Do The Evangelicals Love And Worship Trump's Cheatin' Heart? You Know They Do

I was only 5 years old when Hank Williams’ “Your Cheatin’ Heart” was posthumously released but I think I got to know the song because my parents used to play the Ray Charles version on the family victrola, which was in the alcove where I slept. The song became a real standard for me when I was a country dj in San Francisco, at The Cinch on Polk Street, in the late ‘70s, playing the Patsy Cline cover:

I thought about it this morning. I was reciting the 10 Commandments, in order and got stuck between the one about not murdering people and not stealing from anyone. Finally it came to me: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” That one has nothing to do with me, I thought, so I decided to concentrate on it and figure out what it does have to do with me. And the song popped into my head. 

Is there a single Commandment Trump hasn’t broken? That adultery one maybe as much as the one about bearing false witness. But all of them really. Which one do you think he isn’t steeped in? 

Writing about MAGA Christians yesterday, John Pavlovitz noted that “in the most dizzying display of theological spin doctoring, they actually declare that it is precisely his ever-growing trail of personal toxic discharge that supposedly proves evidence of God's hand in it all. The ‘logic’ goes that God uses flawed human beings, so Trump's multiple marriages, his porn star affairs, his sexual assaults, his verbal obscenities, his disregard for rule of law, his compulsive lying, his clear racism, his unrelenting attacks on marginalized communities (things these Christians would have figuratively and almost literally crucified Obama for) are now unmistakable signs that God is using this former President.

This is nonsense of Biblical proportions. Trying and draw some line between Jesus of Nazareth and Donald of Florida is about as farcical as you can get without actually spontaneously combusting from the cognitive dissonance… This sanctified retrofitting of this godless, loveless human being to any kind of providential momentum is the height of absurdity.”

His ascension is not prophetic but pathetic, the result of:

• Russian interference,

• fake news,

• gerrymandering,

• voter suppression,

• a compromised GOP,

• Hillary hatred,

• Obama resentment,

• Fox News brainwashing,

• Democratic stumbles,

• the votes of bigoted Evangelicals,

• whites terrified of losing market share, 

• third-party voters,

and the inaction of 100 million Americans who couldn't be bothered to participate in one of the greatest responsibilities of living here by voting.

That's it.

• No Providence.

• No Divine messages.

• No Biblical prophecies.

• No spiritual movements.

• No act of God.

Just ordinary human beings who chose really, really poorly when they should have known better.

This isn't a mystery or a miracle—and it sure as hell isn't God.Trump Christians need to stop passing the buck to the Lord and just own the compromises and sick bedfellows they've been willing to make for Supreme Court seats, anti-choice legislation, weapon stockpiling, and a rapidly assembling white Evangelical theocracy. 

Stop namedropping God. God is love, while Donald Trump is incapable of it.

• God wasn't generating fake news or showing up at his campaign rallies or stumping for him at nationwide crusades or using him as an expression of their misogyny.

• God didn't vote for the guy who said he could grab women by the genitalia.

• God didn't choose the guy who said protestors should be beaten.

• God didn't go with the guy endorsed by the KKK.

• God didn't excuse the bankruptcies and overlook the affairs and laugh off the racist remarks.

I'm pretty sure people did that— lots of supposedly Christian folks.

And God isn't now justifying Trump’s vile nonsense on social media,

• or creating Constitutional crises,

• or ignoring the rule of Law,

• or celebrating LGBTQ discrimination,

• or laughing off collusion, treason, and human rights atrocities.

Again, Christians.We really should stop pretending God is responsible for this fast-food dumpster fire when it's clear whose hand is in it all.

This reality is the rotten fruit of

• misogyny,

• racism,

• Nationalism, 

• fear, 

• xenophobia, 

• and bigotry— all released by people who want God to consent to it all so they don't have to deal with their own culpability or face their own repentance.

God didn’t choose any of this.

And Trump didn’t choose any of these psychopaths who make up the GOP base, especially not the Evangelicals, who are more foreign to him than Kim Jong-Un. He doesn’t give a shit about any of their issues, especially not abortion and now he sees their mania as an impediment to his campaign. And among a growing number of them, the feeling is mutual. Yesterday, Michael Scherer reported that when it comes to writing a GOP platform, Trump wants it to be a document that came help him get votes and couldn’t care less what it says beyond that, while his evangelical base wants it to further their theological vision of America. 

Christopher Rhodes wrote that “Trump doesn’t substantively care about abortion rights. He seems to have gone from being ‘very pro-choice’ in 1999 to being ‘pro-life’ in 2011 to advocating legal punishment for women who had abortions during his 2016 campaign. However, Trump does care about winning, or more precisely about being perceived as a winner. That is why as recently as last year, he was taking credit for ‘killing’ Roe v Wade, the landmark case that guaranteed abortion rights until the Supreme Court overturned it in 2022. ‘After 50 years of failure with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v Wade, much to the ‘shock’ of everyone,’ Trump posted on his Truth Social platform last year, adding: ‘Without me the pro Life movement would have just kept losing.’ The problem that Trump now has is that the MAGA crowd sit far to the right of him on the issue of abortion and he does not seem able to rein them in. In fact, moderating his rhetoric on abortion may alienate some of his supporters, especially the white conservative evangelical base. For evangelicals, the fight against abortion has been the centrepiece of their unspoken bargain with Trump: We’ll ignore your many moral and legal failings as long as you push forward our agenda. They may perceive Trump’s moderation of rhetoric as a betrayal of this bargain at a time when they have built momentum towards eliminating all legal abortions in Republican-controlled states.”

Trump might try to hold onto these voters with other issues, such as LGBTQ rights, exaggerated narratives about urban crime and so on. But those may not be enough.

Already Trump is feeling the heat from conservatives. In April, Republicans in the Arizona State Legislature blocked a Democrat-led effort to repeal an 1864 law banning abortion, defying Trump, who had said the ban “went too far”. Days later, former Vice President Mike Pence, a devout Christian, criticised his former boss in a New York Times opinion piece, accusing him of “retreating” on the abortion issue, displaying “weakness” and “leading other Republicans astray” by encouraging moderation.

In early May, moderate Republicans in Arizona joined Democrats to repeal the 1864 law, but conservatives continued to defend abortion bans.

The eagerness of state-level Republicans to restrict abortion and their recalcitrance against calls for moderation, even from fellow Republicans, create a challenge for Trump. So he may change strategy and avoid confronting abortion hardliners.

This seems to be in play already. Trump was recently scheduled to virtually address supporters at an event hosted by the Danbury Institute, an ultraconservative organisation that seeks to completely ban abortion, which it considers “child sacrifice”. However, instead of doing a speech, his campaign sent a two-minute recorded message to be played to the audience in which he made one passing reference to protecting “innocent life” but otherwise sidestepped the issue of abortion entirely.

As much as he tries, Trump will be unable to avoid an issue that is mobilising voters against the Republican Party, especially as the Biden campaign has already started to hang the abortion albatross around his neck.

The topic will almost certainly come up in one or both of the debates the two candidates have agreed to have, and a number of states like Florida will have abortion measures on the ballot in November.

Trump may also try to sell his supporters the idea that it’s politically expedient to moderate, at least until after the election. But many of his most fervent anti-abortion supporters are eager to capitalise on the successes they have had during and after his first term in office.

Trump may, therefore, find it difficult to contain the political forces that he has unleashed, a reality that could end up costing him and his anti-abortion supporters victory in November.

So how frustrating for poor Señor T yesterday when the gigantic and gigantically-influential Southern Baptist Convention, <> voted to oppose in vertro fertilization!

“The move,” wrote Megan Messerly, “may signal the beginning of a broad turn on the right against IVF, an issue that many evangelicals, anti-abortion advocates and other social conservatives see as the “pro-life” movement’s next frontier— one they hope will eventually lead to restrictions, or outright bans, on IVF at the state and federal levels. The vote comes as Democrats in Washington, hoping to drive a wedge among Republicans, prepare to hold a vote on legislation to protect IVF, while former President Donald Trump struggles with how to message to evangelicals on abortion and other reproductive health issues that they would like to see him take stronger positions on in the post-Roe era... Many evangelicals are now coming around to the fact that their conviction that life begins at conception must be applied to IVF, too. If abortion is murder, the destruction of viable embryos created during the IVF process is as well.”

The IVF conversation has put Republicans in an uncomfortable position as they stare down polling showing overwhelming popular support for IVF. A CBS News/YouGov poll earlier this year found that 86 percent of respondents thought IVF should be legal, and a survey released in December by a firm run by Kellyanne Conway, former President Donald Trump’s former senior counselor and campaign manager, found that IVF had 78 percent support among self-identified “pro-life advocates” and 83 percent among evangelical Christians.