The marriage between Donald Trump and right-wing evangelicals was—like all of Trump’s marriages, and the tuxedos he wore to the weddings—a really bad fit. Evangelicals purport to live their lives according to the teachings of Jesus Christ, but it turns out there’s some wiggle room there. For instance, you can easily get dispensation for dozens of alleged sexual assaults if you nominate a gropey lush of a Supreme Court justice who promises to force 11-year-olds to give birth to their rapists’ babies.
Googling “Trump” and “evangelicals” used to serve up pages of stories about right-wing Christians worshiping their new golden beluga calf. Yet after announcing his intention to ruin everyone’s lives run for president again, Trump has seen much of his once-rock-solid support erode like Don Jr.’s septum at Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and Subterranean Cocaine-Processing Facility.
With Trump’s power diluted, those cultish search results are yielding to some disturbing auguries for the ochre abomination.
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For instance, there’s this, from The Washington Post:
A televangelist who served as a spiritual adviser to Donald Trump says the former president has the tendency to act “like a little elementary schoolchild” and suggests that Trump’s focus on minor spats was preventing progress on larger goals.
“If Mr. Trump can’t stop his little petty issues, how does he expect people to stop major issues?” James Robison, the president of the Christian group Life Outreach International, said Wednesday night at a meeting of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers (NACL), a conservative political group that focuses on social issues.
[...]
His audience included dozens of Republican state legislators from across the country gathered in a hotel ballroom. At first they listened attentively as Robison began his address, nodding and showing support with a frequent “yes” and “amen.”
Meanwhile, The Jerusalem Post is wondering if Trump still has the backing of evangelicals.
Will Evangelicals, who claim that Donald Trump blessed Israel more than any other American president in recent memory, stand behind him again as he announces another run for the White House?
[...]
“At the present moment, our [evangelical] movement is divided” on Trump, [evangelical leader Dr. Mike] Evans said. “The average Evangelical Christian is a faith-based person… [and] Donald Trump does not personify biblical values. So, although they very much admire his policies, they honestly don’t admire the person.
“He does not have the support of the Evangelicals that he did,” Evans said.
However, he admitted that Evangelicals will likely be faced with a dilemma: Trump is likely to win the Republican primary.
Evans—who The Jerusalem Post notes “helped mobilize the Evangelical vote for Trump that won him the 2016 election” and “also supported the former president in the 2020 election”—also published an essay Thursday in The Washington Post in which he wrote, “Donald Trump can’t save America. He can’t even save himself. He used us to win the White House. We had to close our mouths and eyes when he said things that horrified us. I cannot do that anymore.”
D’oh! Well, that’s not good … for Trump, anyway.
Trump’s staunchest ex-allies are reluctant to hop on Trump’s Hades-bound bandwagon—not because he’s a terrible person whose values are antithetical to everything Christians claim to stand for. Nah. It’s because the one thing Jesus can’t forgive is being a big loser with big loser stink lines pouring off your big loser corpus.
Newsweek:
Robert Jeffress, a pastor at the First Baptist Dallas church in Texas and staunch evangelical ally of Donald Trump, said on Wednesday that he will wait for the Republican Party nomination to endorse the former president.
"Donald Trump was a great president, and if he becomes the GOP nominee in 2024 I will happily support him," Jeffress told Newsweek.
When further asked about supporting Trump ahead of the Republican nomination, Jeffress told Newsweek that "the Republican Party is headed toward a civil war that I have no desire or need to be part of. My priority is being pastor of First Baptist Church Dallas and preaching God's word to millions of people each week on our television and radio broadcasts."
Guess evangelicals’ new golden rule is “Do unto Donald Trump what we should have done unto him in 2016, for fuck’s sake.”
RELATED: Evangelicals excused porn under Trump, but are ready to restart their crusade
And while Trump—and Republicans—have long pursued the evangelical vote as vital to their future control of the nation, support among future evangelical voters is apparently a bit wobbly.
Newsweek:
Donald Trump rode to victory against Hillary Clinton in 2016 with significant help from white, Protestant evangelicals, who make up about one-fifth of the electorate. Around 77 percent of them backed the former president, according to Pew Research.
But evangelicals ages 18-25 — representing about 13 percent of Gen Z — are not nearly as likely as their parents and grandparents to be influenced by Republicans, according to a new poll from Neighborly Faith, which bills itself a student movement that introduces Christians to young people of other religions.
Neighborly Faith co-director Kevin Singer told Newsweek the shift in whom young evangelicals look to for influence could already be having an impact, pointing to midterm elections in which the Republicans did not achieve the "red wave" of victories they had hoped for.
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This next go-around, at least when it comes to the new generation of voting evangelicals, it could inch closer to a 50-50 split Republican to Democrat, which may not bode well for the GOP's future, said Singer, even though evangelical elders remain steadfastly conservative.
And while Trump has at times (or, rather, at all times) fancied himself the chosen one, many of his disciples seem ready to deny him three, 30, or even 300 times. On Sunday, Everett Piper, an evangelical Washington Times columnist, bluntly laid out what many—perhaps even most—right-leaning observers are currently thinking.
It’s the weekend after the November midterms, and here are three key takeaways from Tuesday’s election.
No. 1: Conservatism still wins.
No. 2: Trumpism does not.
No. 3: If we don’t learn lessons one and two, and learn them quickly, the GOP will get destroyed in 2024.
When grifters see the grift falling apart, they blow town and try their luck elsewhere. But where can Trump go after the whole world has caught on to his tacky shell game?
RELATED: Does anyone besides Donald Trump actually want his 2024 comeback story? Even Ivanka tapped out
Of course, ever since Constantine, many Christians have seen sidling up to power as the best strategy for promoting their own interpretations of Jesus’ message—which, to be clear, included exactly nothing about abortion. And now they appear to be sidling away from Trump, who seems to have suddenly contracted a form of political leprosy even Jesus can’t heal.
That’s great news for America, but that doesn’t mean America isn’t still thirsty for snake oil, and if Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—who presented himself as God’s gift to the Sunshine State in a recent campaign ad—becomes Republicans’ new panacea, the cure may actually turn out to be worse than the disease.
Sen. Raphael Warnock is still defending his Georgia seat, and the Dec. 6 runoff is coming fast. If you can—and if you aren’t too tired from saving America on Nov. 8—please rush a donation to Team Warnock now! You can also write letters to Georgia voters with Vote Forward! Let’s finish up strong!
Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.