Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Did Trump Just Compare Himself To King Cyrus?

In a statement for Nowruz, the Persian New Year, President Trump quoted Cyrus the Great — and seemed to suggest a comparison between himself and the ancient Persian ruler.

“Cyrus the Great, a leader of the ancient Persian Empire, famously said that ‘freedom, dignity, and wealth together constitute the greatest happiness of humanity. If you bequeath all three to your people, their love for you will never die,’” a March 22 statement from Trump read.

Trump went on, “On behalf of the American people, I wish you freedom, dignity, and wealth.”

The reference could slip by most, but for some of Trump’s fans, it will hold great meaning.

That’s because some Trump supporters see him as a modern-day Cyrus, “anointed” by God to rule.

During Trump’s campaign, comparisons of Trump to the Cyrus circulated widely in evangelical and some Jewish circles. Many compared Trump to Cyrus, referred to in Isaiah as God’s “anointed one,” who — though not Jewish — served the Hebrew God and aided the Jewish people.

Likening Trump to Cyrus was a way to make spiritual sense of the dizzying election.

Trump was a decidedly non-religious candidate — but one who was seen as still serving the interests of Americans on the religious right.

“It’s not a normal election and so we — it’s — we almost need a different kind of candidate,” evangelical speaker Lance Wallnau told CBN news in November. “Trump has the Cyrus anointing to navigate in chaos.”

Wallnau, who incidentally claims Jewish roots, led the charge in the Trump-Cyrus comparison. Wallnau even met with Trump last year — and afterwards said he “heard the Lord” say “Trump is a wrecking ball to the spirit of political correctness.”

While the Cyrus trope was most popular with evangelicals, in some Jewish circles, the comparison also took hold — particularly among the controversial Temple Mount movement, which seeks to rebuild the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem to hasten the coming of the Messiah.

For them, the comparison is even more explicit: in the bible, Cyrus decreed that the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem be rebuilt after the Babylonian exile.

After Trump’s election, member of Knesset and leading figure in the Temple Mount movement Yehuda Glick said that if Trump were to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, “He will be the latter-day Cyrus.”

“A lot of Trump supporters are going to make a big deal that he cited Cyrus in this statement,” said Brian Tashman, a researcher for the website Right Wing Watch. “With his election, they believe something miraculous happened.”

Email Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected]

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.