COVID-19: “A Blessing from God”

President Trump on Wednesday, October 7 released a direct-to-camera video address to the nation in which he called getting the coronavirus “a blessing from God.” His comment coincided with my reading a paper by Ceri Hughes. Hughes analyzed 175 Trump speeches and about 30,000 Trump tweets for use of religious language. Hughes surprised me when I learned that his earlier research determined that Trump used both general religious terms and “God terms” at a significantly higher rate than all his predecessors from and including Franklin Roosevelt.

In his current paper, Hughes suggests that “Trump appears to use religious language in a strategic manner in two central ways.… Read the rest