“Nothing bad can happen, it can only good happen.” These words were spoken by the 47th President of the United States of America on September 22, 2025. He was speaking at a press conference concerning pregnancy and Tylenol, announcing the Health Secretary’s latest affront to science and particularly those with autism.
Trump enraged women by suggesting that they should “tough it out” if they are in pain during pregnancy, highlighting again that women’s healthcare is an afterthought in the U.S. It was no surprise that the scientific community clapped back. Both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology issued statements after the press conference affirming the safety of Tylenol and pointing to misleading information.
Parents of autistic children were equally disturbed that the president would blame mothers who took Tylenol during pregnancy for autism. It was a stark reminder that neurodivergence is still largely seen as something that must be “cured,” and the president’s off-script word salad sparked outrage and a treasure trove of memes. Still, it is anything but funny.
Health specialists and researchers warned that the disinformation could lead to unnecessary pain and suffering during pregnancy. New York University bioethicist Art Caplan said it was “the saddest display of a lack of evidence, rumors, recycling old myths, lousy advice, outright lies, and dangerous advice I have ever witnessed by anyone in authority.”
The highlight of Trump’s nonsensical remarks was a page out of the playbook of health and wealth gospel preachers: Seriously, just listen to me; I know what I am talking about, and good things are coming… “Nothing bad can happen, it can only good happen.”
The correlation was both striking and chilling.
His words reminded me of myriad gospel adjacent quotes I have heard on stages and television and have read in plenty of best-sellers. A quick internet search can offer various examples from a plethora of preachers.
You can, however, take merely a single prosperity preacher’s words to exemplify biblical contradictions, diminishing God to a genie:
“Don’t just accept whatever comes your way in life. You were born to win; you were born for greatness; you were created to be a champion in life.”
“You will produce what you’re continually seeing in your mind… If you develop an image of victory, success, health, abundance, joy, peace, and happiness, nothing on earth will be able to hold those things from you… Start anticipating promotions and supernatural increase. You must conceive it in your heart and mind before you can receive it… You must make room for increase in your own thinking, and then God will bring those things to pass.”
“It’s our faith that activates the power of God.”
These words come from Joel Osteen’s Your Best Life Now.
Words like these offer a shallow faith that will surely falter in times of trouble. They offer no hope. They disregard the poetic wisdom of Job and ignore Jesus’s preference for the poor, the widowed, the oppressed, and the marginalized.
The prosperity gospel uses toxic positivity to align Christianity with empire.
The parallel between these shallow theologies and September’s press conference is most alarming. Not just because the president would go off-script during such an important announcement, potentially harming millions. But also in its lack of depth, factual grounding, basic grammar and coherence.
Spectacle substitutes for substance.
We are being fed prosperity politics just as harmful as the prosperity gospel. And it is fueling the president’s base the same way hands-raised, swaying and clapping congregation-goers are mesmerized and hoodwinked by the promise of riches from the pulpit.
In this faith, doubt is treason and criticism is sin. The only difference is that it’s coming from the presidential podium.
It’s not just the misinformation that fills his speeches, but sentences that are as whimsical as the cat-in-the-hat, offering enough levity to be entertaining as they slide into the public sphere. Just days after the Tylenol press conference, Trump called Obama “a lousy president” and remarked that Biden was not “respected” globally because he fell down the stairs. While Obama was “lousy,” though, he could “bop, bop, boppity-bop” down the stairs.
It was a bizarre and rambling bunch of words strung together in front of the nation’s military leaders. But it’s now been spoken into the world, and there’s a red-hat-wearing base of people faithful enough to remember not only the bopping but the insults strung together with nonchalant levity. A picture painted without substance, its colors bleeding harm onto the canvas of public life.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy is not the absurdity itself, but how easily we have learned to laugh at it. Each word erodes our tolerance for seeking truth, and each cheer lowers the bar for what we will accept from our nation’s leaders. These are the broad strokes of positivity that serve to disguise the rot beneath.
The same brush paints these pulpits and podiums—broad strokes of blessing without burden, hope without honesty. The prosperity gospel hollows out the church and prosperity politics are hollowing out our nation.
When we baptize lies with optimism, the damage runs deeper than misinformation. It is a corruption of hope itself: faith turned spectacle, democracy turned devotion. We owe it to both our faith and our republic to demand truth from every pulpit and podium that claims to serve the public good.
“It can only good happen?” Maybe if we surrender our conscience to charisma, but Lord, deliver us from such a salvation.
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Rev. Michelle Wahila is an ordained PCUSA pastor, founder of Ruffled by Grace, and sought-after officiant and retreat leader. She creates heartfelt celebrations and soulful experiences that blend tradition with imagination. Now living in a 19th-century farmhouse in rural France with her family and a menagerie of pets, she enjoys gardening, making jam, and savoring a good cup of coffee.
