It is no secret that America's various conservative evangelicals have had an about-face, on most issues of morality, human decency, compassion, generosity, and other underpinnings of their religious faith in recent decades. Televangelists, in particular of the prosperity gospel sort that use donations from supporters to fuel lavish lifestyles, which they then point to as earthly evidence of God's personal support, have been drawn to the Trump brand like flies to honey; Trump himself appears to enjoy the attention, and certainly seems to identify with the wealth-as-glory message of his new would-be entourage.
But there is perhaps no preacher in America who has bent his supposed faith to comport to Trump's various boasts, admissions and scandals than Franklin Graham. To Graham, Donald Trump can do no wrong—and if he does, it's "nobody's business."
"These things happened many years ago – and there’s such bigger problems in front of us as a nation that we need to be dealing with than other things in his life a long time ago. I think some of these things – that’s for him and his wife to deal with. I think when the country went after President Clinton – the Republicans – that was a great mistake that should never have happened. And I think this thing with Stormy Daniels and so forth is nobody’s business."
Among the Republicans who thought differently, in the Clinton years: the televangelist Franklin Graham.
“Private conduct does have public consequences,” Graham wrote in a 1998 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled, “Clinton’s Sins Aren’t Private.” [...]
“[T]he God of the Bible says that what one does in private does matter. Mr. Clinton’s months-long extramarital sexual behavior in the Oval Office now concerns him and the rest of the world, not just his immediate family. If he will lie to or mislead his wife and daughter, those with whom he is most intimate, what will prevent him from doing the same to the American public?”