Sunday, September 18, 2022

The Trump Prophecy (2018)


There are very few instances when I outright hate a movie. You may have noticed that while reading the Sunday “Bad” Movies posts that I’ve written over the past almost ten years. I’ll always try to find something good or, at the very least, interesting about a movie. Even a movie that I find bad, there tends to be something to take away from it. A lesson about what not to do. One scene that stands out among everything else that doesn’t. An interesting performance within a forgettable movie. Stuff like that. I’ll find something to cling onto because very few movies are outright terrible. There’s always something to appreciate.

But here we are, at week 512 of Sunday “Bad” Movies, and I find myself in an interesting predicament. This week’s movie has joined the ranks of such prestigious alumni as The Parking Lot Movie and Chicks Dig Gay Guys. I have found another movie that I outright hate. Even if it has one redeeming quality. That little redemption could not counter the seething detest that I had, thanks to the messaging and final third. It couldn’t come back from that, no matter how strong I thought the one redeeming quality was.


The Trump Prophecy came out in 2018. I knew I was going into something bad simply based on the name. I didn’t know just how bad it would be. Firefighter Mark Taylor (Chris Nelson) was torn up about a boy he couldn’t save in a house fire. The memory of the child’s death was tearing him up inside. He sought professional help for his PTSD and left his job at the firehouse. One night, during one of his many nightmares about the dead boy, Mark awoke and jotted something down in his journal. He prophesized that Donald Trump would win the presidency in 2016. He and his therapist watched and waited as the prophecy held true.

That first bit of The Trump Prophecy wasn’t so bad. The story of Mark experiencing PTSD because of a child’s death during a housefire was compelling enough. It wasn’t necessarily done well, what with the movie having the subtle touch of a typical Christian film. But it had the potential to be a captivating story under the right circumstances. Someone out there could tell that story, one of a hero not being able to save everyone and falling apart because of it, in an interesting way. This wasn’t the interesting way, but it was the most interesting part of the movie.

Then The Trump Prophecy completely dropped that storyline for a Christian Conservative political agenda. That’s where I started to outright dislike The Trump Prophecy. I’ll get to the full hatred in a few minutes. The PTSD storyline was thrown by the wayside in favour of a story about Donald Trump being elected. Mark woke from one of his restless slumbers to write in his journal about something God told him in his sleep. He wrote that Donald Trump would be president. This part of the story took place in 2011, so it was strange that he would have thought a businessman with no political history would become president. The prophecy was what it was, though, and that was that.

Four years later, Mark had switched to a new therapist, Don Colbert (Don Brooks), to deal with his PTSD. It was now 2015 and he told Dr. Colbert about the prophecy he wrote down four years earlier. Colbert wanted to take a look. Mark brought in a copy of his journal, which Colbert shared with his wife, Mary (Paulette Todd). Mary took the prophecy to heart. She took it as the word of God that Donald Trump should be president. She set up a church prayer line, connecting churches across the country to pray for Donald Trump to win the election. She even went so far as to commandeer an airplane bathroom during takeoff to host a prayer on the phone.

Mostly, this just seemed like a ridiculous Christian Conservative story. I’ve seen movies of this kind before. I’ve seen movies where people were healed of cancer through prayer, or they learned the true meaning of Christmas through Christianity. The Trump Prophecy even had people blowing into shofroth to bring good will to Donald Trump in the election. That stuff wasn’t what made me hate the movie. That just felt like wacky religious movie hijinks.


The Trump Prophecy took two strange turns after Donald Trump was elected, however. The first was a five-minute uber-patriotic music video that followed the election storyline. It had nothing to do with anything in the rest of the movie. It didn’t fit at all. There was a bald eagle flying in front of the American flag and the constitution while some stereotypical American guitar rock played. Families held up pictures of their soldier fathers, brothers, and sons. It was a tribute to the fallen troops of the past. It had nothing to do with The Trump Prophecy.

The second turn was what made me hate The Trump Prophecy. Following the weird patriotic music video that was inserted into the movie, things shifted into documentary mode. A bunch of real-life Conservatives and church leaders were used as talking heads to discuss a specific Bible verse that was used in the movie. They tied the Bible verse to Donald Trump, his work with Israel, and the make America great again movement. I started to get mad at the people making the movie.


A fictional story where characters believe bad things and behave badly is much more palatable than when you’re presented with real people who are the same way. This documentary section of The Trump Prophecy showed real people who believed in the make America great again sentiment. They believed in the racism and misogyny that Donald Trump presented through his campaigns and his term as President. Their religion and their political allegiance pushed them to support a monster of a human being, wholeheartedly, and they were using this movie to spread their agenda. It wasn’t just that they believed in this stuff. It was that they were pushing for other people to also believe it. They were given a platform.

Donald Trump was, and still is, a huge piece of shit. He wanted to build a wall on the border of Mexico to keep the “bad hombres” out of America. He instituted a Muslim ban. ICE was ramped up while he was in power. He was probably involved in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking buiness. And he’s most certainly a criminal who was giving government secrets away, likely for monetary gain. That’s all he really cares about. Money. And then we have all the people in The Trump Prophecy declaring their support for Donald Trump because that was God’s will. God wanted Trump to be president.

In the words of Mox in Varsity Blues, “I say fuck that. Alright? I say fuck that.” I’m not religious, and even I know that Jesus was about helping the poor and less fortunate. At what point in his life has Donald Trump represented that idea? He wanted to get rid of the poor and less fortunate. He wanted to get more money for himself and his rich friends. That’s against the teachings of one Jesus Christ, and thus against the morals that these Christian leaders claim to uphold. But I guess we already knew they didn’t uphold them, since typical American Christianity seems to be soaked in white supremacy.

There was also a strange connection between Donald Trump and Israel that The Trump Prophecy felt like it needed to hammer home for everyone. The strange use of the shofroth during the scripted portion was an odd touch, and it led to the people of Israel also using shofroth to support Donald Trump’s presidency. Worse, though, was the comparison between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu during the documentary portion. They were making it out to be a good comparison of two good politicians. The comparison worked, though not as they hoped. Instead, both political leaders were found out to be criminals and have gone through impeachments and trials. These talking heads were vouching for two pretty bad dudes.


I’m all for people having a platform to tell the story they want to tell and to advocate for things they find important. What I don’t want to see is stories that support hate or people that support hate. The Trump Prophecy supported hate. It supported Donald Trump, one of the poster boys for hate. It told a story about people wanting him to get elected, which was fine, but then decided to show real people talking about why it was God’s wish to keep Trump in power. That’s less fine. That’s just real people who are okay with hate speech, hate actions, and all around hating of other people. That’s not okay. That’s where a movie loses me.

There are very few movies that I hate. In terms of Sunday “Bad” Movies, there are three that I can think of off the top of my head. Chicks Dig Gay Guys was a movie about two guys pretending to be gay to pick up women. Being gay was the punchline of the movie. It wouldn’t be as bad if the writer of the movie wasn’t out there proudly saying that he did the same thing to pick up women in his real life. Ugh. Disgusting. The Human Centipede II was a movie that was offensive simply for the sake of being offensive without any actual redeeming qualities. Then there was The Parking Lot Movie, a documentary that held parking lot attendants up on a pedestal as if they were gods. As a former parking lot attendant, myself, I can tell you that the job is nowhere near that important. The Trump Prophecy has now joined that illustrious crowd. That’s not a good thing.


Now let’s toss some notes in here and be done with it:

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