POLITICS / NEWS

Amid Racial Unrest Trump Poses with Bible

American rights trampled for Trump photo op

Presidential 2020 nominee Joe Biden is speaking live in Philadelphia, condemning President Trump’s heinous actions yesterday in Washington DC.

President Trump used the US military for his own personal purposes yesterday, clearing out peaceful Black Lives Matters protestors with tear gas, flash bangs, rubber bullets, and clubs. In the areal view I watched in horror as an officer threw a woman to the ground. She had been moving away from him, with her back to him and he shoved her to the ground.

Then he picked her up off the ground and threw her again. Is this really America?

I watched with tears welling in my eyes as a person was hit not once but twice with a club. That person was also moving away. People were running. Some were hurt.

Officers moved quickly and violently on a crowd of people I’d been watching for over an hour on CNN live coverage. Peaceful people. Peaceful protesting — within their American rights to do so.

As I sit here listening to Biden speak, I hear him saying “I just wish he’d open it once in awhile instead of brandishing it” on the actions of Trump yesterday with a Bible in his hand. Shortly after the crowds were cleared. People running in horror and confusion. And our President smiling and holding up the scripture as a prop for his personal political agenda — so out of touch with the needs of the American people.

The people were pushed back violently about 25 minutes before the time of curfew, though many likely would not have dispersed at curfew.

Moments later, the reason became clear. It wasn’t to clear some kind of rebellious group or keep law and order. It wasn’t so that businesses or other property was protected. It was so the President of the United States could take a walk to the St. Johns Episcopal Church, a church he has not attended since St. Patrick’s Day of 2019, to pose in front of the church.

He held up a Bible, moved it from one angle to another, smiling and proudly posing for the photo op. Then he and his protective Entourage walked proudly back to the safety of the White House.

As an American I’m horrified. As a Christian I am disgusted. Compare this event to Jesus’ anger in the temple in Matthew 21:12–13:

12 Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’[a] but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’[b]” Matthew 21:12–13 NIV

Jesus’s righteous anger sought to keep the temple from being used for selfish purposes. What we saw with the President yesterday makes a mockery of the Christian faith, of the Bible, and of the Black Lives Matters and ‘I Can’t breathe’ movements, all at the expense of the rights of the Americans our Presidency is sworn to protect and uphold.

Our President did not go to the church yesterday to pray or to kneel. He went to pose for pictures that further his self-serving political message.

Is this really America? How can we heal the racial wounds in this country when the Presidency is so far removed from the reality of so many American people of color?

I call on you today to remember this moment at the polls. Think of the servants you are electing. I call on you to speak out against this travesty and demand leadership from those in power. I call on you to be adequately outraged.

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Christina M. Ward is a poet and nature writer from North Carolina. Her poetry has been published in the Cameo literary magazine, the Arrowhead literary magazine, Vita Brevis Poetry Magazine, Scarlet Leaf Review, The Frightened Traveler, and in Wolff Poetry Literary Magazine. Christina was the recipient of the Creative Writing Prose Award at Catawba College for a short piece entitled “Clarity.” She lives in rural North Carolina with her family., where she is working on her second novel. Her first poetry collection organic is available on Amazon.