President Trump has never had much use for religion except as a vehicle to attract support from conservative evangelical Christians who are seemingly oblivious to the fact that nearly his every behavior violates the teachings they supposedly hold so deep in their hearts.
It was not surprising, therefore, when the President was forced to send out a second tweet about his participation in a ceremony at the White House celebrating one of the biggest holidays in India and throughout South Asia. The initial tweet included photos of the President with members of the White House staff of Indian descent, as well as the Indian Ambassador to the U.S., lighting the traditional Diya lamp marking Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights.
The followup tweet was necessary because the president initially described the holiday as being “observed by Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains throughout the United States & around the world,” without mentioning the hundreds of millions of followers of Hinduism, the religion that instituted the holiday.
Today, we gathered for Diwali, a holiday observed by Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains throughout the United States & around the world. Hundreds of millions of people have gathered with family & friends to light the Diya and to mark the beginning of a New Year. https://t.co/epHogpTY1A pic.twitter.com/9LUwnhngWJ
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 13, 2018
Hindus on Twitter noticed the omission immediately and pointed out the major slight that the president’s careless tweet constituted.
Um, hundreds of millions of Hindus too https://t.co/tuYRLD6FzX
— Ram Ramgopal (@RamCNN) November 13, 2018
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Once the mistake was discovered, Trump’s original Tweet was deleted, but rather than reposting a corrected version fixing the omission, he simply repeated the error in the corrected tweet again.
Trump deleted the original Diwali tribute tweet because it left out Hindus only to post a corrected tweet and still leave out Hindus.
Diwali is literally the most popular festival in Hinduism. https://t.co/NOGZEgtIeD
— siraj hashmi (@SirajAHashmi) November 13, 2018
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Diwali is primarily celebrated by Hindus and was observed last week on November 7th.
But let's get the date wrong and leave out the primary religious group, because Trump… https://t.co/tXGrs0wx10
— TOᑭ ᖇOᑭE TᖇAViS (@TopRopeTravis) November 13, 2018
It wasn’t just Hindus who noticed the mistake.
*Hindus. https://t.co/LHNsxhR9Sf
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) November 13, 2018
Finally, about 20 minutes after Trump posted the second embarrassingly misleading tweet, he posted a new tweet that properly attributed the origins of the Diwali festival.
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It was my great honor to host a celebration of Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights, in the Roosevelt Room at the @WhiteHouse this afternoon. Very, very special people! https://t.co/kQk7IvpSFo pic.twitter.com/tYlBABg4JF
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 13, 2018
That President Trump would have such trouble with Diwali is not surprising considering what the festival symbolizes in the Hindu tradition: the spiritual “victory of light over darkness, good over evil and knowledge over ignorance.”
Sounds like a good slogan for the forces in the resistance aligned against the president.
Follow Vinnie Longobardo on Twitter.
Original reporting by Brett Samuels at The Hill.
