Is Donald Trump the Second Coming of Cyrus the Great?

As strange as it may sound, Donald J. Trump, the current president of the United States of America, has been repeatedly likened to Cyrus the Great (lived c. 600 – c. 530 BC), the founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. The comparison between Trump and Cyrus the Great is especially popular among evangelical Christian Trump-supporters in the United States, but it also has some prominence among Israeli Jews. Let’s take a look at who Cyrus the Great was, why Donald Trump is being compared to him, and why these comparisons don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Who was Cyrus the Great?

Šāhanšāh Kūruš II of the Achaemenid Empire, most commonly known in English as “Cyrus the Great,” was a historical ancient Persian king who founded the Achaemenid Empire, the first of many Persian empires. He conquered the Neo-Babylonian Empire in September 539 BC after his armies defeated the armies of the Neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus in the Battle of Opis. He instituted a policy of religious tolerance and allowed the Judahites who had been taken captive in Babylon to return to Judah to rebuild the temple to their national god YHWH in Jerusalem.

Partly on account of his decision to let the Judahites return to Judah, Cyrus figures prominently in the Hebrew Bible, in which he is portrayed a glorious, benevolent ruler acting as nothing short of God’s own vessel on Earth. In the Book of Isaiah 45:1, Cyrus is even referred to as a מָשִׁיחַ‎ (māšîaḥ), which means “anointed one” in Hebrew. To give you an impression of just what an important title this was, the English word Christ comes from the word χριστός (christós), which is the Greek translation of מָשִׁיחַ. In the Book of Isaiah, then, Cyrus bears the very same title that is applied by Christians today to Jesus.

ABOVE: Presumed relief carving of Cyrus the Great in the form of a supernatural being from Pasargadae

In his book The Histories, the Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos (lived c. 484 – c. 425 BC) portrays Cyrus as an ideal ruler and paragon of wisdom. He even ends his Histories with a quote which he attributes to Cyrus. The later Greek historian Xenophon of Athens (lived c. 431 – 354 BC) wrote a mostly fictional biography of Cyrus titled Kyropaideia or The Education of Cyrus in which he presented Cyrus as the ideal monarch, a wise and benevolent ruler over a nation of admiring subjects.

Because Xenophon is known for his simple, easy-to-read style of writing, the Education of Cyrus is often one of the first works that students read when learning Ancient Greek. The Education of Cyrus was influential on the Founding Fathers, particularly Thomas Jefferson, who had two copies of the book in his personal collection. He studied the book in great detail in both Greek and in English and made extensive annotations on it.

Of course, it is also extremely important to remember that, hidden beneath his now-gilded reputation, Cyrus also had a dark side. Like all ancient conquerors, he was hellbent on conquering neighboring peoples and forcing them into submission if necessary. Thus, he was capable of committing more than his share of violent atrocities. The Nabonidus Chronicle, for instance, records that, after he overcame the Babylonian forces in the Battle of Opis, there was a “massacre” of “the people of Akkad.”

It is unclear whether this is supposed to refer to a massacre of enemy soldiers or of civilians, but, in any case, the mention of the “massacre” at all should remind us that Cyrus was no saint—a fact that I fear is often forgotten whenever Cyrus is being discussed. As I discuss in this article from January 2019, history is not always written by the victors, but, in the case of Cyrus, the narrative that is known today is very much one that is biased in Cyrus’s favor.

ABOVE: Eighteenth-century tapestry depicting Cyrus the Great as a ruler of Persia

The Trump-as-Cyrus story among evangelical Christians

In any case, from what I have said here, to most people, Cyrus probably does not sound very much like Trump at all. Nonetheless, it seems that evangelical Christians who support Trump are comparing Trump to Cyrus the Great almost constantly. As early as September 2016, Lance Wallnau, an evangelical leader, published an entire book titled God’s Chaos Candidate: Donald J. Trump and the American Unraveling in which he argued that Donald Trump is the modern-day equivalent of Cyrus the Great, handpicked by God as a new kind of candidate to lead the United States to greatness.

The idea of Trump as a modern-day Cyrus has also been promoted by other prominent evangelical leaders. When asked about Donald Trump, Ken Ham, a very prominent evangelical apologist, the founder and CEO of Answers in Genesis, and founder of the Creation Museum, told the Mormon-affiliated news outlet Deseret News in January 2017:

“God is in total control. He makes that very clear in the Bible where he tells us that he raises up kings and destroys kingdoms. He even calls a pagan king, Cyrus, his anointed, or his servant to do the things that he wants him to do.”

In December 2017, Mike Evans, an evangelical leader and founder of the Jerusalem Prayer Team, said the following words to the evangelical Christian media outlet CBN News in response to Donald Trump’s decision to move the United States embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem:

“I will see President Trump Monday. I will be in the White House on Monday and the first word I’m going to send to him, ‘Cyrus, you’re Cyrus. Because you’ve done something historic and prophetic,’ and he promised us he would do it. He [i.e. Cyrus] saved the Jewish people. He was used as an instrument of God for deliverance in the Bible and God has used this imperfect vessel, this flawed human being like you or I, this imperfect vessel and he’s using him in an incredible, amazing way to fulfill his plans and purposes. We are so happy. We couldn’t be happier and as somebody who has wanted and prayed and hoped for this for more than forty years, I see us in the middle of prophecy right now.”

The idea of Trump as a modern-day Cyrus the Great featured prominently in the 2018 pro-Trump evangelical propaganda film The Trump Prophecy, produced by a collaboration of ReelWorksStudios and Liberty University’s Cinematic Arts program. The film’s basic message is that Donald Trump is a messianic figure appointed by God Himself to save the United States. The film explicitly compares Trump to Cyrus, declaring that, like Cyrus, Trump is God’s vessel on Earth. It also directly equates those who oppose Donald Trump with those who oppose the will of God Himself.

ABOVE: Promotional image for the pro-Trump evangelical propaganda film The Trump Prophecy, which describes Donald Trump as the modern-day equivalent of Cyrus the Great

Why? Why Cyrus?

The reason why evangelical Trump-supporters keep comparing Trump to Cyrus is because, in their eyes, Cyrus serves as a clear and concrete Biblical justification for supporting Trump. Most evangelical Christians are intelligent enough to realize that Donald Trump is not one of them. Not only do Trump’s morals not align with those espoused by evangelicals, but Trump has also repeatedly shown an almost comical ignorance of the Bible. In an interview with Bloomberg in August 2015, Trump was asked what his favorite Bible verse was. This was his response:

“I wouldn’t want to get into it because to me that’s very personal. You know, when I talk about the Bible, it’s very personal, so I don’t want to get into verses… The Bible means a lot to me, but I don’t want to get into specifics.”

Here is a video of Trump saying this:

It is pretty clear from this response that the reason why Trump cannot name a single Bible verse is because he has never read the Bible. On 14 April 2016, Trump was asked his favorite Bible verse again in a radio interview. This time he had an answer, but it wasn’t a good one: “An eye for an eye.” Evidently Trump has never read the Gospel of Matthew 5:38–42, in which Jesus says the following, as translated in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV):

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.”

In other words, the one verse Trump picked happens to be one of the verses from the Hebrew Bible that, according to the gospel, Jesus specifically rejected. It should be clear to anyone with eyes and ears that Donald Trump is not a religious man.

Nevertheless, many evangelical Trump-supporters look to Cyrus as a Biblical precedent for Trump. Cyrus was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but rather a Zoroastrian. Cyrus never read any of the Biblical writings and he did not worship the Judeo-Christian God. In fact, he probably was not even a monotheist in the sense that we would think of today, since Zoroastrianism at the time of Cyrus was still more henotheistic than truly monotheistic.

Nevertheless, the Bible portrays Cyrus as an instrument of God’s will. The way many evangelical Trump-supporters see it, Trump is like Cyrus; he is not a Christian (certainly not a devout Christian at any rate), but, in their eyes at least, he supports Christian interests.

ABOVE: Cyrus Hunting Wild Boar, painted by Claude Audran the Younger (lived 1639–1684)

The Trump-as-Cyrus story among Israelis

American evangelical Trump-supporters are not the only ones who keep comparing Trump to Cyrus. Many Israelis who support Trump are making the same comparison. In March 2018, Benjamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister of Israel, lavished praise on Donald Trump for his decision to move the United States embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, comparing him the Cyrus the Great:

“I want to tell you that the Jewish people have a long memory, so we remember the proclamation of the great king, Cyrus the Great, the Persian king 2,500 years ago. He proclaimed that the Jewish exiles in Babylon could come back and rebuild our Temple in Jerusalem. We remember a hundred years ago, Lord Balfour, who issued the Balfour Proclamation that recognized the rights of the Jewish people in our ancestral homeland. We remember 70 years ago, President Harry S. Truman was the first leader to recognize the Jewish state. And we remember how a few weeks ago, President Donald J. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Mr. President, this will be remembered by our people through the ages.”

In an interview in June 2019, Benjamin Netanyahu’s son Yair Netanyahu praised Trump as well, comparing him to Cyrus the Great, saying, “The Jewish people still remember King Cyrus the Great from Persia that recognized Jerusalem 2,500 years ago, so we have a long-term memory.”

The Israeli Mikdash Educational Center is even selling novelty coins depicting Trump and Cyrus the Great standing next to each other in profile with the words “And He charged me to build Him a house in Jerusalem” in both Hebrew an English. The words on the coin are taken from the Decree of Cyrus, which is found in the Second Book of the Chronicles 36:22–23. Here is the passage, as translated in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV):

“Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may the Lord his God be with him! Let him go up.”

The message of the coin is very explicit: Trump is the new Cyrus who has been sent on a mission by God to support the nation of Israel.

Obviously, not all Israelis support the comparison between Donald Trump and Cyrus the Great. Indeed, many Israelis are even opposed to Trump. Certainly, the vast majority of Jewish people in the United States despise Trump. A Gallup poll from March 2019 found that 71% of Jewish people in the United States disapprove of Donald Trump—the highest percentage of all the religious groups who were included in the poll. Nonetheless, among the Jews and Israelis who do support Trump, the comparison to Cyrus seems to be prominent.

ABOVE: Image of a novelty coin being sold by an Israeli organization depicting Donald Trump and Cyrus the Great standing side-by-side in profile

Donald Trump’s promotion of the comparison between himself and Cyrus

Probably largely as a result of evangelical leaders like Mike Evans telling him to his face that he is “Cyrus,” Donald Trump is not totally oblivious to the frequent comparisons between himself and Cyrus the Great. In fact, there is some evidence that he has actively promoted such comparisons. For instance, on 22 March 2017, in an official statement released in recognition of the Persian holiday of Nowraz, Trump referenced a quote that is misattributed to Cyrus the Great:

“Cyrus the Great, a leader of the ancient Persian Empire, famously said that ‘freedom, dignity, and wealth together constitute the greatest happiness of humanity. If you bequeath all three to your people, their love for you will never die.’ On behalf of the American people, I wish you freedom, dignity, and wealth.”

To be clear, Cyrus the Great never actually said this. Like most other quotes you find attributed to people from ancient times on the internet, the quotation is fake. Also, calling Cyrus “the leader of the Persian Empire” is probably not the most accurate way of describing him, since there were, in fact, multiple Persian Empires and Cyrus was specifically the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, the earliest of them all. In any case, the fact that Trump (or at least whoever wrote this statement for Trump) made a point of including a quote that he believed came from Cyrus most likely represents a subtle encouragement of the association between Cyrus and Trump.

Trump is not the only one in his administration who has made references to Cyrus. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also extolled Cyrus the Great as an ideal ruler, perhaps implicitly comparing him to Trump. Pompeo has also (even more bizarrely) explicitly compared Trump to Esther, the heroine of the Book of Esther, who is described in the book that bears her name as preventing a massacre of the Jews that had been plotted by Haman, the evil vizier of the Achaemenid king Ahasuerus.

ABOVE: Queen Esther, painted in 1879 by the British Academic painter Edwin Long. Mike Pompeo has (rather bizarrely) compared Trump to Esther.

Well… how do they compare?

Since so many people are comparing Trump to Cyrus the Great, I suppose we should probably look at how the two men actually compare. Right from the get-go, they are very different. We do not know much about Cyrus, but we do at least know a little bit about him. Our surviving sources generally portray him as a talented military strategist who commanded respect even from his enemies.

Trump seems to be almost the opposite of this. For instance, his withdrawal of United States troops from northern Syria in October 2019 resulted in a widely-predicted debacle in which forces aligned with the Turkish government invaded the region and attacked the Kurdish militant groups with which the United States was previously aligned. The Kurds subsequently sided with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, an enemy of the United States and ally of Vladimir Putin. Trump’s decision not only won criticism from his enemies, but also from members of his own party.

Cyrus the Great is also portrayed in the ancient sources as a generally merciful leader who often chose to show clemency towards his defeated enemies. His clemency even went so far as giving his defeated opponents positions in his administration. For instance, Herodotos records in Book One of his Histories that, after Cyrus defeated King Kroisos of Lydia in the Battle of Thymbra in 546 BC, he decided to not only spare Kroisos’s life but also appoint Kroisos as one of his advisors.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, is notoriously vindictive towards his enemies, even those whom he has defeated. Could you imagine Donald Trump appointing Hillary Clinton as a member of his own cabinet? No, of course not. Honestly, Cyrus was more like Barack Obama in this regard, since Obama appointed Hillary Clinton, whom he defeated in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, as his Secretary of State for his first term in office and often made a point of listening to the views of his opponents and former opponents.

ABOVE: Attic red-figure amphora dating to between c. 500 BC and c. 490 BC depicting King Kroisos of Lydia about to be burned on a pyre under the orders of Cyrus. According to Herodotos, Cyrus decided at the last moment to not only spare Kroisos’s life, but also to appoint Kroisos as one of his advisors.

About that whole embassy thing…

Trump has been most often compared to Cyrus in the context of his decision to move the United States embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem—a decision which has been likened to Cyrus’s decision to let the Judahite captives in Babylon return to Judah and rebuild their temple. It was in the context of the embassy move that many evangelical and Israeli leaders made the association between Trump and Cyrus explicit.

Even this comparison, though, does not really hold up to scrutiny. Cyrus allowed perhaps as many as around 20,000 Judahites who had been held in captivity in Babylon to return to the homeland many of them had been desperately pining for. The Babylonian captivity that Cyrus brought to an end had lasted for generations. Many of the people Cyrus allowed to return to Judah had probably never even seen their original homeland, since the initial deportation of Judahites to Babylon occurred in 597 BC and Cyrus’s decision to let the captives return occurred in 539 BC. Cyrus’s decision, though it was undoubtedly politically motivated, obviously meant a lot to the Jewish people.

Trump, on the other hand, simply renamed the United States consulate compound that was already in Jerusalem an “embassy.” It was a purely symbolic move. Very little actually changed as a result of Trump’s decision. No matter where you stand on the political spectrum and no matter what your stance is on Trump’s decision, I think we all can agree that what Trump did wasn’t anything even remotely on the scale of what Cyrus did.

ABOVE: Photograph of the United States embassy to Israel in Tel Aviv

A decidedly un-American comparison

The persistent comparison between Donald Trump and Cyrus the Great is disturbing in so many ways. One reason why it is disturbing is because of the rhetoric and the ideology that are inextricably tied to it. In the eyes of many evangelicals, Trump is, like Cyrus, the vessel of God’s will. Whatever Trump’s personal flaws may be, his evangelical supporters still maintain that he is still God’s vessel and that people should support him no matter what, because opposition to Trump is opposition to God.

This is an ideology much closer to the idea of the divine right of kings that flourished in western Europe during the Early Modern Period than the ideas on which our democracy rests. In the United States, the president is not supposed to be ordained by God Himself, but rather elected by the people. This is arguably the most fundamental idea on which our entire constitution rests. When the principle that the president should be chosen by the people and not by any other power is undermined, democracy begins to crumble.

When people start saying that the president is appointed by God, the natural implication of this assertion is that only God can hold the president accountable and that the people have no right to challenge him. This is exactly the kind of reasoning that is used to justify a theocratic monarchy or dictatorship. It is the most fundamentally un-American way of thinking.

The ideology of absolute monarchy is virtually inherent in the comparison between Trump and Cyrus, since Cyrus himself was an absolute monarch who justified his own rule by divine right. On the Cyrus Cylinder, a clay cylinder inscribed with a decree undoubtedly issued by Cyrus himself declaring his policy of toleration in Akkadian cuneiform, Cyrus explicitly declares himself as having been appointed by Marduk, the Babylonian national god.

ABOVE: Daniel and Cyrus before the Idol Bel, painted in 1633 by the Dutch Golden Age painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rij. Cyrus the Great was an absolute ruler who claimed to have been ordained by the gods. When people declare Trump the new Cyrus ordained by God, they imply that he is answerable to God alone.

The depths of hypocrisy

The comparisons between Trump and Cyrus are also disturbing for another reason, which is that these comparisons reveal the extent to which some right-wing evangelicals are willing to bend to excuse and justify the deeds of a man whose actions they would ordinarily consider indefensible. They excuse and dismiss Trump’s misdeeds by asserting that God is using him as a vessel like Cyrus and they do not adequately address the serious problems with Trump’s morality.

I am sure everyone remembers how, on 7 October 2016, a video recording came to light of Donald Trump on a bus with Billy Bush in 2005 on his way to an Access Hollywood shoot literally bragging about how much he loves sexually assaulting women. In the video, Trump said regarding women:

“You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful. I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. I just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. . . . Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

Here is the video itself in which Trump says these things:

This is an unambiguous description of sexual assault. When the video came to light, Trump’s response was to simply insist that this was all “locker room talk.” This suggests that he doesn’t understand the difference between talking about consensual sexual activities and talking about sexual assault. Trump hasn’t just talked about assaulting women; there is considerable evidence that he has actually done it. Over the past roughly forty years, Trump has been credibly accused by at least twenty-three women of various forms of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment.

Even if you leave aside his assaulting women, Trump’s relationships with women still leave much to be desired, especially from the perspective a conservative evangelical who truly believes that a man should have one wife for life and never engage in extramarital affairs. Trump is currently on his third wife, who is young enough to be his daughter. (Donald is currently seventy-three and Melania is forty-nine.)

Trump is also notorious for his numerous extramarital affairs, including at least one with a porn star (i.e. Stormy Daniels) and at least one with a Playboy playmate (i.e. Karen McDougal), whom he paid settlements of $130,000 and $150,000 respectively in effort to keep them quiet about the affairs.

ABOVE: Photograph originating from Stormy Daniels’s MySpace page of her and Donald Trump

ABOVE: Photograph of Karen McDougal, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and Melania Trump

Most evangelical Christians probably like to think of themselves as being opposed to racism and white supremacy. One of the things Cyrus the Great is most famous for is his policy of tolerance towards ethnic and religious minorities within his empire. Donald Trump, on the other hand, has repeatedly lent credibility and support to white supremacists. For instance, an infamous white supremacist rally organized by the Neo-Nazis Jason Kessler and Richard Spencer known as the “Unite the Right rally” was held in Charlottesville, Virginia, beginning on the evening of 11 August 2017 and continuing into the next day.

On the night of 11 August, about 250 attendees of the rally marched through the campus of the University of Virginia carrying tiki torches and chanting Nazi slogans such as “Blood and soil!” “White lives matter!” and “Jews will not replace us!” Over the course of the next twenty-four hours, there were multiple incidents in which the white supremacists attacked various counter-protesters. At around 1:45 p.m., a self-identified white supremacist rammed a car into a crowd of peaceful counter-protesters, killing one person and wounding nineteen others.

About two hours after the attack, Trump went on camera to issue a pre-written statement condemning the violence that took place in Charlottesville. Trump went off script, however, adding that the blame for the violence lay “on many sides,” implying that the peaceful anti-racist counter-protesters were equally to blame for the violence as the white supremacists.

On 15 August 2017, Trump took questions from the press. When asked about his remarks on the Charlottesville rally from the preceding days in which he seemed to imply that the anti-white supremacist counter-protesters were just as bad as the white supremacists, he said the following words concerning the white supremacists who held the rally:

“…you have some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group — excuse me, excuse me — I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.”

Just for the record, these are the kinds of “pictures” Trump is referring to in this quote:

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of white supremacist protesters at the “Unite the Right” rally on 12 August 2019 carrying Confederate flags, Gadsden flags, flags with Nazi swastikas on them, and other white supremacist symbols

ABOVE: Photograph of white supremacists in Charlottesville carrying white supremacist flags and wearing Ku Klux Klan robes

ABOVE: Photograph of white supremacists in Charlottesville giving Nazi salutes, at least one of them wearing a T-shirt with a Confederate flag

ABOVE: Photograph of some of the white supremacists on the night of 11 August 2017 who were carrying tiki torches chanting the Nazi slogans “Blood and soil!” and “Jews will not replace us!”

The Unite the Right rally was explicitly a white supremacist rally from the beginning. Anyone who was there as part of the rally was a white supremacist. Trump, though, came away with the impression that there were “very fine people” among the white supremacists gathered there.

Trump has also engaged in political corruption on instances too numerous to count. He has repeatedly and openly solicited foreign governments for dirt on his political opponents. For instance, on 27 July 2016, while speaking at a news conference that he knew was being recorded, Trump explicitly urged the Russian government to hack his opponent Hillary Clinton’s private emails and release them to the public:

“I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. That’s see if that happens. That’ll be next.”

Here is the video of Trump saying this:

More recently, in July 2019, Trump withheld $300 million in military aid that had been mandated by Congress to be sent to Ukraine. In a phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on 25 June 2019, Trump told Zelensky that he would only send the military aid to Ukraine if Zelensky announced that Ukraine was initiating investigations into Trump’s political opponent Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. According to a heavily redacted summary of the conversation released by Trump’s own administration, this is how the first crucial part of the conversation between Trump and Zelensky went:

Volodymyr Zelensky: “I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps, specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.”

Donald Trump: “I would like you to do us a favor though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike … I guess you have one of your wealthy people … The server, they say Ukraine has it for sale. There are a lot of things that went on the whole situation … I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it… As you said yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”

Here is the second crucial part of the conversation, according to Trump’s own summary:

“Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. The other thing, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.”

Here Trump very clearly tells Zelensky that receiving military aid from the United States is dependent on him announcing investigations into Trump’s political rival. There is currently no credible evidence personally linking Joe Biden or his son to any criminal activity in Ukraine. In reality, the “prosecutor” Trump is referring to here was widely known to have been corrupt and multiple organizations including the United States and the World Bank wanted him removed, not just Joe Biden. Trump is just looking for a way to tarnish his opponent’s reputation.

By the way, this isn’t even a real transcript; it is a non-verbatim summary that has been heavily redacted and edited to make Trump appear in the best light possible. When even the redacted version is incriminating, you have to wonder what the non-redacted version is like.

The examples I have given here are just a few of the more famous examples of things Trump has done that are inconsistent with traditional Christian morals. If a Democrat engaged in anything like the sort of conduct Trump has engaged in, evangelicals would be rightly condemning that Democrat’s actions as deplorable; they certainly wouldn’t be calling that Democrat the second coming of Cyrus the Great. Indeed, back in the 1990s, Republicans and evangelicals deplored Bill Clinton’s proclivities for womanizing, but yet today in 2019 they refuse to condemn Trump’s.

Conclusion

Donald Trump and Cyrus the Great are not only two completely different historical figures, but figures that come from completely and irreconcilably different worlds. Cyrus came from a world of absolute rulers, conquests, and empires; Donald Trump comes from a world of presidents, elections, and nation-states. When people compare Trump to Cyrus, declaring him God’s anointed, they are unknowingly sanding away at the very bedrock of democracy.

I am not the only one criticizing the comparison between Trump and Cyrus the Great. There are even some evangelicals who criticized this comparison. For instance, in an article titled “Is Trump Our Cyrus? The Old Testament Case for Yes and No” published on 29 October 2018 in the evangelical periodical Christianity Today, Daniel I. Block, the Gunther H. Knoedler Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Wheaton College, concludes:

“Moses’ ‘Charter for Kingship’ in Deuteronomy 17:14–20 presents an alternative to the prevailing exercise of kingship, a model in which rulers are to function as servants of their people. To guard against the predominant megalomaniacal paradigm, Moses focused on the personal character of the king. They were not to use their position of authority in self-interest (multiplying horses, women, and silver and gold for himself). Rather, Israel’s kings were to read the Torah for themselves and then embody the righteousness the Torah called for in all of YHWH’s people: fearing YHWH, walking in the ways of YHWH, and walking humbly among their fellow Israelites (vv. 18–20). In short, the Israelite king’s primary function was to be a model citizen, so that people could look up to him and declare, ‘I want to be like that person!’”

[…]

“To me, then, this biblical history suggests that no matter how and why we cast our vote for a particular candidate, Democrat or Republican, we must never allow ourselves to become blind to their personal and moral flaws. According to the Bible, leadership is more than effectiveness; it’s also (and, in fact, primarily) a matter of character. Jesus modeled perfectly the righteous standard of which he spoke: ‘I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep’ (John 10:11; cf. Eph 5:25b).”

Meanwhile, an article written by Rachel Orpheff titled “Debunking the Trump-Cyrus Prophecy,” published on 5 November 2019 on the Christian website Red Letter Christians concludes:

“The bottom line, folks, is that any prophecy spoken or written over Donald Trump isn’t biblical. That frees us all up to let it go and see him for who he truly is. You won’t be messing with the vessel. But you could be saving the world.”

I want to emphasize that these are devout Christians writing these things. In other words, not all Christians are Trump supporters; at least some Christians are willing to recognize Donald Trump for the national disgrace he is.