Does God start sweating when packs of politicians proceed to piously pray in public? If so, heaven needed extra Kleenex Thursday.

That’s the day President Biden spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast.

It’s one of Washington’s most hypocritical rituals, where politicians gather to silently pray that the Lord will destroy all their enemies — or at least get them indicted on multiple charges.

Breakfast organizers were hoping to avoid any scandals this year. The prayer breakfast became notorious as “an international influence-peddling bazaar, where foreign dignitaries, religious leaders, diplomats and lobbyists jockey for access to the highest reaches of American power,” The New York Times reported.

Convicted Russian spy Maria Butina used the breakfast “to establish a back channel of communication” with America’s top political leaders, according to a 2018 federal indictment.

To safeguard the event’s purity, the breakfast was not held at a spacious Washington hotel this year. Instead, it took place at the US Capitol and had far fewer attendees. Organizers stressed the event strictly adhered to “congressional ethical standards” — a phrase that boosts confidence only inside the Beltway.

Perhaps it was a divine spirit that lifted Biden’s rhetoric higher than usual Thursday: “We’re the beacon to the world. The entire world looks to us. That’s not hyperbole. This is an idea. This idea was made real before the soul became flesh, before this dream became a fact. It was prayed for, it was hoped for, it was believed in. That’s the story of America.”

Lord have mercy on anyone trying to follow Biden’s revelatory narrative.

The president maintained his perfect record by invoking the “better angels of our nature” before assuring listeners that “the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness — I believe that’s our collective calling.”

And if you think Biden actually believes that, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

At last year’s prayer breakfast, Biden proclaimed, “We can redeem the soul of America,” and called for Americans to “go forward together.”

Such prattle was null and void last month when he denounced his likely election opponent Donald Trump for allegedly “echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany.” The Biden campaign is using a graphic explicitly likening Trump’s rhetoric to Hitler’s. Biden previously denounced Republicans for “semi-fascism.” The backdrop for his raging September 2022 speech in Philadelphia looked like it was borrowed from 1930s Nuremberg.

Biden boasts that America “gives hate no safe harbor,” but hating Republicans is apparently merely doing God’s work.

Of course, it shouldn’t be a crime for politicians to meet in public and claim to be praying. The real problem is the “rent a halo” effect of such confabs. Attending a prayer breakfast makes politicians as religious as waving a flag makes them patriotic. Unfortunately, there are plenty of gullible folks out there, and not all of them are in the press corps.

Tartuffe is the patron saint of the prayer breakfast.  It would be more accurate to label the event “Parade of Pharisees.” But that would be tricky considering the Biden Justice Department’s proclivity for prosecuting people for “parading without a permit” (its favorite charge for Jan. 6 defendants).

How many of the politicians pirouetting at Thursday’s breakfast supported forcibly shutting down churches and synagogues during the COVID pandemic?

Biden concluded his spiel: “Let’s remember who the hell we are: We’re the United States of America. It’s all about dignity and respect.” At least Biden didn’t fling the F-word at the audience. But concluding a prayer-breakfast pitch with hell is more appropriate than Team Biden might like to admit.

News coverage of the breakfast stressed that House Speaker Mike Johnson sat next to Biden and the two of them shook hands. Johnson said that “we wept in the front row” during the screechy performance by an Italian singer that started the breakfast. Pundits are hopeful this signals a new era of politicians working together.  Actually, that is how America got a $34 trillion debt. Maybe Thursday’s breakfast should have offered special prayers for the federal government’s credit rating?

For decades, DC bipartisan deals have been smarmy Solomonic solutions sawing the Bill of Rights in half to help politicians snare campaign contributions.  But citizens don’t send members of Congress to Washington to destroy their rights, liberties or currency on the installment plan.

Americans are at the start of an election year that will likely be dominated by two presidential candidates most Americans heartily distrust. It would take divine intervention for either Joe Biden or Donald Trump to be consistently honest with the American people. That type of miracle is so unlikely that even Las Vegas is not taking bets.

James Bovard is the author of the new book “Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty.”