The Good News Grift
The Donald Trump Bible shows how much the GOP profits from conspiracies and their cures.
Over the past few days, the media has been abuzz about Donald Trump hawking a new product that is oddly not gold-plated – the “God Bless the USA” Bible, issued by Lee Greenwood, the musician responsible for the song “God Bless the USA.”
The song was released in 1984 with a music video that features a family of white farmers who are obviously lip-synching and inexplicably looking morose, but proud. This song was a staple of my Texas childhood, played at every single school and community event. I thought it was the official anthem for many years, played during such events as the Plano Hot Air Balloon Festival as the final launch sent the corporate-sponsored fleet of helium bags into the evening sky.
According to the website copy, this book, which can be yours for $59.99 plus shipping, features the following:
Easy-to-read, large print and slim design, this Bible invites you to explore God’s Word anywhere, any time. This bible has been designed so that it delivers an easy reading experience in the trusted King James Version translation. This large print Bible will be perfect to take to church, a bible study, to work, travel, etc.
The book also includes the American founding documents plus the lyrics to “God Bless the USA,” which simply cements my childhood notion that the song was, in some way, official. It is also “[t]he only Bible endorsed by President Trump,” which…sure. (I don’t claim to know much about the Bible but I don’t think it requires a political endorsement.)
A lot of the coverage of the Trump Bible focuses on the links of Trump’s Campaign to “Christian Nationalism.” (This term has been used so much by the media that it’s becoming devoid of meaning. I prefer to use Dr. Anthea Butler’s formulation of “White Christian Nationalism,” which she uses to emphasize the “promise of whiteness” – in other words, it’s not that the people who flock to this version of America are all white, but rather they crave the privileges that come with whiteness. I add to this the promise of Manifest Destiny and endless expansion that makes this particular version of Christian Nationalism an important part of the myth of the West.)
This same Bible has been around for a few years before Greenwood managed to license Trump’s name and image, which all look extremely photoshopped. In 2022, Sheriff Mark Lamb of Pinal County – now running in the GOP primary for Arizona Senator against Keri Lake – also hawked the same Bible. (See top of the page.) Greenwood also gifted the book to Don Jr. at CPAC that same year.
Amanda Marcotte at Salon points out that “slim” and “King James Bible” don’t really go together. Is the book just empty pages? Who knows, and who will order it to find out? (Like Marcotte, I feel disinclined to do so.) Trump never opens the book, nor does Lamb. Lamb does have a video version where he puts his gun on top of the Trump Bible.
Given this, I wonder how many of these Good Books Greenwood has actually sold. They appear to be backordered on the website. One of the ways to analyze this Bible that is under-reported, I think, is the link between the far-right and grift. From multilevel marketing to Infowars health cures to lies about COVID, the right has, for years, staked its ground on profiting handsomely from conspiracy theories spread by its politicians.
Lamb is a prime example. I have written a few times about his multiple sales grifts, including a variety of marketing materials, video/television ventures, t-shirts, and partnerships with dubious companies. The Greenwood book slots right in. (It’s not clear how much Lamb received from Greenwood to promote the book on Facebook other than, I presume, a free book. Lamb’s office and campaign have stopped responding to my requests for information and comment.)
In 2012, Rick Perlstein wrote a great piece for the Baffler on the GOP and grift, focusing on Mitt Romney (now a centrist hero). It’s easy to forget how much Romney lies during his 2012 campaign against Obama. Perlstein – rightly, in my view – links this to a long tradition of snake oil cures, panicked messages, and grift. His point, if I may be so bold as to speak for him, is that the right has long provided both the disease and the cure, profiting from the entire pipeline of panic to purchase.
And, in an intersection that is utterly crucial, this same theology of fear is how a certain sort of commercial appeal—a snake-oil-selling one—works as well. This is where the retail political lying practiced by Romney links up with the universe in which 23-cent miracle cures exist (absent the hero’s intervention) just out of reach, thanks to the conspiracy of some powerful cabal—a cabal that, wouldn’t you know it in these late-model hustles, perfectly resembles the ur-villain of the conservative mind: liberals.
In this respect, it’s not really useful, or possible, to specify a break point where the money game ends and the ideological one begins. They are two facets of the same coin—where the con selling 23-cent miracle cures for heart disease inches inexorably into the one selling miniscule marginal tax rates as the miracle cure for the nation itself. The proof is in the pitches—the come-ons in which the ideological and the transactional share the exact same vocabulary, moral claims, and cast of heroes and villains.
In other words, the ideological project and the financial project (grift) are both the end game and the starting point. It is wrong to distinguish some members of the right as being uninterested in financial gain; this is part of the project. Thus lies the appeal of Trump and why Trump selling a Bible is a sort of hallmark of the mainstream GOP and not some outlier. Trump, who is still best known as a failed businessman who plated everything in gold, is always selling. Like The Art of the Deal, Trump is both the sales pitch and the product. Trump selling Bibles is not some sort of aberration; it’s all the same grift.
Years ago, I had a writer friend who was between books and couch surfing in New York when her hosts brought her to a cocktail party. There was a famous right-wing author there, and she and my friend (who were around the same age and even looked somewhat alike) hit it off.
"I'm pretty broke and I don't know what to write about next," my friend said.
"Oh, just do what I do," the famous lady said. "Just pick on the liberals and push the right buttons and put it in a red, white and blue cover and it will sell. It's easy."
My friend, being quite liberal herself -- much more so than me, in fact -- just let it pass. But she couldn't wait to tell me about it. And in case you were wondering, this was back in 2005 or 2006.