September 15, 2025 WASHINGTON — Nine months into his second term, President Donald J. Trump’s White House has become a fortress of unyielding loyalty, where dissent is branded treason and truth bends to his will. On Sept. 10, as the nation mourned the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old firebrand who galvanized young conservatives for Trump’s MAGA crusade, the president seized the moment to double down on his narrative of one-sided peril. Responding to critics urging accountability on “both sides” for America’s deepening rifts, Trump thundered: “The problem is on the left. It’s NOT on the right!” He decried “agitators — the scum that speaks so badly of our country, the American flag burnings all over the place — that’s the LEFT, NOT the right.”

This outburst, delivered amid Kirk’s funeral preparations, exemplifies Trump’s dangerous alchemy of deception and division. Fact-checkers have tallied over 30,000 false or misleading claims from his first term alone; now, in power again, his lies — from “crushing” inflation that persists to voter fraud fantasies that incited Jan. 6 — erode democratic guardrails. By absolving the right of any blame, Trump not only whitewashes his supporters’ role in violence but paves the way for authoritarian consolidation, stripping protections from foes like former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Kirk, co-founder of Turning Point USA, was no mere ally; he was the architect of Trump’s youth vanguard, mobilizing campuses with misinformation and conspiracy theories.
His death — a gunshot at a Utah rally — has only intensified the fervor, with Trump calling him a “genius” and “little brother” to Don Jr.
Yet Kirk’s machine, now orphaned, feeds a darker symbiosis: the religious right, recast as a perilous cult worshiping Trump as divine vessel. Evangelicals, 72% approving of Trump per Pew,
blend prosperity gospel with end-times paranoia, viewing him as God’s “chosen one” against “globalist” evils.
Project 2025, their blueprint, has birthed over 100 policies — from gutting reproductive rights to mandating “religious liberty” edicts — transforming faith into a weapon for theocracy.
Historians liken this to imperial cults, where national myth supplants scripture.
“It’s not Christianity; it’s Trumpism as religion,” warns theologian Michael Horton, decrying the “cult of Christian Trumpism.” With Kirk’s Turning Point Faith tours framing elections as “spiritual battles,” this alliance risks a ruthless takeover: loyalty oaths over oaths of office, purity tests via executive fiat.
As Trump eyes annexations of Canada and Greenland under “Manifest Destiny” echoes, the cult’s grip — from Kirk’s digital legions to evangelical pulpits — signals peril. America’s republic hangs by a thread, ensnared in a web of lies and zealotry.