White born again Christians are the reason Trump is in the White House. Full stop.
— sean. (@SeanMcElwee) July 14, 2017
It was white evangelicals who were Trump’s indispensable supporters, and it is to white evangelicals that Trump turns when he needs a public-relations boost. Recall the photos from just a few days ago of evangelical leaders standing around The Donald, praying and laying-on hands. Now, as with the tweet above, the proverbial chickens are coming home to roost. Longtime readers will recall that I predicted this just a few days after the election:
Third, 81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump, and that will eventually sink into public consciousness, as in, Wait a minute! What are you saying? The church people gave us that piece of sh*t p***y-grabber?! Yep, they did — and that will be the tale of how the Evangelical Right and ‘movement so-called conservatism’ committed political suicide. They might make some noise, occasionally score a small victory … but they are done. The Trump administration, with its inevitable serial indecencies and corruptions, is their achievement, and they will never live it down.
Good. The Evangelical Right is, and has been since the days of the Moral Majority, a malignant presence in our national life — irrational, mean-spirited, deeply anti-intellectual, resolutely ignorant. Donald Trump is their achievement, and they have done incalculable harm to the country. They can’t hide who they really are, or what they really value, or what they really think is important, behind smiling pieties any longer. Good riddance.