Speaking on Fox News this week, former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich marveled at the political resilience of President-elect Donald Trump over the past nine years. Enumerating Trump’s myriad challenges, Gingrich cites the two impeachments during his first term, “all these efforts to catch him in the law,” and the Butler, PA assassination attempt — before concluding admiringly: “and the guy just keeps coming.”
Gingrich added of Trump: “This is a mythic figure, almost like the various Scandinavian Beowulf and other kind of sagas.” Gingrich, a former college history professor, went on: “There’s no practical way that you can explain Trump within a normal political structure.”
MAGA is definitely not a cult, Newt Gingrich just describes Trump as a mythical Beowulf character from the Scandinavian sagas. Some people just call Trump a sociopath, pathological liar and a fascist so there’s that. pic.twitter.com/bTXZWCwEWM
— Decoding Fox News (@DecodingFoxNews) December 13, 2024
Note: Beowulf is an Old English epic poem set in pagan Scandinavia in the 5th and 6th centuries. The hero of the story, Beowulf, helps the king of the Danes by slaying a monster Grendel (Beowulf rips the monster’s shoulder and arm off).
He also fights off Grendel’s vengeful mother before returning home and becoming king of his own people.
Not everyone views Trump through Gingrich’s heroic lens, of course.
Juliet Jeske of Decoding Fox News responded sarcastically to the former Speaker’s monologue: “MAGA is definitely not a cult, Newt Gingrich just describes Trump as a mythical Beowulf character from the Scandinavian sagas. Some people just call Trump a sociopath, pathological liar and a fascist so there’s that.”
MAGA, Trump’s movement, has been called a cult of personality for the perception that its unwavering lionization of Trump is excessive and blinding. The opposing view holds that those who fail to acknowledge the former President’s virtues suffer from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
[Note: There are at least two sides to every story, even ancient ones — the novelist John Gardner wrote a highly regarded book called “Grendel” placing the monster at the story’s center.]
A commenter who clearly is not a fan of Gingrich or Trump replied: “We don’t need a mythical character in office.” And another chimed in: “Trump isn’t Beowulf he’s Grendel.”
Meanwhile, the world’s contemporary myth makers — America’s tech giants like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk — are sending Trump millions of dollars to help his inauguration celebrate the vanquishing of his opponents.