Actor Jim Caviezel appeared on “Fox & Friends” last week as part of the aggressive promotional blitz for his new film boosting QAnon-premised theories about child trafficking. You might know Caviezel from his most famous role: He played Jesus in the Mel Gibson slasher flick that reduced Christianity to only its most important parts, a vaguely pervy BDSM treatment of the crucifixion that touched some serious fetishistic nerves among the evangelical right. The details are unimportant. Caviezel's current role involves sucking Donald Trump's holy toes, and the man is committed to the part—and then some.
Specifically, Caviezel was prodded to say we should be "doing more" about child trafficking, that being the whole premise of his filmed ode to QAnon. That’s when things started to get, uh, weird.
“Oh, yeah. We have to do a lot more. And we got to start with Donald Trump,” he replied. “Well, he’s got to be in there because he’s going to go after the traffickers.” ...
He then said of Trump, “This is the new Moses. I mean, I’m still Jesus, but he’s the new Moses. Pharaoh, let my children go free,” to which he and the others laughed at his reference to playing Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson’s The Passion.
"I'm still Jesus" is the sort of sentence that used to cause record-burning rallies, but Donald Trump as the hero who will stop sex trafficking. The grabby, rapey, ogle-teen-girls-in-dressing-rooms, import-foreign-models hero Caviezel thinks has to lead this whole operation. Donald Trump as the "Moses" who will confront the sex traffickers with a booming "let my people go"—I mean, what?
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Even if we were to take the Caviezel's new obsession with child trafficking seriously (which we might if his movie weren't dripping with QAnon notions that suggest nobody involved did a lick of research beyond visiting a half-dozen sketchy far-right websites), the notion that righties are looking to Donald Freaking Trump as the Moses of Sex Trafficking goes beyond disturbing and into major cult territory. And not the mostly innocent type of cult, like groups of people who enjoy Star Wars way too much or who have a lifelong grudge against the Audubon Society, but the sort of cult that keeps juice and rat poison on hand in preparation for the day when government authorities start knocking on their door.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I can see it now: Donald Trump, swathed in robes, holding a big ol' stick and with the most fabulous comb-around prophet beard you ever laid eyes on, standing on the White House lawn demanding, "Let my children go!" And then all the child traffickers open big cartoony cages and all the trafficked children of the world go free, and then Trump starts a new beauty pageant circuit specifically for underage formerly trafficked children and the ghost of Dennis Hastert appears in the sky to give a thumbs-up and tell Americans everything's gonna be fine now.
And then Trump will go on to perform miracles such as "parting the sea of boxes in the downstairs bathroom," and he'll go to Mount Rushmore and return with a stone-carved set of new commandments that absolutely for sure came from God Himself, even if seven of them are just blanket pardons for Trump and a new constitutional amendment giving Donald prima nocta dibs on all new wives in the country.
Listen, guy who is "still Jesus," we're going to have to ask you to take it down a notch or 10. I mean, buddy.
Now, that's not to say inserting Trump into every last bit of the Bible wouldn't be an entertaining endeavor. Caviezel could probably make it his next film, no problem. Trump is already supposed to be Saul né Paul, Cyrus the Great, and something near to the second coming of Jesus. Slap together a new Bible in which Donald Trump plays every role: He'd love it, Jim would love it, his base would love it. It'd come out pretty weird but sure, go for it.
Trump as Abraham, ordered to sacrifice his son Uday, I mean Issac, to prove his faith:
"Do not lay a hand on the boy," said the angel of the Lord. "Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your loudest son."
"Uh, there's a problem. I already stabbed him."
"What? I said you didn't have to."
"But it's flashier this way, yes? People these days don't do enough stabbing. They're weak. Also now I can write this knife off as a tax deduction."
Trump as Job, faced with horrific trials because God wanted to win a weird bet with Satan?
"How long will you torment me, oh Lord?"
"Donald, it's a paper cut."
"The worst paper cut in the history of paper cuts, that's what it is. Nobody has ever suffered a paper cut as unfair as this one."
"Donald, if you don't shut up right now I'm going to have you swallowed by a whale. I've done it before, you know. I've got five whales I use just for swallowing people who piss Me off."
"It's because you're woke, that's what's going on here. Your wokeness gave me a paper cut."
Look, this has all gone way beyond mere fetish at this point. The "evangelical" obsession with elevating a man who goes out of his way to be horrible in every way he can think of says much more about them than about him.
Anyone who has read the Bible knows that Trump already appears in it. It's in the Book of Revelation. Don't give him all these new fake roles while ignoring the one he nailed the audition for.
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