The reality-based world sees Donald Trump as an abject failure. In most polls, he struggles to get approval ratings in the mid-40s. FiveThirtyEight’s average of approval-rating polls only has Trump at 42 percent—which, even at this stage, is in code-calling territory politically.
But most fundies think that Trump is manna from heaven. At least, according to Liberty University president Jerry Falwell, Jr. He dropped by Jeanine Pirro’s show on Friday to talk about why Trump seems to be holding his ground among white evangelicals.
Falwell and Pirro discussed a recent Fox News poll that showed 73 percent of white evangelicals approved of Trump’s performance. Lest you think Fox had its thumb on the scale, a Pew Research poll found even starker numbers.
For Falwell, it came down to a lot of things. Besides the obvious stuff—Neil Gorsuch, the large number of “people of faith” in the Trump White House, and a changed ISIS strategy, they were also pleased by Trump’s approach to handling jobs and immigration.
He then delivered a dire warning to moderate Repubs—join the Trump train or else.
“I’ll tell you what evangelicals are not happy about in the first 100 days. It’s that moderate Republicans who I believe seem to be obstructing Donald Trump’s agenda in Congress, and I think they’re going to pay the price in 2018 if they don’t stop. I think the American people are angry about that. These moderates just make my blood boil.”
In other words, Trump must be supported by any real Republican, no matter what. Gee, I didn’t know anyone was right that often. Nobody in this world anyway.
But even without that to consider, in Falwell’s world, the GOP has to ignore every outrage about Trump just because he made the right clucking noises on social issues. Nothing else matters—not even his railing about being wiretapped, his unsecured cell phone, etc., etc.
As we now know, the religious right would support any schmuck who gave them what they wanted—Putin, the Antichrist, etc. Sounds like Jerry, Jr. learned his lessons well from his father—unfortunately for this country.