Last year I ruminated in this column about the meaning of Donald Trump’s obsession with royalty and the prerogatives of kings, not least their right to rule unfettered by constraints such as congress. Huge “No Kings” protests were sweeping the country. Supreme court justice Sonia Sotomayor warned “the president is now a king, above the law”.

Trump’s king fetish was about a lust for power but also a manifestation of his widely diagnosed narcissism, a self-belief that drives a conviction in his God-like self-importance and entitlement. And infallibility.

Nothing better, I wrote, illustrates his regal folies de grandeur and legacy obsession than his “dream” to join the line-up of George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt on Mount Rushmore. A local politician has prepared the necessary legislation. And now he is building in Washington a gigantic triumphal arch, to dwarf even the French original. Asked by CBS News what this was meant to commemorate, Trump pointed to himself: “Me.”

We’ve moved on too. Now the president, encouraged by some of his most sycophantic supporters, has cast himself as the Son of God, aspiring to divinity or at the least to a divine mandate or mission. This is a logical outcome of his narcissistic personality disorder, after all, often known as the God complex.

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As Indian economist Dr Vidhu Shekhar explains: “Political psychology describes a familiar pattern. Confidence swells into inflated self-regard. A dramatic event becomes destiny. Judgment detaches from restraint. The circle narrows until the leader believes history moves through him alone.”

In posting on Truth Social an AI-generated picture of himself as a healing Christ laying his hands on a sick man, Trump has yet again elevated self-regard to new levels with what Christians generally would regard as two clear blasphemies, representing himself as Jesus and a mocking of the church. Then, another post followed of himself standing alongside Jesus, the latter’s arm wrapped around Trump’s shoulder, both bathed in a glow of heavenly light.

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A “joke”, vice-president JD Vance has suggested. But Trump is a man with no sense of humour and an incredibly thin skin who does not countenance anything sending him up. Such lèse-majesté has repeatedly been met with thunderous reproach and what bolts of lightning he can muster. He behaves like the Greek goddess of retribution Nemesis – she it was, ironically, who punished Narcissus for his arrogance in spurning lovers, causing him to fall in love with his own reflection.

And Trump has form in claiming connection with deity. Denials that he is comparing himself to Christ notwithstanding – a “fake media” conspiracy – he has referred to himself as “the chosen one”, claimed anointment by the “supernatural hand” of God to win a second term, and insisted in his inaugural speech after an assassination attempt that “many have told me that God saved my life for a reason, and that reason was to save our country.”

On April 1st Trump boasted that “on Palm Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem as crowds welcomed him with praise honouring him as king. They call me king now. Can you believe it?”

He has revelled in biblical allusions by supporters. Chief spiritual adviser Paula White-Cain, an evangelical Christian pastor, in the White House garden Easter ceremony compared his story to Christ’s. “You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused. It’s a familiar pattern that our Lord and Saviour showed us.”

“And sir,” she continued, “because of his resurrection, you rose up.”

Secretary of war Pete Hegseth has repeatedly elevated Trump’s wars to God-inspired, recently likening reporters’ “incredibly unpatriotic” coverage of the Middle East to the Pharisees tearing down Jesus after he had performed a miracle in front of them. He has spoken of Iran as a “holy war”, quoting Old Testament passages, such as Psalm 144: “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.”

In 2024 Trump reposted on Truth Social a video made by supporters called “God made Trump”. Mimicking a famous broadcaster’s paean to farmers, “So God made farmers”, it opened with: “And on June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker.’ So God gave us Trump,” declaring that he’s a “shepherd to mankind who won’t ever leave nor forsake them.”

Trump’s delusions, however, are not a sign of madness but of a rational belief in his right to absolute power and a function of his ever-growing sense of impunity that the fawning political majority of republicans allows him.

There are some signs, however, as midterm elections loom, that his Maga coalition may be fraying, helped by his blasphemous hand. Note the post by former Alaskan governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin: an image of Jesus seemingly begging Trump to stop making such an ass of himself: “Alright. That’s enough. Give me the phone.”

© The Irish Times