First, WorldNetDaily lashed out at Trump-Hitler comparisons, despite the fact that it spent the past eight years regularly likening President Obama to Hitler and other Nazis. Now, WND is looking askance at anyone who criticizes the idea that the election of Donald Trump was divinely inspired. Jack Minor writes in a Jan. 5 article:
After years of fostering the narrative of President Obama as a messiah, members of the media now seem to have developed a sudden aversion to attributing divine attributes to the leader of the free world.
For years after Obama’s election, establishment media described Obama often with soaring language, sometimes in photographs capturing him in a halo.
But now they seem alarmed by the claim that the GOP thinks President-elect Donald Trump is Jesus.
The issue began when Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus and Co-Chair Sharon Day sent out a statement celebrating Christmas, as the party has done for many years.
Part of the statement read: “Merry Christmas to all! Over two millennia ago, a new hope was born into the world, a Savior who would offer the promise of salvation to all mankind. Just as the three wise men did on that night, this Christmas heralds a time to celebrate the good news of a new King. We hope Americans celebrating Christmas today will enjoy a day of festivities and a renewed closeness with family and friends.”
Some immediately seized on the phrase “new King” to suggest that since Trump was the new president, the passage was a reference to him, and the RNC was comparing Trump to Jesus Christ.
Minor goes on to cite various isolated instances in which people have ascribed messianic qualities to Obama. He doesn’t mention the rhetorical pro-Trump excess that has billowed forth from the place that published his article.
The biggest Trump fangirl at WND has been Gina Loudon, who proclaimed that Trump is “the candidate we have been waiting for all these years since Ronald Reagan” and literally credited his election as president for saving Christmas, asserting that “It has never felt so good to say Merry Christmas, because I believe now that the overreaching government won’t take it from us and replace it with something agnostic or satanic.” And she, like the RNC, also suggested that Trump was our new Savior.
Numerous other WND writers, meanwhile, were quick to ascribe Trump’s victory to divine intervention, apparently not considering that the opposite of their biased religious interpretations might be true: that Obama was the divine blessing and that Trump is the divine curse.
And while Minor and WND have long been critical of Obama-Messiah comparisons, WND also has a record of portraying Obama as the Antichrist.