'Exploiting religious faith for personal profit': Trump pockets $1.5M from branded Bible

President Donald Trump has provided “a stunning example of political pandering and exploiting religious faith for personal profit,” said a religious freedom advocate on Tuesday after financial disclosure forms revealed one of the latest ways in which the president has profited from the presidency: this time, by licensing his name to the “God Bless the USA” Bible sold by supporter and country music star Lee Greenwood.

The Bible bearing the president’s name is being sold for $99.99—as are the “First Lady Edition” and the “Vice Presidential Edition.”

According to his latest financial disclosures, the president has earned a total of $1,514,521 from placing his name on the religious text in a package that also includes copies of the US Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the handwritten chorus of Greenwood’s 1984 song “Good Bless the USA.”

About $1.3 million was earned while the president was campaigning ahead of the 2024 election, while about $208,000 flowed to the president in 2025.

Anna Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), said that “Trump wraps himself in Christianity, wraps the Constitution inside a Bible, and is persuading supporters to finance his political brand while enriching himself to the tune of more than $1.5 million.”

“As all things are with Trump, this has always been about money,” said Gaylor. “It is a stunning example of political pandering and exploiting religious faith for personal profit.”

Hemant Mehta of The Friendly Atheist noted that the disclosure also showed about $1.4 billion that the president made last year from “crypto-related schemes” and $80 million from lawsuits against media companies including CBS and ABC.

Trump has suggested the Bible venture is closest to his heart, saying in a video promoting the basic version of the “God Bless the USA Bible”—which retails at $59.99—that the religious text is his “favorite book.”

“Christians are under siege,” he added in the video. “We must protect content that is pro-God. We love God, and we have to protect anything that is pro-God… Our Founding Fathers did a tremendous thing when they built America on Judeo-Christian values.”

The notion that the country was founded as a Christian nation has long been a fixation of the far right and has been deeply embedded in the president’s celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—but historians say there is no evidence for the claim.

“The only rules they wrote about religion were ones that keep religion at arm’s length,” Princeton University professor Kevin Kruse told The Washington Post as the White House planned an all-day prayer event on National Mall in May. “There’s a difference between saying America is a nation with many Christians in it and that America is a nation dedicated to Christianity and defined by it.”

Both Mehta and FFRF noted that Trump has “struggled to discuss even the most basic aspects of the Bible, declining on multiple occasions to identify a favorite verse or even express a preference between the Old and New Testaments.”

“Trump’s Bible enterprise demonstrates how easily religious symbolism can be weaponized to enrich politicians while undermining the constitutional principle of state/church separation that protects believers and nonbelievers alike,” said FFRF.

Gaylor added that “religion should never be a marketing strategy.”

“Nor should the office of the presidency become a platform for selling religious merchandise,” she said. “Americans deserve leaders who respect both religion and government enough to keep them separate—not presidents who see faith as another licensing opportunity.”