all the votes and not try to figure out which ones might be fraudulent.
The joke’s on JD Vance
As explained in my post last week, Hungary’s elections on April 12 were of great consequence, as Hungarian premier Viktor Orban has opposed European Union support for Ukraine. Russia’s Vladimir Putin, understandably, hoped Orban would win. So did Donald Trump, who sent his vice president, JD Vance, to campaign for Orban.
Orban lost by a landslide so large that it’s reasonable to believe that Trump and Vance’s support for him actually widened the size of his defeat.
To his credit, Orban promptly conceded defeat rather than calling election officials and saying, “I need you to find another 1,111,780 votes for me.” (Trump famously phoned an election official in January 2021, asking him to “find” 11,780 more votes to change the election results in one US state.)
US Senator Mitch McConnell didn’t think Vance’s meddling in a European election was funny. He had an essay ready for publication the day after the election.
“Clearly, Orban’s fawning servitude to authoritarians doesn’t reflect American values,” McConnell wrote. “But far more importantly, his government’s fealty to Moscow, its willingness to be a gateway into Europe for China’s predatory machinations, and its deepening ties with Iran run counter to America’s interests.”
Two blockades
Despite controlling the world’s strongest military, Trump has been unable thus far to end the Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. When I read that Trump had decided on his own blockade, I concluded that his reasoning must have been something like “The only way to keep the Iranians from blocking the strait is for me to block it instead!”
Actually, his strategy is to keep Iran from letting ships carrying Iranian oil go through the strait. Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, said the strategy makes no sense.
Last week, Sanchez responded to the US-Iran cease-fire with a pointed remark: ““The government of Spain will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket.”
The pope outwits the president
Many have accused President Trump of lying frequently, but no one has given this diagnosis in more clever fashion than Pope Leo XIV. After Trump posted criticisms of the pope on his Truth Social message platform, Leo responded, “It’s ironic—the name of the site itself. Say no more.”
I’m not Catholic, but I’m pretty sure God is speaking through this pope!
Vance tells us it was a joke
The last joke of this blog post wasn’t funny for a lot of people. On Monday morning, Donald Trump posted an image that appeared, to most people, to be equating him with Jesus. Even many of his usually reliable supporters were shocked, calling the post outrageous and blasphemous.
Trump soon removed the post, claiming that he thought the image portrayed him as a doctor. Vance insisted that Trump meant the post as a joke, and that people didn’t realize it was humor.
I must admit that the post cheered me up, because my conviction that Trump is causing great damage to the US, the world order, and the kingdom of God has caused me to urge Christians to elect Democrats to Congress this year. Trump’s ability to offend Christians is making my job easier!