The “Golden Trump” seen at CPAC is drawing comparisons to the biblical Golden Calf. Courtesy of Twitter

By PJ Grisar February 26, 2021

Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, two men were seen hauling a gold statue of Donald Trump through the Hyatt Regency Orlando lobby. Clergy, coreligionists and people with eyes for easy metaphors all asked: Where’s the beef?

It doesn’t take a doctorate of divinity to see the parallel to this ludicrous idol worship and the episode of the golden calf, in which a faction of the Israelites, left alone by Moses for roughly the period Trump’s been out of office, melted down their rings into a “molten calf” and made offerings to it.

This made God (a Jealous God) angry, and Moses, too. I mean, our guy shattered the Ten Commandments when he saw what was going down. It’s pretty clear to see why.

On those tablets, notarized by divine fire, one finds the line item, “Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”

It’s kinda baffling how often the people who insist on having oversized Ten Commandments outside government buildings forget this one. (Remember that the Israelites didn’t worship the Commandments themselves, just kept them in a portable litter they brought to all their battles — and that may or may not be able to melt Nazi faces.)

So, I guess I have no real drash here. The people who go hard for Trump really do revere him as a kind of kitschy deity. Here he has star-spangled swim shorts, flip-flops and some sort of paper (The Constitution?) and a magic wand in his hands. This kind of blind devotion is hardly a revelation at this late stage.

It is perhaps notable in one sense. Like the Golden Calf — believed by some to be a representation of the Egyptian bull god, Apis — the Golden Trump is an avatar of a defeated party and a rejection of a decisive victor now in leadership.

Those kowtowing to their gold-plated Trump are paying fealty to the losing side.

PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture reporter. He can be reached at Grisar@Forward.com.

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