The golden Trumpian calf

It has been a while since something truly exploded my brain, but this did it.

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Nancy O'Brien Simpson

A 22-foot statue of Donald Trump, wrapped in gold leaf, now stands at his Doral golf course in Miami. Trump proudly unveiled it on Truth Social with the all-caps declaration: “THE REAL DEAL — GOLD.”

The statue itself is grotesque enough. But what truly broke me was that evangelical and Jewish religious leaders actually blessed it.

Are you freakin' kidding me? Jesus spent his life defending the poor, the outcast, the sick, the powerless. Trump wants to shaft the poor at every turn. 

Jesus preached mercy, humility, and peacemaking. Trump brandishes threats against entire nations like a man drunk on power, talking casually about destroying civilizations overnight while surrounding himself with cosplay Hegsethian soldiers obsessed with “lethality.” Jesus said, “Love your enemies.” Trump himself once told Erika Kirk, “Forget that. I hate my enemies.”

None of this is remotely Jesus-y.

And then there is the gold.

In Exodus 32, while Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving the law, the people grew restless. Aaron gathered their gold, melted it down, and fashioned a golden calf for them to worship. “These are your gods, O Israel,” they proclaimed.

When Moses came down from the mountain and saw it, he smashed the tablets in fury, ground the idol into powder, scattered it on water, and made the people drink it.

Not long after came the commandment that could not have been clearer: “You shall not make for yourself an idol.”

So when I see pastors standing around a towering golden Trump statue with raised hands and solemn blessings, I go berserk. Has anyone involved read the book they claim to follow.  Hello?  What about that god damn golden calf, dudes?

I keep thinking about something Pope Leo XIV said this April in Cameroon. He warned of “a handful of tyrants” ravaging the world and then delivered a line the men at Doral should have read before they laid hands on that golden Trump statue:

“But woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.”

That golden Trump (calf) statue says everything, and even more sickening are those who bless it.

This is an old story repeating itself in modern clothing: the idol remade, the calf regilded, the same human impulse to take what is temporary, flawed, and political and drape it in holiness it does not deserve.

Scripture already named this pattern. A people, impatient for God, forge something they can see, touch, and control, and then call it divine, no matter how dark it may be.  Never mind, Jesus said his kingdom is not of this world.  

We are watching MAGA make an earthly kingdom with old King Midas, who wanted everything golden. 

And this is the judgment that invites. When power is worshiped, truth is the first offering laid on the altar. When leaders are turned into sacred objects, conscience becomes inconvenient. And when religion kneels before empire, it ceases to be religion at all.

So let the gold shine.

It has always been the oldest disguise.