Marmaduke’s Weekly Sting — N°1 “Ecce Homo” by Marmaduke
Marmaduke is neither journalist, nor expert, nor any of those creatures who perform on television panels. He watches, he thinks, he stings. Once a week, he puts it on paper.[1]
One must give Donald Trump his due: the man is consistent. Last week, he dismissed Pope Leo XIV as a troublemaker — an agitator in a white cassock who ought to mind his own business. This week, he posted an image of himself as Jesus Christ, complete with crown of thorns and heavenly light. The circle is complete. First you drive out God’s representative on earth, then you take his place. In certain professional circles, they call this a fast-track promotion.
There is, incidentally, a detail worth pausing on. Leo XIV is American. Trump is therefore picking a fight with the only American that two billion Catholics recognise as God’s representative on earth. A fellow countryman. One searches in vain for the electoral logic, but let us press on.
And really, as strategies go, it’s not entirely stupid. When you’ve exhausted every human superlative — greatest president, greatest negotiator, greatest genius in the history of the modern world and surrounding areas — you have to go up a floor. God is the last floor available. After that, there’s only the void, and even that might not be enough.
I don’t want to play the priest here, but still. The man has been divorced three times, bankrupted thousands of small suppliers, lied with the regularity of a Swiss metronome, and now poses as the Redeemer. There’s a certain coherence to it, one has to admit. The Jesus of the Gospels kept company with prostitutes, out of Christian charity. Trump keeps company with them rather differently — and it’s his lawyer who picks up the bill. Same general line of business, you might say, but with a rather different accounting system.
What interests Marmaduke is not so much Trump as those who applaud. And they do applaud — thunderously. Millions of decent people who see in this image not the megalomaniacal fantasy of a man who clearly needs a long nap, but a sign. A confirmation. Their champion stands above everything — above the law, above the Pope, above Congress, above reality itself. Logically, he stands above the Son of God as well. This is no longer politics. It is religion. And religion does not negotiate.
Evangelical America has always had this particular gift for manufacturing saints to order. It beatified Ronald Reagan while he still breathed, canonised George W. Bush after September 11th, and now it crucifies Trump in order to resurrect him. The liturgical cycle runs like clockwork. The martyr’s suffering — the trials, the convictions, the “persecution” — the electoral resurrection, the eternal glory of Mar-a-Lago. Pontius Pilate, in this version, is the New York judge who convicted him of fraud. The Romans are the Deep State. And the empty tomb is the White House.
What should concern us more than the buffoonery is the machinery. Napoleon too took the crown from the Pope’s hands and placed it upon his own head. A magnificent gesture, full of panache. The difference being that Napoleon had won actual battles. Trump’s victories consist of tweets and tariffs. But no matter. Form always outlasts substance. The sacred gesture imposes itself before anyone has checked whether the sacred is deserved.
Meanwhile, the Pope — the real one, the one in white, the American by the Tiber — continues to speak of migrants, of the poor, of peace. For this he receives volleys of abuse from Palm Beach. Strange distribution of roles. The billionaire in the armoured limousine preaches national greatness, while his fellow American in the cassock speaks to the humble. Someone, somewhere, got the costumes muddled.
Marmaduke is not a religious man. Not particularly. But he was taught, somewhere along the way, that the sin of pride — superbia, as the ancients had it — was the first of the deadly sins. The one that comes before all the others. The one that announces the fall.
So Marmaduke waits. He pulls up a chair, orders a drink, and waits.
With a man like this, the fall is going to make quite a noise.
[1] Marmaduke’s Weekly Sting appears every week on European-Security.[©]
