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Energy Secretary Rick Perry, a former governor of Texas and Republican presidential candidate, raised eyebrows in an interview that aired Sunday on Fox News FOX, -0.24% in which he said that Donald Trump is God’s “chosen one” to lead the United States and was “sent by God to do great things”:
Indeed, the deity is “still very active in the details of the day-to-day lives of government,” according to Perry, who will be leaving Trump’s cabinet at the end of the year. And not, per Perry, only in the Trump era:
‘Barack Obama didn’t get to be the president of the United States without being ordained by God. Neither did Donald Trump. … God’s used imperfect people all through history.’
Perry listed several biblical figures believed to have been chosen by God, saying they, too, had their flaws. “King David wasn’t perfect. Saul wasn’t perfect. Solomon wasn’t perfect,” Perry said. “Donald Trump’s not perfect.”
Plenty of people on Twitter TWTR, +1.37% were willing to take up the question of political perfection, and who falls short of that mark, while the “chosen one” remark — a sobriquet Trump himself has latched on to in the past — drew responses from some notable names:
Perry maintained that he’s spoken directly with Trump about this very topic, and even gave him a pamphlet on the Old Testament kings: “I shared it with him and said, ‘Mr. President, I know there are people that say you said you were the chosen one and I said, ‘You were,’ ” Perry said. “I said, ‘If you’re a believing Christian, you understand God’s plan for the people who rule and judge over us on this planet in our government.’ ”
