On Thursday, a co-host from the View took to social media to share an “insane” tidbit about President Donald Trump. According to Alyssa Farah Griffin – who served as Press Secretary of the Department of Defense during Trump’s first term – the president once offered an eyebrow-raising take on the Christian messiah’s name.
She was responding to a post asking what the “H” stands for when people say “Jesus H. Christ.” According to Farah Griffin, “Hand on my heart, my first day at the White House, Trump asked me if I knew what the H stood for. I said no. He said Horatio. I think about that at least once a week.”
“Sigh,” responded a prominent political commentator. “Why is this completely insane and yet entirely realistic.” While “realistic” may depend on one’s subjective view of the president, Farah Griffin’s story certainly fits a pattern of Trump’s unusual approach to words and spelling. Perhaps the most looming recent example involves the “Dumocrats” insult he slings at his political opponents. “Most people don’t know that ‘dumb’ has a B at the end,” he’s asserted repeatedly, often adding, “they think it’s D-U-M, and that’s okay.” But as CNN notes, “dumb” is a basic word that most Americans learn to spell in grade school.
This is far from the only case of such word confusion. When railing about immigrants, for example, he often claims that other nations release “asylum” inmates, who then make their way into the U.S. illegally. But as many have suggested, he seems to be confusing mental institutions with the concept of refugees seeking political asylum – the two are completely unrelated.
There are also plenty of examples in which he misspeaks and plows ahead with it, pretending he said what he meant. On Wednesday, for example, while speaking at a rally in South Carolina, he launched into one of his favorite refrains about how he should have gotten the Nobel Peace Prize. But in the process, he suddenly paused and said, “Does anybody know the name of that peace prize? They gave the Pulitzer Prize to a young lady — I think she’s 80 years old — a young lady who nobody ever heard of.” He was taking a swipe at 85-year-old Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, who has spent her entire life promoting human rights. In this case, Trump seemed to catch the mix-up, playing it off like it was intentional. “I didn’t get the Nobel Prize. I didn’t get the Pulitzer. I should have gotten the Pulitzer for writing, too,” he added.
Trump’s “Jesus H. Christ” comment also speaks to his uneasy alliance with U.S. Christians, 80 percent of whom voted for him in all three elections, though that support has diminished as his approval rating has plunged. In regard to Christianity, he’s made no shortage of gaffes. For example, earlier this year during a strange fight with the Pope, Trump posted an AI-generated photo of himself as Jesus, prompting outrage from disillusioned followers. He’s also made a number of misstatements exposing his ignorance regarding the Bible, such as when he read a passage as “Two Corinthians” rather than “Second Corinthians.”