Is There Really NOTHING That Will Change Evangelicals' Minds About Trump? How About Fox News Addicts?

Is there anything likely that could persuade you to change your position on Trump? Same for most white evangelicals. Reporting on the new polling from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), The Atlantic's Emma Green wrote that new polling shows Trump’s base totally unified behind him, no matter what investigations might reveal. Start with this: 98% of Republicans who get their news primarily by watching Fox oppose removal and 71% of them strongly approve of Trump, which is all the more interesting single only 39% of non-Fox-watching Republicans strongly approve. For all his huffing and puffing about Fox lately, the station is his biggest firewall.

Green wrote that in mid-September 94% of self-identified Republicans opposed impeachment. "A month later-- after the news about Trump’s fateful phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and after House Democrats formally launched an impeachment inquiry-- their views are essentially unchanged. Even with these revelations, 93 percent of Republicans remained opposed to impeachment in mid-October, according to data released today from the Public Religion Research Institute. Of all Republican voters, two subgroups stand out for their unwavering support of Trump: those who primarily get their news from Fox, and white evangelical Christians."

Vote Common Good-- progressive evangelical pastors and laymen-- are disproving the sweeping generality that white evangelical Christians are incapable of changing their minds.

Doug Pagitt is an evangelical pastor in Minneapolis and co-founder of Vote Common Good. "Of course, Evangelical voters are capable of changing their minds in regards to Trump," he told today. "They changed their minds toward him in early 2016, as this article points out. I am confident that up to 15% are prepared to change their support away from Trump in 2020 as compared to 2016. The poll questions about the support of impeachment will not serve as a pre-curser of election support. I’ve recently overheard high profile evangelicals expressing their personal concern about the President and his statements of his “unsurpassed wisdom,” the retreat in support for the Kurds, and general incompetence. These polls are late-indicators of what happens in the election. Trump will not lose all Evangelical support, obviously, but as we saw in the 2018 mid-term election, Evangelical support for Republicans dropped from 81% in 2016 to 75% in 2018. This number will move downward again in 2020." 

A significant portion of Trump’s Republican supporters are open about their belief in his infallibility: 42 percent of Republicans said there is virtually nothing the president could do to lose their approval. Among Republicans who cited Fox News as their primary news source, this number was even higher, at 55 percent. And Trump’s most steadfast supporters are also most likely to condone his behavior: Nearly two-thirds of white evangelicals said Trump has not hurt the dignity of the presidency. By contrast, majorities of all other religious groups said Trump has damaged the image of the office.

These numbers reinforce the idea that some of Trump’s supporters have come to see American politics as an all-out war. Whatever reservations they may have had about Trump when he first ran for office have apparently been soothed, either by his full-throated defense of his supporters’ priorities or because these voters resent what they see as unrelenting attacks against him and his administration. Trump’s evangelical surrogates have said as much. The Texas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress recently said that Democrats were inviting a “civil war” by pursuing impeachment proceedings

Hard-core Trump supporters are not representative of America, and they’re not the only voters who have hardened their political position in the past few years. Only 29 percent of registered voters told PRRI that they would vote for Trump in the 2020 election, no matter who becomes the Democratic nominee. By comparison, 40 percent of registered voters said they would support the Democratic candidate no matter who it is, while 29 percent said their ballot remains up for the taking.

Regardless of how impeachment plays out in the coming months, the proceedings are not likely to bring any semblance of political unity or compel committed Trump supporters to change their mind. Even if the president goes down, some Americans have apparently decided that they’re willing to go down with him.

Frank Schaeffer, whose father, Francis Schaeffer, helped "invent" the religious right, has a very pessimistic view of this subset of Americans that he shared with us early this morning. "What secular commentators don’t 'get' is that Trump has passed from the political to the supernatural for white evangelical supporters in the same way as they don’t care what 'science says' about virgin births in order to believe in one. Evangelicals don’t care about facts related to Trump being 'sent by God to save America.' It’s now a matter of faith. Trump has been 'raised up by God' not because he is good but because he is being used by God set the conditions for the end of the world. Trump is a holly mystery that can’t be argued about but just needs to be believed."