ABOUT the only satisfying sight to emerge from President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday was the picture of progressive independent Senator Bernie Sanders sitting grumpily with his arms folded while others around him stood to cheer.
The image was reminiscent of the Sanders photo that went viral after Joe Biden’s chilly outdoor inauguration in January 2021, when Sanders sat in a similar pose wearing a pair of large, woolly mittens.
Sanders didn’t need the mittens this time because Trump’s inauguration was moved indoors, even though expected temperatures were scarcely lower than those during the inaugurations of John F Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama’s first, all of which took place outside. The decision to go inside rightfully elicited an outpouring of scorn directed toward Trump’s aspirations as a machismo-fuelled strongman.
Sanders didn’t break the internet this time either, but someone else was about to, in the slight and unlikely figure of Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde. An Episcopalian bishop, the petite, soft-spoken Budde was chosen to lead the official inauguration prayer service at Washington’s National Cathedral.
As Trump and Vice-President JD Vance sat in the front row with their spouses, looking every bit like naughty — if defiant — schoolchildren called before the headmistress, Budde gently admonished them to act with compassion.
“I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives,” she said.
“And the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labour in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes, and are good neighbours. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurdwara and temples,” she said.
In a reference to Trump’s planned mass deportations, Budde went on: “I ask you to have mercy, Mr President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.”
There was some level of satisfaction in watching a stony-faced Trump come to the gradual realisation that he was receiving a thorough telling off, albeit in the softest of tones. Vance, barely suppressing a smirk, turned several times to his wife, herself a daughter of Indian immigrants, to whisper what one can only imagine were words of disbelief that Budde was getting such a golden opportunity to humiliate them at their hour of triumph.
Trump and Vance shouldn’t have been surprised however. If they had actually done their homework they would have read that Budde “believes that Jesus calls all who follow him to strive for justice and peace, and to respect the dignity of every human being.”
But these are all words outside of the Trump regime’s vocabulary.
Of course it didn’t take long for Trump to retaliate with his usual volley of ad hominem attacks on social media, where he lambasted Budde as a “so-called bishop” and a “radical left hard-line Trump hater.”
Using words that more appropriately describe his own style, Trump railed that Budde “brought her church into the world of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart,” and demanded that “She and her church owe the public an apology!”
Far-right Republican Congressman Mike Collins of Georgia went even further, calling for Budde, a US citizen born in New Jersey, to be “added to the deportation list.” However, there is no obvious legal pathway for this to happen.
But Budde’s words were met with praise and welcome elsewhere. Jeremy Corbyn wrote that Budde had offered “a lesson in moral leadership and courage. Our government would do well to listen and learn.”
African-American bishop Talbert Swan summarised the thoughts of many when he wrote on X: “If white Christians are outraged by Bishop Mariann Budde’s call for compassion toward the marginalised, just wait until they actually read the Bible and see what Jesus said. Spoiler alert: the foundation of his teachings were loving your neighbour, uplifting the oppressed, and standing with the outcasts.”
And responding herself to the sermon and its repercussions, Budde said: “My responsibility yesterday morning was to pray to the nation for unity … Unity requires a certain degree of mercy … We need to treat everyone with dignity. I was trying to counter the narrative that is so divisive in which real people are being harmed.”
Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland.