Category: Donald Trump

Some Evangelicals Turn Away from Trump, Some Remain, Some Haven't Spoken

The fall out continues from the audio of Donald Trump claiming to use his celebrity status to assault women. While some evangelical Trump supporters have remained on the Trump train, at least two prominent ones have jumped off. At least one prominent Trump supporting evangelical has stayed quiet.
UPDATE: Christianity Today’s Andy Crouch produced a hammer after the video scandal and didn’t spare his evangelical brothers and sisters who are enabling Trump. Must. Read.
The Leavers
Wayne Grudem and Hugh Hewitt have taken back their support. Hewitt thinks Trump should turn over the candidacy to Mike Pence while Grudem took back his support and called for Trump to withdraw.
Hewitt also thinks more tapes and awkward material is to come. Grudem still doesn’t know who he is going to vote for if Trump stays in.
UPDATE: Christianity Today has a nice write up of former Trump advisory board member James McDonald’s efforts to get Trump to take advice from the advisory board.
WaPo also has the report of McDonald’s strong denunciation of Trump’s comments on the video.
On the Trump Train
Supporters Tony Perkins, Ralph Reed, and Gary Bauer, are sticking with him. Liberty University president Jerry Falwell, Jr. tweeted his Trump pride after last night’s debate. Michele Bachmann is still on the team.
Silence in the Face of Vulgar Video is Still Silence
Eric Metaxas hasn’t tweeted anything since October 7 when he first acknowledged the video. In his tweets, he took a negative view of Trump’s behavior and said he was going off Twitter for awhile.
Trump advisory board member and president of the American Association of Christian Counselors Tim Clinton has not responded to two requests for his position on Trump’s candidacy in light of the video.  I expected the owner of the largest association of Christian counselor might have something to say about it.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Mike Fuoco quoted me in this article on evangelical support for Trump.
UPDATE:
Eric Metaxas will keep us waiting until Wednesday but will block out unpleasantness until then. Sigh.

RE: Donald Trump – Norman Geisler Meet Ross Douthat

On 9/28, evangelical author and professor Norman Geisler told Christianity Today readers why he supports Trump.  Dr. Geisler meet Ross Douthat who yesterday wrote why he doesn’t support Trump.
I am with Douthat in that a very necessary part of making a determination is to consider the type of president Mr. Trump would make based on his actions now. Since Geisler wrote, Trump has gone on an early morning tweeting binge targeting a former Miss Universe. Also, we have learned that he appeared in a porno and may not have paid federal income taxes for nearly two decades.
Face it, Douthat is right. It doesn’t matter what good policies Trump says he supports (there are a few) if he doesn’t have the skills or personality to bring them to pass. He showed this earlier this year with his tweet battle with the Mexican president. At issue then was the fictional wall. Wait until it is what to do about North Korea or Russia or Iran.

Donald Trump, Rosie O'Donnell, Alicia Machado, and Evangelical Women (UPDATE: It got worse)

There were many articles out yesterday and today regarding Monday night’s debate and much has been said about Donald Trump’s attitudes toward women as indicated by what he said about Rosie O’Donnell and Alicia Machado.
I wonder if evangelical women are paying attention.
About O’Donnell, Trump said:

“You know, Hillary is hitting me with tremendous commercials. Some of it’s said in entertainment. Some of it’s said – somebody who’s been very vicious to me, Rosie O’Donnell, I said very tough things to her, and I think everybody would agree that she deserves it and nobody feels sorry for her.

About Machado, Clinton reminded Trump about a former Miss Universe.

CLINTON: And one of the worst things he said was about a woman in a beauty contest. He loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them. And he called this woman “Miss Piggy.” Then he called her “Miss Housekeeping,” because she was Latina. Donald, she has a name.
TRUMP: Where did you find this? Where did you find this?
CLINTON: Her name is Alicia Machado.

Machado has spoken out about how Trump treated her at he time.
In an appearance by phone on Fox News yesterday morning, Trump doubled down saying at 47 seconds into the clip Machado “gained a massive amount of weight” after she won the contest:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UdqZmNy4o0[/youtube]
I looked and asked around to find out if any evangelicals condemned this gross disrespect toward these two women and by extension to all women who aren’t perfect. I found nothing. Evangelical supporters of Trump seem to be accepting everything Trump does. His disgusting attitudes toward women was in full display during the debate and has been throughout the campaign.
Trump ridiculed O’Donnell and essentially urged others to do so as well (“she deserves it”). He demeaned Machado for her race (“Miss Housekeeper”) and appearance (“Miss Piggy”). Will evangelicals stand for this?
Although some evangelicals have admitted Trump lost the debate, I have not heard a direct condemnation of him over his disrespect for women. I have to believe when many evangelical women enter that voting booth, they will remember what he said and how he bullied and demeaned women. Closer to home, evangelical men should worry that evangelical women will remember that their men said nothing about it.
UPDATE – Steve Deace is a pretty conservative and a Never Trump person. He had something to say:


Trump tripled down on his attacks on Machado, now suggesting people watch a sex tape that apparently doesn’t exist.

Eric Metaxas: Donald Trump Speaks Hyperbolically and Shouldn't Be Taken Literally

According to Eric Metaxas, people who oppose Trump have taken him at his word and that is a mistake.
Really.
Read what he told Justin Brierley with Premier Christianity (UK).

Brierley: I think they would also point to some of his polices, like banning Muslims from entering the US
Metaxas: What fascinates me is how everyone takes him literally, and they don’t seem to understand that he has always spoken hyperbolically and impressionistically. That’s what he does. The idea that he is a racist or a xenophobe, I think that’s simply not true, but if you say something enough people believe it.
What about Trump’s rhetoric on Muslims and Mexicans?
If people think that he could bring xenophobic legislation into the United States of America, I just don’t believe that we would stand for it. I think what he is really talking about, which ought to be common sense, is that we’ve got to protect our borders.

The contortions of Trump’s Christian supporters are painful to watch. How else are we supposed to take the policy pronouncements of the GOP candidate for president? If we can’t take him literally, then how can anyone take him at all? Once upon a time words mattered, but in the post-modern evangelical space, a leading evangelical figure is fascinated that his fellows take the words of a presidential candidate seriously.
We are to assume Trump speaks nonsense impressionistically, but we are cautioned with the straightest of faces to take each word from Hillary as a dark prescription for the end of everything good. Furthermore, Metaxas is convinced that the American people will reject Trump’s impressions should they turn out to be literal but will be powerless to withstand Hillary’s evil mind tricks.
Every time I read Mr. Metaxas, I think of the warnings from William Buckley about hyperbolic demagoguery. Buckley knew Trump and warned about him. He also had something more general to say about how America should respond to a demagogue:

In other ages, one paid court to the king. Now we pay court to the people. In the final analysis, just as the king might look down with terminal disdain upon a courtier whose hypocrisy repelled him, so we have no substitute for relying on the voter to exercise a quiet veto when it becomes more necessary to discourage cynical demagogy, than to advance free health for the kids. That can come later, in another venue; the resistance to a corrupting demagogy should take first priority.

Ironically, Buckley’s reference to “free health for the kids” is something Mrs. Clinton championed. In so many words, Metaxas admits that Trump is spoofing us, just talking smack with the details to be named later. What should we do with such a pretender to the throne? According to Buckley, the voter’s first priority should be to reject such “cynical demagogy.” I concur.
For those who believe both Trump and Clinton are corrupted demagogues, there is potential to move the election into the House if only a certain voting bloc would follow Mr. Buckley’s advice.

Eric Metaxas: Hillary Clinton is 1930s Fascism in Rainbow Colors

Eric Metaxas continues to double and triple down on his contention that opposition to Hillary Clinton (and support for Trump) is like Bonhoeffer’s resistance to the Nazis. For good measure, he seems to liken Trump opponents to German Christians who failed to oppose Hitler.
Reading the comments, it appears that many of his Twitter followers aren’t buying it.
From Twitter today:


and


and


Bonhoeffer was an exception but many German church leaders agreed with the Nazis about the “Jewish problem.” They also had good things to say about the coming Nazi domination. Any analogy to now can only work if Trump is the fascist element. Trump’s conservative opponents are not rhapsodizing about Hillary the way German Christians did about the Nazis.
I agree with this Twitter user:


In a post back in June, I discussed a book Complicity with the Holocaust. Author Robert Ericksen describes how the church overlooked the warning signs about the Nazis. I wrote then:

Consider this quote from Erickson’s book (via Leithart) from a German Lutheran newspaper in April 1933:

We get no further if we get stuck on little things that might displease us, failing to value the great things God has done for our Volk through them [the Nazis]. Or was it perhaps not God but ‘the old, evil enemy?’ For humans alone have not done this, an entire Volk , or at least its largest part, raising itself up into a storm, breaking the spiritual chains of many years, wanting once again to be a free, honest, clean Volk . There are higher powers at work here. The ‘evil enemy’ does not want a clean Volk , he wants no religion, no church, no Christian schools; he wants to destroy all of that. But the National Socialist movement wants to build all this up, they have written it into their program. Is that not God at work?

Heightening concern is the observation that Trump has called for war crimes, singling out and banning Muslims, deporting 11 million illegal immigrants, stigma against children of immigrants, and limitations on the press. He also told religious leaders that he wanted to make Christianity more powerful and somehow coerce businesses to say Merry Christmas. Even the impulse to take power in this manner should be questioned by the church. Instead, religious leaders are telling us that Trump “gets it.”
By now, shouldn’t we question boldly the political declarations of religious leaders? History shows us multiple illustrations of religion being used and abused for political benefit. To be candid, I fear this in the present day. Religious leaders have had a full year to study Trump and become knowledgeable about him. However, after one meeting, many come out declaring him God’s man for the hour. I just can’t get there and in fact their reassurances worry me all the more.

As I have said before, I don’t think Trump is reincarnating Hitler. I do think he has described a program for the vanguard of an American fascism. It is not Trump alone that frightens me, it is his followers and those who want him to do more than he publicly described. What he has owned is bad enough.