After Donald Trump sided with the neo-Nazis and KKK members of the Charlottesville protests, many business leaders took the off ramp, leaving Trump’s advisory boards. But almost all of the evangelical pastors on Trump’s religious advisory board—and the board is all evangelical, none of these Catholics or even mainline Protestants, let alone Jews or Muslims—stayed on Team Trump post-Charlottesville. Now they’re expressing support for Dreamers, while laying the groundwork for their decision to stick with Trump when the deportations start:
[Pastor Jentezen] Franklin said he doesn’t think Trump is racist — but he feels that had he resigned in protest over Charlottesville, he would not have been there to make the case for young immigrants.
“If I resign every time [the president] does something I don’t agree with, then I lose the ability to have influence and speak up for the ‘dreamer’ children [and] the minorities that feel offended and hurt by the Charlottesville incident,” he said.
What a great logic! Surely by the time the Dreamers start being deported, there will be another group that really needs Franklin in the room with Trump failing to convince him to do the right thing.
Bishop Harry Jackson, an African American pastor from Beltsville, Md., who has spoken out against abortion and same-sex marriage, said he sees his role on the board partly to influence others on issues such as criminal justice that are important to the black community.
“That is why I am supposed to be there,” said Jackson, who was among the pastors who saw Trump in the Oval Office on Friday. “I believe I am affecting other people on that board.”
So … it’s not that he thinks he can influence Trump, but maybe he can influence someone else on Trump’s board? Yeah, sure.
Once these so-called Christian leaders let Trump know that support for neo-Nazis was not their breaking point, they lost all moral credibility. Trying to pretend they’re still with Trump for anything but the Oval Office access and fun photo ops is just pathetic.