{"id":12281,"date":"2020-06-02T16:21:50","date_gmt":"2020-06-02T20:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=12281"},"modified":"2020-06-02T16:21:50","modified_gmt":"2020-06-02T20:21:50","slug":"the-base-is-happy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=12281","title":{"rendered":"The base is happy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though sane and decent people everywhere were left aghast by Trump’s appalling photo-op last evening, his base was elated<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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A few hours after the dystopian spectacle, I spoke on the phone with Robert Jeffress, a Dallas megachurch pastor and indefatigable Trump ally. He sounded almost gleeful.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was completely appropriate for the president to stand in front of that church,\u201d Jeffress told me. \u201cAnd by holding up the Bible, he was showing us that it teaches that, yes, God hates racism, it\u2019s despicable\u2014but God also hates lawlessness \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI will never forget seeing [Trump] slowly & in-total-command walk \u2026 across Lafayette Square to St. John\u2019s Church defying those who aim to derail our national healing by spreading fear, hate & anarchy,\u201d wrote Johnnie Moore, the president of the Congress of Christian Leaders.<\/p>\n

In an email to me, Ralph Reed, the chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, heaped praise on Trump for his visit: \u201cHis presence sent the twin message that our streets and cities do not belong to rioters and domestic terrorists, and that the ultimate answer to what ails our country can be found in the repentance, redemption, and forgiveness of the Christian faith.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The sad truth is that the squalor that is Donald Trump is who the Evangelical Right really are; he can’t speak Jesus — but his barely-hidden malice, his automatic recourse to force, his conviction that science needlessly complicates matters, his disdain for expertise, that’s who they are, too<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Though sane and decent people everywhere were left aghast by Trump’s appalling photo-op last evening, his base was elated. A few hours after the dystopian spectacle, I spoke on the phone with Robert Jeffress, a Dallas megachurch pastor and indefatigable … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12281"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12281"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12282,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12281\/revisions\/12282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}