Of Course Trump Skipped MAGA’s Christian Fest on the National Mall to Golf Instead

I mean … was there ever any doubt, really? Despite the direct aid, cooperation and involvement of the White House and multiple members of Trump’s cabinet, and the use of at least some taxpayer funding alongside private donations to bring Sunday’s MAGA Christian blasphemo-fest to life on the National Mall, did any of those attendees manage to trick themselves into believing that Trump would care enough to physically attend, as organizers had teased? When the weather was hot and balmy, on a lovely Sunday afternoon? Did they seriously believe that Trump was about to pass up prime golfing weather to hang out in D.C. with a bunch of filthy Christian poors? They probably should have remembered who we’re talking about: The man whose biggest problem with the crowd at the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol Riots was that they looked “low class” and their lack of taste and refinement reflected poorly on him.

So yeah, of course Donald Trump was not going to rub elbows with his evangelical supporters at the event known as “Rededicate 250,” not that this prevented an aura of madness from permeating the proceedings. Predictably, some of the most insane things spoken out loud at the event came from the mouths of Christian pastors and preachers, like the already much-publicized statements from far-right Christian author Eric Metaxas, who proclaimed that Trump’s $1 billion ballroom was divinely ordained, among other things. It made a fine follow-up to one of Trump’s favorite MAGA pastors, Mark Burns, dedicating a literal golden idol (22 feet tall!) of the President the prior weekend, complete with the phrase “Let me be clear: This is not a golden calf.” Can you believe that most pastors manage to go their entire clerical careers without having to utter that kind of phrase?

Trump’s bizarre pre-recorded message to Rededicate 250 ended up on abrupt note, but that didn’t stop the follow-up speaker from worshiping him as a false idol

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 6:51 PM · May 17, 2026

The most frightening actual material of Rededicate 250, however, came primarily from the mouths of members of the Trump administration, who seized on the event as a chance to push for more or less the total dissolution of any concept of the separation of church and state. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who was actually in attendance, likes to state that the entire concept of keeping religion out of active governance is “misunderstood,” and that secretly, “the Founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around.” And naturally, when he mentions “the church,” he is specifically speaking about an Evangelical Christian church and nothing else.

The Southern Baptist Speaker of the House, who we occasionally like to remind folks monitors his porn intake with his son, said the following about Rededicate 250 to Fox News on Sunday, attempting to make the case that “Christian nationalism” is actually a very positive thing: “The people who are the naysayers and who have created this new term of Christian nationalism as a pejorative, a derogatory term, are trying to silence the influence and the voices of Christians, and I think that’s wildly inappropriate.” At the event itself, Johnson proclaimed that “We hereby rededicate the United States of America as one nation under God.”

Mike Johnson: “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, and I think that’s wildly inappropriate.”

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 9:50 AM · May 17, 2026

The rest of the Trump administration heavy hitters all appeared in pre-taped messages, including Trump himself, in a recycled clip of the President reading a Bible passage filmed months ago for a different event. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, in his video, invoked an apocryphal story about George Washington praying for divine intervention against the British while wintering at Valley Forge in 1777, among the various administration officials who attempted to make the historical case for the United States as a solely Christian nation from its earliest moments. As Hegseth put it: “Let us pray for our nation on bended knee and let us ask our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, as Washington did on that momentous day, so help us God.”

Never a stranger to abject hypocrisy, the admin also included some curious speakers for an explicitly Christian festival. One of the most notable: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, today ostensibly a practicing Hindu, who has nevertheless jumped at the opportunity to ingratiate herself to Trump’s inner circle by randomly speaking Christian prayers at events of this nature during his second term. This, despite the fact that Gabbard grew up in the Science of Identity Foundation, a Hawaii-based cult of personality and offshoot of the Hare Krishna movement whose members are known to consume the toenail clippings of venerated 78-year-old leader Chris Butler to absorb his mystical energy. Seems like the right sort of vibe for the person quoting the Lord’s Prayer at Rededicate 250 on Sunday, yeah?

Or perhaps that’s perfectly appropriate, given that this attempt at creating a Christian ethno-state is headed up by a man who makes no secret of his contempt for those Christians, who famously couldn’t even quote a single Bible passage when it was asked of him. Purely coincidentally, his approval numbers just hit brand new lows. Somehow, people who are clearly not Christians have been elevated as the mythic saviors of Christianity itself in this era of stupidity, even as the rhetoric of the actual Christian pastors and firebrands in attendance only grows more and more apocalyptic. If this is indeed a battle between “good and evil,” as they’re fond of putting it, how much longer until we’re meant to be purging our “evil” neighbors in God’s name?

“When you look at American history, you can see God has been at the center of our nation since its founding in 1776,” said Gary Hamrick, a Virginia pastor, at Rededicate 250 on Sunday. “Today, friends, we are in a spiritual war. This is a battle in our day between good and evil, between right and wrong, between truth and lies, between light and darkness.”

When you’ve backed yourself into a theological corner where Donald John Trump represents “right,” “truth” and “light”—while he ignores the very event you’re speaking at to golf instead—then something has gone very wrong indeed in your spiritual life.