David Perdue.

Freshman Georgia senator David Perdue opened his remarks to the Faith and Freedom Coalition Friday morning with an ice-breaking joke – about imploring God to end the president’s life.

“I think we’re called to pray for our country, for our leaders – and yes, even our president,” Perdue said at the conservative Christian group’s conference. “But I think we need to be very specific about how we pray. We should pray for him like Psalms 109:8 says. It says: Let his days be few, and let another have his office!”

For those who haven’t been to Bible study in a while, here’s how that psalm continues.

Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out. Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the Lord; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out. Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

Does David Perdue actually want Sasha and Malia to spend the rest of their lives as penniless vagabonds? Probably not. Was his primary motivation just to make a pun out of the phrase “let another have his office”? Possibly. But did he and his audience know how the rest of that psalm goes – and have a good old laugh about the Lord blotting out the next generation of Obamas?

This is not an original one-liner Perdue’s speechwriter stumbled upon while flipping through the ole King James version: “Pray for Obama – Psalm 109:8” has adorned the car bumpers and Twitter accounts of god-fearing American patriots for seven years now. Perdue knows what he was winking at. He knows the kind of memes his voters like – Trump won Georgia’s GOP primary by 14 points. Purdue knows that he belongs to the party of birtherism, Muslim bans, and jokes about Michelle Obama becoming a homeless widow. He acts accordingly.



Senator Purdue’s office released a statement on Friday afternoon, extending his prayers to the American media.

Senator Perdue said we are called to pray for our country, for our leaders, and for our president. He in no way wishes harm towards our president and everyone in the room understood that. However, we should add the media to our prayer list because they are pushing a narrative to create controversy and that is exactly what the American people are tired of.

As of this writing, Purdue did not specify which psalm you should refer to when praying for bloggers.