Donald Trump Uses the National Prayer Breakfast to Pray for Ratings and Brag About Firing His Agent

By Anna Merlan | February 2, 2017 | 3:05pm

Politics

Donald Trump, a noted fan of Jesus and all his works, whatever they were, was at the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday morning, a solemn event that our nation’s presidents have used for decades to display their piety. While there, he bragged that the ratings on The Apprentice totally suck now and sarcastically asked for prayers for Arnold Schwarzenegger, who took over his old job.

Trump was introduced by Apprentice producer Mark Burnett, who supposedly has potentially damaging tapes of our now-president from the show, which he claims he is unable to release. Burnett talked for many, many minutes about the origin of The Apprentice, which is an important thing to get into at the National Prayer Breakfast. Then he addressed Trump, calling their friendship “one of the greatest relationships of my life.”

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Trump, who recently tried to enact a xenophobic Muslim ban that Jesus would detest, kicked off his own remarks by telling Senate Chaplain Barry Black that he didn’t care if he was a Democrat or a Republican: “I’m appointing you for another year. The hell with it.” (Hell: also a thing to bring up at the prayer breakfast.)

Our president, the leader of the free world, then segued into a nice story also about The Apprentice, and also about firing his agent, just as, I believe, Christ Jesus fired his own talent representatives in the cleansing of the Temple.

“I really fired him after it became the number one show,” he beamed. “It became so successful. And he wanted a commission. And he didn’t want to do it. That’s when I really said — but we had tremendous success on The Apprentice. But when I ran for president, I had to leave the show. That’s when I knew for sure I as doing it. And they hired a big, big movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger to take my place. And we know how that turned out. The ratings went right down the tubes. It’s been a total disaster. And mark will never bet against Trump again. And i want to just pray for Arnold if we can, for those ratings, OK?”

Who else feels spiritually refreshed right now?

Update, 10:14 a.m.:

Oh, and then he vowed once again to destroy the legally enshrined separation between church and state:

The Johnson Amendment keeps tax-exempt organizations like religious institutions from endorsing political candidates. It’s been in place since 1954. Trump said in September he was for a repeal of the law, which was apparently enough to get a lot of Christian conservatives to vote for him.

Update, 11 a.m.:

In a news story that gets less important by the second, Schwarzenegger has responded: “I have a great idea. Why don’t we switch jobs? You take over TV, because you’re such an expert in ratings, and I take over your job, and then people can finally sleep comfortably again. Hmm?”