Trump Gives Bizarre Message to Half-Empty Christian Nationalist Event

Practically no one attended Donald Trump’s eight-hour religious program Sunday on Washington’s National Mall.

Even the president—or his cabinet members—couldn’t be bothered to show up to Rededicate 250, which was billed as a “national jubilee of prayer, praise and thanksgiving.” A smattering of people attended the outdoor event, held during 90-degree weather and high humidity in the nation’s capital, to hear Trump’s glitchy, prerecorded message about God. Trump, meanwhile, was at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.

Appearing from his seat behind the Resolute Desk, Trump read a verse from 2 Chronicles 7:14 that urged people to “humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways.” The three-minute missive ended on an abrupt note, sparking slow applause as the sparse audience figured out that was all they’d be hearing from the president.

The one-day event was organized by the nonprofit Freedom 250 in a public-private partnership. It is not clear how much the lone Christian assembly cost, but the Department of the Interior has thrown at least $100 million at the nonprofit to organize several events in honor of the nation’s semiquincentennial, including a government-sponsored IndyCar street race through Washington on August 23 and a “Freedom Truck” mobile history museum.

Trump couldn’t even be bothered to read a new Bible passage or film a new clip for Sunday’s event: The prerecorded message from the president originally aired in April for an event called America Reads the Bible, reported the Associated Press.

The gathering was another indication as to what kind of America the Trump administration—and its MAGA acolytes—is willing to uplift. Prior to the ceremony, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted that Christianity, rather than other religions or the freedom of religion, is a core tenant of the American identity.

“The naysayers who have created this new term ‘Christian Nationalism’ as a pejorative, a derogatory term, are trying to silence the influence and voices of Christians,” Johnson said in an interview with Fox News Sunday. “I think that’s wildly inappropriate.”

Instead of attending his administration’s nine-hour prayer festival on Sunday, President Trump decided to play golf at his club in northern Virginia.

Rather than speak at the Christian nationalist event, held as part of the America250 celebrations for the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Trump sent a prerecorded message where he read from 2 Chronicles 7:11-22. It was the same video he made last month for a marathon Bible reading organized by a Texas supporter.

On Truth Social, Trump barely mentioned the festival, posting a note at 8:30 a.m. Sunday: “I HOPE EVERYBODY AT REDEDICATE 250 IS HAVING A GOOD TIME. IF THERE IS ANYTHING I CAN DO TO HELP, JUST HAVE OUR BEAUTIFUL, BOTH INSIDE AND OUT, RACHAEL C.D., GIVE ME A CALL. I’M BACK FROM CHINA!!! President DJT.” For some reason, the post appeared to mention Rachel Campos-Duffy, the wife of Transportation Secretary Chris Duffy and a co-host of Fox and Friends Weekend.

Despite enjoying strong support from evangelical Christians and regularly professing his Christian faith, Trump does not appear to have attended any church services since his second inauguration in January 2025. On Easter Sunday, he opted to skip attending religious services and instead drove with his motorcade around the site of his proposed “triumphal arch.”

Trump has provoked religious ire by repeatedly posting photos comparing himself to Jesus and picking fights with Pope Leo XIV. The backlash to the president has been strong in these cases, and may have even provoked the man who attacked the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last month. The president, however, has continued to golf and post through it all with no regard for consequences.

President Trump is officially dropping his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, opting instead to create a roughly $1.8 billion fund to further enrich himself, January 6 rioters, and virtually any right-winger who felt targeted by the Biden administration.

Trump initially attacked the IRS for allegedly allowing “a rogue, politically-motivated employee to leak private and confidential information about President Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to The New York Times, ProPublica and other left-wing news outlets, which was then illegally released to millions of people,” Trump’s attorney said last week. “President Trump continues to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable.” Now Trump is abandoning that in favor of using the IRS—which is under his executive purview—to get him and his friends paid without legal action.

What’s perhaps even more troubling is that Trump would be able to choose and fire members of this weaponization committee without cause, forming it in his own image with little to no oversight—as they aren’t required to reveal who the money goes to either.

“Waste, fraud, and abuse in the flesh,” California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote last Friday on X. “Donald Trump wants to settle his joke lawsuit against his own IRS department to hand out $1.7 BILLION of OUR TAX DOLLARS to Jan. 6th insurrectionists and his cronies.” The Justice Department later announced the fund would total almost $1.8 billion.

MAGA Republicans are teaching a scary lesson in the wake of Senator Bill Cassidy’s weekend primary loss: Do not cross Donald Trump.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham appeared on NBC News’s Meet the Press Sunday to spread the word.

“Are you glad that Senator Cassidy is no longer going to be your colleague, senator?” asked host Kristen Welker.

“No, I like Bill. I thought he was a great senator, but he made a political decision,” Graham said.

Cassidy was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial—a decision that, even five years on, has earned him the ire of his MAGA-aligned peers. Graham said Cassidy’s actions would have “ruined” Trump’s “political life” and kept him from ever “running for office again.”

Graham also threw shade at Representative Thomas Massie, another Trump dissenter whose primary is coming up on Tuesday, whining that the Kentucky Republican “votes against Trump all the time.”

“What’s the headline? ‘Trump strong,’” Graham said. “Those who try to destroy Trump politically—stand in the way of his agenda—are going to lose.”

“Bill made a decision. What would LBJ do?” the South Carolinian continued, referring to former President Lyndon B. Johnson. “Is it natural for a politician to go after people who try to destroy their political life? So, Bill Cassidy lost because he tried to destroy Trump. Massie is gonna lose because he’s trying to destroy the agenda.

“You can disagree with President Trump, but if you try to destroy him you’re going to lose, because this is the party of Donald Trump,” Graham concluded.

Cassidy was first elected in 2008 to represent Louisiana’s 6th congressional district, a thin, backslash-shaped region that spans from Shreveport in the northwest to Baton Rouge in the heart of Louisiana. The incumbent senator finished third in the district’s Republican primary on Saturday, officially pushing him out of the running. The remaining two candidates—including a Trump-endorsed state representative, Julia Letlow—are headed to a runoff in June.

A CSPAN caller who identified himself as a three-time Donald Trump voter compared the president to Adolf Hitler.

In a damning pulse-check on Trump’s second term, a caller, who identified himself as “Thomas from Hawaii,” told CSPAN’s Washington Journal Saturday that he regrets supporting Trump after realizing he was “the worst president we’ve ever had.”

“It’s hard for me to say this, but I think if I can open up about it in public that it might help others,” Thomas said. “I wanted to believe Trump was the real deal for a long time, even though I had doubts because I knew enough about his business history to think otherwise. But now I regret my support for him, and I should’ve known better. He’s making it plain as day.”

“He’s a con man, a liar, doesn’t keep his promises. He’s in office all for himself and he doesn’t even try to hide his corruption anymore.”

The caller added: “He’s the worst president we’ve ever had and he’s the most corrupt president we’ve ever had. I know it’s hard, it took me a while to be able to say that. Very difficult when you commit yourself to believing in somebody.”

Washington Journal host Taylor Popielarz asked what had been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Thomas replied it wasn’t any one thing. “He was gonna lower prices on day one, he was gonna do this on day one, only he could fix all this stuff,” he said. “And now I understand how somebody like Adolf Hitler was able to brainwash millions of people. I never thought I’d see that again in my lifetime. But it’s happened, right? I thought we got past that, but we don’t learn from history.”

Thomas isn’t alone in his concerns.

In a recent CBS News/YouGov poll, seven in 10 Americans said that they were either “angry” or “frustrated” with Trump’s economic approach. A New York Times/Siena poll found that Trump’s approval rating has sunk to a second-term low of 37 percent amid his deeply unpopular war with Iran, which has sent the price of energy skyrocketing.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly report, released last week, found that inflation rose to 3.8 percent in April, outpacing wages, which grew at a rate of 3.6 percent. Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to tout cherry-picked data to show dropping prices.