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“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.”
Collage by Harry Welty, AI and others

When Donald Trump was campaigning for President in 2016 he said he was the perfect person to be President because he knew how the system worked. It implied he and the system were crooked. 
Trump has a long history of speaking out of both ends of his gastrointestinal tract. The cult gathering around him loved the apparent honesty of a crook promising to fix the system. Trump was a modern-day Robin Hood. 

Just how crooked Trump is, is laid out in last year’s movie The Apprentice, with about as much accuracy as you find on X, Truth Social or Fox News. The rape scene is as the first Mrs. Trump described it and attorney Roy Cohn’s duplicity rings true, despite imagined scenes of nefariousness.

My dad made sure I went to Sunday school, where by age 10 I was already a blooming agnostic – one who doubts but doesn’t actively disbelieve in God. My skepticism has grown but I still sing in our Presbyterian choir.  

During 30 years of singing, I have abstained from becoming a church member. I respect the Beatitudes and when I returned to Duluth from my wife’s peace studies in the Holy Land, I finished a long-delayed item on my bucket list. I read the Old Testament to the end.

My career as a Republican has been much the same. In 1972, when Richard Nixon ran for re-election, I quietly voted for the peace Democrat, George McGovern. 

In 1974, I moved to Duluth a proud Republican knowing our party’s leaders had insisted that the lying Richard Nixon quit the White House.  How my Republican years unfolded afterward are summed up in a 2005 Reader column titled “Church of the Republican God.”

One clumsy sentence in that column about the rich man who wanted to go to heaven without giving up his fortune should have read differently as it reads in Mathew, Mark and Luke. 

Jesus told Donald Trump that his getting to Heaven was about as likely as a camel passing through the eye of a needle. In the richest but stingiest nation on Earth, Trump’s mantra is, “Our government will tax our wealth and give it to the poor little children Jesus commanded us to suffer – OVER OUR DEAD BODIES!”

Jesus infuriated religious leaders who tried to trick him into admitting that he was worshiping Rome’s “god” Caesar when he spent coins with Caesar’s face stamped on them. Jesus parried telling his interlocutors to give Caesar what is his, taxes, and give to God what is God’s, their faith. For an exclamation point Jesus overturned the tables where Trump’s money lenders cheated believers offering gifts to the Temple. 

I warned Republicans in 1992 that Donald Trump was the future of the Republican party. I was booed off the stage. Those Republicans had not yet succumbed to the alure of a constitution redrawn to make Christianity the state religion. 

Trump has changed their tune despite the near certainty that he has broken all of the 10 commandments repeatedly starting with, “You shall have no other Gods before Caesar!”

I recently sent a crude cartoon of our president pissing on a California fire fighter to the Reader. If I replaced the firefighter with the 10 Commandments it would be just as accurate. 

I also doctored a famous painting of the devil whispering to Jesus that he could make him King. I glued Trump’s head over Satan’s. 

There are people who voted for Trump who are about to lose their Social Security, veteran’s jobs and farm income. Children in impoverished schools are about to lose their Title One funding and the starving are about lose American food aid.

Donald Trump’s forked tongue was warning America what to expect when he repeatedly recited the lyrics to Al Wilson’s Civil Rights era song called “The Snake.” There are several recordings of Trump reading these lyrics on YouTube.

On her way to work one morning
Down the path alongside the lake
A tender hearted woman saw a poor half frozen snake
His pretty colored skin had been all frosted with the dew
“Oh well,” she cried, I’ll take you in and I’ll take good care of you”
Take me in, for heaven’s sake
Take me in oh tender woman,” sighed the snake

She wrapped him up all cozy in a curvature of silk
And then laid him by the fireside with some honey and some milk
Now she hurried home from work that night and as soon as she arrived
She found that pretty snake she’d taken in had been revived
Take me in, for heaven’s sake
Take me in oh tender woman,” sighed the snake

Now she clutched him to her bosom, “You’re so beautiful,” she cried
“But if I hadn’t brought you in by now you might have died.”
Now she stroked his pretty skin and then she kissed and held him tight
But instead of saying thanks, that snake gave her a vicious bite
“Take me in, oh tender woman
Take me in, for heaven’s sake
Take me in oh tender woman,” sighed the snake
I saved you,” cried that woman
“And you’ve bit me even, why?
You know your bite is poisonous and now I’m going to die”
“Oh shut up, silly woman,” said the reptile with a grin
“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.”

Welty often writes about snakes at: www.lincolndemocrat.com 922.