WorldNetDaily has long seen Donald Trump as a figure of Biblical proportions, repeatedly pushing the idea that God himself had a hand in Trump’s election as president. But there’s another Biblical figure to which WND has likened Trump.
A May 15 WND article highlights how Fox News host Jeanine Pirro “is comparing the president to the biblical King Cyrus,” adding: “Cyrus, a Persian king, founded the Achaemenid Empire, conquered Babylon and made history by allowing the Jews to return to Jerusalem to rebuild their Temple. The prophet Isaiah wrote of him as an ‘anointed one.'”
This is far from the first time WND has likened Trump to Cyrus. Even before the election, an October 2016 article by the notorious Jerome Corsi touted a sermon “sweeping quietly across evangelical America” featuring “a minister asking a simple question: ‘Would you have voted for Cyrus the Great?'” The sermon didn’t mention Trump but implicitly argued that God would “use a pagan king like Cyrus the Great to advance his glory” like he would purportedly use Trump.
Another pre-election article cited an Israeli rabbi and “international Bible codes expert” who “sees Trump as a leader in the mold of Cyrus the Great of Persia, who helped free the Jewish people from Babylonian captivity in Old Testament times. They were then able to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.”
a September column by WND editor Joseph Farah touted how “Michael Freund, an American-Israeli political activist, pleads with President Donald Trump to follow in the footsteps of Cyrus the Great by fulfilling his campaign promise to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to the nation’s capital, Jerusalem.” Farah concluded: “All I can add is this: From Freund’s keyboard to Trump’s heart to God’s ears.”
In December, WND promoted a claim that Trump’s moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem would help lead to the construction of the third temple, citing the spokesman for a group of organizations working towards making the Third Temple a reality, claiming that “Trump’s role similar to the one played by Cyrus, the Persian king who ended the Babylonian exile and helped build the Second Jewish Temple.”
In February, as we previously noted, WND touted a commemorative Trump coin minted by the far-right Israeli rabbinical group the Sanhedrin marking the embassy move, which would also have “an image of the ancient Persian King Cyrus, who was key to the construction of the Second Temple.”
An April article highlighted how the Sanhedrin and other groups were making another commemorative coin to fund the construction of the Third Temple. The article stated of the earlier coin: “The Trump-Cyrus coin, which honored two Israeli foreign heroes – one present and one past – came following President Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, Israel’s capital.” The article quoted a spokesman saying, “Hopefully, Trump will continue in this path and, like Cyrus, play a central role in the building of the Temple.”
Notice the conflation of moving the embassy to Jerusalem and building the Third Temple. The temple reconstruction on the Temple Mount — currently home to a mosque — is something WND has been cheerlead ing for years, though Farah has tried to deny that he supports it because it sets in motion certain End Times prophecies.