By Laurie Baron in San Diego
Since tons of ink have already been spilled on how blasphemous Donald Trump’s post of him as Jesus is, I’ll forego my condemnations of the image and analyze it closely. Trump claims he was merely depicting himself as a doctor. I’ve never seen a doctor dressed in a white robe with a red cloak draped over his neck minus a stethoscope. Trump plans to require this type of scrubs on all the doctors on the staff of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after he renames it the Trump Panacea Hospital and Casino. I pity the hospital laundry tasked with getting the blood and bodily excretion stains out of that fabric.
He is treating a bedridden man with light rays emanating from his hands. This follows the regimen he prescribed for curing Covid. I suspect there’s a glass of bleach just outside the frame of the picture in case the light rays aren’t effective. There are two hands on the man which don’t belong to him. One is near his crotch. They belong to Jeffrey Epstein. Although the man is the wrong age and gender for Epstein, when you’re dead, you can’t be picky.
The man is flanked by a nurse and a woman praying. Since we live in the era of RFK Jr. being the head of Health and Human Services, it is telling that the praying woman is positioned higher than the nurse. If prayers can stop mass shootings, why not disease too? I wonder if the man would be sick if he had been vaccinated for whatever afflicts him. If Trump is the product of immaculate conception, then perhaps this scene illustrates RFK’s dictum of inoculate deception. Perhaps the woman isn’t praying for the recovery of the man, but rather for abolishing the 22nd Amendment so Trump can run again and win a third term.
Two men are above the women. One is a soldier who looks reverentially at Trump thinking what a great President he is for giving him a chance to fight in a foreign war. The other is a pensive old man who is grateful he’s not ill because his Medicaid benefits have been cut.
The Statue of Liberty floats over the soldier. It is small next to Trump to illustrate that a bigger monument of him should replace Liberty in New York Harbor. A jet hovers above the Statue of Liberty in case Iran tries to blockade the harbor.
The eagle soars higher than the jet to remind us of America’s national bird before it goes extinct from budget cuts to the National Fish and Wildlife Service. At the top of the post are indistinct figures floating in what appears to be heaven. These are the soldiers who have died in Iran. One of them has wings which proves he died for a holy cause. Finally, no picture of Trump would be complete without an oversized flag on his right (wing) side.
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Laurie Baron, retired from San Diego State University, is a professor emeritus of history.