Evangelicals' embrace of Trump could be costly

This post was published in the Wilson Times Aug. 31, 2019.

The Gospel of Luke records an incident early in Jesus’ ministry after he read Scripture in the synagogue at Nazareth, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor … “ Then he said,

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

His audience, composed partly of friends and neighbors from his boyhood home, found his assertion of a direct link to ancient prophecy blasphemous, and they sought to kill him by throwing him off a cliff. Luke reports that Jesus miraculously slipped away through the crowd.

Knowing this excerpt from Luke’s Gospel, how is it that self-proclaimed evangelical Christians have not condemned Donald Trump for asserting, “I am the Chosen One” and “the Second Coming”? Blasphemy is not a capital offense in 21^st century Christianity, but surely Trump’s assertions should send evangelical voters running away. But they are still with him.

Evangelicals have stood steadfastly behind Trump even as he has left behind a series of acts and statements that would have been answered with derision and repugnance if they came from most any other politician. Trump’s popularity in fundamentalist churches has remained strong even after the release of the October 2016 “Access Hollywood” video of Trump advising a younger colleague, Billy Bush, on how to grab, grope, fondle, and kiss women against their wills. Twice on the recording, Trump says that with women, “You can do anything.”

Trump dismissed the recorded conversation as “locker room talk” but that comparison angered athletes who knew locker room talk was not all about manhandling women. The evangelical leaders supporting Trump, including Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell Jr., have given Trump a pass for his unprecedented public vulgarity.

Trump has shown a shocking unfamiliarity with the Bible, such as when he read a passage from what he called “Two Corinthians,” oblivious to the fact that Christians refer to Paul’s letters to the church at Corinth as First Corinthians and Second Corinthians.

Trump sees nothing wrong with shouting profanity and threats of violence at his public rallies. When asked about his prayers and forgiveness, Trump declared that he had never needed to ask forgiveness because he had never committed a sin. This non-confession comes from a man who has been twice divorced and who publicly flaunted his new girlfriend while still married to his first wife. News reporters have counted thousands of provable lies from Trump’s lips. He even denies making false statements despite a roomful of eyewitnesses or recordings of his falsehoods.

Some of those willing to overlook Trump’s lack of moral scruples are the same people who accused President Obama, a devoted family man still married to his first wife and deeply attached to his daughters, of being insufficiently religious or anti-Christian, although Obama would sprinkle Scriptural references into his speeches and even break into a religious hymn (“Amazing Grace” at the memorial for those murdered in a Charleston, S.C., church). By any neutral judgment, Obama is the more Christ-like president.

Many Americans support Trump with an intense loyalty while others cannot conceive of how Trump managed to win the presidency and now has a chance to win a second term. Although opinions on the 2020 presidential race go from a certain and overwhelming Trump victory to a landslide election with Democrats winning the White House and both houses of Congress as voters express their disgust with Trump and his administration.

In either scenario, evangelical Christian voters will be a “swing” demographic. Will they vote for Trump in hopes of keeping a strong economy, weak regulations, and a conservative, religion-friendly Supreme Court? Or will they rise up against the foul-mouthed, amoral narcissist who has alienated U.S. allies while embracing Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un?

Regardless of the election results, the church leaders who praised Trump as God’s appointee will have a lot of soul-searching to do within their organizations.

Meeting with a Russian lawyer, plus second thoughts

The New York Times reported over the weekend that Donald Trump Jr. had met last year with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer who promised derogatory information about Hillary Clinton. The NYT has led the Fourth Estate in researching possible connections between Russia and the Trump campaign. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the Kremlin conducted a cyber campaign aimed at aiding the Trump campaign and denying the presidency to Clinton.

The only remaining major question for all but the most blinded Trump supporters has been whether there was collusion between the campaign and the Kremlin. That is, did the Trump campaign coordinate or conspire with Russians to hinder Clinton's campaign or reduce her vote totals?

Although the Trump Jr. meeting sounds a bit like collusion, the fine print is less provocative. Would Chelsea Clinton have accepted an invitation to meet with someone who promised negative information about Donald Trump? Would any political campaign operative decline such an invitation promising "dirt" against an opponent in this era of background research teams and negative campaigning? The meeting might be ill-advised but shouldn't be surprising.

Trump Jr. says the meeting was a bust. He says he received no negative information about Clinton. He says he was told that some Russians were secretly contributing to the Clinton campaign, and the Russian lawyer only wanted to talk about international adoptions. He says he received "no meaningful information."

Far from being a "smoking gun" proving collusion, this incident seems to be another example of Trump administration inexperience or delusion. Unless Trump Jr.'s account can be contradicted by other sources, there's not much smoke in this collusion gun.

Second Day Second Thoughts

 After I wrote the above post, Donald Trump Jr. gave more information about his meeting with a Russian official and released some emails that only raise more concerns about the Trump campaign's lack of caution and lack of any moral standards. The campaign that led chants of "lock her up" last year seems willing to accept derogatory information about Hillary Clinton from any source, no matter how suspicious or how tainted by its Russian origins.

These latest revelations (from Trump Jr. himself, lest anyone claim that it's all "fake news") show just how naive and trusting Trump officials have been about Russia's interests and actions in the 2016 campaign. They were willing to meet with and believe any intermediary who had "dirt" on Clinton. They knew the promised information was coming from inside the Kremlin — confirmation that a foreign power was attempting to influence and subvert a U.S. presidential election. 

A year later, Donald Trump, the candidate the Kremlin was attempting to assist, continues to deny that the Russian government was trying to subvert the vote of the American people. Trump Jr.'s "I love it" (from his own email, released to the media by himself) may be the closest we've come to proof of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

If Trump Jr. is being truthful about the lack of useful information from his meeting with a Russian lawyer — a dubious proposition about the Trump administration — it might not matter. Trump Jr.'s enthusiasm for the derogatory information, acknowledged to be from a foreign power, may be all that is needed to show collusion.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller still has a long way to go with his investigation, but Donald Trump Jr. is making his task a little easier.

All Supreme Court nominations are divisive

"A pox on both your houses," Shakespeare might say, were he around to observe the U.S. Senate's "advise and consent" duties in recent years. 

The Senate is headed toward a filibuster over the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Democrats say they cannot in good conscience approve the nomination of such a man. The Republican leadership appears ready to eliminate the Senate's cloture rule, which has been around since the first years of the Republic, in order to get Gorsuch approved.

President Trump's nomination of Gorsuch came a year after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, a year in which the Republican-controlled Senate refused to even hold hearings on the nomination by President Obama of moderate Judge Merrick Garland. The Republican rationale was that voters might elect a Republican to the White House in 2016, and that president might nominate someone more conservative and more to their liking. The reasoning they presented to the public was that the 2016 electorate should decide who fills that Supreme Court seat; it shouldn't be filled by the 2008 and 2012 electorate that chose President Obama or by a president who has held office for seven years. It didn't matter whether anyone accepted their thinking, the Republicans controlled the Senate and got their way.

My hope was that Hillary Clinton would win and take revenge by nominating someone far less to Republicans' liking, such as Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. (Check with William Howard Taft about the willingness of former president to accept appointment to the Supreme Court.)

(Not that I wanted Hillary Clinton to be president -- I simply wanted the GOP leadership to learn a hard-earned lesson. I thought voters might punish Republicans for obstinately blockading a qualified nominee, but I was wrong.)

What I've heard of Gorsuch's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee and what I've read about Merritt persuades me to believe that both men are well qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. A court with five Gorsuches and four Garlands, or five Garlands and four Gorsuches, it seems to me, would be a good, reasonable court.

Consider this: A recent poll found that more than half of Americans surveyed could name even one current Supreme Court justice. It's true that Supreme Court justices serve for decades and almost always influence events long after their sponsoring president has left office. But most voters don't know a single justice.

Judicial nominations have not always been so partisan. When Robert Bork was nominated by President Reagan, it was assumed that the old rules would apply: a qualified nominee would be approved by the Senate in deference to the president's preferences, so long as no ethical or competency issues arose. But Bork's nomination unexpectedly faced a concerted effort by Democrats and interest groups to stop him. Hence, the verb "borked," meaning to be demonized unfairly by lobbying and media campaigns, was born. Suddenly, Supreme Court nominations became national elections without a popular vote (by people who can't name a single justice).

The nomination of Clarence Thomas by George H.W. Bush took a similar path, but he eked out an appointment, 52-48, after an extremely emotional and divisive hearing.

Since then, the partisanship has extended even to federal district court nominations, prompting Democrats, who then controlled the Senate, to change the time-honored rules and stop debate on lower-court nominations, but not Supreme Court nominations. 

Now Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appears ready to use the "nuclear option" and halt debate with a simple majority vote on Supreme Court nominees. If that happens, the Republic will not fall, but this change will likely only make the nomination process more partisan and divisive.

Books are made for reading

I have difficulty understanding or even conceiving of someone who doesn't read books. Our house is filled with books, books in every room, some neatly decorating bookshelves, some stacked in baskets beside comfortable seats, some lying patiently on bedside tables — books ready to be picked up and read. I read every day, and almost every day from books. On days when I don't read a book, I read magazines, which are also prevalent around our house.

So when the president of the United States says boastfully that he doesn't read, my mind is flummoxed. It's inconceivable. I'll admit that I'm not a great reader. I can't check out 10 books from the library and return them all in a week or two, fully consumed, as some people I have known can. I am a slow reader, perhaps in part because of the years I spent editing newspapers, parsing each word and punctuation mark for misuse or error. And my reading tends to be at night, an effective sleeping pill that allows me to put aside the tensions and worries of the day and relax until my eyelids fall closed and I lose my grip on the book I've been reading. Many nights I've awakened, the lamp still on, my book in the floor, my stopping place a mystery. The next night, I hunt for my stopping place and pick up the narrative again.

I also tend to feel obligated once I've begun a book to stay with it to the end, whether it is a novel with a beginning, a plot (or two) and an ending, or nonfiction that may only be a series of facts or arguments. I recently finished a book that I found engulfing. I could not get William Kent Krueger's "Ordinary Grace" off my mind and kept the novel close by my side to snatch a few minutes to dive back into the immersing plot.

But now I'm reading a novel (I won't mention any names) that I find a bit plodding and confusing. There are time shifts and new characters and plot shifts that fail to keep me interested. But I've devoted the time to get more than 100 pages into the book, and I won't give up yet. Still, that non-fiction book that is next on my bedside table keeps enticing me. Surely it's better than this bland and skip-about novel.

Even when I hit the inevitable bumps in the literary road, I cherish my books and my time to read. Even not-so-good books are better than not reading. With all due respect, you should try it, Mr. President.