November 25, 2019 02:19 PM UTC

Rick Perry Accuses God of Election Tampering

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• by: Colorado Pols

Outgoing Energy Secretary Rick Perry is likely complicit in President Trump’s efforts to get Ukraine to investigate one of his political opponents (which, of course, has led us to Congressional impeachment hearings), and at the very least appears to have used his Cabinet position to enrich his friends. If you’ve been wondering how Perry and other Trump acolytes can justify their pious devotion to the Great Big Orange Man in the White House, here’s part of your answer…

Rick Perry believes Donald Trump really is heaven-sent. https://t.co/W4ydcbdQ5L

— HuffPost Politics (@HuffPostPol) November 25, 2019

Perry says that Donald Trump is the “chosen one” who was “ordained” by God to become President of the United States, which is a polite way of suggesting that God interfered in the 2016 election. As Perry told Ed Henry of Fox News:

“I said, Mr. President, I know there are people that say you said you were the chosen one and I said, ‘You were.’ I said, ‘If you’re a believing Christian, you understand God’s plan for the people who rule and judge over us on this planet and our government.’”

Trump has referred to himself as “The Chosen One” — as recently as late August — and supports the suggestion that he might be the “King of Israel,” so this kind of butt-kissing is right on target. Perry is the former Governor of Texas and a onetime contestant on “Dancing With the Stars,” but he’s not a complete dummy; he didn’t get to become Secretary of Energy without being skilled at buttering up President Trump. As National Public Radio reminds us, Perry was singing a different tune four years ago:

At first, it might have seemed absurd that what Perry wanted was to join the Trump administration.

After all, in 2015, during his second presidential run, Perry scorched Trump in a speech, calling his Republican opponent’s candidacy a “cancer on conservatism” and “a barking carnival act.” Trumpism, Perry warned, was “a toxic mix of demagoguery and mean-spiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued.”

It’s also worth noting that Perry is the leaving the same Department of Energy that he wanted to eliminate altogether when he was seeking the GOP nomination for President in 2015. In other words, the outgoing head of a department he doesn’t think should exist — who was appointed to the job by a man he didn’t think should be President — would now have you believe that Donald Trump was chosen by God to lead the United States of America.

And that, dear friends, is as good an explanation as any for the current state of American politics and the Republican Party in general.