this i believe essay tony hawk

This I Believe: Writing a Creative Personal Essay

Essay: "do what you love" by tony hawk.

The Joy and Agony of Loving Tony Hawk

Watching Hawk’s path to destruction is painful. And inspiring.

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Last year, I bought my first skateboard. I had been on a skateboard only once before, back in high school, and it had been a disaster —I fell, bruised my ribs, and planned to never touch one again. But this time was different. I skated through the summer of 2021, learning to balance, cruise, and eventually land the occasional ollie or shuvit. My reason for learning was simple: I wanted a hobby I couldn’t monetize, compete at, or excel in. I didn’t have a goal, standards, or expectations. I’m a middle-aged adult who will never be good at skateboarding, and I don’t want to be.

The only thing I want is what I call “a moment.”

I had seen a moment in a tweet from Tony Hawk earlier that year: Old Man Tony, the most accomplished skateboarder in history, 52 years old, trying to land a 720. The exact moment comes at 33 seconds into the clip—not when he finally lands the trick after countless tries, but the moment when he tosses his skateboard in celebration. It’s the moment he knows he landed the trick, did what he came to do, and can go home.

A moment rivals sex and drugs.

A moment is when everything feels right in the world.

A moment is perfect.

It was that clip that got me interested in a new documentary that premiered this month on HBO, Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off . And whether you’re interested in Tony’s career or only barely recognize his name, you should watch it.

Until the Wheels Fall Off is an insightful look into the skateboarding subculture of the ’80s, ’90s, and 2000s through the career of the best skateboarder in history. Tony and many of his peers, including Lance Mountain and Rodney Mullen, are interviewed. You’ll learn how much Tony was disliked as a kid in the ’90s, the booms and busts of making a living as a professional skateboarder, and the evolution of how his cohort—and fans like me—see him today.

To know of Tony Hawk is to love him. But he’s still skating like he has something to prove, as one former skateboarder, Stacy Peralta, explains. After a particularly nasty fall, Stacy pushed Tony’s peers and family to intervene to keep him from continuing to skate at his age, but couldn’t find anyone willing to have the conversation with Tony.

“It was shocking. It was really scary … and it really, really troubled me,” Stacy said. “I mean, come on! That’s not a bad concussion [anymore]. That’s a disaster.”

I struggled with the “troubled” feeling that Stacy described, partly because it’s so easy to celebrate the glory of accomplishment without the reality of what goes into it. Tony and his peers are destroying themselves.

“Broke my elbow,” Tony says in the documentary, as he begins running through a list of some of his injuries over the past 40 years. “Knocked my teeth out at least five times. Didn’t dislocate my shoulder, but it went out and [back] in. Rolled my ankles so far that they should have broken … I’ve had dozens of concussions but only a few that were really bad, where I woke up somewhere else … Fractured my skull, broke my thumb, broke my pelvis.”

Tony’s descriptions of his injuries and his compulsion to get back on his board sounded not unlike how I might describe someone struggling with drug addiction and sharing what it had cost them over the years. Skateboarding is dangerous and could eventually kill him—and according to Lance Mountain, it likely will. But when faced with Stacy’s appeal for an intervention, Lance—who himself still skates like he has something to prove—sounds somber in his acceptance.

“I think it’s no one’s place to say that to him,” Lance says. “[Tony] doesn’t even understand that we’re probably gonna die skateboarding and kill ourselves. It’s something you can’t change … It’s horrible. You’re actually destroying yourself on what you love.”

Perhaps the movie’s greatest appeal is to see whether you can listen to Rodney, Lance, and Tony without them changing your mind about the merits of self destruction. Rodney, one of Tony’s few peers, is especially effective. He seems to have a healthier relationship with skating, if only in his ability to articulate its merits with such soft-spoken emotion that you almost can’t help but be persuaded.

“This is the luxury of having spent my life doing what I love,” Rodney says. “The cost of that sucks. I’m not blind. I’m not numb to the pain. I would argue I’m more conscious of it than anybody else. But I’m also more conscious of what that gives me … I see all the arguments against it, but I wish I could relate the intangibles to you.”

“My guess is that we’re all built the same,” he continues, talking about other obsessive skaters. “None of us are completely stupid … But ultimately, we also know what we have. And to go and lay down in that sense of it, that’s like embracing what we’ve done with our lives.”

The awareness that their passion could be the death of them, and the peace they’ve found with it, is agonizing. But the joy is also intoxicating.

“I could feel the thrill that I got from anything I’ve done through him. It was huge,” Lance said about watching Tony land the first-ever 900 at the 1999 X Games. “I was so excited to see him do that. So excited and happy for him … And just the feel of that, the win of that … it’s just killer. It’s so good.”

And if the joy of skateboarding is, for them, the entire meaning of life, maybe all the rest of us can do is cheer their moments when everything feels right in the world.

Or maybe have a moment ourselves.

Mine won’t be a stellar accomplishment on my skateboard. I’m still a middle-aged adult who will never be good at skateboarding, and I don’t want to be. But maybe I’ll feel it—that everything is right in the world—if only for a second.

And toss my board like Tony.

Thanks to everyone who responded to last week’s essay about Everything Everywhere All at Once . If you haven’t watched it yet, I hope you see it soon—especially Marc, who sent my favorite email this week, which included the line “I’m not sure my wife would appreciate talking rocks, but I may have to make a solo trip to see it.”

You listen to me, Marc: She’ll love the talking rocks. The day will come when I make a bad recommendation in this newsletter, but that day hasn’t come yet. Tell her that I need this and that I’m irrationally connected to the idea of convincing her, a stranger, to just trust me. If she doesn’t like it, I’ll give away five books next week. I put my name on this, Marc; I’m not fucking around.

Speaking of ringing endorsements, I actually just read the first book review for my upcoming memoir and it made my day, to say the least.

This week’s book giveaway is How We Fight for Our Lives , a wonderful coming-of-age memoir by Saeed Jones. Just send me an email telling me about a “moment” you had—any accomplishment, big or small, but meaningful to you—and I’ll send the book to a random person who hits my inbox. You can reach me at [email protected], or find me on Twitter at @JordanMCalhoun . And if you’re in New York, here’s your reminder about my book launch at the Strand on Friday, April 29.

In the meantime, 12 days until my memoir comes out. I hope you preorder.

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‘I’m way older, but I’m still doing it’: Tony Hawk on his skateboarding legacy

He’s the record-breaking skateboarder who took the sport mainstream. Here he reflects on how the sport has changed, and how he feels knowing he may never do a 720 again

I n January, after a few attempts the previous days, Tony Hawk landed a 720 – a skateboarding trick involving two full rotations mid-air. Hawk is widely understood to have invented the 720, a move he has performed many times during his career. But this time, as he wrote on Twitter, it “was a battle … I can’t imagine doing any more”.

I’m speaking to Hawk from his car. He is on his way home to Encinitas, California, having just wrapped a snowboarding trip in Mammoth Mountain. At 53, it’s not that he’s physically incapable of performing the trick again, he says, but that “the risk” – think a broken pelvis and teeth knocked out – “versus the reward will not be worth it in years to come”.

Hawk is a busy guy. Looking at his Instagram page , it would seem his schedule – speaking on podcasts, juggling meetings, taking trips and visiting events – comes easy to the man who has made a lifelong career from skateboarding. But it isn’t. I’ve witnessed the hours that it demands up front: I spent some time around him and his family during a trip to California with my boyfriend – also a pro skateboarder – and it was clear that Hawk is pretty much always on call.

But one other thing was clear: the man really does just love skateboarding.

If you grew up in the 1990s, it is almost impossible for you not to know him. The most famous name in skateboarding, he invented 89 vertical tricks , won more than 70 contests, and even guest-starred as himself on The Simpsons . His hugely popular video game series saw him pick up a Teen Choice Award, and his cameos in the show Rocket Power and film, Lords of Dogtown speak to the influence of his name in the industry.

But fame was never Hawk’s aim. Growing up in San Diego in the 1970s, Hawk was bound to get on a board. His older brother, Steve, was an outstanding surfer who skated frequently and kept boards around the house.

Out of curiosity, Hawk tried his luck, eventually using skateboarding as a means of transportation to and from school. But it was photos of skaters from a magazine that set him on a new path. “I was flabbergasted by what I saw – literally [skateboarders] flying in and out of swimming pools and I just thought, ‘I want to get to that level. I want to learn how to do that,’” he says. Little did he know, one day he would be competing against those same skaters, names such as Steve Caballero, Eddie Elguera, and Billy Ruff.

At the time, learning unique tricks wasn’t the norm; skating was more focused on style and how high one could go. But Hawk enjoyed maneuvering his body and board in new ways, setting him apart from many in his cohort. He was also learning to play the violin, which involved additional practices after school and extracurricular concerts on the weekends: “At some point I told my music teacher that I’m skateboarding and competing on the weekends, and he flat out told me that I have to choose violin or skateboarding.”

He chose the latter.

After a couple of years of moving up the ranks in competitions, Hawk went pro at 14. And almost four decades later, Hawk can claim he took skateboarding mainstream.

Not that he would: “I never think of it in such personal lofty terms. I’m happy if whatever I’ve done has raised the profile of skating and has maybe changed the stigma that skating is for outcasts, losers and whatnot.”

Instead, Hawk likes to think of himself as a skateboarding advocate, and someone who just helped it along. Aside from his talent on the board, Hawk is embedded in numerous projects that prioritize the intersection of skateboarding and community. His foundation, The Skatepark Project , helps build public skateparks in underserved communities. The non-profit directly contributes to diversifying a sport that has historically lacked inclusivity in its earlier days. Individually, Hawk is always supporting skaters in need, most recently helping a skater get prosthetic legs .

Today, skateboarding looks different to when Hawk was getting started. You can find anyone at the skatepark despite their gender, sexual orientation or ethnic background. More women are going pro, and this year the sport will make its Olympic debut in Tokyo.

During the pandemic, learning to skateboard saw an unlikely boom, as the practice can take place safely outdoors and alone. And with more facilities and skateparks popping up left and right, coupled with major fashion collaborations like Louis Vuitton’s first skate shoe with Lucien Clarke, skateboarding is more embedded in popular culture than ever before. “Everyone skates now, or has some attachment to it, or has some interest in it. It’s woven into the fabric of youth now,” Hawk says.

But members of the skateboarding community have differing views on skateboarding’s mainstream facet. Some people have labeled Hawk as a sellout because of his endorsements in the early 2000s with brands like McDonald’s, Mountain Dew and Bagel Bites. Others have frowned upon the unspoken sentiment that he popularized skating as a competitive sport, rather than as an art form.

Popularity and success always open the door for scrutiny, and as Hawk tells me about fame, “it’s like you’re living under a microscope and anything you do or say can be misconstrued or taken down a rabbit hole.” What few realize is his role in the future of skateboarding, simply through the relationships he holds with young, upcoming skaters. Often opening his home, which has a bowl in the backyard, and his private warehouse which features a 13.5ft vertical ramp and a street/flow course, Hawk is hoping to inspire the next generation.

That’s how I got to spend a bit of time with him, when my boyfriend spent a month skating with him and his sons. “I just love that I still get to be in the mix, that I get to participate. It’s such a fun window to be in, where I’m way older, but I’m still doing it. And then I get to skate with these guys who are truly pushing limits of what I thought was possible,” he says.

Hawk is notably free of public scandals and controversial statements. He says it’s because he isn’t ever trying to present a fake version of himself, which certainly reflects my experience of being a guest in his home. He is authentically himself, laughing at The Office reruns, ordering takeout quite frequently, and always up for a game of Mario Kart. “There’s a machine that goes along with celebrity, where people just fabricate a certain persona and they put it out there and that’s what you’re led to believe they are,” he says.

But Hawk admits he didn’t always get it right. “I followed and chased my career a little too much, and gave up time with my family because of that. I wished that I had a better balance of work and family back then,” he says. His only other regret is the carelessness that came with his worst injury: a broken pelvis during a skit for MTV’s WildBoyz. “They wanted me to dress like a gorilla and skate through it. I misjudged my speed and fell from the top. If I could go back to that time, I would have been a lot more careful with what I was doing,” he says.

It seems now Hawk really is being careful. How does it feel knowing that he won’t be able to perform some of his favorite tricks much longer?

“It’s been kind of a fun process to do them for the last time. I don’t think many athletes get to go through that process very much because at some point they’re just not doing it any more, and they never had any sort of closure,” he says. “And I’m at a place, and more of an awareness, that I can have closure on these things.”

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Covid-19 ends Australian skateboarders' Olympic hopes

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'If you’re on wheels, you’re our friend': veteran roller-skaters embrace a new generation

Sky Brown: 'Sometimes you fall but I wanted to show me getting up again'

Experience: I built the first skatepark in Syria

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This I Believe

Sample Essays 

All essays, photos and descriptions come from the This I Believe website .

Sarah Adams

Be cool to the pizza dude.

“We know them. We depend on them. We call them out on cold, rainy nights. Now, college professor Sarah Adams tells us why her life philosophy is built around being cool to the pizza delivery dude.” You can read the text of the speech here.

Muhammad Ali

I am still the greatest.

“To be ‘The Greatest of All Time,’ boxing legend Muhammad Ali said you have to believe in yourself. It’s something Ali’s parents taught him as a child, and it’s helped him through the biggest challenge of his life: fighting Parkinson’s disease.” You can read the text of the speech here.

Do What You Love

“Tony Hawk has turned what many consider a childhood activity into a professional career. Now for Hawk, skateboarding is not only a job, it’s a means of expression and a foundation for personal belief.” You can read the text of the speech here.

Alaa El-Saad

America’s beauty is in its diversity.

“Fifteen-year-old Alaa El-Saad is a student at John B. Connally High School in Austin, Texas. She hopes to study medicine and become a pediatrician. El-Saad says she wants to help children learn to embrace their differences and accept who they are.” You can read the text of the speech here. 

Brighton Earley

Finding the flexibility to survive.

“Brighton Earley’s mom shops at a gas station because she can no longer afford to buy food at a regular grocery. At first Earley was ashamed to go on these shopping trips, but now the Los Angeles student believes they’ve taught her a valuable lesson.” You can read the text of the speech here.

The Triumph of Kindness

“Josh Stein believes that when people come together, it’s a beautiful thing. He’s seen it happen on the Little League field, in a most unexpected way.” You can read the text of the speech here.

The Real Me

Katherine bowman.

“Katherine Bowman is one high school student with much more on her mind than impressing people with her well made-up face. She believes that hiding your true self can do more harm than good. You can read the text of the speech here.

Kamaal Majeed

Being content with myself.

“Massachusetts teenager Kamaal Majeed believes being content with himself and defining his own life are more important than adhering to any racial stereotypes that his peers may try to force upon him.” You can read the text of the speech here.

We’re All Different in Our Own Ways

Joshua yuchasz.

“By all outward appearances, Joshua Yuchasz is a regular teenager. But his classmates still tease him about the thing that makes him different. Yuchasz believes it’s our differences that deserve respect.” You can read the text of the speech here.

Delia Motavalli

Find a good frog.

“Delia Motavalli has grown up watching movies about fairy tales and princesses. But after she received a piece of advice from her mother, Delia has come to realize her own definition of ‘happily ever after.’” You can read the text of the speech here.

Ying Ying Yu

A duty to family, heritage, and country.

“Ying Ying Yu has a maturity beyond her years. The 13-year old immigrant from China believes she has a duty to honor the sacrifices made by her parents, her ancestors, her teachers and her homeland.” You can read the text of the speech here.

Sufiya Abdur-Rahman

Black is beautiful.

“What’s in a name? For writer and teacher Sufiya Abdur-Rahman it’s key to her identity as the proud daughter of Muslim parents. Like the 1960s movement, Abdur-Rahman believes black is beautiful and not a condition she should have to rise above.” (Note: This essay was recorded in 2008, so it predates a lot of changes, such as the Black Lives Matter movement.) You can read the text of the speech here.

Amelia Baxter-Stolzfus

Returning to what’s natural.

“High school student Amelia Baxter-Stoltzfus believes in the freedom offered by semi-permanent hair dye. As much as she likes trying a new look, Baxter-Stolzfus knows there are some things worth coming back to, no matter how much her life may change.” You can read the text of the speech here.

Alexxandra Shuman

The essentials to happiness.

“When Alexxandra Shuman was in eighth grade, she was diagnosed with clinical depression. But it took more than medication for her to feel happy again. Ms. Shuman believes she has to look in the right places in order to find happiness.” You can read the text of the speech here.

Finding Out What’s Under Second Base

“Sports teaches us many useful lessons: how to be a team player, how to handle defeat, and how excellence comes with practice. Lex Urban learned a different lesson on his Little League ballfield–one he’s carried with him to this day as an attorney.” You can read the text of the speech here.

Corey Ratsch

Trans-cendent.

Corey Ratsch, a high school senior in Illinois, talks about his experience of realizing he is transgender and his belief in rights for members of the LGBT community. Hear the audio and read the text of his essay here . 

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Biography — Tony Hawk – a Legendary Professional Skateboarder

Tony Hawk – a Legendary Professional Skateboarder

• Categories: Biography

About this sample

Words: 428 |

Published: Sep 19, 2019

Words: 428 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Early life and introduction to skateboarding, entrepreneurial ventures and philanthropy, legacy and impact, references:.

• Hill, C., & Hawk, T. (2012). Tony Hawk: Professional skateboarder. HarperCollins.
• Birdman: The Tony Hawk Story. (2006). Dir. Ludvig Gür. FilmRise.
• Peacock, L. (2019). The Tony Hawk Foundation: Transforming communities through skateparks. International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, 24(3), e1616.
• Kent, T. (2008). Tony Hawk: Skateboarding champion & entrepreneur. ABDO Publishing.
• Brookes, D. (2020). Tony Hawk: The man who gave skateboarding its wings. BBC Sport. https://www.bbc.com/sport/av/skateboarding/54034080

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Clinical social worker: "With the Trump Bible, one must consider dementia"

"a person who isn't cognitively impaired should be doing a cost-benefit analysis", by chauncey devega.

Fascism is a type of political religion. Donald Trump is preaching the religion of fascism.

History has repeatedly shown that fascism and other forms of political religion almost always end in widespread violence and destruction. With his promises and threats of “bedlam” and a “bloodbath,” Trump, the dictator in waiting, has basically guaranteed such an outcome if he “wins” the 2024 election. And that outcome is perhaps just as, if not more, likely if he were to be defeated by President Biden.

"Trump has turned Holy Week into an opportunistic carnivalesque grift."

Over the last few months, Donald Trump has escalated his claims of god-like prophet-messiah status. He has declared that “Jesus Christ” and “God” chose him to win the presidency and defeat President Biden in the 2024 election. He has promoted a video online declaring that “God made Trump” – again elevating himself to near superhuman status as a force of destiny and divine retribution against his and the MAGA movement’s enemies. The corrupt ex-president has taken to comparing himself to Jesus and just announced that he is selling his own Trump-branded version of the Bible with “exclusive” content. Even for those of us who are not Christians, Trump’s behavior is obscene and absurd to the extreme.

On this, Amanda Marcotte told this powerful truth in a recent essay here at Salon :

The teachings of Jesus Christ were always a poor fit for Republicans. They're just way more into decimating Social Security than they are into loaves and fishes. What Trump offers when it comes to Christianity is what he offers his followers in every other aspect: permission to stop pretending to be good people. His gift to them is his shamelessness. Through Trump, his followers can realize their fantasies of being unapologetic bullies. This is the same schtick as MAGA members who claim to be "patriots" while attacking the rule of law and democracy. Trump tells them what they want to hear: You can be a Christian without compassion…. Replacing the real Bible with Trump Bibles is a too-perfect symbol of what has happened to evangelical Christianity. The mistake is in believing Trump's followers are confused or ashamed about their devotion to a  godless creep who laughs at true believers . In Trump's hands, the Bible is not a text for prayer and reflection, it's just a weapon. It's much easier to beat people down with a book if it's closed.    

Ultimately, once God is invoked, and a malign actor such as Donald Trump anoints himself as a type of prophet, messiah, or Chosen One, there can be no compromise, negotiation, or consensus politics within a real democracy. Religious crusades (or specifically with the union of Christofascism, Trumpism and today’s Republican Party and larger “conservative” movement as a form of political religion), almost by definition are winner-take-all all to the extreme. Such extremism is an existential threat to American democracy and the good society.

In an attempt to better understand Trump’s Christofascism and the threat to democracy, I recently spoke to a range of experts.

These interviews have been lightly edited for clarity and length : 

Katherine Stewart  is the author of “ The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism ."

Most of the people who follow Trump don’t expect him to behave like a religious person. They are not going to hold him to account for his heresies or irreligious pronouncements, because they don’t truly believe he is religious anyway, and they don’t care. For them, religion is far less about religion than identity, so they have no interest or concern about whether Trump is blasphemous or not. For a good number of those who lend their support to the Christian nationalist movement, professed faith in the literal word of God is little more than performative. To be sure, some do have familiarity with some parts of the Bible, but their religious identity has become entwined with signaling in-group membership and loyalty to their chosen leaders.

What is curious is how some people still insist on interpreting politicized religion through an individual lens: as men’s and women’s search for meaning or as an effort to grapple with the mysteries of the cosmos. We need to be clear: For leaders of the Christian nationalist movement, along with many followers, the politics comes first, and the religion is tailored to its needs like a cheap suit.

As far as Trump himself is concerned, these statements are just further evidence of his bottomless self-pity and narcissism. It would be nice to think that we live in a world where that would cause people who claim to support religious motives to think again, but for too many Trump supporters that is just not the case.

Add in how Trump is now profiting from the sale of Bibles and it is a masterclass from a grifting insurrectionist demagogue on how to win votes by conflating a fundamentalist religion in which he does not believe with a Constitution he has attempted to undermine. Patriotic bombast in a profit-making package.

Robert P. Jones is the president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller " The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future ," as well as " White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity ."

For the approximately two-thirds of Americans who identify as Christian, this is Holy Week, a solemn time of participation in worship services that evoke self-evaluation and repentance ahead of the holiest day on the Christian calendar, Easter Sunday. In the midst of this sacred week, the presumed Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump, has committed acts that in any other era would have created an outcry among serious Christians across the spectrum.

On Holy Monday, Trump compared himself to Jesus in a Truth Social post. This was not a one-off comparison. They echoed the claims he has made in other settings, such as his speech to white evangelicals at the National Religious Broadcasters annual meeting last month. There, Trump evoked the theological language of substitutionary atonement to describe himself as their savior. Trump claimed, "I’ve been very busy fighting and, you know, taking the, the bullets, taking the arrows. I'm taking 'em for you. And I'm so honored to take 'em. You have no idea. I'm being indicted for you…."

"Trying to hawk a $60 Trump Bible may be an indication of the poor judgment of early dementia exacerbated by narcissism that in the end may boomerang back on him." 

On Holy Tuesday, Trump began hawking a $60 “God Bless the USA Bible," posting this message on X: "Happy Holy Week! Let’s Make America Pray Again. As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless The USA Bible.” The book binds, within its brown leather cover, the text of the King James Version of the Bible (preferred by white evangelical Protestants) along with the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance, and a handwritten chorus of Lee Greenwood’s song, “God Bless the USA,” which Trump regularly plays at rallies. This new venture — that includes a royalty deal collected through the same company handling his $400 gold sneakers — is a tangible, monetized embodiment of Trump’s white Christian nationalism.

That Trump has turned Holy Week into an opportunistic carnivalesque grift is not surprising given his character and the financial crunch he is facing from his legal troubles, but it should be appalling. Christian theology has a word to describe those who claim the attributes of Jesus for themselves and who treat sacred things with contempt and disrespect. It’s blasphemy. And the failure of Christians, especially white evangelical Christians to whom Trump is pandering, to speak out against such disgrace during the holiest week of the Christian year is a measure of their captivity and complicity in the denigration of both Christianity and our nation.

Paul Djupe is a political scientist at Denison University and the editor of the Religious Engagement in Democratic Politics series at Temple University Press. He is also the co-author of "The Full Armor of God: The Mobilization of Christian Nationalism in American Politics"  and co-editor of the new anthology,  "Trump, White Evangelical Christians, and American Politics."

It’s Christian holy week, so what better time than to keep the persecution narrative fully stoked? In a recent Truth Social post, Trump allowed a supporter to suggest that his legal plight is comparable to Jesus’s suffering on the cross . This has been Trump’s play since running for president in 2015: appealing to Christians who feel out of power with a promise to restore them to their believed rightful place. But Trump’s centrality to this narrative has changed drastically. Early in his presidential bid he was seen as the Christian Right’s bully – their protector in politics. As legal and political pressure mounted, Trump became the story, the proxy for how a fallen world treats Christians. He was called anointed by God and he even toyed with the idea in 2019 that he, himself, was the Chosen One.

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In the last year, with indictments piling up, he has been reinforcing his martyrdom, suggesting that he is “taking the arrows…for you and I’m so honored to take them, you have no idea.” He will continue to draw comparisons of his plight with Jesus’s persecution through to the election. He doesn’t stop there, but paints an apocalyptic scene in which his enemies are coming for Christians (“The radical left is coming after all of us.”) and only he stands in the way of broadscale persecution or even a “bloodbath.” There are so many problems with this language, but the most problematic is that the expectation of persecution serves to justify extreme measures to protect their basic rights and liberties up to and including violence. Such connections are being reinforced all over the Right, such as by Charlie Kirk who recently said, “If this election doesn’t go our way, the next day we’d fight.”

Hal Brown is a clinical social worker and was one of the first members of the Duty to Warn group. He has extensive expertise in working with multiple personality disorder (now called dissociative identity disorder) and police stress.

It has always puzzled objective observers, both mental health professionals and others, how many of Trump's lies, exaggerations, and acts of self-aggrandizement were done with him knowing full well that he was pandering to his cult, and how many he actually believed. If he believed even half of them, he'd be considered delusional. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, let's say all of this was performance art. Now with the Trump Bible, one must consider dementia as a cause since ⅓ of all people with dementia end up experiencing delusions. If you listen to his 3-minute spiel for the Bible where Trump seems to deviate from the teleprompter and ad lib you can see indications he actually believes some of what he is saying. For example, does he really think he has many Bibles in his house? His sales pitch for Trump Bible where he meanders into stream of consciousness suggests he may be delusional.

If Trump has even the slightest notion that he is some kind of Jesus-like deity he has become unmoored from reality. Whether this is due to psychosis, dementia, or a combination of the two can't be determined without a complete neuropsychiatric assessment that would include not only extended interviews with Trump and much more extensive testing than the MOCA test but also Melania who presumably would interact with him in unguarded moments and could be asked for other signs of dementia.

Another aspect of early dementia is an increase in signs of poor judgment. Poor judgment can sometimes precede memory loss. It isn't as extreme as somebody wandering off from a facility in the winter wearing only their pajamas. Somebody who is always garrulous and tends to go off on tangents when speaking may do this more frequently. They often lose their train of thought when speaking. People with early dementia can demonstrate a pattern of inappropriate decisions or actions which will ultimately be self-defeating based on their personality but not realizing that there will be predictable consequences that will hurt them.

Decision-making includes three components: courses of action, uncertain events and consequences. When you consider Trump's decision to market a special Bible just before Easter there are his narcissism and money-making inspired aspirational reason for doing this which has to be contrasted with foreseeable negative ramifications. A person who isn't cognitively impaired should be doing a cost-benefit analysis asking themselves whether the benefit will outweigh the cost. They should be able to weigh how uncertain the consequences of an action are. Trump with his narcissism would find it hard under normal circumstances to accept that there might be a final straw where one of his attempted grifts backfires on him, after all he's gotten away with so much. Trying to hawk a $60 Trump Bible may be an indication of the poor judgment of early dementia exacerbated by narcissism that in the end may boomerang back on him. 

Rick Wilson is a co-founder of The Lincoln Project, a former leading Republican strategist, and author of two books, "Everything Trump Touches Dies" and "Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump - and Democrats from Themselves."

There’s no doubt Trump is a snake oil salesman trying to make a quick buck selling overpriced Bibles to unwitting Christians during the holiest week of the year. But it’s also a clumsy attempt to sell himself as a God-fearing Christian because he’s rightly terrified that his criminal case for paying off a porn star and the E. Carroll lawsuit are making evangelicals rethink their support for him. It's just another example of Trump showing he’s willing to do or say anything to make a buck or grab a vote.

about this topic

• "Hastening his deterioration": Dr. John Gartner on impact of court trials on "Trump’s fragile brain"
• Lost in the malignant normality of the Trumpocene
• "They’ve told me he’s Jesus": Unpacking Trump's empty pseudo-religion

Chauncey DeVega is a senior politics writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at  Chaunceydevega.com . He also hosts a weekly podcast,  The Chauncey DeVega Show . Chauncey can be followed on  Twitter  and  Facebook .

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10 Senate Races to Watch in 2024

With Democrats holding a one-seat majority and defending seats from Maryland to Arizona, control of the Senate could easily flip to the G.O.P.

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By Jonathan Weisman

The fight for Senate control is playing out almost entirely in Democratically held seats this year as President Biden’s party defends a slim 51-49 seat majority.

The retirement of Senator Joe Manchin III, a Democrat, in deep-red West Virginia has all but ceded one seat to the Republicans, who are targeting a number of vulnerable Democratic incumbents in red or swing states. And if former President Donald J. Trump wins the White House, one seat is all the G.O.P. needs to flip the chamber. Should the Senate come down to a 50-50 split, the vice president plays tiebreaker.

For Democrats to hold the Senate, the party would most likely need all their incumbents to win; for their candidates to prevail in open seats in Arizona, Michigan and Maryland; and for Mr. Biden to be re-elected so Vice President Kamala Harris would play the tiebreaker in an evenly split chamber. The party is targeting two Republican-held seats, but those are considered more difficult terrain.

Here are the Senate races to watch in 2024.

Montana: Farmer vs. former Navy SEAL

Senator Jon Tester, the flat-topped farmer from Big Sandy, Mont., has defied the odds before in his increasingly Republican state, but his Senate victories in 2006, 2012 and 2018 all came in strong Democratic years nationally. His fight for a fourth term will be considerably tougher with Mr. Biden at the top of the ticket in a state that Mr. Trump won by 16 percentage points in 2020. And Mr. Tester will most likely be battling the Republican Party’s selected candidate, Tim Sheehy, a decorated former Navy SEAL and businessman with the wealth to self-finance his campaign, as well as Mr. Trump’s backing.

Mr. Tester has the power of incumbency, and the authenticity of a third-generation Montanan. In 2012, President Barack Obama received 41.7 percent of the vote. Mr. Tester earned 48.6 percent. He may need even more ticket-splitters — people who will vote for Mr. Trump for president and him for Senate — this November.

Cook Political Report rating: A toss-up

Ohio: Sherrod Brown faces the fight of his political life

Besides Mr. Tester, Senator Sherrod Brown is the only other Democrat defending a seat in a solidly Republican state. He too has had the advantage of winning in strong Democratic years — 2006, 2012 and 2018 — and like Mr. Tester, he has established an image as a stalwart supporter of the working-class voters who will decide the election. As a powerful member of the Senate — he is the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee — Mr. Brown has amassed a considerable war chest for his re-election campaign.

Unlike Mr. Tester, he will be running against a Republican who was not the Ohio G.O.P. establishment’s choice. Bernie Moreno, instead, was the candidate of Mr. Trump. The Republican’s sizable fortune will seed fund-raising and undergird his campaign against the incumbent, but Democrats boosted Mr. Moreno’s candidacy during the primary because they believe his business background will make him vulnerable to attack.

Arizona: Kari Lake, a prominent election denier, tries again

The retirement of Senator Kyrsten Sinema, the Democrat-turned-independent iconoclast, has set up a stark Senate race between Representative Ruben Gallego, a progressive, and Kari Lake, a former television news anchor and a favorite of Mr. Trump’s Make America Great Again movement who lost her race for governor in 2022. The primary in Arizona is July 30, but Mr. Gallego and Ms. Lake have established themselves as the odds-on favorites to represent their parties in the open Senate contest.

President Biden narrowly won Arizona in 2020, and unlike Ohio and Montana, the state promises to be a presidential battleground, potentially warping the Senate race. Ms. Lake made a name for herself by falsely claiming that Democrats stole the Arizona election for Mr. Biden in 2020, then falsely claiming that her Democratic opponent in the governor’s race, Katie Hobbs, stole her election. Mr. Gallego is less well-known outside of his Phoenix House district, but as a Latino with a Harvard pedigree and combat experience in Iraq with the Marine Corps, he has a compelling biography.

Michigan: Trump looms large

The full range of Republican Party factions will fight it out for the right to contend for the Senate seat of Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat who is retiring. There’s Peter Meijer, who voted to impeach Mr. Trump just after being sworn into the House, then lost in the 2022 Republican primary to a Trump-backed challenger. Mr. Meijer has now said he will vote for Mr. Trump in November. There’s Justin Amash, the libertarian-minded former congressman who denounced Mr. Trump, faced a fierce backlash that chased him from his party, tried to run for his House seat as an independent, lost and is now running for the Senate again as an anti-Trump Republican. Then there’s Mike Rogers, the mainstream Republican who said the party needed to move on from Mr. Trump, then wooed and won Mr. Trump’s endorsement for Senate and embraced him.

Mr. Rogers has to be considered the favorite in the Aug. 6 primary, but past and present views of the former president will loom over this race all summer. The primary winner will almost certainly face Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat who has used her national security credentials to win over swing voters in Central Michigan since 2018. Her trick will be to keep those centrist voters and energize more liberal voters in and around Detroit. And looming above it all is the presidential contest.

Cook Political Report rating: Leaning toward Democrats

Nevada: Low-key incumbent vs. political newcomer

In recent years, Nevada Democrats have profited off Republican voters’ penchant for nominating candidates from the G.O.P.’s extremes, but this year, party leaders are rallying around Sam Brown, a political neophyte with an extraordinary story. The West Point graduate nearly died in Kandahar, Afghanistan, when a roadside bomb burned him badly and left him permanently scarred. His thin political résumé could be a plus, since it will make him difficult to label.

Senator Jacky Rosen, the incumbent Democrat, isn’t flashy, but the power of incumbency matters, unless Mr. Biden’s support in the state craters.

Wisconsin: A wealthy Republican candidate faces questions over his ties to the state

Senator Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, has been a low-key fixture in Wisconsin politics since her election to the State Assembly in 1992. With her comes little drama, but Wisconsin, a state that just re-elected its famously quiet governor, Tony Evers, in 2022, seems to like Democrats who speak softly.

Republicans have recruited Eric Hovde, a banker and businessman who, if nothing else, can finance his own campaign. But his connections to Southern California in a state full of Badger pride have helped keep this race leaning toward the incumbent.

Pennsylvania: David McCormick tries again

The Keystone State may be a key battleground in the presidential election this year, but Senator Bob Casey, the Democratic incumbent, is an institution. His expected Republican opponent is David McCormick, the former chief executive of Bridgewater Associates, one of the largest hedge funds in the world. Mr. McCormick lost the Republican Senate primary in 2022 to Mehmet Oz, and the lines of attack honed two years ago on his wealth and his mansion in Connecticut are sure to be recycled.

Maryland: Larry Hogan makes things interesting

Reliably blue Maryland should not be in play, but Larry Hogan, the moderate former Republican governor, has decided to run for the Senate seat of Ben Cardin, the retiring Democrat, making the race one to watch.

Democrats had figured they could count on the three-term Representative David Trone , the wealthy founder of Total Wine & More, a large retailer of wine and spirits. Then Mr. Trone used a racial slur at a House hearing, for which he has apologized and said was inadvertent. But several Black Democrats endorsed Angela Alsobrooks, the Prince George’s County executive, ahead of the May 14 primary, as did Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the powerful House Oversight Committee.

Cook Political Report rating: Likely Democratic

Texas and Florida: Democrats try to flip seats in reliably red states

Democrats have only two races to play offense in: Senator Ted Cruz’s campaign in Texas and Senator Rick Scott’s in Florida. Both men have never been personally popular in their states, but those states have been reliably Republican of late. Democrats like their candidates, Representative Colin Allred in Texas and former Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in Florida, but it would most likely take severe erosion of Mr. Trump’s support to put those Senate seats in play.

Cook Political Report ratings: Likely Republican

Bonus races to watch: Long shots

Utah is nobody’s idea of a swing state, and the retirement of Senator Mitt Romney at the end of his term has drawn in nearly a dozen Republicans ahead of the June 25 primary, including Representative John Curtis; Brent Orrin Hatch, the son of Senator Orrin G. Hatch ; and Brad Wilson, the former speaker of the State House. But one Democrat made waves with a unique announcement video : Caroline Gleich, a professional ski mountaineer.

Nebraska is almost as red as Utah, with an incumbent Republican, Deb Fischer, running for re-election. Her main opponent is not a Democrat but an independent, Dan Osborn, who led a strike at the Kellogg’s plant in Omaha in 2021 and is testing whether his pro-labor, working-class message can resonate at a time when the union movement is resurgent.

Cook Political Report ratings: Solidly Republican

Jonathan Weisman is a politics writer, covering campaigns with an emphasis on economic and labor policy. He is based in Chicago. More about Jonathan Weisman

Our Coverage of the 2024 Elections

Presidential Race

Donald Trump, who ends many of his rallies with a churchlike ritual, has infused his movement with Christianity .

Trump posted a video to his social media website that features an image of President Biden with his hands and feet tied together .

A campaign event intending to galvanize support among organized labor and Latino voters behind Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s bid instead drew condemnation from the family of the labor organizer Cesar Chavez .

Other Key Races

Tammy Murphy, New Jersey’s first lady, abruptly ended her bid for U.S. Senate, a campaign flop that reflected intense national frustration with politics as usual .

Kari Lake, a Trump acolyte running for Senate in Arizona, is struggling to walk away from the controversial positions  that have turned off independents and alienated establishment Republicans.

Ohio will almost certainly go for Trump this November. Senator Sherrod Brown, the last Democrat holding statewide office, will need to defy the gravity of the presidential contest  to win a fourth term.

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This I Believe

Stepping out of fear.

Vickie Milazzo

Vickie Milazzo worked as a critical care nurse before pioneering the field of legal nurse consultants in the early 1980s. She is the author of Inside Every Woman: Using the 10 Strengths You Didn't Know You Had to Get the Career and Life You Want Now. courtesy Vickie Milazzo hide caption

I believe in stepping out. I learned this from living in fear.

As a child, I was afraid of everything: escalators, heights and New Orleans cockroaches the size of pralines. At the age of 8 I even became afraid of getting Halloween candy.

Normally on October 31, my twin brother and I would step out of our shotgun house and rush to every home within a three-block radius. Most of the houses were only a step or two off the ground. Easy.

That year, when we approached one of the bigger houses -- a house known to have the best candy but with 10 tall cement steps leading to the front door -- my fear of heights stopped me cold. My brother was already up the stairs, while I stood frozen at the bottom.

I told myself I might stumble in the dark and drop my bag of treats. I might crash to the concrete below. I might tear my homemade fairy costume. I wanted the candy, but there was no way I was going up those stairs to get it.

I lost more than candy. I lost my confidence.

The fear of stepping out took me along the safe, no-risk route through high school, nursing school and into a secure hospital job. After six years in nursing, unsatisfied with the career choice I had made, I woke up to a different kind of fear: The fear of becoming like the other no-risk nurses -- tired, burned out and old before their time. I faced a decision: Step out into the unknown or spend the rest of my life at the bottom of those steps, never tasting the best candy.

I wanted to start a consulting business advising attorneys on medical-related cases. I settled for reading business books instead. Then I thought back to the worst thing that ever happened to me: my mom dying at age 48 of breast cancer. Compared with that, how bad could a business failure be?

So, with only $100 in my savings account, I called my first attorney to offer my services as a legal nurse consultant. To my horror he answered the phone. About to hang up, I thought: If he was wearing a hospital gown with his backside showing, I would have no problem introducing myself. I sputtered out something unintelligible, and he became my first client.

Climbing the stairs of business hasn't been easy. Once I lost my biggest client. The old fears returned, but I'd tasted the candy, and the memory of my mom put me right back on those stairs.

Success is not about the achievement. Every time I step out into the unknown, win or lose, I succeed. I might break a leg or invest in a losing business idea, but I won't end up at my 90th birthday with nothing more than stale white cake and regrets. Bad things can happen when we step out, but I believe worse things happen to our souls when we don't.

More 'This I Believe' Essays

Bill gates: unleashing the power of creativity, brian grazer: disrupting my comfort zone, tony hawk: do what you love.