Trump was handed a book claiming God sent people visions predicting his presidency


While in Davos, Switzerland, on Friday for the World Economic Forum, President Trump was seen holding aloft a book entitled God and President Trump. As Amy Sullivan explains at Politico, the author, Stephen Strang, has penned a work that is "part spiritual hagiography, part Fox News bulletin, and part prophecy," including accounts of divine visions predicting Trump's electoral victory.
"Strang outlines a string of [charismatic Christians] who had visions — or who now retroactively claim to have had visions — that Trump would one day win the White House," Sullivan writes. "A Catholic holy man named Thomas Zimmer who spent much of his life in Italy even claimed to have received a prophesy in the 1980s that Trump would 'lead America back to religion.'"
For the pro-Trump evangelicals Strang describes, the improbability of Trump's triumph is further confirmation of God's involvement. To observe the election results was to feel "as if God had answered our prayers and the impossible had happened," Strang says in the book. "We had a new president, one we believed God had raised up for a time such as this."
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Read the full Politico piece here, and read The Week's Damon Linker on why some Christians embraced with such enthusiasm "a man who makes a mockery of Christian piety and traditional moral decency."
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
-
Judge blocks Trump's asylum ban at US border
Speed Read The president violated federal law by shutting down the US-Mexico border to asylum seekers, said the ruling
-
Thai court suspends prime minister over leaked call
Speed Read Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra has been suspended, pending an ethics investigation
-
Senate passes GOP megabill after Alaska side deal
The pivotal yes vote came from Sen. Lisa Murkowski, whose support was secured following negotiated side deals for her home state Alaska
-
Trump sues LA over immigration policies
Speed Read He is suing over the city's sanctuary law, claiming it prevents local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities
-
Obama, Bush and Bono eulogize USAID on final day
Speed Read The US Agency for International Development, a humanitarian organization, has been gutted by the Trump administration
-
The last words and final moments of 40 presidents
The Explainer Some are eloquent quotes worthy of the holders of the highest office in the nation, and others... aren't
-
Senate advances GOP bill that costs more, cuts more
Speed Read The bill would make giant cuts to Medicaid and food stamps, leaving 11.8 million fewer people with health coverage
-
Canadian man dies in ICE custody
Speed Read A Canadian citizen with permanent US residency died at a federal detention center in Miami