Jack Graham

What are the Court Evangelicals Saying About Trump’s Coronavirus Speech?

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Trump Jeffress

Last night Donald Trump delivered a nationally-televised address to the nation on the coronavirus. It was a disaster.  And he followed-up today with an equally bad press conference.

  • Following his speech, Trump’s administration had to clarify facts about his travel ban on multiple occasions.
  • Trump’s failure to calm fears, tell the truth, and get his facts straight last night resulted in the stock market’s free-fall today.
  • Today Anthony Fauci told Congress that the country is failing in its attempt to test for the virus.
  • Less than an hour later, Trump said that “testing has been going very smooth…if you go to the right area you get the test. We are very much ahead of everything.”  This, of course, is not true.
  • Also today, the president said that all Americans coming back to the country from Europe were being tested for the coronavirus.  That is not true.  Some of these travelers are getting screened, but they are not getting tested for the virus at the airport.

The criticism of Trump’s handling of the virus is coming from some unlikely places.

After a briefing with senators, conservative Republican Jim Lankford of Oklahoma said, “We couldn’t get a good, clear answer on when we are going to get commercial testing out there, labs that can get faster responses.” He said that the president’s claim that anyone who wants a test for the virus can get it is incorrect.

Here is Trump’s court journalist (at least among evangelicals) David Brody of Christian Broadcasting Network:

Trump’s speech did not go well.  But that did not stop some of the court evangelicals from praising it:

Here is Robert Jeffress:

Dallas-area megachurch pastor Jack Graham was comforted by the speech.

And here is Trump’s boy wonder Charlie Kirk:

As I said in another recent piece, the court evangelicals will never criticize the president. He holds them and their public faith captive.

The Court Evangelical Twitter Follies

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Trump court evangelicals

The court evangelicals have been dropping some real doozies of late:

Jack Graham recently retweeted this:

No, Jack, the “difference” is back in the day Christians used to call the president our for lying.

Here is a tweet from Ralph Reed‘s pro-Trump operation:

I don’t know about you, but whenever I see Christian leaders talking about “majorities” I am reminded of Jesus’s words: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction,and many enter through it.” Mt. 7:13

Here is Reed again. This time he is responding to a tweet from Roland Martin:

Actually, Ralph, I am not sure history bears this out. As I argued in Believe Me and here, the Christian Right has been afraid for a long, long time.

And here is a tweet proving my point that this picture was taken for political purposes in the hopes that court evangelicals would share it with their constituencies.

 

The Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention is Investigating Russell Moore

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Dr._Russell_D._Moore

There are a lot of Southern Baptists who do not like Russell Moore‘s leadership of the denomination’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.  It looks like court evangelical and Texas pastor Jack Graham is part of the resistance.  Here is a taste of Yonat Shimron’s piece at Religion News Service:

Jack Graham believes in the Southern Baptist Convention.

He’s a former president of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination and once traveled the country drumming up support for the Cooperative Program, the church giving program that funds much of the convention’s missions.

Yet, after three years, Graham’s congregation, Prestonwood Baptist Church, which claims 45,000 members, started to withhold money from the SBC. At issue: Graham’s disagreement with Russell Moore, Southern Baptist ethicist and Never Trumper, who once referred to Donald Trump as “an arrogant huckster.”

Graham, one of the president’s evangelical advisers, felt that Moore’s criticisms of Trump and his evangelical supporters was out of bounds. He didn’t want his church’s dollars to support Moore’s work at the denomination’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Prestonwood eventually starting sending money to the SBC again. But it has opted out of funding the ERLC, which Graham thinks has outlived its usefulness.

“The focus of the ERLC is not the focus of the mainstream of the SBC in terms of its approach to politics, to conservative thought and theology,” Graham told RNS in a phone interview this week.

Graham is not alone. About 100 of the denomination’s 46,000 churches said they would withhold funds from the Cooperative Program because of the ERLC back in 2017, according to published reports. Since that time, more churches have threatened to do the same, according to leaders of the SBC’s Executive Committee.

Mike Stone, chair of the Executive Committee, said this week that committee members have heard anecdotal evidence that churches are displeased with the ERLC and withholding money. So the committee voted to launch a new task force to review the ERLC to see if it is fulfilling its “ministry assignment” or if its actions have threatened donations to the cooperative program.

Graham said that the Executive Committee made the right move. He has long believed that Southern Baptists should “address the direction of the ERLC and the disposition of its leader, Russell Moore.”

Read the rest here.

Graham says that Moore is outside the “mainstream of the SBC in terms of its approach to politics, to conservative thought and theology.”  Last time I checked, Moore believes in the Baptist Faith and Message, a 2000 doctrinal statement adopted by the SBC in the wake of the fundamentalist takeover of the denomination in the 1980s and 1990s.  The Baptist Faith and Message requires Southern Baptist leaders to believe, among other things, in the inerrancy of the Bible and a complementary view of gender roles.

But this is apparently not enough for some Southern Baptists.  What does Graham mean when he says that Moore’s politics are outside the mainstream?  Is this a reference to the fact that Moore is a vocal critic of Donald Trump?  This is significant in the sense that politics is now dividing the largest Protestant denomination in North America, a denomination that has historically championed the separation of church and state.

And what about Graham’s reference to “conservative thought?”  Does one have to believe that the Bible and conservative political ideology are compatible in order to hold a leadership position in the Southern Baptist Convention? If Graham represents the mainstream of the Southern Baptist Convention, then I think it is fair to say that the thoughts of Southern Baptists are is no longer captive to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5), but captive to a Trumpian brand of conservative GOP politics.  It looks like the SBC is ready for another rupture.

ADDENDUM: February 21, 2020 at 11:23:

A helpful correction from a Twitter follower.  I changed the title of this post:

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

 

What Can Evangelicals Learn from Adam Schiff?

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They can learn something about moral clarity. They can learn something about doing the right thing.  They can learn something about patriotism.

“If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost.”

Here is what Fox News had to offer in the wake of Schiff’s speech.

There is nothing here on the content or the merits of the House defense.  They are talking about television ratings and CNN.  They are making vague references to our “Constitution.”  Is this all the Fox News crowd has to offer–gotcha lines and sarcastic jokes?  I am guessing we will see more of this on Saturday when Trump’s defense lawyers take the stage.  Will Cipollone and Sekulow be able to present a counter-narrative to the one presented by the House Managers over the last several days?  Will they even try? Is there a fact-based alternative narrative?

It is only a matter of time before Robert Jeffress gets on Fox News with Lou Dobbs to trumpet the court evangelical defense of Trump.  Expect multiple appeals to Trump’s visit to the March for Life.  They are already weighing in:

The Court Evangelicals Take a Photo

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Most of them were there on Friday night:

COurt Evangelicals

I don’t recognize everyone, but I see Alveda King, Jack Graham, Jenetzen Franklin, James Dobson, Shirley Dobson, James Robison, Michael Tait, Greg Laurie, Michelle Bachmann, Eric Metaxas, Tony Suarez, Robert Jeffress, Ralph Reed, Johnnie Moore, Gary Bauer, Tony Perkins, Richard Land, Cissie Graham, Tim Clinton, Harry Jackson, and Jim Garlow, Paula White, and Guillermo Maldonado.

I wonder if Trump can identify them all.

Many of these people feature prominently in Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump.

Thoughts on the “Evangelicals for Trump” Rally

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Court evangelical prayer in Miami

Earlier this evening Donald Trump launched his “Evangelicals for Trump” campaign with a speech at a Miami megachurch.

The King Jesus International Ministry Church, a Hispanic megachurch, was filled with court evangelicals.  Prior to Trump’s speech, some of them laid their hands on the president and prayed for him.  This group included Paula White, Jack Graham, Michael Tait (of the Christian rap group DC Talk), Jentezen Franklin, Cissie Graham (Franklin’s daughter), and Alveda King.  “Apostle” Guillermo Maldonado, the pastor of King Jesus Church, prayed that Trump would fulfill his role as a new King Cyrus.  Paula White prayed against the demonic forces trying to undermine Trump’s presidency.  Later Trump acknowledged James Dobson, Robert Jeffress, Charlie Kirk, and other court “eeeeevangelicals” in attendance.

As Trump took the lectern, the evangelicals in attendance, many wearing pro-Trump clothing and MAGA hats, began chanting “U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.”  It was clear from the outset that this event would be no different than any other Trump rally.  The applause lines were the same.  Trump degraded his opponents by name.  Nothing new here.  “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” Trump’s theme song, blared over the church loudspeaker when he was done with his speech.

Once the crowd stopped their patriotic chanting, Trump started bragging about the crowd size, adding that there were “1000s of people” outside “trying to get in.”  He called the “Evangelicals for Trump” movement the “greatest grass roots movement in American history.”  He reminded everyone how he killed Qassem Soleimani.

Trump generally stuck to the teleprompter, but he did go off script every now and then.  He painted himself as a president who was protecting American evangelicals from the those on the “Left” who want to “punish” people of faith and “destroy religion in America.” During this part of the speech one of the evangelical Christians in the audience screamed “Pocohontas,” a reference to Massachusetts Senator and Democratic president candidate Elizabeth Warren.  Trump was visibly pleased.  Indeed, Trump the strongman was on display.  Like autocratic leaders before him, he stirred fear among his people and offered them safety under his regime.  (This, I should add, is why evangelicals prefer Trump to Mike Pence, the Vice President who sees eye-to-eye with conservative evangelicals on every social and moral issue they care about.  Trump is a fighter and protector. Pence is not.)

Trump spent the entire speech reiterating the talking points that have defined his rhetoric when speaking to evangelicals.  He falsely claimed, once again, that he ended the Johnson Amendment.  He continued to claim, falsely, that Virginia Governor Ralph Northam wants to kill babies after they are born.  He said that he was going to return prayer to public schools when, in reality, prayer never left. He bragged about his commitment to global religious freedom, but failed to mention how he threw Syrian Christians under the bus.  He compared the crowd size of his Lincoln Memorial July 4, 2019 speech to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

At one point in his speech, Trump rattled off the names of the Fox News personalities who carry his water on cable television.  The crowd cheered as Trump read this laundry list of conservative media pundits.  It was all very appropriate for such an occasion because Fox News, more than anything else, including the Bible and the spiritual disciplines, has formed and shaped the values of most of the people in the room.  Trump’s staff knows this.  Why else would they put such a roll call in the speech? It was like Trump was reading the court evangelical heroes of the faith (Heb. 11), but instead of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Joseph, Moses, David, and Samuel, we got Hannity, Ingraham, Carlson, and the hosts of Fox and Friends.  (It is also worth noting that Trump never quoted from or referenced the Bible in his speech).

At one point Trump had to rebuke one of the evangelicals in the crowd.  As the president praised himself for appointing conservative federal court justices, someone apparently yelled something about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s recent health problems. The implication was that Ginsburg would soon die (was this guy praying for it?) and then Trump could appoint another conservative Supreme Court justice. Trump had to tell this person that he did not wish any harm on Ginsburg.  Think about this for a moment.  Trump was in a room full of evangelicals and he, at least in this case, took the moral high road.

In one of the most human moments of the rally, Trump introduced two members of the Fresno State University pro-life club.  These women told a story about a professor who tried to stop them from sharing pro-life messages on campus.  They sued the professor and won in court.  Good for them. What was this professor thinking? He denied these young women free speech, but he also gave the court evangelicals more fodder for their victimization campaign–a campaign that was on full display in Miami tonight.

Trump also focused on non-religious issues.  He took credit for the strong economy.  He said he would make sure the evangelicals in attendance would not lose their Second Amendment rights.  And, despite the fact that there were probably undocumented evangelical immigrants in the room, extolled the virtues of his border wall.

By now I am used to this kind of thing from Trump.  But tonight I witnessed evangelical Christians–those who identify with the “good news” of Jesus Christ–raising their hands in a posture of worship as Trump talked about socialism and gun rights. I watched them rising to their feet and fist-pumping when Trump said he would win in 2020.

I usually get angry about evangelicals worshiping at the feet of Trump.   But tonight I just felt sad.

What the Court Evangelicals (and some others) are Saying About Mark Galli’s *Christianity Today* Editorial

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Trump Beleive me

Out in paperback on January 7, 2020

Here is Robert Jeffress:

Franklin Graham here.

Ralph Reed:

Ralph Reed also really likes Franklin Graham’s comments:

Jerry Falwell Jr.’s Falkirk Center‘s at Liberty University retweeted Trump.

A spokesperson for the Falkirk Center is upset at Jim Acosta of CNN:

Here is one of the so-called “Falkirk Fellows”:

A former leader of the Assemblies of God is not happy with Mark Galli:

Jack Graham thinks, Christianity Today is out of touch with American evangelicalism, as if public morality is some kind of popularity contest.  This makes me wonder who is on the narrow road and who is on the broad road.(Matthew 7:13-14).

It’s always good for the court evangelicals when alt-Right website Breitbart is on your side:

Laura Ingraham of Fox News:

Jerry Falwell Jr. blocked me a long time ago, but this morning he tweeted: “Less than 20% of evangelicals supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 but now CT Magazine has removed any doubt that they are part of the same 17% or so of liberal evangelcials who have preached social gospel for decades! CT unmasked!”

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council trashes Christianity Today:

David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network shows how crazy this is getting and how Trump is not driving the white conservative evangelical narrative.  He  thinks that Christianity Today is now somehow the magazine of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

Eric Metaxas is apparently engaging on Twitter, but I can’t read his tweets because he blocked me.

 

What are the Court Evangelicals Saying About Yesterday’s Impeachment and Trump’s Responses?

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Watch:

So far none of the court evangelicals have said that Trump is right about Dingell because the former Michigan congressman did not accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior before he died. But I would not put it past any one of them to say this.

Sarah Pulliam Bailey has it covered at The Washington Post.  Read it here.

Here of some of the tweets in Bailey’s piece and a few more (with commentary):

Bailey quoted me in her piece:

Evangelical supporters of Trump have been talking about “forces” undermining Trump, framing the impeachment proceedings in “spiritual battle” language, said John Fea, a historian at Messiah College.

In November, Franklin Graham, president and chief executive of the Billy Graham Evangelical Association, told Eric Metaxas on his radio show, “Well, I believe it’s almost a demonic power that is trying . . .” And Metaxas interrupted and said, “I would disagree. It’s not almost demonic. You know and I know, at the heart, it’s a spiritual battle.”

Last week, Trump hosted about 50 evangelical leaders in the White House to pray for him, especially drawing pastors from the Pentecostal tradition where teaching on “spiritual warfare” is prominent.

“If Trump is indeed God’s anointed, impeachment and his potential removal is of utmost concern to those with this worldview,” Fea said.

Why doesn’t Graham go all the way and say that he is the most “pro life pro faith president in American history? 🙂

Once again, a Trump supporter refuses to argue based on the facts of the case.  If you want to say impeachment is a “sham” then you need to make a solid constitutional case for why Trump’s dealings with Ukraine and his failure to cooperate with Congress are not impeachable offenses.  Impeachment has nothing to do with whether a president is pro life, pro faith, a defender of religious freedom, or presiding over a strong economy.  (On the latter point, it find it interesting that so many court evangelicals are now economic determinists.  I thought they didn’t like Karl Marx).  Jack Graham, like the rest of the court evangelicals, are in Trump’s pocket. How else can we explain the fact that he will not say anything negative about this president and simply ignore his indiscretions.  Either shut-up about politics, or apply biblical truth to public life (and this POTUS) in an even-handed way.

See my comment above.  Ralph, please make an argument based on the facts of the case.

This document is absurd.  A quick response:

  1. The House of Representatives impeached Donald Trump and no one else.
  2.  Stop trying to politicize what it means to be a God-fearing, family loving and patriotic!  This “family values” rhetoric has been around since the late 1970s and  Trump’s behavior and policies in office have made it virtually meaningless.  I wonder what Moore and Rodriguez think about the moral quality of the rhetoric coming from this White House? Do they really want evangelical children to listen to Donald Trump or read his tweets? Should we all tell our children to be like Trump and publish children’s books extolling his character? And don’t even get me started with “family values” after what Trump did to migrant families at the border.
  3. This document makes vague references to “due process” and “rule of law.”  It does not say ANYTHING about the facts of the case.  (See my response to the Jack Graham tweet above).  Rather than approaching impeachment and Trump’s behavior with deep historical and theological reflection, this statement just echoes the talking points of the GOP members of the House Judicial and Intelligence committees.  Christian leaders should do much, much better than this.  I’m not holding my breath.
  4. This document assumes that those who impeached Trump do not believe in “free elections” to determine political leadership.  Actually, if it wasn’t for “free elections” the Democrats would not have won the House in 2018.  The people spoke.  The 2018 election was a referendum on the first two years of the Trump presidency.  THIS is democracy at work.  But I assume Moore and Rodriguez mean that Trump’s impeachment somehow undermines the results of the presidential election of 2106.  First, the undermining of the elections was done BY THE RUSSIANS well before impeachment.  Second, impeachment is meant to discipline a POTUS during the time in-between elections.  Based on the logic of Moore and Rodriguez’s statement, the impeachment of Bill Clinton also undermined the people’s voice in the election of 1996.  The near-impeachment of Richard Nixon undermined the people’s voice in the election 1972.
  5.  The statement reads: “They impeached millions of Americans…who believe that it’s precisely the job of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the United States government to intensely obstruct one another in order to check and balance our freewheeling democracy….” I have no idea what this means.
  6. The statement assumes that one cannot believe “every life is sacred in and out of the womb” and still support impeachment.  That’s nonsense.  Trump’s impeachment has nothing to do with abortion or any other kind of life issue. He was impeached for abusing power and obstructing Congress.

Gary Bauer has a unique ability to nicely summarize the court evangelical position in 560 characters.

What’s Wrong With This Picture? If You are a Court Evangelical, Absolutely Nothing.

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Trump iN Dallas

Here is Trump at his rally tonight in Dallas talking about Turkey and the Kurds.  Yeah, sometimes you just got let them kill each other for a few days. Let the Turks have their way with Syrian Christians.  No big deal.  We’ll throw $50 million at the problem–that should appease the evangelical base.

What did the Dallas court evangelicals think about Trump’s blatant disregard for human life?  Apparently they loved it:

 

My Piece Today at Religion News Service: “Trump’s evangelicals bewail a ‘civil war’ while still profiting from the last one”

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Trump Jeffress

Here is a taste:

But Jeffress also seemed to forget another important point about American civic life in his civil war comment. The United States, after all, had a real Civil War, in which over 600,000 lives were lost.

Did the country heal after this war?

The United States still exists, implying that some healing certainly took place. But the war also left us with some open wounds. The war brought an end to slavery, but it did not bring an end to the racism upon which slavery was built.

These wounds are still open and Jeffress’ own First Baptist Dallas, with its long history of segregation, has contributed to keeping them open. His congregation was built upon a Civil War fracture that has not yet healed. Under his leadership, it has failed to confront its long-standing commitment to racial injustice in any meaningful way.

We don’t need to fear a new civil war. Instead, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address, we still need to bind the wounds of the old one. The impeachment and removal of Trump will be a step toward the ongoing work Lincoln called us to do.

Read the entire piece here.

Did Your Evangelical Church Say Anything About El Paso or Dayton on Sunday Morning?

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Trump court evangelicals

Feel free to write a response in the comment sections below or hit me up on Twitter.

Meanwhile, here is a taste of Emma Green’s piece on the evangelical response to the shooting:

But other pastors, including several influential mega-church leaders who have been strong supporters of the president, have pushed back on what they call the politicization of this and other shootings. “I think it is wrong to assign blame to any party or any candidate for this problem,” Robert Jeffress, the head pastor at First Baptist Church in Dallas and a member of Trump’s evangelical advisory council, told me. “This is the problem of evil.”

Repeatedly throughout his candidacy and presidency, Trump has spoken about immigrants and asylum seekers, especially from Latin America, as “invaders.” He has also derided Mexicans as “rapists” and “criminals.” But Jeffress does not believe that the president is at all responsible for creating an atmosphere of violence. “If you listen to what the president is saying—contrary to some in the mainstream media—he is not anti-immigrant. He is anti–illegal immigrant. And there is a big difference between the two,” Jeffress told me. “I’ve known the president for four years. He’s a friend of mine. I’ve seen him in a number of different situations. And I’ve never seen one scintilla of evidence of racism in him.” In an address to the nation today, Trump did take a unifying tone: “The shooter in El Paso posted a manifesto online consumed by racist hate,” the president said. “In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated.”

Democrats are not impressed. Over the weekend, Democratic presidential candidates repeatedly blamed Trump for “savagely fraying the bonds of our nation by speaking consistently words of hatred,” as Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey put it on CNN. This kind of behavior is “shameful,” Jeffress said. “By politicizing this tragedy, some Democrats are trivializing this tragedy.”

Another Dallas-area pastor and Trump adviser, Jack Graham, agreed. “I’m not going to blame rhetoric on the evil heart of some terrorist. Who knows what was going on in the mind of this shooter,” he told me. “To me, this is not the time … to go running out there and condemning political leaders, whether it’s the president or anyone else, or blaming rhetoric, or blaming guns.”

Samuel Rodriguez, an evangelical pastor who serves as the head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, has also been one of Trump’s evangelical advisers. But he told me that it is impossible to deny that anti-immigrant rhetoric stokes bigotry. “I do believe words matter,” he said. “When we paint the immigrant community with one broad stroke, we are, in essence, feeding the poisonous venom already injected in the hearts and minds of individuals who truly do believe there is a Hispanic invasion.” He called on all elected officials to disavow this kind of anti-immigrant rhetoric. But he also said he hopes his white, Christian brothers and sisters will explicitly defend immigrants in this moment. “I would like to see every white evangelical pastor in America stand up on their pulpit and say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, immigrants are not a burden. Immigrants are a blessing,’” he said.

Read the entire piece here.

Trump Tells Border Agents to Break the Law. Court Evangelicals Remain Silent

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families

Jake Tapper of CNN is reporting that Donald Trump told immigration officials on the Mexican border to essentially ignore court orders allowing Central American migrants seeking asylum into the country.  Here is a taste of Tapper’s piece:

Three Thursdays ago, in a meeting at the Oval Office with top officials — including Nielsen, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, top aides Jared Kushner, Mercedes Schlapp and Dan Scavino, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and more — the President, according to one attendee, was “ranting and raving, saying border security was his issue.”

Senior administration officials say that Trump then ordered Nielsen and Pompeo to shut down the port of El Paso the next day, Friday, March 22, at noon. The plan was that in subsequent days the Trump administration would shut down other ports.

Nielsen told Trump that would be a bad and even dangerous idea, and that the governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, has been very supportive of the President.

She proposed an alternative plan that would slow down entries at legal ports. She argued that if you close all the ports of entry all you would be doing is ending legal trade and travel, but migrants will just go between ports.

According to two people in the room, the President said: “I don’t care.”

Ultimately, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney seemed to have been able to talk the President out of closing the port of El Paso. Trump, however, was insistent that his administration begin taking another action — denying asylum seekers entry. Nielsen tried to explain to the President that the asylum laws allow migrants from Central America to come to the US and gain entry. She talked to the White House counsel to see if there were any exceptions, but he told her that her reading of the law was correct.

Neither the White House nor the Department of Homeland Security responded to official requests for comment.

Last Friday, the President visited Calexico, California, where he said, “We’re full, our system’s full, our country’s full — can’t come in! Our country is full, what can you do? We can’t handle any more, our country is full. Can’t come in, I’m sorry. It’s very simple.”

Behind the scenes, two sources told CNN, the President told border agents to not let migrants in. Tell them we don’t have the capacity, he said. If judges give you trouble, say, “Sorry, judge, I can’t do it. We don’t have the room.”

After the President left the room, agents sought further advice from their leaders, who told them they were not giving them that direction and if they did what the President said they would take on personal liability. You have to follow the law, they were told.

Read the entire piece here.

Some will say that Tapper represents the “left-wing media” who is out to get Trump.  I have a few thoughts on this:

  1.  Tapper is an excellent reporter who is one of the most fair-minded interviewers on CNN.
  2.  What Tapper is reporting here fits very well with everything we know about Donald Trump.
  3.  A question for Trump supporters (or “left-wing media” haters):  Is there anything  that the CNN or New York Times could uncover about Trump that might actually be true?

Tapper’s piece is just further proof that Trump is a populist tyrant.  He won in 2016 by promising to build a wall.  His immigration policy thus far has been draconian.  Some of the children he separated from their parents are lost and it will take up to two years to find them.  Today he falsely claimed that Obama is to blame for the separation of these children. He believes that he has a mandate from the people (or at least the ones who elected him) to do these things and, as a result, he does not pay much attention to the rule of law, checks and balances, or time-honored American institutions.

Trump’s populism reminds me of Andrew Jackson’s rationale for removing the Cherokees from their homeland and sending them on the so-called “Trail of Tears.”  The white men who voted for Jackson wanted the Cherokee gone.  Jackson listened and responded.  This is what democracy meant in the early 19th century.  Maybe this is why Michigan conservatives do not want students to study “democracy” in their history classes.

And where are the Trump court evangelicals today?  What do they have to say about his disregard for the law, his separation of children, and his constant lies?  Here is what they are up to today:

Bob Jeffress, with his snarky laugh and Trump name-dropping, is still obsessed with the fact that Pete Buttigieg is gay, progressive and pro-choice.  (By the way, Jeffress’s defense of Mike Pence here does not seem to hold-up when compared to past Pence statements on the subject).

Jack Graham is hanging out with the “My Pillow” guy:

I am not sure if Paula White has any followers among the separated families on the border, but if she does, they are going to have a hard time taking her advice here:

 

Post-Election Spin From the Court Evangelicals

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Here is what the court evangelicals are saying today:

I agree here with Jack Graham. Yes, life and liberty were on the ballot yesterday. Life in the womb and after the baby is born. Liberty for all men and women:

Robett Jeffress makes a prediction:

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council made a statement.  He thinks that GOP victories last night were largely because of abortion.  His statement also reveals that he has no interest in finding any common ground with his opponents:  “We will stand with President Trump and Majority Leader McConnell in working to repel the Pelosi agenda that is at odds with the values that made America a great nation.”  At least Tony Perkins is honest.

Here is Samuel Rodriguez:

I have no idea what Eric Metaxas and Jerry Falwell Jr. are saying.  They both blocked me.

Was there a court evangelical viewing party?

The Court Evangelicals are Out in Full-Force Tonight

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In case you have not heard, Donald Trump is having a big dinner right now for evangelical leaders.  It looks like a court evangelical extravaganza.

Click here to see what court evangelical Robert Jeffress is saying about it at the Christian Broadcasting Network.  Jeffress makes it all sound like a political calculation.  We need Trump and Trump needs us.

Court evangelical Johnnie Moore is there:

Court evangelical Gary Bauer is there:

Court evangelical Jack Graham is there:

Court evangelical Greg Laurie is there:

So are James Dobson, Jentezen Franklin, Samuel Rodriguez, and Ronnie Floyd:

Court Evangelical Eric Metaxas is yucking-it-up with fellow court evangelical Mike Pence (more on Metaxas in my next post.  Stay tuned)

Metaxas at Party

It also looks like court evangelical Tony Perkins got an invitation:

Trump finally said something nice about John McCain. I guess he did not want to come across as an unforgiving man with court evangelicals in the room:

Court evangelical Darryl Scott is there:

It wasn’t very hard to learn which evangelicals came to the White House tonight.  Many of them proudly tweeted to their followers and congregation as they relished in the power of the court and solidified their celebrity.

Some of you may be wondering what I mean by the term “court evangelical.”  I wrote a an entire chapter about these Christians in Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump. That chapter builds off of several shorter pieces, including:

“Trump threatens to change the course of American Christianity,” Washington Post, July 17, 2017

The term “court evangelical” has even made it into the Urban Dictionary.

Perhaps the court evangelicals should go back to their hotel rooms tonight and read 2 Samuel 12. (There is a Gideon Bible in the drawer).  Nathan was one of King David’s court prophets.  In other words, he had a “seat at the table.”  When David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then arranged for her husband, Uriah, to be killed on the battlefield to cover up David’s sins, Nathan rebuked his king.  He told David the story of a poor man whose beloved “little ewe lamb” was stolen by a self-centered rich man who had plenty of lambs but wanted the poor man’s only lamb to serve his guests.  When David’s anger “was greatly kindled” against the rich man in the story, Nathan said to the king, “You are the man!”

Will there be a Nathan in the room tonight?  Somehow I doubt it.

Explaining White Conservative Evangelical Support for Donald Trump in One Tweet

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Jack Graham

I have been on the road for ten days speaking to audiences about why so many white evangelicals support Donald Trump.  At almost every stop on the Believe Me book tour someone asked me why evangelicals can support a man who is a nativist, xenophobe, nativist, adulterer, etc., and a man who separates children from families, trashes our NATO allies, and refuses to confront a Russian leader who undermined American democracy.

I have tried to dutifully answer that question at every stop along the way, but now it is time to let one of Trump’s supporters answer the question.  This tweet from court evangelical and Southern Baptist pastor Jack Graham explains a lot.  Graham tweeted this in response to Trump’s remarks in Helsinki.

It doesn’t matter what Trump does, as he long as he delivers the Supreme Court and follows the Christian Right’s political playbook.