For most of the time since Donald Trump’s upset victory, the religious right has spent a lot of time warning us against speaking out against him. Their explanation? To hear them talk, the resistance to Trump is driven by the devil himself, and is heavily influenced by witchcraft and demons who are hellbent on derailing God’s plan for America. Therefore, if you oppose Trump, you’re opposing God himself, and risk being “smacked” by the Almighty.
Well, the warnings began anew late last week. One of the religious right’s newest celebrities, a guy who claims to have prophesied Trump’s win, claims that God made Megyn Kelly sick because he somehow knew she was going to put Trump through the wringer at a Republican primary debate.
For much of the campaign season, a number of Trump’s charismatic and Pentecostal supporters were buoyed by a supposed prophecy from Mark Taylor, a retired firefighter from Orlando, which foretold that Trump would win the presidency. Taylor claims to have received this “word from the Lord” in 2011, and was heavily promoted by Rick Wiles and other religious right luminaries.
One tiny problem–just a month after Taylor issued this prophecy, Trump announced he wouldn’t run in 2012. By definition, that makes Taylor a false prophet. But that hasn’t stopped Taylor from becoming the latest big thing in the hypercharismatic world. He has since become one of the go-to guests among the religious right bigshots still leading the cheers for the Donald. For instance, earlier this spring, he dropped by Jim Bakker’s show and declared that Trump’s agenda and God’s agenda were one and the same.
On Friday, Taylor gave the reality-based world its first taste of what he thinks of those who supposedly stand in Trump’s way. He delivered that message on WINA in Charlottesville, Virginia, as the guest of lunchtime host Rob Schilling while promoting his upcoming book, “The Trump Prophecies.” People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch got a clip.
You may recall that at the first debate of the Republican primary season on August 6, 2015, Kelly raked Trump over the coals–leading Trump to infamously suggest that Kelly had “blood coming out of her whatever” that night. But Kelly almost didn’t make it to that debate. She got severely nauseated just hours before the debate from what she believed to be a bad case of food poisoning. However, in 2016, in response to speculation that she might have been poisoned, Kelly chalked it up to the same stomach virus that Rand Paul caught around the same time.
According to Taylor, however, that illness was a shot across Kelly’s bow fired by God himself.
“You know, God says, ‘Do not touch my anointed.’ And Donald Trump is anointed by God, and that’s why you saw people literally getting kicked out of the race because they were going after Donald Trump. You’re seeing it in the news media right now. Megyn Kelly was a prime example. She went after Donald Trump in the first debate. She got violently ill that morning and she didn’t even know if she was going to be able to do the debate. And that was a warning shot from the Lord saying, ‘Do not touch my anointed.'”
Taylor went on to say that ever since Kelly’s tough line against Trump, “her life has never been the same.” He also appeared to suggest that the fair and balanced network’s tumultuous last two years date precisely from that debate performance. He believed it was a clear sign that Trump was “chosen by God and anointed by God for such a time as this.”
Apparently Taylor forgets that the tumult Fox News has faced was brought on in part because the dark matter surrounding the network’s rape culture finally came to light. He also forgets that Kelly played a key role in exposing in when she came forward to say that Roger Ailes had harassed her. Hmmm–doesn’t sound like Kelly got punished for calling out Trump that night. But then again, this is to be expected from a so-called prophet who thinks a guy who plasters a private cell phone number on social media, mocks the disabled, and revels in degrading women is anointed by God.
Schilling’s other guest that day was Mary Colbert, the wife of one of the charismatic world’s favorite doctors, Don Colbert. The Colberts have been among Trump’s biggest cheerleaders; Don served on Trump’s evangelical advisory board, and Mary recently warned Trump critics that they risk being cursed down to the third generation if they persist in standing against Trump. She said that when Taylor visited the Colberts and revealed this prophecy, she knew almost immediately that “this was not a man’s word–this was a word from God!” Later, she claimed that Taylor’s book would explain how everything unfolded in the campaign, and that it has been “absolutely vetted and proven.”
Really, Mary? Everything? Well, take a close look at Taylor’s prophecy.
“The Spirit of God says, in this next election they will spend billions to keep this president in; it will be like flushing their money down the toilet. Let them waist their money, for it comes from and it is being used by evil forces at work, but they will not succeed, for this next election will be a clean sweep for the man I have chosen. They will say things about this man (the enemy), but it will not affect him, and they shall say it rolls off of him like the duck, for as the feathers of a duck protect it, so shall my feathers protect this next president.”
Any competent reading of this “prophecy” shows that Taylor was foretelling a Trump victory over Obama in 2012. So if Taylor is really a prophet, why were we celebrating Obama’s reelection that year–and over Mitt Romney, not Trump?
From where this charismatic/Pentecostal liberal Democrat is sitting, this is yet more evidence that the religious right is so desperate to push through its agenda that it will do absolutely anything. That not only includes propping up the most manifestly unfit and unqualified person to occupy the White House in recent memory, but also recycling a false prophecy.
(featured image: screengrab from YouTube)
