January 2024: Where Trumpism is going

Trump is now promoting "the false charge that the Biden administration is persecuting Christians," Sarah Posner says (MSNBC, January 7) — which, like the big lie about the election, is "designed to immerse his loyalists in a grievance-laden alternative reality in which Trump alone can rescue them from an evil government threatening their freedom." He wants "to deflect attention from his own criminal liabilities" and suggesting that the Biden administration is "similarly persecuting religious Americans." In his 2024 campaign, he has just promised (in his words) "a new federal task force on fighting anti-Christian bias to be led by a fully reformed Department of Justice that’s fair and equitable." The words "fair and equitable" of course mean nothing here. He's going to destroy the Department of Justice, rebuild it as a shell of its former self, and make a task force to push Christian theocracy.

So now there's a video Trump likes which has this narration:

"And on June 14th, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, 'I need a caretaker.' So God gave us Trump. God said, 'I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, fix this country, work all day, fight the Marxist, eat supper then go to the Oval Office and stay past midnight and a meeting of the heads of state.' So God made Trump."

The NYT says on January 5 (subscriber gift link) that, through the House Education and Workforce Committee, chaired by Representative Virginia Foxx:

"House Republicans are now embarking on an aggressive and expansive investigation into institutions of higher education in America, targeting the academic elites they have long viewed as avatars of cultural decay — all in the name of combating antisemitism."

Obviously, it never has been, and is not now, about combating antisemitism. The very same Republicans lightly pretending to care about combating antisemitism are the ones who overtly contribute to it.

As the NYT article notes: the Republicans "helped create" this "political moment" and are taking advantage of it. Yes, but a little more pointedly: Republicans often say the opposite of what they mean. They tell Group A that they care about them and are only opposing Group B, they tell Group B that they care about them and are only opposing Group A, meanwhile the contradiction is reported but Republicans don't stop what they're doing because they don't go by facts nor are they ashamed by their own hypocrisy and therefore sunlight does not disinfect them, and they empower themselves to continue.

If we allow the Republicans to continue with their racism, antisemitism, homophobia and transphobia, we will get more of that. If we let them remove the guardrails of democracy, we will see more wrecks on that highway. We will see ever-worse power grabs.

Trump has long argued that he can do whatever he likes. See: Seth Meyers's sketch, January 2024, video (2:34–3:45).

The main problem with the proposal to shoot shoplifters isn't the hypocrisy of it, but as a bonus, it is indeed hypocritical. (Bluesky)

As Judith Butler would go on to write in the Guardian on February 6, 2025:

"The sadistic glee at issue here is not just his [Trump's]; it depends on being communicated and widely enjoyed in order to exist – it is a communal and contagious celebration of cruelty. Indeed, the media attention it garners feeds the sadistic spree. It has to be known and seen and heard, this parade of reactionary outrage and defiance. And that is why it is no longer a simple matter of exposing hypocrisy that will serve us now. There is no moral veneer that must be stripped away. No, the public demand for the appearance of morality on the part of the leader is inverted: his followers thrill to the display of his contempt for morality, and share it."

On January 9, Trump "claimed there’d be “bedlam' in America if he was denied a return to the White House as a result of the multiple ongoing criminal prosecutions against him," HuffPost reported. This could be intended by Trump, or heard by others, as a call for violence. But also:

"Trump has 'used that word [bedlam] throughout his whole career any time the system comes at him in a way he doesn’t like,' said O’Brien, who wrote the 2005 biography 'TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald,' which called into question the billionaire status of the then-businessman.

'When [then-New York City Mayor] Ed Koch refused to zone a piece of property Trump wanted on the West Side, he said, ‘There’s bedlam in New York, I couldn’t get zoned,’' O’Brien recalled."

'He has no sense of proportion,' O’Brien added. 'And he’s got no sense of civility or the rule of law. So he’ll simply say, ‘It’s chaos,’ because I’m not getting what I want.'"

We're all becoming desensitized. This is how it happens. The former US president is ***threatening another coup if he loses and it's not even news***.

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— Brendan Nyhan (@brendannyhan.bsky.social) May 2, 2024 at 8:12 PM

Alyssa Farah Griffin said that Trump said Pence "deserved it when there were ‘Hang Mike Pence’ signs [during the attack on the Capitol]. He alluded to Gen. Milley should be executed. He, in a meeting I was in in the Oval Office with a dozen other staffers, said that an aide should be executed for leaking something negative about him."
— Ex-Trump Aide Reveals 'Scary' Moments He Wanted People Killed: Former White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin described a frightening behind-the-scenes incident. Ed Mazza, HuffPost, Jan 11, 2024

Dictator for one day? No, it wouldn't just be one day. His agenda is large. For example, Russian assault on Europe would last more than one day.

Trump at a Feb 10 rally (HuffPost):

“NATO was busted until I came along,” he began. “I said, ‘Everybody’s going to pay.’ They said, ‘Well, if we don’t pay are you still going to protect us?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ They couldn’t believe the answer.”

He rehashed the story a few moments later.

“One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’ He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want,” Trump said.

“You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills,” he added.

* * *

It is not clear whether the scenario Trump described actually happened. Trump frequently takes credit for supposedly pressuring other NATO members into contributing more funding during the course of his first term.

The narrative doesn't make sense, as each member nation is supposed to spend 2 percent of its own gross domestic product on its own military and is obligated to treat any attack on on member nation as an attack on all. The NATO goal is for each member nation to have a significant military, not for each member nation to "pay" its "bills."

Nick Paton Walsh:

"NATO is not an alliance based on dues: it is the largest military bloc in history, formed to face down the Soviet threat, based on the collective defense that an attack on one is an attack on all – a principle enshrined in Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty.

It’s [a] purpose which suits the US profoundly: The White House invoked Article 5 after 9/11. And since NATO’s creation, US might has been often packaged globally as the expression of a dozens-strong consensus. NATO helps bolster the US’s ebbing position as the sole hyperpower. Strip away this vast alliance, and its diplomatic and economic might, and the US looks quite lonely on the world stage.

In short, the US will almost certainly always spend much more than anyone else on its military, regardless of its allies. NATO gives it a global bedrock of legitimacy, support for the dollar, and the post-Soviet hegemony it thrives upon."

Paton Walsh continues: Trump is "persistently trying to derail vital aid to Ukraine. If the desired $60 billion does not arrive, or is delayed much longer, it will have an irrevocably detrimental impact on Ukraine’s practical defenses at the frontlines, political cohesion in Kyiv, and nationwide morale."

"...the lack of a guarantee of American support massively undermines NATO’s effectiveness. It calls into question the alliance’s cohesion and therefore its existence.

Trump knows that. He is not simply saying the US won’t help NATO allies who haven’t paid. He is saying he would encourage Russia to attack, invade, inflict the horrors of Mariupol upon US allies."

— Nick Paton Walsh, "Trump’s incendiary NATO remarks send very real shudders through Europe," CNN, Feb 12, 2024

Donald Trump Says Local Police Will Play Key Role In His Mass Deportation Plan: The front-runner in the Republican presidential primary contest said he would give officers immunity to carry out his plan. Marita Vlachou, HuffPost, Mar 1, 2024

Christian dictator?

Trump isn't personally religious, but the Christian right-wing continues to throw all its support behind him.

Reported by POLITICO ("Trump allies prepare to infuse ‘Christian nationalism’ in second administration," Alexander Ward and Heidi Przybyla, February 20, 2024):

"An influential think tank close to Donald Trump is developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas in his administration should the former president return to power, according to documents obtained by POLITICO.

Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget during his first term and has remained close to him. Vought, who is frequently cited as a potential chief of staff in a second Trump White House, is president of The Center for Renewing America think tank, a leading group in a conservative consortium preparing for a second Trump term."

Although "the documents obtained by POLITICO do not outline specific Christian nationalist policies," they did obtain a list of priorities that include "Christian nationalism," as well as (in POLITICO's words) "invoking the Insurrection Act on Day One to quash protests, and refusing to spend authorized congressional funds on unwanted projects, a practice banned by lawmakers in the Nixon era."

Vought is an advisor to Project 2025. He has suggested that eligibility to immigrate to the US should depend on whether someone has “accept[ed] Israel’s God, laws and understanding of history.” He "has a close affiliation with Christian nationalist William Wolfe, a former Trump administration official who has advocated for overturning same-sex marriage, ending abortion and reducing access to contraceptives."

"In his rambling 75-minute speech, Trump delivered his most thorough articulation of his vision of white Christian nationalism to date..."
— "In Speech to White Evangelical Broadcasters, Trump Lays Out His White Christian Nationalist Vision," Robert P. Jones, March 18, 2024

On March 26, Trump is selling a Bible printed together with the U.S. Constitution. Bluesky

Pro-insurrection, anti-abortion

For the Colorado ballot eligibility question that went to SCOTUS, Jonathan Mitchell was Trump's lawyer at the Feb 8, 2024 SCOTUS hearing. Mitchell was behind the Texas law that offers a $10,000 bounty for reporting anyone who helps someone get an abortion. NY Times

On April 8, Trump "declined to support any new national law setting limits on abortions." In other words, leave it to each state to decide. The next day, showing just what can happen when you leave it to each state to decide, "the Arizona Supreme Court ... resurrected an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions, except to save the life of the mother. The law also imposes penalties on abortion providers." ( — Dan Balz)

Or, as the HuffPost put it:

"'Many states will be different, many will have a different number of weeks or some will have more conservative than others and that’s what they will be,' Trump said in a Monday statement. 'At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.' In our current dystopian post-Roe landscape, Trump hopes 'leave it to the states' will get him the most votes ― a supposed middle ground or compromise on abortion."

However, HuffPost continues, neither the decision by the Arizona court (near-total ban) nor the one by the Florida court (six-week ban) is "the will of the people. It’s the will of a handful of conservative judges cherry picked by anti-choice Republicans. (The same goes for the IVF decision in Alabama last month.)"

Then, on April 10, Trump said "he won’t sign a national abortion ban if elected in November — but cleared up nothing about whether he or his appointees would implement a backdoor ban." (HuffPost)

Christian Nationalists are predicting that Trump will be (or perhaps that they can persuade him to be) increasingly on their side:

"A former White House official and prominent fundamentalist Christian said Donald Trump is 'cloaking' his actual, 'radical' beliefs on the campaign trail, and that a second Trump administration would see him 'govern in a more conservative and more aggressive fashion.'

William Wolfe ― a self-described 'Christian nationalist' who served under Trump as a deputy assistant secretary of defense at the Pentagon and as director of legislative affairs at the State Department ― made the remarks Thursday [April 11, 2024] during a conversation on X Spaces, a live audio chat room on the platform formerly known as Twitter. Wolfe was among half a dozen panelists convened by editors at The Sentinel, a far-right digital media outlet, to discuss Trump’s stance on abortion." (HuffPost)

Wolfe made the comments in the context of anti-abortion legislation. The HuffPost article continued:

'I actually think there’s wisdom in cloaking some of your power levels and maybe some of the things that you’re trying to do, and then once you secure power, and you have it, you govern in a more extreme position,' Wolfe said. 'I think Trump is one of the first Republican candidates I’ve ever seen in my lifetime who has done that.'

'Power levels,' a popular term in online far-right and white supremacist circles, refers to the degree of a person’s extremism or radicalization. It’s most often used when discussing the need to 'hide your power levels' while infiltrating mainstream conservative and Republican organizations."

Wolfe is not just 'some guy' with opinions.

"Wolfe has intimate knowledge of at least one person heavily involved in shaping Trump’s potential second-term policy agenda. As reported by Politico, Wolfe has close ties to Russ Vought, president of the Center for Renewing America, a MAGA-aligned think tank that’s part of the consortium behind Project 2025, a blueprint for a radically conservative second Trump administration.

Wolfe was a visiting fellow at CRA, and also worked alongside Vought at Heritage Action, another conservative policy advocacy group. 'I’m proud to work with @William_E_Wolfe on scoping out a sound Christian Nationalism,' Vought tweeted in January 2023."

GOP Rep. Scott Perry Flip-Flops On Whether He Backs A National Abortion Ban: The Pennsylvania conservative says he opposes such a ban — but he’s been sponsoring legislation to impose one for the last seven years. Jennifer Bendery, HuffPost, Apr 27, 2024

Incredible: Russ Vought’s daughter has cystic fibrosis and benefits from a “miracle drug” made possible by the National Institutes of Health—an agency Vought now aims to gut as part of the Project 2025 attack www.motherjones.com/politics/202... Scoop from @motherjones.com’s @metrauxjulia.bsky.social

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— Mark Follman (@markfollman.bsky.social) February 11, 2025 at 8:42 PM

I don’t think people really understand how bad the OMB proposed rule is going to be for state and local govt. We’re talking about putting a full third of state budgets under the explicit control of Russ Vought. (1/2) www.bondbuyer.com/news/cities-...

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— Phil Rocco (@philiprocco.bsky.social) July 10, 2026 at 10:52 AM

🎁🔗 Democrats plan to check OMB Director and key author of Project 2025 Russ Vought who thinks he can reprogram taxpayer dollars allocated by Congress to whatever Trump wants or refuse to spend the money at all which is illegal. www.nytimes.com/2026/11/13/b...

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— wendyspirit.bsky.social (@wendyspirit.bsky.social) November 13, 2026 at 7:26 AM

Also:

"In one of his most bizarre interviews in recent memory, Donald Trump insisted abortion is 'not that big of an issue,' claimed Republicans are the 'party of fertilization' and said every legal scholar in the world supported overturning Roe v. Wade."
— Trump Says Abortion 'Not That Big Of An Issue,' GOP Is 'Party Of Fertilization' In a bizarre interview, the Republican presidential hopeful also said that “every" legal scholar "all over the world” supported overturning Roe v. Wade. Jennifer Bendery, HuffPost, May 6, 2024

Explicit corruption

Trump proposed an explicit quid pro quo to oil and gas executives. wapo.st/3UBf4Fy

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— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw.bsky.social) May 9, 2024 at 10:01 AM

What Biden can do

Eugene Robinson suggests in the Washington Post (January 8, 2024) (emphases mine):

"The [Biden] campaign can make better use of the Democratic Party’s most effective messengers. Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison skillfully led the party through the midterm election, reducing a predicted red wave into a pinkish ripple. Stacey Abrams’s brains and energy in registering new voters helped make Democrats competitive in Georgia — one result being the election of Sen. Raphael G. Warnock, whom the party should be touting as a rising star. Biden’s team should turn to the likes of former Obama administration official Julián Castro to try to keep Latino voters in the Democratic fold, too."

The 2024 vote for president was driven by racism, not formal education

Almost everyone with a high level of racial resentment tended to vote for Trump in the 2024 election, regardless of educational attainment. Conversely, those with a low racial resentment score tended to support Harris, whether they had a college degree or not.

— Thomas Zimmer (@thomaszimmer.bsky.social) November 17, 2025 at 9:59 AM

Facebook is now the military?

Very cool that several people who used to yell at me in DMs for being too mean to Facebook are now running some sort of extralegal posse informally deputized by the actual United States Army.

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— Tim Onion (@bencollins.bsky.social) June 16, 2025 at 6:32 PM

Keep reading

American history to explain ‘How did we get here?’ It's my article on Medium. Paying members can read it.

You look Latino. You speak Spanish. You work hard. That’s now probable cause. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

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— United Farm Workers (@ufw.bsky.social) September 10, 2025 at 5:31 PM

Yes, Of Course, Trump Will Invoke the Insurrection Act open.substack.com/pub/charlies...

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— Charlie Sykes (@sykescharlie.bsky.social) October 7, 2025 at 1:24 PM

Vance Says Trump Still Weighing ‘Options’ For Deploying Troops — Including Insurrection Act: Vice President J.D. Vance’s comments come as the president himself previously floated this possibility. Li Zhou, HuffPost, Oct 12, 2025

This is the Project 2025 racism:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Isaac Hayes III (@isaachayes3)

Wow -- as first spotted by @BadFoxGraphics on X, Fox & Friends this morning used *old footage of a previous dignified transfer* to mislead their audience about the fact that Trump wore a baseball cap during the one yesterday

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 8, 2026 at 8:24 AM

The Rise of Christian Nationalism

Trump is putting no effort into becoming less unpopular but a TON into putting elements of a coup in place. Some of them may remain invisible, but the ones we can see point to his general approach: violent intimidation + corrupt judges + executive branch and congressional coconspirators + bribes.

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— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler.bsky.social) May 20, 2026 at 9:54 AM

Really enjoyed going on the I've Had It Podcast to talk about the psychosexual panic known as the Make America Great Again movement, and talk about why you've just gotta make fun of these people. www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1qr...

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— Tim Onion (@bencollins.bsky.social) May 26, 2026 at 2:19 PM

Nick Adams’ Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness has brought in millions in donations and helped him land a State Department appointment, but records show there is almost no indication FLAG was spending that money on its stated mission.

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— TPM (@talkingpointsmemo.com) July 29, 2026 at 7:56 AM

Praying with the U.S. president

In 1950, the evangelical preacher Billy Graham, then 31 years old, landed a brief private meeting with President Harry S. Truman at the White House. Graham offered to pray, and Truman consented.

Outside, on the White House lawn, reporters were waiting for Graham. Graham eagerly revealed details of the conversation. Tell us more about the prayer, the reporters asked. And Graham, not realizing the reporters were looking to sensationalize the story, knelt in prayer for the cameras.

Image caption: From left to right, Jerry Beavan, Billy Graham, Clifford Barrows and Grady Wilson. Photo by the Associated Press.

Truman was furious. He thought the preacher's prayer stunt looked ridiculous and made him look ridiculous by association.

---

What changed in the assumptions of proper presidential behavior?

Flash forward nearly 70 years. Today, the President allows people to pray for him — not just one preacher in private, but multiple preachers, touching him, with official cameras in the room.

Image caption: Christians in the Roosevelt Room in the White House, Oct. 29, 2019. Official White House photo by Joyce Boghosian.

Does it not make him look ridiculous? It does indeed. To me, it appears that the president is the center of a cult and that he wants to be seen as such. Do these white evangelicals care that they are making themselves and the president look ridiculous to everyone who doesn't share their religion? Nope.

And do they care that the president secretly mocks them? Also nope. (Michael Cohen's 2020 book Disloyal reports that Trump said "Can you believe that bullshit?" after pastors "laid hands on him" to bless him in 2011.

Today, this is deliberately promoted. A lot has changed.

.@realDonaldTrump receives a blessing he attends a Church Service at the International Church of Las Vegas in Las Vegas, NV. pic.twitter.com/3pIiGLY03P

— Doug Mills (@dougmillsnyt) October 18, 2020

Maybe Graham himself didn't want it this way. Three decades after his interaction with Truman...

"On February 1, 1981, evangelical leader Bill Graham encouraged social conservatives to avoid jumping into a hard association with the Republican Party. 'It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right,' he told Parade magazine. 'The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.' Graham was worried that evangelicals would become corrupted by worldly political power, instead of recognizing that church teachings come first, and politics second.

But it was already too late."

— Matt Stoller, "On Lina Khan Derangement Syndrome," Substack, Feb 18, 2023

A statue of Billy Graham

As of early 2019, sculptors were sought "to design and cast a life like statue of the Rev. Dr. William Franklin 'Billy' Graham, Jr. The statue will become part of the National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol in Washington D.C."

Rev. Rob Schenck, a white evangelical who acknowledges that he himself once used "street theater" of religious performances (including publicly displaying a Bible, for example), has moved away from those tactics. He reacted to Trump's photo-op in front of St. John's church during the George Floyd protests as a "sacrilege." Schenck says he used to hear his fellow evangelical clergy speak about the transactional nature of their relationship with Trump, but that argument has become uncommon. "That's even more distressing to me," he said, "because what it seems to suggest is that a kind of final conversion has taken place, at least in their thinking, if not in their hearts." In other words, they believe what Trump is saying and doing. They no longer recognize their choice as an unpalatable transaction; it has become less objectionable to them. Schenck worried about their possibility of "reclaiming their moral integrity, regaining a sense of ethics and what is right and wrong — and if they have lost that ability to discern that, then they are indeed in very grave danger, personally. Certainly as a community: I mean, we know what the history of demoralized churches are. They quickly become relics of history, and not good ones. And then, of course, — I'm still a believer in salvation. I believe we have to have a certain standing before God. And if we lose that, we've lost everything."

The religious cult iconography may just be another version of overall fascist iconography, which I submit as an addition to Sarah Churchwell's observations in the New Statesman on September 2, 2020:

"The first fascists emphasised individual heroism and physical perfection: Trump emphasises it, too, but only in regards to himself. He is his own fascist sublime.

Anyone doubting this needs only to consider the iconography he and his family routinely share, such as the photo of Trump’s face superimposed on to the sculpted body of Rocky Balboa, which Trump himself trumpeted on social media. As historians have pointed out, this is fascist imagery, in its glorification of the physical perfection of a mythologised leader. Meanwhile, on 4 July, Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, shared a meme of his father’s head Photoshopped on to George Washington’s body, standing in front of the American flag and holding a Minigun and an eagle. Both memes rework images from the entertainment industry, whether it’s Rocky or an image made by the Call of Duty video-game franchise, into neo-fascist propaganda."

Even and perhaps especially following his COVID-19 diagnosis, Peniel E. Joseph argues, he now embodies "a living church whose political insinuations of racial superiority attract unstinting loyalty from his most ardent supporters, no matter how nonsensical and dangerous he becomes; they seem comforted, not horrified, that he is capable of articulating and revising political, medical and personal doctrine on the fly." He "has managed to become a one-person church worshiped by an overwhelmingly, although not exclusively, White congregation that seems to believe he can do no wrong." His "uncanny ability to detect political vulnerabilities allowed him to not just remake the GOP in his own image, but to erect a kind of parallel religious faith — the Church of Trump — where in a crowd of White faces, wearing masks that might save the lives of fellow human beings during a pandemic is never required." If a church is "a gathering place or grouping point for like-minded individuals to learn, express and amplify a set of beliefs that they collectively define and refine over time," then that is what Trumpism is. "While unable to articulate any meaningful religious experience, biblical knowledge or deep belief system, the President has become, for many, the embodiment of a peculiar definition of American exceptionalism."

On June 13, 2023, immediately after his arraignment in the documents case, Trump was blessed by two clergy members. According to this article in Salon, one was "right-wing evangelical Christian pastor named Mario Bramnick," and the other was "Isaac Aretuo (also known as Alex Isaac Aretuo and Alejandro Isaac Aretuo). He is affiliated with Congregation Najamu Ami in Miami," a Messianic Jewish (i.e., Christian) congregation.

In 2023, General Mark Milley said he erred in allowing himself to be in the frame of a photo when President Trump was holding up the Bible in Lafayette Square during the George Floyd protests in 2020. Later in 2023, he gave a speech saying that the military won't pledge loyalty to "a king, or a queen, or a tyrant or a dictator," nor a "wannabe dictator." Instead: "We take an oath to the Constitution and we take an oath to the idea that is America – and we’re willing to die to protect it."

When Bob Woodward interviewed Milley for his 2024 book War, Milley called Trump "a total fascist" and "fascist to the core."

Bills to bring chaplains into public schools

"The bills have been introduced this legislative season in 14 states, inspired by Texas, which passed a law last year allowing school districts to hire chaplains or use them as volunteers for whatever role the local school board sees fit, including replacing trained counselors. Chaplain bills were approved by one legislative chamber in three states — Utah, Indiana and Louisiana — but died in Utah and Indiana. Bills are pending in nine states. One passed both houses of Florida’s legislature and is awaiting the governor’s signature."

— Putting chaplains in public school is the latest battle in culture wars, Michelle Boorstein, Washington Post, March 22, 2024

Trump's spiritual adviser:

"Robert Morris, founding pastor of Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, which attracts an estimated 100,000 worshipers weekly, has confessed to “inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady” more than 35 years ago while he was a young pastor after a woman accused him of sexually abusing her over multiple years beginning when she was 12."

— Pastor Robert Morris confesses to ‘moral failure’ after woman claims he began molesting her at age 12, Leonardo Blair, Christian Post, June 15, 2024

Robert Morris, the former megachurch pastor and Trump spiritual advisor who just finished a sentence for sexual abuse charges, has an...interesting new photo on the sex offender website

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— Robert Downen (@robertdownen.bsky.social) September 15, 2026 at 3:30 PM

More prayer

Christians flock to Washington to pray for America to turn to God — by electing Trump: Conservative organizers of the “Million Women” worship rally billed the event — and the November election — as “a last stand moment” to save the nation from satanic forces. Mike Hixenbaugh, NBC, Oct. 12, 2024

Read: How’s Trump’s health? He’d rather talk about the state of his soul: Like an evangelical preacher, the president knows how to speak to his MAGA flock. Chauncey DeVega, Salon, September 4, 2025

Ways one oughtn't respond to anti-Semitic domestic terrorism

On Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018, eleven Jews were murdered while worshipping in a synagogue in Pennsylvania. The President tweeted this:

...This evil Anti-Semitic attack is an assault on humanity. It will take all of us working together to extract the poison of Anti-Semitism from our world. We must unite to conquer hate.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2018

Later that evening, the President appeared at a self-promotional rally and joked about nearly having canceled it — not because he believed the morning's tragedy warranted more attention or solemnity from him, but because standing in the rain to give a news conference about the attack had caused him to have a "bad hair day."

To cap off the evening, he tweeted:

Watching the Dodgers/Red Sox final innings. It is amazing how a manager takes out a pitcher who is loose & dominating through almost 7 innings, Rich Hill of Dodgers, and brings in nervous reliever(s) who get shellacked. 4 run lead gone. Managers do it all the time, big mistake!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 28, 2018

By Monday, Oct. 29, the President returned to his usual authoritarian line that the media is the "enemy of the people." His press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, came up with a "both sides" explanation: "I think the president has had a number of moments of bringing the country together. Once again, I'll remind you that the very first thing the president did was condemn the attacker. And the very first thing the media did was blame the president." Kellyanne Conway, an advisor to the president, suggested that late-night television comedians in particular bore responsibility for triggering anti-Semitic violence. She Christian-splained that the Jews "were there [in the synagogue] because they're people of faith," that comedians have unfortunately made a culture in which it's usual "to make fun of anybody of faith, to constantly be making fun of people that express religion," and that what is needed is more religion in "the public square." (Diaspora Jews, on the whole, have always been really quite skeptical about religion in the public square.)

The President, for his part, took a different tack in claiming that he had not meant to generalize about "the media," but had only meant to refer to the media that is "fake."

The Fake News is doing everything in their power to blame Republicans, Conservatives and me for the division and hatred that has been going on for so long in our Country. Actually, it is their Fake & Dishonest reporting which is causing problems far greater than they understand!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2018

There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news. The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly. That will do much to put out the flame...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2018

....of Anger and Outrage and we will then be able to bring all sides together in Peace and Harmony. Fake News Must End!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2018

CNN and others in the Fake News Business keep purposely and inaccurately reporting that I said the “Media is the Enemy of the People.” Wrong! I said that the “Fake News (Media) is the Enemy of the People,” a very big difference. When you give out false information - not good!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2018

Check out tweets from last two days. I refer to Fake News Media when mentioning Enemy of the People - but dishonest reporters use only the word “Media.” The people of our Great Country are angry and disillusioned at receiving so much Fake News. They get it, and fully understand!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2018

Meanwhile, the Vice President invited clergy of the Messianic Jewish religion — a religious movement that most Jews recognize as Christian and that they resent for being culturally appropriative and theologically deceptive in their deliberate mimickry of Judaism — to publicly speak about the matter. The Messianic Jew prayed for Republican victory.

In response to antisemitic white nationalist attack, Vice President Mike Pence opens campaign event with a Christian Rabbi. pic.twitter.com/5iMLx1V3NH

— Rafael Shimunov 🔥 (@rafaelshimunov) October 30, 2018

He begins by promoting that people in power are ordained by Jesus to wield power.

— Rafael Shimunov 🔥 (@rafaelshimunov) October 30, 2018

Then, rather than praying for the victims and survivors of the Pittsburgh synagogue attack, Mike Pence's Christian Rabbi prays --by name-- for each Republican candidate on a list given to him. pic.twitter.com/nZ5Vj6MQs8

— Rafael Shimunov 🔥 (@rafaelshimunov) October 30, 2018

Full clip https://t.co/YDnsOeqm8T

— Rafael Shimunov 🔥 (@rafaelshimunov) October 30, 2018

Evangelicals disappointed in Trump's character

President Trump is perhaps the least demonstrably Christian U.S. president ever. When he and First Lady Melania Trump attended the funeral service for George H. W. Bush on Dec. 5, 2018, they did not recite the Apostle's Creed that was printed in the program. Seated next to them, Barack and Michelle Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton recited the prayer.

But how do contemporary Christians perceive him?

It can be tricky to pin down what evangelicals think of Trump, in part because it's an impermanent demographic based on self-identification.

It is well known that 81% of self-identified white evangelicals told exit pollsters they voted for Trump in 2016. However, as Napp Nazworth points out, this self-identified group may not correlate to the people who actually attend church or the people who don't vote. There may be many churchgoing Americans who aren't active voters but nevertheless don't like Trump.

The most often cited number when it comes to evangelical support for Trump is "81%," which is likely what Falwell had in mind. But that number comes with many caveats: 1) it only includes white evangelicals, 2) it only includes self-identified evangelicals, which means non-churchgoers and people who don't hold evangelical beliefs could be included, 3) non-voters were not polled and so their numbers are not included in the denominator, and 4) it was based upon exit polls, which are among the least reliable polls.

It's important to note the decline in Christian influence in the United States. Many commentators have suggested that Christians are making a kind of "deal" with the man who happens to have gained power, someone who — just perhaps — they otherwise would not have admired.

Nina Burleigh wrote for Newsweek on April 16, 2018 that white evangelicals have experienced a sharp demographic decline over the last decade. Burleigh attributes this to their children "leaving the faith in droves over its anti-LGBT and anti-science positions"; today, 92 percent of white evangelicals are over age 30. "During the 2016 primary season, white evangelicals were largely divided in their opinion of Trump...But once Republicans nominated him, his favorability among white evangelicals jumped to 61 percent in September 2016...Now, according to a poll conducted in late March [2018], after the Stormy Daniels story was widely discussed, support has risen to a record 75 percent." This suggests that this demographic is substantially unconcerned "by his lawyer’s hush money to Stormy Daniels," "revelations that the married President had a year-long affair with an adult film actress after First Lady Melania gave birth to their son Barron," and "shady business deals". After all, as Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels wrote in Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, "A great many of his supporters were thrilled to hear white Christian America forcefully defended against its perceived enemies. Those were their identities. He was their hero. Whether he got the facts right did not matter."

MUST WATCH: In this video, from April 5, 2018, Trump categorically denies knowing anything about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels

Trump claimed he doesn't know why Cohen made the payment or where he got the money

Everything he says here is a liehttps://t.co/HeGy7d31XG

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) March 18, 2023

THERE ARE AUDIO TAPES "In a conversation captured in an audio recording in approximately September
2016 concerning Woman 1’s account, the Defendant [Trump] and Lawyer A [Cohen] discussed how to obtain the
rights to Woman 1’s account from AMI and how to reimburse AMI."

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) April 4, 2023

An update on the hush money payments, regarding a lawyer handling the appeal of that case:

Jared Yates Sexton: "We're very lucky, for the record, that this overt corruption is happening. No one thought to put in the law that you can't name your personal lawyer [James M. McDonald] who's in a suit against the Southern District of New York to make them the head of the Southern District of New York. You know why? 'Cause most people's brains don't work that way. You know? You're just like, Well, what are you talking about, I never thought that could happen."
Nick Hauselman: "Well, hang on — The lawyer himself can't accept that position. That's really part of it, right? That's what you would go to law school for, to learn."
Jared: "Well, you'd think — It depends on the law school."
Nick: "I guess so."
Jared: "It depends on where you're going and what they're teaching you, and also whether you carry those ethics into your regular life."
(We're Talking About Revolutionary Shit, Here, Muckrake Podcast, June 19, 2026, 30:23–31:05)

Angie Maxwell wrote in the Washington Post in July 2019 that the Republican Party's late 20th-century "Southern strategy" has "finally come to fruition, and it is still working today. The GOP’s partisan conversion of Southern white evangelicals is so complete that no longer must a Republican candidate hold authentic religious beliefs to secure their support. Nowhere is this clearer than in Southern white evangelical support for Donald Trump. Indeed, only 38 percent of white evangelicals living in the South identified Trump as a Christian, but 84 percent of them still voted for him."

Though "Democrats like to pretend [the realignment that sorted the two parties along lines of civil rights] was over and done with in the 1960s," the sorting continued until 2007 when Barack Obama ran. (Vikram Bath, The Democratic Party Was Not Always This Way, 2018, and see also The Republican Party Was Not Always This Way)

Inspired by an exchange here yesterday, I wrote up a short piece at CAMPAIGN TRAILS about an infamous Lee Atwater quotation that just about everyone gets wrong.

[image or embed]

— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) December 7, 2025 at 5:07 PM

White evangelicals "went from being the least likely to the most likely to agree that a candidate’s personal immorality had nothing to do with public service," an article in the New York Times said in June 2018, referencing a September 2017 article in the paper.

As an example of how Trump merges his lifelong interpersonal habits with his policy: On December 13, 2019, reporter Bob Woodward interviewed Trump, who said he instantly had a good feeling about North Korea's dictator Kim Jong Un. Trump said, as Woodward quoted him in his book Rage: "You meet a woman. In one second, you know whether or not it's all going to happen. It doesn't take you 10 minutes, and it doesn't take you six weeks. It's like, whoa. Okay. You know? It takes somewhat less than a second."

John Pavlovitz wrote a searing indictment of the inconsistency of Trump's evangelical supporters. In January 2018, he wrote an open letter addressed to "White Evangelicals," berating them:

For eight years [during the Obama administration] they watched you relentlessly demonize a black President; a man faithfully married for 26 years; a doting father and husband without a hint of moral scandal or the slightest whiff of infidelity.

* * *

you never once suggested that God placed him where he was,
you never publicly offered prayers for him and his family,
you never welcomed him to your Christian Universities,
you never gave him the benefit of the doubt in any instance,
you never spoke of offering him forgiveness or mercy,
your evangelists never publicly thanked God for his leadership,
your pastors never took to the pulpit to offer solidarity with him,
you never made any effort to affirm his humanity or show the love of Jesus to him in any quantifiable measure.

* * *

And yet you give carte blanche to a white Republican man so riddled with depravity, so littered with extramarital affairs, so unapologetically vile, with such a vast resume of moral filth — that the mind boggles.

* * *

They see that pigmentation and party are your sole deities.
They see that you aren’t interested in perpetuating the love of God or emulating the heart of Jesus.
They see that you aren’t burdened to love the least, or to be agents of compassion, or to care for your Muslim, gay, African, female, or poor neighbors as yourself.
They see that all you’re really interested in doing, is making a God in your own ivory image and demanding that the world bow down to it.
They recognize this all about white, Republican Jesus — not dark-skinned Jesus of Nazareth.

Ross Douthat wrote for the New York Times in September 2018 that a new survey by the Cato Institute’s Emily Ekins for the Voter Study Group found that whether a Trump voter attends church predicted their views on race. Among Trump voters who never go to church, only half had positive feelings about Black people, and a quarter said their own whiteness was "very important" to their identity. Among Trump voters who frequently go to church, 71 percent had positive feelings about Black people, and only 9 percent said their own whiteness was "very important" to their identity. While the religious and secular groups in the survey had similar incomes, the secular people were "less likely to have college degrees, less likely to be married and more likely to be divorced; they’re also less civically engaged, less satisfied with their neighborhoods and communities, and less trusting and optimistic in general." (Emily Ekins wrote a separate article about it, concluding that "encouraging conservatives to disengage from religion...may in fact make it even harder for left and right to meet in a more compassionate middle.") But why did the churchgoing people vote for Trump, if they disagree with him about race? It seems they made "a pragmatic bet that his policies on abortion and religious liberty were worth living with his Caligulan personal life and racial demagoguery." Early Christianity made such a bet with the Roman emperor Constantine. However, with Trump, it's "the reverse sort of situation: A Christian community trying to make the best of its decline, and allying with a leader whose core appeal depends upon and possibly furthers the de-Christianization of conservatism....it’s hard to see how it can reverse de-Christianization, and easy to see how it might accelerate it."

Others have a different interpretation. Neil J. Young, author of We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics, notes the study's conclusion that "religious participation may serve a moderating function in our politics" [emphasis mine] and he clarifies that he believes that "white evangelicals are no moderating force. They are the core of our extremist president’s support." [emphasis mine] Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, an Episcopalian, and an openly gay man running as a Democratic candidate for President in 2020, said in an April 2019 television interview that evangelicals' "hypocrisy is unbelievable" when it comes to their support for Trump.

Paula White, the "spiritual adviser" to Trump, who said a prayer at his inauguration and who formed a White House evangelical advisory council, "has ratcheted up support among evangelicals for the president’s hard-line immigration policies and used her Facebook following of more than 3 million to champion the idea that God has blessed Trump’s plans," according to the Washington Post. When challenged with the proposition that Jesus was a refugee, she once answered, that Jesus had done nothing illegal. "If he had broke the law, then he would have been sinful and he would not have been our Messiah." (Other Christians have challenged this interpretation, as Jesus was, famously, executed.) When she spoke at the rally in June 2019 at which he announced his reelection campaign, she told the crowd, "let every demonic network who has aligned itself against the purpose, against the calling of President Trump, let it be broken, let it be torn down in the name of Jesus!” she prayed. She added: "I declare that President Trump will overcome every strategy from hell and every strategy from the enemy — every strategy — and he will fulfill his calling and his destiny."

"Today, I submitted another FOIA request to the Department of Justice after the Department used Trump’s so-called Religious Liberty Commission mailing list to promote a White Christian Nationalist event scheduled to take place on the National Mall.

They’re calling it “Rededicate 250,” and the list of speakers reads like a Who’s Who of Christian extremism, including multiple members of Trump’s Cabinet, the Chancellor of Liberty University, the president of Hillsdale College, Paula White, Franklin Graham, and many more." (Geoffrey T. Blackwell, Legal Director of American Atheists, May 12, 2026)

Christian Author Catches Holy Hell Online After Ball-sy 'Joke' About Trump Falls Flat Eric Metaxas insisted that critics simply didn't get his "sarcastic humor." Ed Mazza, HuffPost, May 18, 2026

Whether or not conservatism today is stripping Christianity of its religious content, it is giving it power, and this does reverse the decline of the influence of Christian institutions. Katherine Stewart, author of The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children wrote in a May 2018 op-ed for the New York Times:

"There is a story going around, on both the left and the right, that America’s 'true believers' are a declining force and are now conducting desperate, defensive maneuvers in a secularizing society. But that is not how the leaders of the Christian Nationalist movement see it — because it is not true. They played a key role in putting President Trump in power. They are protecting him now, as they giddily collect their winnings in legislatures and in the courts. Why should they doubt that they can pull off the same trick again?

What Christian nationalists know — and many of us have yet to learn — is that you don’t need a majority to hijack a modern democracy. You just need a sizable minority, marinating in its grievances, willing to act as a bloc, and impervious to correction by fact or argument. Make this group feel good about itself by making other people feel bad about themselves, and dominion may well be in reach."

---

Franklin Graham, son of the late Billy Graham, planned ten "campaign-style rallies" throughout California in late May and early June 2018 in advance of that state's primary election. The goal is to turn out the evangelical vote. Other kinds of Christians are not receiving the same outreach to attend these rallies, "a tactic that plays directly into the growing separatist sentiment among many white evangelicals," according to Neil J. Young, author of We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics. Of this attempt to stoke "white evangelical resentment and outrage," Young wrote: "Such a dark and alarmist vision might seem to contradict the hopeful joy evangelicals claim their faith provides, but it aligns perfectly with the cynical and conspiratorial worldview Trump has brought to the center of American politics. As such, white evangelicals’ support for Trump doesn’t expose their hypocrisy, as plenty have contended, so much as it plainly reveals their heart." On 13 June, even Graham told the Christian Broadcasting Network that Trump's policy of separating would-be immigrant families at the border is "disgraceful, it’s terrible to see families ripped apart and I don’t support that one bit." He stopped short, however, of holding Trump accountable: "I blame the politicians for the last 20, 30 years that have allowed this to escalate to where it is today."

(Franklin Graham later complained about the ten Republican congresspeople who voted to impeach Trump for incitement to insurrection in 2021. He said they must have betrayed him for "thirty pieces of silver" — i.e., he couldn't imagine they had cast their votes on principle — though he said one must "wonder" what the material reward was.)

Whether Christian power is seen to be declining or rising, many see the new administration as an opportunity to advance a theocratic-leaning political agenda.

This was how it worked on an institutional level. Anne Nelson, author of Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right, in conversation with Andrew Keen, published May 18, 2020 on the "Keen On" on LitHub (recording: 5:30–6:30)

I think that the relationship between the leadership of the Council for National Policy and Donald Trump is as purely transactional as you’re going to get in politics. There was a deal cut in fairly stark terms in 2016, in June, where the conservatives from the fundamentalists and these business interests came to Trump and said, 'You don’t have any campaign organization. You don’t have a war chest. You don’t have people on the ground. We’ve got all of those. We’ve got campaign in a box. What we want from you is the right to nominate your federal judges. We want our guy, Mike Pence, as your running mate. We want to write the social platforms for the Republican National Convention.' And the deal was struck, and both sides have honored them. So I think it’s the ultimate quid pro quo.

The deal has also been internalized on an individual, personal level by many people. The theologian Roger E. Olson wrote for Patheos in August 2018 in "Is Trump “Our Cyrus?"

Here I’m not talking about those evangelical Christians who, among others, voted for Trump in order to vote against Hilary Clinton as the “lesser of two evils.” I’m talking about the many evangelical Christians who are now lionize Trump as a kind of new national messiah—not on a par with Jesus Christ but...on a par with whom?

A growing common answer is "He’s our Cyrus.'

* * *

During his approximately thirty year reign he [Cyrus] released the Hebrew people in exile to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple that was destroyed earlier by the Babylonians....the Hebrew people did not consider Cyrus one of them, of course, but a powerful ally — and one raised up by God to deliver them from exile and bondage."

Olson issues a warning: "I strongly suspect that he [Trump] is manipulating his conservative Christian 'base' and would turn on them in a moment if it suited his agenda to be powerful."

Is it hypocritical? Well, yes. Kathleen Parker on Aug. 31, 2018 in the Washington Post decried "the utter hypocrisy of allowing such a foul-mouthed, race-baiting misogynist to occupy the Oval Office after many of these same paragons of virtue impeached Bill Clinton for lying about his irresponsible affair with an intern." But it can be politically expedient to ignore the personal failings of one's own candidate. James Traub wrote in the Atlantic on July 18, 2018:

Elected Democrats lined up to denounce President Bill Clinton’s private behavior during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, though none deemed it worthy of impeachment. Donald Trump’s vastly more outrageous behavior has provoked far less opprobrium from his own party. Republicans aren’t less decent than Democrats; rather, they have come to see political struggle in such apocalyptic terms that no merely personal form of shameful behavior can compete with the political stakes. Thus Christian conservatives hold their tongue rather than jeopardize their chances of getting a Supreme Court justice who will overturn Roe v. Wade. The party of personal morality thus becomes the party of indifference to personal morality.

On another front, where Christians are trying to consolidate political power, it isn't exclusively white Christians who are doing so.

Katherine Stewart profiled Jim Domen for the New York Times on June 20, 2018. Domen (who considers himself a "former homosexual") founded Church United and has led it since 2014. It is "a multiethnic group of pastors from a variety of traditions — including Pentecostal and Catholic clergy members" with a mission of “helping pastors transform California at the government and church level.” Domen supports Trump, saying that he has “done more for the Church than many Christian presidents have.” Church United's work to "politicize pastors," as Stewart put it, "started with six affiliated pastors in 2014. The group now counts approximately 500 member pastors."

Some people feel torn.

An example of a middle-of-the-road position is given by Rev. Samuel Rodríguez, who serves at a church in Sacramento, Calif. and who has had private conversations with Trump in the White House. He publicly condemned Trump for his misogynistic, crude comments on the Access Hollywood tape and is also fighting Trump's immigration agenda, but he is willing to work with Trump overall. In May 2018, Rodríguez told BBC World:

"Trump ha hecho más por el movimiento evangélico que cualquier otro presidente desde la época de Ronald Reagan. Se puede medir. Hay 20 puntos que uno puede decir claramente: aquí firmó una orden ejecutiva, aquí firmó una ley, aquí avanzó..."

* * *

"El movimiento latino evangélico no está casado con Donald Trump. Tampoco estaba casado con Obama. Estamos casados con una agenda que va mucho más allá de la personalidad."

Independently of whatever "deal" may be struck here, what do evangelicals feel about Trump's character?Many are disappointed. Molly Wicker wrote for the New York Times on May 19, 2017:

"Evangelical voters have long demanded that politicians exemplify Christian character and morality in the public sector. In Donald Trump, however, evangelicals were confronted with a candidate who pledged allegiance to conservative ideals, but embodied none of them.
* * *
Claire Waugh, a senior from Woodbridge, Va., told me that she refused in November to have a Trump vote on her conscience, and that she hates to see the country being "led by a man who spews vitriol against anyone who is unlike him, a man who tries to invoke God’s name when he is acting utterly ungodly.""

Some Christians think that theology, not secular politics, is the way forward.

David Kuo, who worked for the George W. Bush administration, wrote in his 2006 memoir Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction when he was facing a terminal illness (pp. 262-263):

"We Christians need a short fast from politics.

We need to eschew politics to focus more on practicing compassion. We need to spend more time studying Jesus and less time trying to get people elected. Instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year in support of conservative Christian advocacy groups such as the Family Research Council, Eagle Forum, and the panoply of similar groups, let's give that money to charities and groups that are arguably closer to Jesus' heart. And we Christians should spend less time arguing with those on the other side and more time communing with them."

More recently, Daniel Burke wrote for CNN on 13 June 2018 about the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting in Dallas that "a small but significant slice" of the 10,000 participants objected to the planned address by Vice President Mike Pence. Younger people seemed more concerned with evangelizing the message of Jesus (what they call "The Great Commission") than with aligning themselves with the Republican Party. Garrett Kell, a pastor, said alignment with the Republican Party was also strategically fraught as it could affect the Southern Baptists' interracial and international relations. (The Southern Baptists formed as a pro-slavery splinter group in 1845, and Pew's 2014 U.S. Religious Landscape Study found that the Southern Baptists remain 85 percent white.) Pence did address the Convention that day, and Burke followed up, saying that "much of Pence's speech was dedicated to praising the accomplishments of his boss, President Donald Trump." He added: "The denomination's executive committee will consider a motion to cease inviting elected officials to speak at national conventions."

Jonathan Merritt, writing for The Atlantic on 16 June, said that the crowd at the annual meeting was significantly younger than he remembered from his childhood. He quoted Baylor University history professor Barry Hankins as saying that this demographic change "has thrust the group into the middle of an identity crisis". They elected 45-year-old J.D. Greear as the president of the Southern Baptists who has promised to make an effort to proportionately represent women and people of color in leadership roles. The denomination addresses public policy through its Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which opposes President Trump, and Greear said that inviting Pence to speak "sent a terribly mixed signal" about whether the Southern Baptists stood for religion or politics. At least some Southern Baptists, Merritt said, "appear to recognize that tethering themselves to Donald Trump...places the moral credibility of the Southern Baptist Convention at risk." Furthermore, although "Southern Baptists have criticized more liberal denominations for their declines," they, too, are experiencing the same decline; they have lost 1 million members in the past 15 years. Tying themselves to conservative politics is therefore, many conclude, not the answer to reversing this trend.

Michael Gerson, a white evangelical conservative, noted the demographic decline in an August 2019 op-ed for the Washington Post, pointing out that a quarter of Americans over age 65 are white evangelical Protestants, but only 8 percent of Americans ages 18-29 have that identity. Gerson said it is a "scandal" that white evangelicals are not in a state of "panic" about this decline." Gerson said that evangelical support of "religious liberty" legislation reflects "a larger anxiety about lost social standing." He argues that evangelicals should reemphasize their "religious calling," as they did "in late-18th-century and early-19th-century Britain, or mid-19th-century America," rather than continuing to behave "like another political interest group."

In her article "The Religious Right Has It All Wrong. Trump is a 'Test,' Not Their Savior," Cynthia Dagnal-Myron said she believes that Jesus is "asking Christians, through Trump, to follow His lead repeatedly," — note that the capitalized "His" refers to Jesus, not Trump — by having Trump break every law in The Book to see if we're paying attention."

Carol Kuruvilla wrote for Huffington Post in April 2019:

"In a 2011 poll from PRRI and the Religion News Service, 60% of white evangelicals surveyed said that a public official who 'commits an immoral act in their personal life” cannot still “behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.' But in October 2016, right after The Washington Post published an 'Access Hollywood' recording of Trump making lewd comments about sexual assault, the number of white evangelicals who weren’t willing to give politicians a pass for immoral behavior dropped to 20%. ...white evangelicals were even less likely in late 2018 to connect politicians’ private and public lives in this way. Only 16.5% said they believed privately immoral behavior translates to unethical professional conduct."

In the most recent study, people did not seem to be responding based on principle as much as they seemed to be responding to a particular politician. When white evangelicals had Bill Clinton in mind, they were four-and-a-half times more likely to say that privately immoral behavior was relevant to public life than when they had Donald Trump in mind.

In May 2019, the Jim Bakker show offered viewers the chance to buy a coin with the faces of Cyrus and Trump for a $45 donation. On the show, Lance Wallnau described Trump as "a Cyrus to navigate through the storm" of American politics. He described the coin as "a point of contact" to use in prayer.

There is also faith-based activism on the left, and, of this, Laura E. Alexander wrote in August 2019:

"...there’s always been progressive Christian activism in the United States.

I have studied religious thought and action around migrants and refugees for some time – including analyzing the New Sanctuary Movement, a network of churches that offers refuge to undocumented immigrants and advocates for immigration reform.

* * *

Talk of an emerging “religious left” is ahistoric. American Christianity has always had its liberal strains, with pastors and parishioners protesting state-sponsored injustices like slavery, segregation, the Vietnam War and mass deportation.

But the high profile, religiously based moral outrage at Trump’s immigration policies does seem to be spurring some long-overdue rethinking of what it means to be Christian in America."

A Fox News poll conducted October 6-8, 2019 found that, among white evangelicals, 71% of approved of the job Trump is doing. Only 44% had confidence in Congress and only 26% approved of the job Congress is doing. These white evangelicals had favorable opinions of Trump (70%), Pence (64%), the president's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani (46%), the Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (21%), Adam Schiff (17%), Bill Barr (34%), Mitch McConnell (37%), Hillary Clinton (24%), the Democratic Party (24%), the Republican Party (63%). And 57% of them were at least somewhat troubled by the situation surrounding Trump's scandal with the Ukrainian president. 73% were concerned about Trump's allegations against Joe Biden in that scandal. While 28% of white evangelicals said that Trump should be impeached and then removed from office, 64% said that he should not be impeached at all. 38% of them said it is, in general, appropriate for a president to ask foreign countries to investigate their political rivals. 34% said they believe Trump feels it is more important to do what is best for him as an individual rather than what is best for the country.

That 71% approval rating among white evangelicals represents a decline from "the 81 percent that backed him over Hillary Clinton in 2016," Eugene Scott wrote in the Washington Post, and it is possible that Trump's military decision that enabled violence against Christians in Syria will cause him to lose more Christian support among American voters.

In October 2019, the Public Religion Research Institute found that, as reported by Relevant Magazine, "75 percent of white evangelicals say they approve of him and, what’s more, 31 percent of that group say there’s 'almost nothing' Trump could do to lose their support." By contrast, "86 percent of black Protestants disapprove of Trump, 67 percent of which say there’s almost nothing Trump could do at this point to change their minds," and a majority of black Protestants, Hispanic Protestants, and Catholics believe that he encourages white supremacists.

A majority of white evangelicals (60%) think that Trump is morally upstanding, a Pew survey found in early 2020. "The evangelical assessment," an NPR article explained, "does come with some reservations. Only about 15% of white evangelicals, for example, say 'morally upstanding' describes Trump 'very well,' while another 45% say the term applies to Trump 'fairly well.'" (Here, they differ from the American population as a whole, two-thirds of which say that "morally upstanding" does not describe Trump.) Furthermore, in the NPR summary: "Almost two-thirds of white evangelicals see Trump as at least 'somewhat religious,' despite his profanity, his sporadic church attendance, and his evident unfamiliarity with the Bible."

Between April and June 2020, white evangelicals' approval of Trump's performance dropped from 78% to 72% in a Pew survey, and yet 82% of them still said they would vote for Trump over Biden. (Pew found that 77% of white evangelicals voted for Trump over Clinton in 2016.)

Other polls had more drastic results. Over two months (March-May 2020), white evangelicals' support for Trump dropped from 77% to 62%. (PRRI survey) "Militant white masculinity has always been at the center of family-values evangelicalism," Kristin Kobes du Mez wrote. "They denigrated feminism, pacifism, and political correctness, and championed war, law enforcement, the military, and the Second Amendment in order to promote a culture where men could exercise their God-given, testosterone-driven authority." That is why, Kobes du Mez argues, one of his biggest problems for his image in the summer of 2020 has been "his West Point commencement address was derailed by his halting descent down a ramp and apparent difficulty in lifting a glass of water to his lips." Any hint of weakness, physical or otherwise, damages his standing with the "family values" crowd.

---

On the other hand, though, people who approve of Trump may be more likely to declare themselves evangelical essentially on his behalf. From 2016–2020, Ryan Burge wrote in the New York Times, "there was no significant decline in the share of white Americans who identify as evangelical Christians. Instead, the report found the opposite: During Donald Trump’s presidency, the number of white Americans who started identifying as evangelical actually grew." This is based on a 2021 report from the Pew Center. However, Burge writes: "The number of self-identified evangelicals has likely not increased over the last few years because evangelicals have been effective at spreading the Gospel and bringing new converts to the church." Instead: "millions of Americans are being drawn to the evangelical label because of its association with the G.O.P." In recent years, the share of evangelicals who say they rarely attend church has grown, and the non-churchgoing evangelicals are simultaneously becoming more likely to say they are politically conservative. It also appears that non-Christians — for example, Muslims — are adopting the label "evangelical" because they think it means "very religiously engaged and very politically conservative." So the label "evangelical," as a self-descriptor, is changing to mean politically conservative and also some kind of religious, whether that is cultural Christianity or another religion. The result is that "more and more Americans are conflating evangelicalism with Republicanism — and melding two forces to create a movement that is not entirely about politics or religion but power."

---

Many white evangelical Christian voters, says Jennifer Rubin in November 2021,

essentially see politics as a great battle between White, Christian America and the multiracial, religiously diverse reality of 21st century America. They want someone to help them win that existential fight. Government [in their view] is there not to produce legislative fixes to real-world problems but to engage their enemies on behalf of White Christianity. ... The fixation with defining the United States as a White Christian nation is on full display nightly on Fox News, where replacement theory — not abortion or gay rights — drives so much more of the conversation.

---

Katherine Stewart said in May 2022 that some Christian nationalism "overlaps with the Great Replacement theory and demographic paranoia in general," although among Latino Christian nationslists, "the argument is not that a preferred racial group is being replaced but that a preferred religious and cultural value system (with supposed economic implications) is under threat.” Stewart prefers to call it "religious nationalism": "a reactionary, authoritarian ideology that centers its grievances on a narrative of lost national greatness and believes in the indispensability of the 'right' religion in recovering that lost greatness."

---

Kathleen Belew writes:

White-power extremism reveals that the core of this ideology is not the victims it attacks, but rather the thing it attempts to preserve — and the mechanism that transfigures this ideology into racial violence. It imagines that a conspiracy of elites, usually imagined as Jewish “globalists,” are deliberately working to eradicate both white people and white culture. This is why white nationalism is so often virulently antisemitic, and also why it feeds on deep distrust of the media, education, science and other arbiters of expertise.

Although, a distinction is added in this January 2021 academic article by Ruth Braunstein "identifies two ideal-typical versions of this [Christian nationalist] narrative: the white Christian nation and the colorblind Judeo-Christian nation."

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From a New York Times story by Ben Smith:

Though Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, "wrote in 2016 that Mr. Trump was 'the Great Evangelical Embarrassment,'" nevertheless in 2020 he supported Trump "because Democrats are 'antagonistic to biblical Christianity' on issues like abortion and transgender rights."

By contrast, Marvin Olasky, the editor of the Christian magazine World since 1994, has continued to oppose Trump. He wrote that he "deplored the 'Flight 93' approach — a reference to the hijacked flight on 9/11 where passengers banded together to storm the cockpit — that he sees among many conservatives, who, he says, believe they must use any means necessary to keep America from being destroyed by liberals." He submitted his resignation in November 2021 because he disagrees with the magazine's direction toward American political conservatism. He plans to produce the annual Roe v. Wade issue in early 2022 and then leave.

As Thomas Zimmer explained ("Do Americans Value Democracy?", Substack, Democracy Americana, November 19, 2023):

"Trump’s appealed to the Right in 2016 precisely because he made it clear he wouldn’t be bound by the rules. That’s exactly what reactionary intellectual/pundit Michael Anton captured so precisely in his infamous “Flight 93” essay, published shortly before the 2016 election, in which he made the case for Donald Trump by presenting the Democrats as a fundamental threat to America, akin to the terrorists of 9/11: Anton called on the Right to embrace Trumpism because Trump would be willing to go much further to stop this “Un-American” threat than any of the “ordinary” Republicans who were “merely reactive,” who would keep playing by the rules of the game, and for whom Anton had nothing but contempt. Since Trump, in this interpretation, wasn’t constrained by norms, traditions, or precedents, he alone could be counted on to do whatever was necessary to fight back against the “wholesale cultural and political change” – to “charge the cockpit,” in Anton’s crude analogy, like the passengers of Flight 93 on 9/11. What the American Values Survey is picking up here is how the “Flight 93” mentality is taking over not just the rightwing intellectual sphere, where it’s been hegemonic for a while, but ever larger parts of the Republican Party and its voters as well. It is now “Flight 93” politics, all the time."

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A Trump speech in October 2023:

"'On Day One, I will immediately restore and expand the 'Trump travel ban,'' he pledged to the cheering crowd.

* * *

Then Trump again expanded his rhetoric.

“I will implement strong ideological screening of all immigrants,” he said, reading from the teleprompter. “If you hate America, if you want to abolish Israel,” he continued, apparently ad-libbing, “if you don’t like our religion — which a lot of them don’t — if you sympathize with the jihadists, then we don’t want you in our country and you are not getting in. Right?”

The crowd cheered enthusiastically. Trump vamped: “We don’t want you! Get out of here! You’re fired!”

* * *

This is all Trump is getting at. “Our religion” — the religion of those in the room at his event — is right-wing, often evangelical Christianity. In 2020, the density of White Christians in a county was a very good indicator of whom voters in the county supported.

* * *

Parsing Trump's comments is excessive, of course; as stipulated, we know what he means. He means that certain categories of people are inherently dangerous and unacceptable ... He is saying, once again, that he will defend American Christians against perceived threats — threats that might be framed in vague religious terms but which are not fundamentally religious...

He is telling those Americans — White Christian conservatives — that he will make them the focus of America’s protective power."

— Trump pledges to turn away those who don’t like ‘our religion’ (gift link), Philip Bump, Washington Post, October 24, 2023

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In 2009, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life asked Americans whether it was ever justifiable to torture suspected terrorists during interrogation, and respondents were 50% more likely to say yes if they were white evangelicals than if they were "religiously unaffiliated."