In the beginning, there was the word, and the word was “WEAK.”
Specifically, the word referred to Pope Leo XIV, who is, according to Donald Trump’s most recent Truth Social disaster, “WEAK” on crime, “catering to the Radical Left,” and “terrible” on foreign policy. Naturally, the president underlined his point by following that posting with an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ, bathed in angelic light and kneeling to heal the sick while bomber planes fly in the background and fireworks explode in the sky alongside an American flag.
But that was just Monday morning. By noon, the president had deleted his self-as-Jesus post (after a predictable Christian outcry) and started a completely separate, completely impromptu press event for a confused set of White House reporters who were ushered to his doorstep to watch a woman wearing a T-shirt that read, “DoorDash Grandma,” deliver a few paper bags of McDonald’s directly into Trump’s hands. As she did so, she praised his “no tax on tips” policy. Trump then took questions about Iran and the seemingly impending end of a delicate ceasefire, while the woman stood awkwardly beside him.
So here was pretend Jesus, ordering hamburgers and milkshakes, at war with Iran and in a holy war with the Vatican, advertising a food delivery app. As the bags strained under the greasy weight of their contents, the president of the United States mused about blockading the Strait of Hormuz. The DoorDash Grandma — “Sharon,” apparently — had a smokey eye clearly applied by a professional makeup artist moments earlier. Trump handed her a hundred-dollar bill.
Truly, there are weeks in American politics when the symbolism writes itself, and then there are weeks when it appears to have been written by an intern with an absurdist sense of humor and a raging fever.
The DoorDash Grandma moment is presumably supposed to paper over the awkward Jesus thing: it puts Trump at the center of a relatable transaction and turns the whole thing into moral theater. He tips well! He orders fast food! He loves the elderly! He’s salt of the earth! For God’s sake, quite literally: forget the thing about how he implied he was Jesus!
“I did post it and I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with the Red Cross,” the president said during the presser, adding that “only the fake news” could see it as anything else. He then talked about how Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, and how America will get “the dust” — the remainder of its uranium stores — out of the ground so they can’t enrich it. What do you think about trans athletes in women’s sports, a reporter asked Sharon? She looked embarrassed and said she had no view.
And of course, all of this is reality TV, which is to say: completely fake.
Sharon Simmons is a political operative, as detailed on the official government document repository. That’s not to say she isn’t a delivery worker, or at least hasn’t worked as one in the past — but she didn’t exactly get spontaneously sent by the app to deliver a bunch of fries to some address on Pennsylvania Avenue today. Her brief appearance on the Trump show was about as real as Antifa, which by the way had a huge hand in getting the Radical Left Pope elected.
Last week ended with Melania Trump making an unscheduled appearance at the White House podium to declare, apropos nothing, that she was not a friend or victim of Jeffrey Epstein. Today opened with the messiah ordering McNuggets. MAGA likes to “flood the zone” — a comms strategy devised by Steve Bannon, wherein one dominates the news cycle with endless chaos in order to exhaust the press and the public and flatten people’s reactions to the most egregious policies — but this is flooding on an appropriately biblical scale.
“I am disheartened that the President chose to write such disparaging words about the Holy Father,” Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote in the hours after the not-Jesus Truth Social post. Marjorie Taylor Greene said she was “praying against” the president’s worst auspices. Evangelicals — many of whom have reportedly started “quiet quitting” Trump and MAGA – baulked.
One can’t imagine Vice President JD Vance, the devoted Catholic who announced just a few days ago that he’ll soon be publishing a memoir all about his conversion to the religion headed up by Pope Leo, is ecstatic to see his boss write: “I like his brother Louis much better than I like him, because Louis is all MAGA. He gets it, and Leo doesn’t!”
Still: Quarter Pounders with cheese! The body of Christ is now available for 40-minute delivery and salvation comes with a side of fries. Blessed are the tip earners, for theirs is a kingdom of low taxation, while the Pope is just a commie who’s all (white) smoke and mirrors.
Certainly the Lord works in mysterious ways, but rarely have we seen them as mysterious as this.
