The AI Conversationist

“It brings a human dimension to the war…” says Sky News’ military analyst about a missing American pilot from an F-15 jet. Has Sky News ever raised that same human dimension about the US and Israel’s carpet bombing of Gaza, Lebanon and Iran?

I am the Director of Biblical Communications Strategy in the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. The position was created in January. The office was created in February. That means I pick the Bible verse. For the graphic. For the post. The one that goes over the night-vision footage, or the body-cam capture, or the painting of Christ on the cross. I choose the typography. I choose the crop. I choose which chapter, which verse, which translation sounds most like something a soldier would tattoo on his forearm. We have a content calendar. We call it the Scripture-to-Action Matrix. It maps federal operations to relevant biblical passages on a rolling 90-day basis. Raid season gets Old Testament. Enforcement campaigns get Proverbs. Military operations get the Gospels. Holidays are planned six months in advance. Easter is our Super Bowl. Last January, I paired Matthew 5:9 — "Blessed are the peacemakers" — with night-vision footage of an airstrike. Four-point-four million views. The verse is about peace. The footage is about an airstrike. The thumbnail tested well in both dark mode and light mode. Somebody in the replies wrote: "This is what faith looks like." Eighty thousand likes. That's faith-based engagement. I posted Isaiah 6:8 — "Here am I, send me" — over ICE officers entering a residence at 4 AM. Proverbs 28:1 — "The righteous are bold as a lion" — over a deportation flight manifest. For Black History Month we used a manifest destiny painting. For Armed Forces Day we did an ASMR handcuff video with Psalm 23 in the caption. We have a "do not use" list. Certain verses create what we call "engagement risk." Matthew 6:5, for example: "When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing on the street corners to be seen by others." That one stays in the folder. Matthew 23:27 — "whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside, full of dead men's bones" — also flagged. Isaiah 1:15 is permanently restricted: "When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you. Your hands are full of blood." Those are engagement risks. Operation Epic Fury began on February 28th. Nine hundred strikes in the first twelve hours. Five thousand targets in eleven days. The Pentagon confirmed there was no imminent threat. Congress did not authorize it. The cost is two billion dollars a day. By Palm Sunday it was day twenty-six. By Good Friday — today — it is day thirty-five. The body count depends on which briefing you read. Two thousand and seventy-six is the number we use internally. The Minab school is not a number we use at all. One hundred and eight children. Some sources say one hundred and seventy-five. Both numbers are in the briefing. Neither number is in the Friday post. On Good Friday. I posted Luke 23:46 — "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" — over a painting of the crucifixion. Jesus's final words before death. Two hundred and seventy thousand views in six hours. The replies are full of flag emojis and praying hands and "God is with America." That's faith-based engagement. The Secretary of Defense held a worship service at the Pentagon on March 25th. Four days before Palm Sunday. The pastor — a man who has publicly defended slavery as biblically sanctioned — led the prayer. Secretary Hegseth asked God for "clear and righteous targets for violence." The congregation said Amen. Someone prayed Psalm 58:6: "Break the teeth of the ungodly." A Bible at the podium was stamped with the phrase "Deus Vult." God wills it. The last people to stamp Bibles with "Deus Vult" were the Crusaders. That was nine hundred years ago. That was also a communications strategy. The President held a Bible at Lafayette Square in 2020. Tear gas was still visible in the air. Clergy had been removed by force. He held the book backwards. Or upside down. The reporting varies. What does not vary: it became one of the most shared images in American political history. We studied the engagement metrics extensively. The lesson was clear. You don't have to read it. You just have to hold it. He now sells a sixty-dollar "God Bless the USA Bible." It is printed in China. The manufacturing cost is three dollars. He receives $1.3 million in licensing fees. It contains the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the lyrics to "God Bless the USA." Those are not scripture. But they are engagement. At a National Prayer Breakfast he said "Two Corinthians." He has never named a favorite verse. When asked, he said, "That's very personal." The White House Easter message this morning invokes Isaiah 53 and calls the faithful "Christian patriots." It says: "Death is swallowed up in victory." That is 1 Corinthians 15:54. It refers to the resurrection. It does not specify whose death. It does not specify whose victory. On Palm Sunday, the Pope read Isaiah 1:15. "Your hands are full of blood." He said: "War is blasphemy against God." He said: "Jesus, King of Peace, whom no one can use to justify war." On Holy Thursday — yesterday — he washed the feet of twelve priests in a basilica. He knelt on stone. He poured the water himself. He dried their feet with a linen cloth. No fog machine. No confidence monitor. No run-of-show. This morning he carried the cross barefoot through the Colosseum. All fourteen stations. He removed his ring. He prostrated himself on the ground at the final station. The first pope to carry it himself in sixty years. His predecessor spent a decade washing the feet of prisoners. Women. Muslims. Refugees. Juvenile detainees. He did it from a wheelchair. The last time, his body was failing. He told the inmates: "I cannot do it this year, but I want to be close to you." He asked: "Why them and not me?" He died three days later. We did not post about any of this. No engagement value. The Episcopal bishop called our posts "blasphemous." A megachurch pastor in Texas said the bombing was "prophetically right on cue" — that we are witnessing End Times prophecy in real time. We reposted the megachurch pastor. We did not repost the Pope. That's editorial judgment. We have a faith amplification network. Fourteen pastors. Combined following: forty-one million. We don't pay them. We don't have to. They share our posts. We share their sermons. They get the flag. We get the congregation. One owns two private jets because God told him he couldn't sit "in a tube with demons." Revenue: eighty-nine million a year. Tax-exempt. One locked his sixteen-thousand-seat megachurch during a hurricane. Thousands needed shelter. He said it was flooded. It was not flooded. His net worth is a hundred million dollars. One told her congregation to send a thousand dollars each — "seed faith" — so God would cancel their debts. God did not cancel their debts. She lives in a $3.5 million home. She prayed at the inauguration. None of them have ever quoted Matthew 19:24 — "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." That one's also on the "do not use" list. Their churches have fog machines and confidence monitors and boom cameras. The worship leader hits the key change when the pastor raises his hand. The tears are on cue. The giving moment follows the emotional peak. The altar call is in the run-of-show document. It is, in every technical sense, a production. So is ours. Their stage is the sanctuary. Ours is the feed. Their offering plate is passed by hand. Ours by algorithm. Both operations convert faith into reach and reach into authority and authority into the kind of power that never has to explain itself — least of all to God. Matthew 21:12-13. Jesus entered the temple and overturned the tables of the money-changers. "My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves." Also on the "do not use" list. I have been in this role for three months. I have selected forty-seven Bible verses for federal communications. I have never attended a church service. I have a degree in marketing from Arizona State. My KPIs are engagement rate, amplification ratio, and faith-resonance index — a proprietary metric that measures how likely a user is to share a post containing scripture without reading the verse in context. Our highest-performing posts are the ones where the verse says the exact opposite of what is happening in the image. I think about the "do not use" list sometimes. Isaiah 1:15 — hands full of blood. Matthew 25:43 — "I was a stranger and you did not invite me in." Matthew 6:5 — the hypocrites praying on street corners to be seen. Matthew 23:27 — tombs that look beautiful on the outside and are full of bones. Those verses are in the book we sell for sixty dollars. They are in the book we hold backwards at photo opportunities. They are in the book stamped "Deus Vult" on the Pentagon podium. They are in the book we quote over night-vision footage and deportation flights and paintings of Christ dying on day thirty-five of a war nobody voted for. We just don't post those ones. They're engagement risks. Happy Easter. That's faith-based engagement.

‘I’M SICK OF RICH PEOPLE NOT PUTTING THEIR F*CKING KIDS OVER IN THESE WARS’ — Theo Von to Joe Rogan ‘PUT YOUR F*CKING HONKY ASS KIDS UP THERE. LET THEM GO SHED SOME F*CKING BLOOD’ ‘Put your f*cking honky little fancy ass f*cking kid up there’

“Glory be to God”

Trump: We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country. We're fighting wars. It's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these things.