It is relatively safe to say that throughout Donald Trump’s miserable existence his only regard was ever serving his own best interests, and that motivation has driven everything related to his occupancy in the White House. It is glaringly apparent that in pursuit of his own interests he has spent the past two years reliably serving the people who aided his ascendancy to a place he has no right occupying; that assertion was made manifest over the past couple of weeks to the detriment of America.
Trump’s decision to sacrifice America’s Kurdish allies in Syria to their Turkish enemies was serving the interests of Russia for their electoral meddling in 2016. If that were not the case Putin would not have thanked Trump openly or felt comfortable asking when Trump would start withdrawing American military forces from Afghanistan; something Trump wasted no time announcing to the shock of the military, Republicans, and foreign policy advisors. Trump has to repay Russia for itsvaluable assistance during the 2016 election.
It was no different when Trump boasted he would be proud to shut down the government, possibly for a very long time, if Congress did not fund construction of a “spiked wall” along the border with Mexico. He was serving the interest of his xenophobic white evangelical base and nothing else. Even Trump knows a wall is no way to reform the nation’s immigration system, but immigration reform was never of interest to Trump or he would not allow undocumented immigrants, or any immigrant for that matter, to work in his businesses. It turns out that Trump was proud to shut down the government to satisfy his white evangelical racist base – the only religious demographic in the nation vehemently opposed to non-Aryan immigrants and racial or cultural diversity.
As was recently revealed by outgoing White House Chief Of Staff John Kelly, Trump had all but abandoned the idea of “solid concrete wall” early in the administration. It is a claim the pathological liar Trump denies, but as noted, he is a pathological liar of the first order. That “big, beautiful, concrete wall” was only proffered during the 2016 campaign to serve the white supremacists and evangelical racists who were crucial to Trump’s electoral success. The wall became important after a survey just prior to the recent midterm elections revealed that making the wall into an “issue” worth shutting down the government was incredibly important to his white evangelical base.
A poll conducted by Public Religion Research Institute, its “9th annual American Values Survey” revealed:
“White evangelical protestants are the only religious demographic in the United States in which the majority views immigrants as a ‘threat’ to American values and sees the country's increasing racial diversity as a very dangerous thing.” (author bold)
The researchers found that Trump’s most dependable acolytes, white evangelical Protestants, are fundamentally, and completely, at odds with “all other identified religious groups on immigration, race, the #MeToo movement and President DonaldTrump.”
A professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, Janelle Wong, explained that contrary to popular opinion, there is much more to white evangelical extremists’ support for Trump than the typical evangelical issues such as opposition to women’s and gays’ constitutional rights. Ms. Wong explained:
"To understand white evangelicals here in the U.S., we really need to look beyond the hot-button traditional religious views of abortion and same-sex marriage. When you look at the [PRRI] report, [marriage and abortion] are a very low priority for Republicans and for white evangelicals. The real key to understanding white evangelicals is their anti-immigrant attitudes and fear of demographic change.
They are also the only religious group to contend that immigrants threaten American values. It is really this potent mix of nativism and racial anxiety and white Christian nationalism that underlines many of the other policy attitudes that you see presented in this report."
It should come as no surprise that less than a week after the PRRI report’s release, and a few days prior to the midterm elections, Trump appealed to his white evangelical supporters’ fear and loathing of (Brown) immigrants and a diverse America. To be more specific, like Trump’s Nazi supporters, white evangelical racists are terrified of the “browning of America.” It is why Trump is pushing what he knows is a futile and childish idea of a “big beautiful wall” that the majority of Republicans in Congress comprehend is not only no solution to undocumented immigration, a simple misdemeanor, it is as absurd and childish as Trump.
Trump’s current, and almost certainly interim, chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney said that Trump’s idea of building a border wall as the best way to address immigration issues was “absurd and almost childish.” He said during a radio interview in late 2015 what nearly any sane human being, and most dyed-in-the-wool Republicans, already knew about Trump; he only tells people what they want to hear so they support him. Mulvaney said:
“The fence doesn’t solve the [immigration] problem. To say build the darn fence and have that be the end of an immigration discussion is absurd and almost childish to take that simplistic of [a] view. It’s easy to tell people what they want to hear.”
In this particular case, Trump actually shut down the government to sate the racial animus of his white evangelical base. Remember, these fake Christians claim to be followers of Christ who preached to love all people without regard to their national origin or the color of their skin making them as fake as their corrupt champion in the Oval Office.
Trump is no kind of Christian, but like the majority of Republicans in Congress even he knows there is not the level of racial animus and fear of immigrants, or a diverse America, in the population that xenophobes and racist white evangelicals hold as close to their bosoms as they do their Christian bible. If that were the case, a Republican-majority House and Senate would have rapidly funded construction of the wall within a month of Trump’s poorly-attended inauguration. But they did not because unless they are racist white evangelicals, they are not willing to embrace an anti-immigrant or anti-diversity posture and risk losing any electoral support – no matter their religious indoctrination.
That Trump was willing to shut down the government, something he took pride in doing to appease a minority of racist and religious Americans, is as much about distracting the people from his corruption and criminality as it is feeding the endemic hatred towards “the other” among his Jesus-loving white evangelical base. That he is willing to put his own self-interests ahead of the entire country, and lie like the lying liar he really is to instill more panic and hostility in that base is typically Trump and a distinctively Republican trait.