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The Bhagavad Gita on Trump

2000+ years ago they saw him coming

1 min readMar 7, 2026

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Photo by Oleg Churakov on Unsplash

Reading the Bhagavad Gita this morning, I came across this passage that perfectly described Donald Trump. All these words hold true today.

“Demonic men cannot comprehend
Activity and rest;
There exists no clarity
No morality, no truth in them.

They say that the world
Has no truth, no basis, no god,
That no power of mutual dependence
Is its cause, but only desire.

Mired in this view, lost to themselves
With their meager understanding,
These fiends contrive terrible acts
To destroy the world

Subject to insatiable desire
Drunk with hypocrisy and pride
Holding false notions from delusions,
They act with impure vows.

In their certainty that life
Consists in sating their desires,
They suffer immeasurable anxiety
That ends only with death.

Bound by a hundred fetters of hope,
Obsessed by desire and anger,
They hoard wealth in stealthy ways
To satisfy desires.

‘I have gained this wish today,
And I shall attain that one;
This wealth is mine,
And there will be more.

I have killed that enemy,
And I shall kill others too;
I am lord, I am the enjoyer,
Successful, strong and happy.’”

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Paul Greenberg
Paul Greenberg

Written by Paul Greenberg

New York Times bestselling author of Four Fish and, most recently, A Third Term https://www.paulgreenberg.org/books/a-third-term/