"Christians are suckers"
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"Christians are suckers" is the explanation John Kiriakou offered in September 2025 for how a president with no visible religious practice could campaign on prayer in public schools without paying a price for it.

The question put to him

Kiriakou was addressed as a man of faith and asked about the incongruity: a president who does not go to church, has no spiritual adviser of the kind Billy Graham was to previous presidents, cannot reference scripture, and when asked to name a single line from the Bible could not manage even "Jesus wept", the shortest verse in it.

The question was how he gets away with it.

The answer

"I think that he thinks that most Christians are suckers. I hate to be cynical like that, but I I believe this. He thinks most Christians are suckers."

The Bible outside St John's

His evidence was the walk across Lafayette Square. During what he calls a near-riot situation the president left the White House with the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and went to St John's Church, "which is directly across the street from the White House where every president since James Madison has gone to services. And what's he do? He holds up a Bible and he just holds it up."

Upside down, in the exchange's telling; and later autographed, with the autographs subsequently sold. Kiriakou's comment: "Only God should be allowed to autograph the Bible."

His reading of the purpose: "it's an easy and cheap way to just uh rile up Christians who are predisposed to support him anyhow. And he realizes, ah, they're all suckers. I'm just going to keep doing this. I really believe that."

What he cannot account for

Kiriakou declined to extend the contempt to the voters themselves. Christians, he agreed, "are no stupider than anyone else anyway", and that is what leaves him without an explanation.

"I would be so furious over the thought that I had been used as as a political prop that I would be furious. I don't understand why why he's a how he's able to get away with this."

See also

- The Greek Orthodox Church
- Christian Zionism
- Donald Trump
