Trump needs to turn to Jesus for his defense in Stormy Daniels, hush money trial

Here’s some free legal advice to my good friend, Donald Trump.

Use the Jesus defense.

Trump, America’s premier crotch-grabbing Bible salesman, is going on trial this month in New York. He’s facing multiple felony charges of falsifying business records in order to secretly pay $130,000 to a porn star in the closing weeks of the 2016 presidential election.

Trump’s canoodling with Stormy Daniels — whose filmography includes "Dual Air Bags," "Trailer Trash Nurses 6," and "Operation Desert Stormy" — was deemed to be potentially problematic to Trump’s performatively pious Christian base.

Especially since his wife was home with their infant son while he was dabbling in Stormy’s charms.

Donald Trump calls himself 'Modern Day Nelson Mandela'

Trump has auditioned various defenses for this well-documented, illegally constructed effort to keep Daniels quiet before the voters cast their ballots in that national election.

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First he said he didn’t know anything about the hush money payment. Then he said that happened too long ago to be prosecuted. Then he blamed it all on getting bad legal advice from his lawyers.

Along the way, he tried unsuccessfully to keep his lawyer and Daniels from being allowed to testify against him.

Lately, he’s just claiming to be a victim of persecution.

And these persecution claims are just getting wilder as the trial approaches. He started out saying that he’s treated worse than Abraham Lincoln, who, let the record show, was killed in office.

This month, he called himself the “Modern Day Nelson Mandela,” who spent 27 years in a South African prison as a leader of the movement to end apartheid in that country.

“Nobody has been treated like Trump, in terms of badly,” Trump said last month.

Lincoln and Mandela are top-tier victims for sure, but if Trump’s willing to go that far, he might as well go straight to the top.

Blame it all on Jesus.

Trump should try the Jesus defense

In “terms of badly,” you can’t beat the treatment of Jesus. And Trump’s already halfway there: He has entertained notions that he is a Jesus figure walking among us.

Earlier this month, he reposted a social media comment from one of his supporters that made the Trump-Jesus connection, pointing out that his prosecution in the New York case coincides with Holy Week, the week that led to Christ’s crucifixion.

“It’s ironic that Christ walked through His greatest persecution the very week they are trying to steal your property from you,” the supporter wrote him, while referring to a Psalm.

“With words of hatred they surround me: they attack me without cause,” it begins.

“Beautiful, thank you!” Trump responded.

It’s time for Trump to take this to the next logical step. All earthly defenses have fallen short. Trump needs to go Full Metal Jesus.

So, here’s my advice to him.

If he cracked open those Lee Greenwood, rock-bottom-remainder Bibles he’s selling for $60 a whack to his gullible flock, he’d discover there’s a key character in the New Testament named Mary Magdalene.

Trump, ditch the King James Bible. What about the King Donald version?

She shows up about a dozen times in the Gospels and was one of the few people present at the crucifixion and the first witness to the resurrection two days later.

Who was Mary Magdalene?

There’s a strain of speculation that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ wife but that’s widely disputed and not as popular as the notion that she may have been a sex worker who was cured of the “seven demons” by Jesus and then became one of Jesus’ most fervent disciples.

Mary Magdalene, described as a wretched sinner, showed up at a banquet, fell on Jesus’ feet and used her tears and long hair to clean his feet and anoint him with her ointment.

That was the beginning of her journey to sainthood, the Bible says.

I’m not sure if there was any foot business involved in the Trump-Stormy anointment during their first golf-club encounter but there’s clearly enough of a parallel narrative that can be exploited here by Trump.

Trump can point out that if the technology were different back in Biblical times, Mary Magdalene might have starred in such videos as Nazareth Nurses Gone Wild, Bethlehem Manger-a-trois or Pizza Delivery on the Mount before meeting a savior who brought her promptly to her knees and changed her life.

By sticking to a Jesus defense, Trump could argue that his intimate encounter with Stormy Daniels wasn’t a cheap act of sexual gratification but a holy mission to cleanse Stormy of her demons.

And that prosecuting him for this holy act of religious purpose is an attack on Christianity, and an infringement on his Constitutional right to practice his religion without government interference.

Trump has already laid the groundwork for this during his online Bible sales pitch.

“Religion and Christianity are the biggest things missing from this country,” he said while hawking the Bibles. “I truly believe that we need to bring them back and we have to bring them back fast.”

Yes, real fast. I'd say, in terms of bigly, by opening statements in his porn-star trial next week.

Frank Cerabino is a news columnist with The Palm Beach Post, part of the Gannett Newspapers chain.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Trump should try this defense at hush money trial: Blame it on Jesus