Want to know how so many evangelicals can still be loyal to Trump even in the face of his almost daily outrages? Well, I discovered part of the answer yesterday when evangelist Mario Murillo declared with a straight face that if you call out your Trump-worshiping pastor, you’re a “villain.”
As I wrote at RDTDaily, this hits a particularly raw nerve with me as a left-leaning charismatic Christian. My pastor in Charlotte realizes that our church is split almost down the middle between Democrats and Republicans, and deliberately tries to stay out of politics. If he were to suddenly start doing everything short of wearing a MAGA hat in the pulpit, I would have no qualms about calling him out.
After all, how can anyone not remain silent when a pastor is urging his flock to go all-in for this manifestly unfit president? And yet, in Murillo’s eyes, if I were to take that line, I’d be a villain. Gee, I didn’t know basic decency made me a villain.
This is but one in a litany of anecdotes from over the last three years that, to my mind, proves that the religious right is part of a swamp that has been overflowing since Trump took office. They would be enough to fill several diaries by themselves, so I’ll just list the most egregious ones that I chronicled over the years at Liberal America and RDTDaily.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is why 71 percent of white evangelicals still support Trump. They’ve been brainwashed and bullied by nonsense like this. And a good chunk of that figure may not be so keen on Trump privately, but are afraid to speak up publicly in part because of fears that they may lose their salvation.
Trump has never gotten higher than 43 percent in FiveThirtyEight’s average approval rating. Yet, by all rights, it should be lower than that. Now we know why—a significant sector of the American people is being fed a false narrative by the nation’s so-called moral guardians.
Simply put, the religious right is part of the swamp. Well, consider yourself warned, fundies—you are about to be drained. And on Tuesday, we will pull the plug.