President Trump was foisted into the White House in large part by the monolithic support of right-wing religious support. He pulled in 81% of the white evangelical vote, allowing him to seize much of the electoral south in an iron grip.
The rank hypocrisy that it took for self-professed religious folk to rally behind a man who has been credibly accused of numerous sexual assaults, bragged about such assaults, and even been accused of raping a 13-year-old girl is staggering in its shamelessness.
These so-called Christians even remained silent when Trump threw his support behind a pedophile in the Alabama Senate race. It appeared there was no low to which the president could sink that would send his supporters scurrying. Now, it turns out that might not be the case.
NPR reports that leaders of the evangelical movement are organizing a sit-down with President Trump in June because they are disturbed by the Stormy Daniels scandal. Apparently, they don’t mind when Trump is accused of rape, but the idea of him having an extramarital affair with an adult film star is simply untenable. To be clear, both are the acts of an evil, unfaithful man, but the former is far worse and should have been the breaking point.
“We’re very concerned,” one leader of a faith-based ministry told NPR. Sources said that they worry that Trump’s deepening and multiplying sex scandals could hurt religious voter turnout in the 2018 mid-terms.
“It is a concern of ours that 2018 could be very detrimental to some of the other issues that we hold dear,” one source said. Those issues include “preserving religious liberty” (whatever that means) and restricting a woman’s access to abortion. In other words, many on the religious right are worried that Trump might be undermining their efforts to remove a woman’s right to make her decisions about her own body. They may not love him, but they need him to keep forcing through their regressive agenda.
Hopefully, the sitdown goes terribly and Trump’s support amongst religious conservatives wanes. These people need to take a long, hard look at themselves and decide if they actually believe what they say they do. If that’s the case, there is no way they can in good conscience vote for him again. It would be better for them, and better for America, if they simply stayed home.
