Tag: donald trump

Fact Free Fun Fact Courtesy of Eric Metaxas: A Vote for Johnson is a Vote for Clinton

Dietrich Bonhoeffer biographer and Trump supporter Eric Metaxas goes fact free today. To wit:


In fact, a vote for Johnson is a vote for Johnson. Furthermore, according to Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com, Trump benefits when Johnson is thrown into polling preferences.

Overall, including third-party candidates takes about 1 percentage point away from Clinton’s margin, on average.

Even Trump’s megaphone Breitbart News headlined in June: Polls: Libertarian Gary Johnson Will Likely Hurt Hillary Clinton More Than Donald Trump
Metaxas didn’t get much support for his #funfact.


#funopinion – Evangelicals like Metaxas, David Barton, James Jeremiah, and Franklin Graham are being played. Trump still cozying up to Putin after Putin’s Russia imposed restrictions on religious liberty. Why aren’t evangelicals going ballistic over it? Instead of looking the other way or placating Trump, evangelical leaders should be denouncing Putin’s moves and should denounce Trump for his silence.

Dinesh D'Souza: Putin Loves Russia and Fights for Its Interests

Yesterday, Christian right film maker Dinesh D’Souza (Hillary’s America) tweeted:


The alt-right is also alt-reality and alt-morality.
Make sure you read the responses to D’Souza’s tweet. D’Souza is supposed to be the celebrity public intellectual but these commenters are taking him to school. In addition to oppressing his political opponents, Putin and his government have recently cracked down on religious liberty and evangelizing in Russia.
Christian right political types in the US cry big tears about religious liberty but praise Putin’s leadership in a nation where religious liberty is truly under attack.
Human Rights Foundation chair and former chess world champion Gary Kasparov tweeted in reply:


Trump’s supporters in the Christian right may someday wonder how they were duped so badly. I hope they aren’t wondering this after a Trump administration deals away American interests to a Russian dictator. Rather I hope it comes later after Trump and Clinton lose in a history making electoral college win for a third party candidate.
Perhaps I am alt-reality too. But at least my conscience is clear.
UPDATE: Mr. D’Souza goes full Trump and makes fun of my name. Classy argumentation.


To Gary Kasparov, D’Souza concedes:


If defending America’s interests looks like Putin, then no, we couldn’t use such a president.

David Barton: Trump Doesn't Need to Be Deep on the Issues Because He is Using a CEO Model

From CBN News/The Brody File
This morning, CBN’s David Brody interviewed David Barton and apparently asked him about Donald Trump. Watch:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sSr4NQ5U80[/youtube]
On one hand, Barton admits that Trump isn’t “deep on the issues.” That’s painfully obvious. But then he invents a new paradigm for a president – the CEO model instead of the “governmental model.”
Barton used Trump’s bankruptcies as illustrations. He said Trump rebuilds because he puts good people around him. It doesn’t seem to occur to Barton that those good people didn’t stop Trump from going bankrupt in the first place.
None of this is comforting or makes me more likely to be a Trump voter.
 
 

Freeing Bonhoeffer: Goodreads Corrects Attribution of Quote Formerly Attributed to Bonhoeffer

On August 25, I posted research into the attribution of the following quote:

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.

Commonly attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I traced the quote back to a now deceased researcher at the Liberty Museum in Philadelphia who added the quote to Bonhoeffer’s exhibit in the museum. The current director of the museum did not know the source and the quote does not appear in any of Bonhoeffer’s writings according to the foremost expert on those writings, Victoria Barnett. It cannot be found before a 1998 newsletter reporting on the opening of the Liberty Museum Bonhoeffer exhibit. Eric Metaxas, author of a biography on Bonhoeffer, has used the quote frequently attributed to Bonhoeffer but has not provided a source for the quote.
Quotes like this are also spread by websites which archive quotes for use on social media. One such website is Goodreads. Today, Goodreads let me know that they have changed the attribution of the quote to “anonymous.”
Before
silence goodreads before b
After
silence goodreads after
International Justice Mission and several others have also made similar changes in the use of the quote.
Good Timing
Thinking about this some more, I believe it is a good time to clear this up. So many people have enlisted Bonhoeffer through this quote for so many different and contradictory causes. Most recently, people for and against Donald Trump have tried to bring Bonhoeffer on their side. With Bonhoeffer’s aura and imprimatur, this quote is used frequently to make the justice of one’s cause seem self-evident.
Recently, Eric Metaxas used a part of it again to encourage a vote for Trump. He said “not to act is to act” and “not to vote is to vote.”


I really doubt Bonhoeffer would have agreed with the perversion of the quote. Not to vote is not to vote. One cannot vote and not vote at the same time. How is the not voting vote to be counted?
To illustrate the absurdity of just taking the form “not to ____ is to ____” and substituting one’s current cause or preoccupation, let’s take another recent blog topic: tithing. I really doubt Robert Morris would go along with “not to tithe is to tithe.” If one is hungry, it won’t fill your stomach to say, “not to eat is to eat.” Also, thinking about the silence from Metaxas on the attribution of this quote, I think it confuses things to say, “Not to take responsibility is to take responsibility,” right?
Freeing the quote from Bonhoeffer invites us to consider that it might not be as wise and universally applicable as it first seemed.

Eric Metaxas Defends Donald Trump Against Charges He Ridiculed a Disabled Reporter

Today, Eric Metaxas went on full Trump defense. Most recently, he tweeted:


Personally, I think the possible comparison is to Musolini but all of this is debatable and the jury is still out. I will add that Metaxas should clean up his own house before he scolds anyone about historical knowledge (when will Metaxas issue a retraction on the spurious Bonhoeffer quote he has promoted for years?).
However, what caught my eye was his retweet of Ann Coulter’s justification of Trump’s mocking references to New York Time reporter Serge Kovaleski. In her column yesterday, Coulter refers readers to footage of Trump also mocking a General and Ted Cruz. She claims the footage proves that Trump did not mock Kovaleski’s disability. Metaxas retweeted it with this message.


Scary, indeed.
What makes Metaxas’ defense of both Trump and Coulter astonishing is how Coulter defends Trump in her new book. In that book, she claims Trump was not mocking the reporting due to his disability, but because he clarified earlier reporting on Muslim response after the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center. She said Trump was just doing a “standard retard” in order to mock Kovaleski. Make sure you read the sentence with the word “retard” highlighted in yellow.
Coulter Retard
Standard retard? Apparently, Coulter thinks having a standard move to mock intellectually disabled people is more acceptable than tailoring one’s ridicule to individual disabilities.
I ask myself: Why is Eric Metaxas recommending Coulter’s defense of Trump making fun of anyone? Because Trump used his “standard retard” to ridicule three people, it is somehow better than using it to make fun of one disabled reporter? I am truly confused by how this justification of inexcusable behavior can be considered the kind of virtue that Metaxas hawks in his new book.
Did Trump Ridicule a Disabled Reporter?

I watched the clips Coulter recommended and I don’t think it is as clear as she does.
First, she doesn’t address why Trump said he didn’t know the reporter when in fact he did. Trump said he was a nice person and told the crowd before he launched into his mocking routine that “you gotta see this guy” referring to Kovaleski. Trump then accused the reporter of using his disability to grandstand (see the Politifact article on these points).
Also, Trump is much more animated and draws his arms up to his body (akin to Kovaleski’s disability) while flailing around when he is mocking Kovaleski more so than when he mocks the General and Ted Cruz. I have embedded the videos below. Watch and decide for yourself.
Trump on Serge Kovaleski and the General:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQQq50JWsmY[/youtube]
Trump on Ted Cruz (which this excellent piece points out is three months later! Reporters could not have ignored the response to Cruz since it hadn’t happened yet.)
[youtube]https://youtu.be/M4604reEqk0[/youtube]
Whether Trump singled out Kovaleski or was “doing a standard retard” doesn’t matter much to me. It is a very Sad! day when political pressures lead to defense of the indefensible.