Midnight Meme Of The Day!

 

by Noah


Sunday Thoughts

I've seen homeless people on the streets of New York act just like this but this is Paula White, President Trump's personal Spiritual Advisor, at least when Stephen Miller isn't around. Jeeez, and we thought Jerry Falwell, Jr. was bad. Years ago, I used to see speed freaks and acid casualties in Tompkins Square Park doing the same rap. Just play the above clip and then let it soak in that, basically, the entire Trump White House staff and his Cabinet are just like this poor, demented and godforesaken soul. I imagine she sits on an oval office couch, or on some of the My Pillow guy's pillows in the corner, chanting this insane gibberish. It's probably piped all over the White House 24hrs a day. Does she get into Don, Jr.'s Meth stash? Nah, she doesn't need to. She comes by what you see naturally. It's just her. We used to have people like Paula White in asylums but Ronnie Raygun let them all go. He, like all Republicans, was soft on insanity.

It's been said that she gives opening "prayers" to cabinet meetings, and we do know that she counts dozens of Republican congresscretins among her fans. In turn, their voters think she's the tops! I'd love to see her on FOX "News" with Rudy Giuliani; just the two of them doing what they do best, for a whole hour. What a conversation that would be. Keep your hands above the desk, Rudy! Maybe they could bring in Screamin' Jeanine Pirro or Sarah Palin for the last 5 minutes before the whole thing just clicks to black in a sudden explosion.

By the way, I think the guy wandering back and forth in the background is a nice touch. Poor guy's probably just trying to find his way out of the building, quickly.

Want more of Paula White? Check this out, and, no, it's not a comedy act.

As If 2020 Hasn't Be Sick Enough... The Falwell Games

 

Last week, Fox News reported that Jerry Falwell Jr is suing Liberty University for defamation and, a Trumpier shit-storm of corruption, perversion and hucksterism isn't likelier to be found anywhere in the grand ole year of 2020.

Falwell left Liberty in August after Giancarlo Granda, a younger business partner of the Falwell family, said he had a years-long sexual relationship with Falwell's wife, Becki Falwell, and that Jerry Falwell participated in some of the liaisons as a voyeur. There have also been charges that Falwell participated in more ways than voyeurism, both with Granda (aka, the pool-boy) and Ben Crosswhile (aka, the gym guy), booth of whom have become wealthy because of their sexual relationships with the Falwells. "[T]here have been concerns that the lines between Falwell’s personal profits and that of the school’s have been blurred and, shortly after his departure, Liberty announced it was opening an independent investigation into his tenure as president-- a wide-ranging inquiry that would include financial, real estate and legal matters." And all of this is tied up with the Trump campaign and Trump presidency.

The Virginia lawsuit asserts that "When Mr. Falwell and his family became the targets of a malicious smear campaign incited by anti-evangelical forces, Liberty University not only accepted the salacious and baseless accusations against the Falwells at face value, but directly participated in the defamation. This action seeks redress for the damage Liberty has caused to the reputation of Mr. Falwell and his family... Liberty’s actions are antithetical to the teachings of Christ by playing right into the hands of sinister operatives with ulterior motives."

Perhaps Falwell will sue Politico as well after Sunday's mega-exposé pounded another rusty nail into his repetitional coffin. Just as word was coming out about how Trump is continuing to tank with Catholic voters, reporters Maggie Severens, Brandon Ambrosino and Michael Stratford took a solid wack at the underpinnings of the biggest Trump support group: white evangelicals. The beginning of the trio's piece was amazing: "When Jerry Falwell Jr. and his wife Becki strolled around the Lynchburg, Va., campus of Liberty University, the evangelical school which Falwell led as president, they would play a secret game called 'Would you rather.' The middle-aged couple would point to students, men and women, and imagine what it would be like to have sex with them, according to a former student who said Becki told him about the game. The former student, a member of a band with the Falwells’ son Trey, has said that Becki initiated oral sex with him while he stayed overnight at the Falwell home, following other attempts to seduce him. She confided to him the details of the game she and her husband would play, and told him multiple times how she and Jerry would take note of students' appearances. 'Her and Jerry would eye people down on campus,' the former student, who was 22 when Becki performed oral sex on him and is now 32, said."

Now, following an episode this summer in which Falwell posted a photo of himself with his pants unzipped and arm around his wife’s assistant, Falwell has left his job and withdrawn from public life. Supporters of the university, which boasts it has more than 100,000 students, are left to wonder how to disentangle its reputation from that of the Falwell family, given that the two were synonymous for generations. And some are wondering why it took so long-- and until a direct act by Falwell like posting a photo-- for the university’s trustees to take any action.

A Politico investigation, including interviews with dozens of Liberty officials from Falwell’s time as president, found a university community so committed to the Falwell legacy that even trustees considered it unthinkable to exert power over the son and namesake of the university’s revered founder. Plus, the university employed at least 20 relatives of stakeholders-- defined as senior administrators and the 32-member Board of Trustees, according to federal tax disclosures-- which gave many leaders an incentive to stay on Falwell’s good side.

...Falwell experienced so little oversight that he regularly used the university’s private jet for personal travel, often to Florida; kept five of his immediate family members on the payroll, including his 31-year-old son Trey at a salary of $234,310; sold a university-owned home to Trey; extended a university-backed loan to a family friend; rented university property on favorable terms to his former personal trainer; and used the university’s employees for renovations on his home, for which he repaid $175,000, among many instances when Liberty’s resources benefited the Falwells and their allies.

While Falwell’s personal behavior and self-dealing raised alarms among some Liberty loyalists, including people close to his father, they would leave the university-- sometimes in exchange for severance agreements that included non-disparagement clauses-- and keep quiet about their misgivings. Like many evangelicals, they had a skepticism about the mainstream media and feared outside retaliation against the university.

“The church has a bad habit of keeping things secret. They want to keep it in house, take care of it in house. And Liberty’s the same way. It wants to suppress things and keep things quiet-- and that’s what they did with Jerry,” said Mark Tinsley, a former Dean of the College of General Studies at Liberty University who left in 2017.

No one doubted that Falwell, backed by the power of his last name, exerted more control than his nominal bosses, the trustees.

One of Liberty’s most high-profile supporters, board member Mark DeMoss, whose father had donated $20 million to Liberty for construction of DeMoss Hall, one of the largest buildings on campus, was pushed off the board in 2016 after questioning Falwell’s endorsement of Donald Trump over other Republican contenders for president.

DeMoss had once served as Jerry Falwell Sr.’s chief of staff, and chaired the executive committee of Liberty’s trustees when he was abruptly pushed out of the Liberty fold.

After Falwell surprised much of the evangelical world by choosing the twice-divorced Trump, an infrequent churchgoer, over numerous Republican presidential candidates with strong religious backgrounds and evangelical ties, DeMoss made the rare move of speaking publicly about the decision. He told the Washington Post that Trump’s behavior is “not Christ-like behavior that Liberty has spent 40 years promoting with its students.”

...The Moral Majority was both a fundraising behemoth and a rallying point for Christians to get involved in politics. As the group's most high-profile leader, Falwell Sr. travelled the country, staging rallies and parades and helping to register new voters at churches. In 1980, the group threw its support fully behind Republican Ronald Reagan against the evangelical Democratic President Jimmy Carter. After Reagan won a surprisingly large victory, the Moral Majority took credit for mobilizing a new bloc of voters that helped him win Southern states that had four years earlier supported Carter, their fellow Southerner.

“You can almost draw a line from his endorsement of Trump in early 2016 to his being much more, not just comfortable, but feeling invincible,” said one former Liberty administrator. “Because he was on an airplane with Donald Trump, and he’s at a rally, and he’s on TV.”

The Falwells were, increasingly, living glamorously. Falwell would speak to faculty about attending Elton John and Justin Bieber concerts, and sometimes going backstage, one former faculty member said. He told a reporter from Slate that he and Kanye West had “struck up a little friendship.”

Falwell’s children posted photos on Instagram of themselves travelling on private jets. And on more than one occasion, Falwell shared photos of his family’s yacht vacations in exotic destinations like Greece and the Bahamas, one of which-- the photo that featured Falwell with his arm around his wife’s assistant-- attracted national attention last summer and led to Falwell being placed on leave from Liberty.

“They all got careless in the social media age, and Liberty was doing so well financially that Jerry began to think he was invincible-- and the board was satisfied with the school’s success in other financial metrics, and wasn’t paying attention,” the former Liberty administrator said.

...Financial success seemed to embolden Falwell in his willingness to cut deals with family members and friends. Back in 2013, the university had extended a $750,000 loan to Falwell’s friend Bobby Moon to form a private construction company to work on Liberty’s upcoming billion-dollar expansion. The company, called Construction Management Associates, became Liberty’s biggest outside contractor, drawing in up to $75 million per year. Liberty also hired a crane company long owned by Moon and his family, CSE Inc., to work on Liberty's library, adding to the payouts.

Falwell, most often with CMA, tackled lavish renovations for the university. Liberty rebuilt its football stadium, baseball stadium and nearly all of its major sports facilities. It built a new concert hall and added a gun club near campus on Liberty Mountain, where students can join a shooting team or take free concealed carry classes. Liberty renovated its basketball stadium at an estimated cost of $20 million, and then added a second, smaller basketball stadium next door for lower-profile games. Under Trey Falwell’s oversight, the Carter Glass house that used to be the older Jerry Falwell’s office was renovated into a “five-star” bed-and-breakfast for Liberty’s guests.

But Moon wasn’t the only person in Falwell’s orbit who received business while Falwell was running Liberty. Family members, board members and university administrators also landed jobs, contracts and other benefits.

Jerry and Becki Falwell’s former personal trainer, Ben Crosswhite, was sold a fitness facility on Liberty’s campus in 2013 that Crosswhite then partially leased back to Liberty for $575,000 over eight years, a sum that significantly cut the cost of buying the fitness center. (Liberty officials maintained the deal was still advantageous to them from a business perspective.)

Crosswhite declined to comment. In a recent interview with Lynchburg’s WSET news, he denied that the deal was to his advantage.

...In 2019 multiple news outlets reported that Cohen, Trump’s fixer, had bragged about helping to bury nude photos of Becki that had circulated among people involved in the youth hostel deal. In September of that year, Politico published an extensive exposé that covered many of Falwell’s self-dealings and recounted inappropriate behavior by Jerry.

“All he wanted to talk about was how he would nail his wife, how she couldn’t handle [his penis size] and stuff of that sort,” Politico quoted a former university official as saying in that September 2019 piece.

Since then, more stories have come to light. Becki’s friend recalled how the Falwells had an old Price of Admission sign decorating their home, and how Jerry told her, “Yeah, every time someone comes in, I say ‘Oh, that’s for blowjobs.’ ”

 

This Is The Most Important Week Of Your Life-- Just Like Every Other Week Has Been And Will Continue To Be

 

Asterisked-- The Worst President In History by Nancy Ohanian

Satan's doorway into American Christianity has always been through the hucksters, charlatans and cranks who make up the leadership of the evangelical movement. And then came Trump... and the next step. Washington Post reporter Sarah Bailey wrote about the rise of so-called Patriot Churches last week. Today they are "praying for a Trump landslide [and that] 'communism and socialism and transgenderism and homosexuality and abortion will not have their way in this land.'... While most White conservative Christian churches might only touch on politics around election time and otherwise choose to keep the focus during worship on God, politics and religion are inseparable here. The Tennessee congregation is one of three Patriot Churches that formed in September. The other two are near Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia., and in Spokane, Washington [see Matt Shea], and [Pastor Ken] Peters says he is talking with several more pastors of existing churches who want to join them... Peters’s flock is not affiliated with a specific denomination, but it does have a distinct identity. The Patriot Churches belong to what religion experts describe as a loosely organized Christian nationalist movement that has flourished under President Trump. In just four years, he has helped reshape the landscape of American Christianity by elevating Christians once considered fringe, including Messianic Jews, preachers of the prosperity gospel and self-styled prophets. At times, this made for some strange bedfellows, but the common thread among them is a sense of being under siege and a belief that America has been and should remain a Christian nation."

They call masks "face diapers" and their perceived enemies are, government-mandated vaccines, Planned Parenthood, anti-fascists and Black Lives Matter. When one woman at a service said she wished there was some social distancing, another crackpot told her "Oh, trust the Lord with your health." People are encouraged to not wear masks. Newt Gingrich's sister, always an even crazier version of him, is a prominent member of the congregation in Tennessee. "Christians are being persecuted. That’s why we’re raising up people right now. We’ve had it with being second-class citizens," she said. "Even if Trump wins, the fight isn’t over."

Way on the other side of the Christianity spectrum are the Jesus followers, who are also very concerned with politics-- although in a very different way than Ken Peters, Susan Gingrich and Matt Shea (did you check him out?). Take John Pavlovitz, whose recent post, The Most Important Tuesday of Your Life has been on fire in woke evangelical precincts. He wrote that Americans' minds and hearts are solely fixed on Tuesday. But they shouldn't be.

"Regardless of what happens on Tuesday," he wrote, "whatever propels you into the voting booth needs to push you to your feet when the sun comes up in the morning. Because no matter the outcome and whether you feel vindicated or crestfallen-- many things will still be the same: You’ll still be surrounded by systemic ills and relational fracture and national discord. You’ll still have seen every grotesque reality that’s been uncovered over the past four years. You’ll still be walking shoulder to shoulder with weary, wounded human beings who will be looking for compassionate people to see their suffering and to move toward them. You’ll still have a specific front row seat to a place filled with terrors and traumas, and you’ll be the only one with your unprecedented ability to be what that world needs. This isn’t just about an election." 

I’d like to think that we are moved by something far greater than a date on the calendar or an election result or a candidate’s victory; that our collective elation or devastation do not reside in those things.

And ultimately, this isn’t just about the current President either.

If he were to disappear tomorrow, we would still be left with the fallout of everything he revealed: every bit of exposed ugliness, every cruel word uttered toward strangers, every disconnection we’ve endured from people we love.





We’ll still be who we are, surrounded by people being who they are, in the nation we’ve become-- and in the resulting tumult we’ll need to navigate the turbulence around us and bridge the expanses between us.

So where will hope be if it all hits the fan on that Tuesday?

It will be you, finding whatever it is that is that pulls you out of the crippling funk of grief and sadness and disbelief you’ll want to stay in-- and back into the fray of living. 
It will be found in your faith convictions and your personal burdens; in your activism and your advocacy and in the stuff you’ll still believe in.

It will be found in you deciding what matters most in this life, and whether or not it still matters enough to defend and protect it even if the threats seem greater than they are now.

Hope will be in the sunrise and how you decide to meet it.

In that way, Wednesday is actually pretty important, too.

On that day, there will still be hungry people needing to be fed, strangers seeking refuge, outsiders needing welcome, hurting people looking for the healers.

No matter what happens, win or lose-- you and I will need to place our energies and fix our gaze on the ways that we can choose gentleness and peace and generosity, far away from the ballot box.

On November 3rd, we’ll experience one of the pivotal, unprecedented moments in our lifetime. 
We’ll have a chance to allow our voices to be heard and to transform the very planet we’re standing on-- as well as the one we leave to people who will follow us.

We’ll get to leave an inheritance to those we love, and a legacy for those we’ll never know.

This particular Tuesday, we’ll get to let our lives impact the lives of countless human beings with one simple, yet profound act that we participate in. It will be our sacred opportunity to speak precisely from our deepest convictions, to let our hearts clearly resound into the world, and to know that we can be the difference in the day. In the face of a deafening fear that would gladly overwhelm us, we’ll get the chance to let love have the last, loudest word.

This is beautiful news, but the even better news is that we have that opportunity well before Tuesday and we’ll have it long after it as well.

As you read these very words, you have it.

Every single moment we’re here, you and I get to be agents of equity and justice. We don’t have to wait for an event to choose such things, and we can’t be fooled into believing they have an expiration date either.

The gravity of this moment isn’t just about changing Presidents and Senate seats and flipping districts and political victories (though it is certainly is about all those things.) Yes, legislatively there is so much hanging in the balance this particular Tuesday-- but the stakes are always similarly stratospheric, even if they are less noticeable.

The really critical act, is remembering that leveraging your life on behalf of others isn’t an event, it’s your ever-present calling. It’s about you and your daily ability to make this place more compassionate and generous and kind than when you found it. You get to be helper and healer and listener; to be an ally and an advocate and an activist.

There will be no way you can lose that.

As you move toward this Tuesday, don’t miss the countless opportunities you have, with every seemingly infinitesimal decision to elect hope, well before you ever step into a voting booth, and long after you walk out into the day.

So yes, please vote-- but regardless of the results of the election, remember that you always have that choice.

Yes, Tuesday is important.

Wednesday, too.

Today is just as critical.

This week is the most important week of your life.

It always is.

Jesus saves; Trump spreads COVID.

Talking About Twisting Yourself Into Knots, Can Anyone Believe In Jesus And Trump At The Same Time?

 

When I sat down on Monday morning to write this post, YouGov had just released 3 new polls for battleground states, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania-- collectively 46 electoral votes that Trump can't afford to lose. The Elections Research Center report on the polling noted that Trump is losing more and more heavily in these states as time goes on-- and as more people vote early. By Monday morning 60,507,338 people had already voted, including 1,985,687 Michiganders, 1,461,135 Pennsylvanians and 1,344,535 Wisconsinites. Among voters who had already cast their ballots, Biden is ahead by wide margins:

• Michigan: Biden- 75%, Trump- 23%
• Pennsylvania: Biden- 87%, Trump- 9%
• Wisconsin: Biden- 73%, Trump- 26%

In all three states, Trump's hold on his racist, neo-fascist base has remained the same but a larger share of undecided voters have decided-- and they're largely voting against Trump. Also, significant numbers of voters who had been toying with voting for third-party candidates have decided to vote for Biden instead.

When the pollsters factored in voter intention of those who haven't cast their ballots yet, it's closer, of course-- but not that close:

• Michigan: Biden- 52%, Trump- 42%
• Pennsylvania: Biden- 52%, Trump- 44%
• Wisconsin: Biden- 53%, Trump- 44%

One of the demographic cohorts most likely to be sticking with Trump are poorly educated white evangelicals. On Sunday evening, Matt Kaufman, a former editor for Focus on the Family’s Citizen magazine, explained to Bulwark readers why Christians should dump Trump. A conservative Christian himself, Kaufman is offended by Trump's torrential lying and gaslighting; pathological narcissism; pettiness, bullying, and cruelty; Twitter tantrums and schoolyard name-calling; corruption and abuse of public power for private interests; assaults on institutions and standards across government and culture; admiration and emulation of dictators; derogation of public servants, statesmen, and heroes; elevation of cranks, crooks, and clowns; bizarre rants and conspiracy-mongering; shameless appeals to the ugliest instincts; blatant racism; staggering ineptitude; and sheer stupidity. And that was just the beginning! He claims there are many Christians like him-- disgusted with Trump-- who are keeping it to themselves. But most conservatives won't abandon him because they see him as the lesser evil compared to Democrats.

That’s their eternal bottom line. No matter what this president does, no matter how indefensible, the greatest dangers they see always come from the left. How can I fail to back Trump, they wonder, with those threats looming? The closer Nov. 3 comes, the more urgently some of them want to know.

...If a president is (say) an utterly amoral, unstable, incompetent, insecure egomaniac, then he’s just got to go. Likewise if he acts like an autocrat, a thug or a criminal. Or if he’s beholden to hostile foreign powers. Or if he tramples the constitutional boundaries of his office, undermines basic norms and institutions, shreds the social fabric, poisons civil discourse, promotes tribalism and sets Americans at each other’s throats. He’s. Got. To. Go.

...It’s not enough for us to behave well individually if we collectively support someone who behaves like Trump. How many people will believe we’re not motivated by hate and fear if we tie ourselves to someone who traffics in both-- someone who invites the worst elements of society to come out and play? How many will believe we are motivated by conscience if we rally behind someone who’s devoid of one? What kind of Christian witness is that to the world?

In short, how much do our political allegiances damage the faith that we’re supposed to be spreading?

In the end, this might be the most compelling reason for Christians to reject Trump. There’s no shortage of others. Yes, he’s bad for our society in so many ways. Yes, he’s bad for the very causes some of us see as reasons to support him. Above all, though, he’s bad for the cause of Christ-- in ways more destructive than an army of avowed enemies could ever be.

From a Christian’s perspective, nothing should matter more than that. And if something does-- like defeating Democrats at all times, at all costs-- then I fear we’re falling into the devil’s trap. In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis had some things to say about the spiritual perils of politicized Christianity-- how factionalism and partisanship can skew our priorities. See for yourself in chapter 7: Like most things Lewis wrote, it’s worth the time.

I know the partisan temptation well: I’ve felt it often enough, particularly when I was a young man. And in my line of work, I also know the temptation to focus so heavily on certain issues that you lose sight of the big picture. Breaking away from those mindsets is a long-term process that takes conscious effort. But break away we must. If the Donald Trump experience doesn’t motivate us to do it, I don’t know what will.

I'd like to ask you to consider how Kaufman's analysis fits a young candidate the Republican Party is allowing to build himself up into a superstar of their future, North Carolina Nazi Madison Cawthorn, who we've written about since his surprise primary run-off win in June for the seat vacated by far right extremist Mark Meadows. Young Cawthorn is far to the right of Meadows and he was the subject of Judd Legum's attention this week, noting that "as election day approaches, a darker side of Cawthorn has emerged." Like virtually all Nazis, Cawthorn is also a racist and a virulent white nationalist. What pisses Legum off is that Cawthorn's racism hasn't stopped some of America's most prominent corporations from backing his campaign.

[A]fter Cawthorn scored an upset, the Republican Party lined up behind Cawthorn and corporate money began to flow to his campaign. Recent corporate PAC contributions to Cawthorn's campaign include:

Popular Information contacted all ten of these entities and asked whether Cawthorn's racist attack had any impact on their support for his campaign. AT&T and Exxon Mobile acknowledged the inquiry but did not provide a response. The other entities did not respond.

Cawthorn's truth problem

Over the course of the campaign, Cawthorn has been caught lying to create a more compelling narrative for voters. One of his campaign videos, for example, says that Cawthorn "planned on serving his country in the Navy with a nomination to the U.S. Naval Academy... until tragedy struck." But in a 2017 deposition related to the car accident, Cawthorn admitted he was rejected from the Naval Academy before the auto accident.

...Pressed on his lack of experience to be a member of Congress, Cawthorn said in an October 2 interview with a local media outlet that he had worked full-time for former Congressman Mark Meadows for two years.

“I don’t have 40 years of work experience, I’m only 25 years old, but I have worked in a congressional office for two years,” Cawthorn said.

Asked if that was full-time, he responded, “Yeah, I was full time.”

That was false. Records show "Cawthorn worked part-time on Meadows’ staff from Jan. 15, 2015 to at least Aug. 1, 2016." Cawthorn's campaign acknowledged that he was not, in fact, a full-time employee. He was paid about $1300 per month. "Madison was a permanent employee for Meadows who was paid on a part-time basis because he was physically incapable of performing some normal office duties due to his accident," a Cawthorn spokesperson said.

Cawthorn also regularly describes himself as a real estate investor and public speaker. But his financial disclosure, filed in March as a requirement of his candidacy, lists no income from either vocation. The form does not list any earned income from any source.

Multiple women allege Cawthorn made "unwanted sexual advances"

While Cawthorn was not accepted by the Naval Academy, he did attend Patrick Henry College for about a year. Ten of Cawthorn’s former classmates authored a letter this month condemning Cawthorn for his “gross misconduct towards our female peers” during his time as a college student.

During his brief time at the college, Cawthorn established a reputation for predatory behavior… Cawthorn would take young women to secluded areas, lock the doors, and proceed to make unwanted sexual advances. It became a regular warning in the female dorms not to be caught alone with Madison Cawthorn. Additionally, he referred to female students as 'bitches' and 'sluts,' both in private amongst his friends and often publicly. He also called our female peers these derogatory names when they refused to go for a ride in his car.

The letter was signed by 166 current students and former alumni of Patrick Henry College.

In response, Cawthorn’s campaign told the AVL Watchdog that the letter contained “unsubstantiated and anonymous accusations” and accused without evidence opponent Moe Davis for spurring the allegations.

Days later, the campaign published a letter of endorsement from Patrick Henry College alumni. It was signed by six people-- two of whom work on Cawthorn’s campaign. This letter describes the original letter as an attack from “liberal sources, as well as, discontented PHC alumni.” According to the AVL Watchdog, however, the authors of the original letter were not in contact with Davis’s campaign or any other political group. In fact, many of them describe themselves as conservative Christians.

In August, World, a Christian news magazine, reported that Cawthorn had made unwanted sexual advances on at least three women since 2014. “Two women say he forcibly kissed them. One woman told me he grabbed her thigh and moved his hand an inch or two beneath her dress,” wrote Harvest Prude.

Even before World published its report, one of the women mentioned in the piece, Katrina Krulikas, took to Instagram in August to publicly describe how Cawthorn forcibly tried to kiss her in 2014. Krulikas was a member of the same Christian homeschool community as Cawthorn.

“This older guy had taken me to the woods on our first date, only to pry into my sexual past and then try to force himself onto me,” Krulikas said. “I texted a friend, expressing how I didn’t feel comfortable being alone with Madison again, how he had been extremely aggressive and creepy towards me.”

Cawthorn’s campaign told World that Cawthorn had previously apologized to Krulikas “if his attempt to kiss her when he was a teenager made her feel uncomfortable or unsafe.” At the time of the alleged incident, Krulikas was 17 and Cawthorn was 19.

According to Krulikas, Cawthorn’s apology was “insincere.” He told her he “thought [she] was playing coy” and that “[he] can see in hindsight how that was over the line.”

“I believe that it should be noted that this [apology] came 6 years after the fact, when his political career is now at stake and he faces the possibility of public scrutiny,” wrote Krulikas.

Cawthorn cozies up to QAnon

In August, Cawthorn posted a video claiming that cartels were coming into the country and “kidnapping our American children and then taking them to sell them...on the sex slave market.” This claim, which is not supported by experts on human trafficking, is commonly echoed by QAnon believers. “I want to set free all the American children who have so tragically been taken from us,” Cawthorn said.

Cawthorn, who was visiting a private border wall at the time, suggests in the video that this information is coming from official channels. “I’m here meeting with a lot of ICE agents, a lot of federal agents and many sheriffs,” Cawthorn said.

On the trip, Cawthorn posted a photo with Lauren Witzke, the GOP Senate candidate who was photographed in a QAnon t-shirt and repeatedly posted QAnon hashtags. (Witzke nevertheless claims she does not believe in the conspiracy.) Cawthorn also took a photo with Mary Ann Mendoza, a member of Trump’s advisory board, who was disinvited from the RNC after promoting an anti-Semitic, QAnon conspiracy theory.

  A spokesperson for Cawthorn told the AVL Watchdog that Cawthorn “categorically disavows ‘QAnon.’” When asked by the AVL Watchdog to provide sources for Cawthorn’s statement, the spokesperson shared a March 2019 news release by The Department of Homeland Security. The release, which focuses on migrants, made no mention of American children being trafficked by cartels.

This isn’t the first time Cawthorn pandered to the fringe. Cawthorn met with congressional candidate Lauren Boebert. Boebert, who is running for office in Colorado, once said that she hoped Q was real because it meant “America was getting stronger.”

Moe Davis is now polling even with Cawthorn and, although the DCCC is ignoring the race, has a shot at beating this monster, who is already planning a Senate race in 2026 against Cal Cunningham, another step towards his eventual goal. If you'd like to give Davis some last minute love for his Get Out the Vote efforts, please use the ActBlue thermometer above.

Borough Park, Brooklyn... A Living Journey Back In Time-- WAY Back In Time... And, Of Course, Thick With COVID And Trumpists

 

When I was growing up in Brooklyn, there were always rumors of Republicans being there-- just not very many, and certainly never enough to be an electoral factor. Even last cycle, decades later, Hillary won Brooklyn 595,086 (79.7%) to 133,653 (17.9%). Still... where the hell did those 133 thousand people come from? Oh, basically Russia... and Israel. Russian neighborhoods in south Brooklyn are breeding grounds for treason and full-on fascism, and Ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods like Borough Park are bizarrely alternative and nearly self-contained universes that have more in common with speaking-in-tongues and snake-handling communities in Tennessee and Arkansas than anything to do with Brooklyn.

Yesterday, the [Jewish Daily] Forward reported that in Borough Park, New York's pandemic central, an anti-shutdown protest turned into a Trump rally, complete with a reporter being assaulted. Keep in mind, the Ultra-Ordthodox in New York, like the Ultra-Orthodox in Israel are willful super-spreaders because they don't think man's laws apply to them-- just a warped Eastern European version of the Old Testament by which they live their lives. They're far more like extreme evangelicals than they are like actual Jews. A trio of Forward reporters wrote that "The religious Jews of Brooklyn’s Borough Park neighborhood often pour into the streets during the harvest holiday of Sukkot to dance with Torahs in a celebration called Simchat Beit HaShoeva, a ritual having to do with rainfall." [Yes, these are very, very primitive people who have barely progressed from the Bronze Age.] "On Wednesday night, they danced along Borough Parks’s 13th Avenue holding Trump flags."

Heshy Tischler, a community agitator and candidate for New York City Council, drew a crowd for the second night in a row to protest new social-distancing restrictions that Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have imposed on the neighborhood and eight other ZIP codes with at least double the city’s positivity rate for coronavirus. And though he promised no violence after a counter-protester on Tuesday was beaten to the point of critical injuries, a Hasidic journalist was hit in the head, kicked and berated as a “Nazi” during Wednesday’s gathering of more than 300.

“Here is my army!” Tischler said Wednesday night pointing to the crowd that included Haredi-- or ultra-Orthodox-- Jews of all ages, some from outside the neighborhood. “We’re gonna fight back. This is our city, our town, our country.”

Tischler is not a rabbi, scholar or elected official, but he has emerged as a popular figure in this deeply religious neighborhood because its usual leaders have not been able to manage their communities’ resentment against the news media and government officials they see as biased against them, or even antisemitic.

“Community leaders all have their issues with standing up to the government,” said one protester, Avraham Mintz, who lives in Borough Park. “They don’t want to fight with Cuomo and de Blasio. So Tischler stood up and said, ‘I’m just going to stand up and scream.’”

Tishler had put out the call via social media and WhatsApp for people to find him at 13th Avenue and 50th Street at 9 p.m. The crowd included many young families with strollers, some grandfathers wearing masks, and teenaged boys from yeshivas in nearby neighborhoods, eager to see what would unfold. Women and girls stood on the sidewalk, as men gathered in the middle of the street to listen to Tishler and also dance to religious music played on loudspeakers.

After some protesters burned masks on Tuesday in a sign of defiance against the coronavirus restrictions, there was something of a concerted effort to show compliance with social distancing on Wednesday. Volunteers walked around handing out masks, and early into the festivities, some Hasidic teenage boys approached a news photographer and asked him to take pictures of them wearing masks.

The gathering was the place to be in a neighborhood unusually quieted for the holiday by the pandemic. “The boys are bored,” said one Hasidic mother who declined to give her name, pointing to the teenagers gathered in the street, rushing about in groups, clutching onto their kosher phones. “They didn’t have camp, they’re off from school now. This is all they have now.”

A teenage girl who said she was visiting from Israel, standing with a gaggle of girlfriends, also refused to identify herself to a reporter. “We’re here for both the protest and the party,” she said. “There’s not enough holiday action this year, so we came to see what’s happening here.”

Tuesday’s rally came a day after Cuomo’s announcement of new coronavirus restrictions that would essentially shut down the final weekend of the Jewish High Holidays in many of the state’s Orthodox communities. Synagogues are limited to 25% capacity with no more than 10 people inside, public and private schools have been ordered closed as of Friday, along with restaurants.

At that rally, protesters burned masks, and two people were attacked. One went to the hospital.

...Tishler, a gadfly who got 4% of the votes when he ran for City Council in 2017, has not issued demands or described specific goals for this new protest movement. He does say that he is running again in 2021 in the 48th District, which includes the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Midwood and Sheepshead Bay-- also subject to Cuomo’s new crackdown-- but not Borough Park.

The coronavirus might have provided him with a new lease on political life, although it is not clear what he is going to do with it.

“He tapped into the vacuum of no leadership,” Jacob Kornbluh, a Hasidic Jew who, like Tischler, lives in Borough Park, and is a journalist for Jewish Insider, said in an interview earlier on Wednesday.

Kornbluh has previously sparked the community’s ire by calling out violations of social-distancing rules. Tischler threatened him in a video he tweeted on Wednesday during the day. And on Wednesday night, when he recognized Kornbluh among the journalists covering his rally, Tishcler sent the crowd to chase him down the street.

Kornbluh was hit in the head and kicked by protesters, who screamed “Nazi” and “Hitler” at him.

Most of Tischler’s neighbors are Hasidic, but he is not. He does not wear the community’s uniform for men of black and white clothing, or curled sidelocks.

He works as an “expediter,” who facilitates official permits and other paperwork for construction professionals, but he also runs a weekly call-in show on YouTube and Facebook. After studying in yeshiva, he served time in prison for immigration fraud. He ran for City Council, but got only 4% of the votes.

Yet since the summer, when he gained wide attention among Orthodox Jews for taking bolt cutters to the chains around playgrounds in Hasidic neighborhoods, his profile has been rising.

“I don’t understand, why only the Jews?” Tischler said in an interview Wednesday, expressing the widespread Orthodox conviction that Cuomo’s rules unfairly single out their communities. “We contribute to this country more than anybody else, so you will respect us.”

In recent weeks, as coronavirus cases have spiked in Orthodox neighborhoods in Brooklyn and other parts of the state, he has risen in prominence because religious and government leaders failed to explain that the community could open in the summer, but would likely need to shut down religious life again in the fall to accommodate a second wave, Kornbluh said.

“What they did is basically argue for a reopening process without communicating a message of adhering to certain measures: Wear a mask, social distance,” Kornbluh said.

The community also felt alienated by city workers and contact tracers, who Orthodox groups have suggested were culturally insensitive. The city admitted last month that it had only five Yiddish-speaking contact tracers on staff. “We have been targeted terribly,” said one Hasidic female protester at the Wednesday rally. “That’s what we are feeling right now.”

Tischler provides an appealing alternative.

“Heshy Tischler is popular because he has a certain charisma, a certain charm,” said Ezra Friedlander, a Borough Park resident and political consultant, adding that Tischler’s rhetoric is “totally unacceptable.”

And he expresses people’s anger for them.

“Coronavirus is a new flu, until God brings us a new virus,” said one Hasidic woman at the Wednesday night protest. “This is part of galus [exile]. People are gonna die and gonna live. If Hashem wants you to live, you live. If He wants you to die, you die.”

"Haters of Israel"

On Wednesday afternoon in Borough Park-- between the two evening protests-- life resumed as normal, with men carrying bags with prayer shawls, as well as the palm branches and etrog fruits that are used in prayer services during the harvest festival of Sukkot, which is this week.

Few in the neighborhood knew Tischler’s name, but the things they said demonstrate that he knows the grievances they harbor against both media and government.

At Amnon’s Kosher Pizza at 4814 13th Avenue, a man turned to a woman and warned her in Hebrew that there are “journalists, she should be careful,” pointing to a corner where TV stations were setting up. She turned to them and screamed, “Haters of Israel!”

“De Blasio and Cuomo hate us Jews,” said one Hasidic woman who declined to give her name.

Cuomo and de Blasio have repeatedly said that they are enacting the restrictions based solely on rates of positive coronavirus infection, which are highest in Orthodox areas.

In Borough Park, the rate was about 6% at the beginning of this week, according to state data. In Rockland and Orange Counties, rates are considerably higher: In Kiryas Joel, the Hasidic hub, positive test rates reached nearly 30%, the highest in the country. The New York state average is just above 1%.

Tischler maintains-- without evidence-- that those numbers are fake.

“These are not real tests,” he said of results from state-administered coronavirus tests.

Tischler’s comments reflect a widespread skepticism in the Orthodox world of the statistics on which the government is basing its shutdown of Orthodox areas. He suggested that the city’s testing machines are not giving accurate results, and that there are few people actually getting sick from contracting the coronavirus at the moment. Cuomo has said that hospitalizations are rising.

Orthodox organizations should do their own testing, privately, and report their results to the state, Tischler said.

“Let me do the testing,” he added. “My tests are negative.”

...His Twitter account has under 1,000 followers, and only 790 people watched a recent show on YouTube from September.

But his videos are shared widely on WhatsApp, where he occupies a role once played by one of his inspirations, Donald Trump, as the community’s outspoken id who tells it like it is.

Tischler said Trump’s return to the White House after being hospitalized for COVID-19, and the president’s claims of recovering from the disease, had inspired him to protest the new restrictions. Tischler also downplayed the deadliness of the coronavirus, claiming without evidence that Orthodox Jews who died from COVID-19 more often died from poor hospital care than the disease itself.

“When I’m on the street, I don’t have to wear a mask, just like the president,” he said.

...On Wednesday, Aron Wieder, a Rockland County legislator representing the Hasidic hub of Monsey, released a video urging his community to continue to distance and wear masks, not for Cuomo’s sake, but because it adheres to Jewish values that promote saving a life over religious obligations.

“When people lose trust in government, chaos happens,” Wieder said in an interview. “I was trying to mitigate that by acknowledging” the community’s anger at Cuomo.

So far, Tischler’s political strategy seems to be more about amplifying anger than mitigating it.

Some of the protesters were grateful to him for his community organizing. “I don’t know what he’s doing but he opened our parks for our kids, and now he organized this,” said one Hasidic mother, pointing to the young men dancing in the street. “He is saying that it’s time for us to get out and show we have a voice, too.”

Life is dangerous for Jews who behave, Tischler said.

“We tried to follow the laws and the governor and mayor still came after us. My father is a concentration camp survivor,” Tischler said. “We were quiet then, and we behaved. Not anymore.”

Time to roll out the classic definition of "idiot" again-- a kind of a palate cleanser after before the dueling OpEds coming up:

First is by Eliezer Brand, a right-wing rabbi in Brooklyn who senses a kinship between his own primitive Haredi tribe and the worst of the evangelicals-- and is all gung-ho on Amy Coney Island and writes that Mike Pence represents him and "has been a great leader for religious people in general and for Orthodox Jews in particular." It starts with Pence's anti-Palestinian and pro-Zionist beliefs "but," he wrote, "it’s not just Pence’s foreign policy that has gained him support in our community. It’s his larger view of life-- specifically, how deeply and unapologetically impacted it is by his religious beliefs."

Early in the Trump presidency, the Washington Post reported that Pence never eats alone with a woman other than his wife Karen, and that he won’t attend events that serve alcohol without her by his side.

This became known as the Pence Rule and was widely misunderstood, mocked, misrepresented as something sinister and outright ridiculed. Even Kamala Harris, now his opponent, jumped at the chance to attack his faith. “I disagree with him when he suggests it’s not possible to have meetings with women alone by himself,” she told Politico. “I think that’s ridiculous-- the idea that you would deny a professional woman the opportunity to have a meeting with the vice president of the United States is outrageous.”

But Pence’s rule is not about denying women opportunities; it’s about making sure you are living by your values every minute of the day.

It’s something we Orthodox and Haredi Jews are well versed in. We, too, have a rule about not being alone with a woman who isn’t your wife or a man who isn’t your husband. It’s one of a few things that unites us with evangelicals, many of whom adhere to the practice known as the Modesto Manifesto, which Pastor Billy Graham created. It was meant as a display of integrity, a means of avoiding sexual temptation, just like our rules of yichud-- not being alone with members of the opposite sex.

This isn’t something we choose to believe in; it’s a tenet of our larger belief system that is not optional. And yet, it’s not something we can discuss openly without facing the mockery, derision, and blowback Pence faced.

And though I was dismayed at the media reaction to Pence’s adherence to his religion, I was also happy that it did garner attention. To have this in the national news helped bring this issue to the forefront and normalized it somewhat. It made us Orthodox Jews feel less alien to the culture at large.

There’s another front on which Pence is a friend to religious Jews. He has since his days as Governor of Indiana has been a champion of religious liberty, and not just for evangelicals.

He has been a strong supporter of Indiana’s private-school voucher program, a meaningful position for Orthodox Jews who largely send their kids to private school. And in 2015, Pence signed a state bill protecting religious liberty, hailed by local Orthodox Jewish leaders as positive.

Now, together with President Trump, he is backing another proudly religious person for the Supreme Court-- Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

Listening to Pence talk, I feel that he represents my interests and my fears as a Haredi Jew. He is a friend to the faithful, and, like me and my community, he does not compromise on his religious beliefs, even when they are unpopular, even when they come in for mockery.

In this sense, he is something of an avatar for Orthodox Jews in public life, despite being an evangelical Christian.

Yesterday, The Forward published an OpEd by Joel Swanson warning Jews about what Trumpism really is. "Sharing video of the protests, right wing Twitter activists decided to portray the tensions between Orthodox Jews and the police as 'rounding up Jews,' which President Trump retweeted with the added commentary, 'Wow, what does this grim picture remind you of? I am the only thing in the Radical Left’s way! VOTE.' It’s not the first time President Trump has sought to portray himself as a defender of the Jews, though comparing Democrats to Nazis is a new low."

But in light of new evidence confirming where the true threat to Jews comes from, it went from dangerous and disingenuous to absolutely galling. On the same day that the massive protests against new coronavirus restrictions broke out in Borough Park, the Anti-Defamation League released a massive new study of social media usage in the run-up to the 2020 election. The organization had uncovered what it called a “deluge” of antisemitism directed against Jewish members of Congress. According to the ADL’s findings, at least 10% of social media attacks against Jewish politicians are explicitly or implicitly antisemitic in nature, with 39% of those attacks focused on the false, antisemitic claim that Jewish Holocaust survivor George Soros is responsible for “funding and organizing the political careers of Jewish incumbents, the media, and Black Lives Matter and Antifa protests in order to assert a Communist or ‘Jewish supremacy’ agenda in the United States.”

The ADL particularly attributes what it calls an “alarming” rise in Soros-linked antisemitism directed against American Jewish politicians to the spread of the QAnon conspiracy theory on the far-right. But Trump himself has played a role in mainstreaming this fringe, antisemitic view, praising supporters of the conspiracy theory for their support for his candidacy and calling some its most prominent adherents “rising stars” in the Republican Party.

For President Trump to try to cast himself as some champion of the Jews in light of his own mainstreaming of one of the biggest antisemitic conspiracy theories of our time is absolutely ludicrous.

...[T]he coincidence that these anti-mask protests happened on the same day that the ADL released its new report on rising election-related antisemitism in the United States, showing that the overwhelming majority of this antisemitism comes from the far-right directed against Democrats and the left, reveals the breathtaking cynicism of politicians like President Trump trying to portray themselves as some kind of protector of the Jews.

On a week when the Department of Homeland Security has itself acknowledged far-right white supremacy as the leading cause of terror in the U.S., no one should be taken in by President Trump’s cynical attempts to portray himself as the protector of the Jewish people. A lot of new information came out this past week about where the real violent threats to the Jewish community in the U.S. lie in the final weeks leading up to the 2020 election. And President Trump is not going to protect us from those threats.

What do we know about religionist extremists (especially ones who wear uniforms as their everyday garb)?

• You can do anything and everything, no matter how savage and inhuman, in the name of their God
• They are extremely paranoid and way beyond self-righteousness and over the line into insanity
• They don't live in the contemporary world (except as leaches)
• They are, by definition and mass self-image, better than anyone else (outsiders)
• Magical thinking is A-OK, in fact, critical thinking is blasphemous, heretical and punished by ostracism if not death
• Members with normal IQs flee as soon as they can get away... which is very bad for the gene pool of the remaining community
• Classically speaking, the members are idiots, a problem for society
• And they gravitate towards authoritarian movements like Trumpism.

Do You Think Donald Worships Jesus?

Fox News judge Andrew Napolitano makes a big deal about being a conservative Catholic brimming over with "conservative Catholic values." The day before Fox suspended him-- for his second wild gay sex scandal-- he was on TV celebrating the nomination of another conservative Catholic to the Supreme Court. I doubt Amy Coney Barrett is in a gay closet like Napolitano. But she is a profoundly bigoted homophobic fanatic (which, presumably is how she defines her conservative Catholic values.

Republican hypocrites like Napolitano are rending their garments and setting their hair on fire because the godless Democrats are supposedly questioning Coney Island about her conservative Catholicism. Now, I don't know how devout Joe Biden is, but he sure seems more religious than the ones who are accusing the Democrats of being anti-Catholic... as usual. And they back DONALD!

The McKay Coppins piece in yesterday's Atlantic Trump Secretly Mocks His Christian Supporters, was the kind of really good writing we've come to expect from him. Does it surprise you that former Trump aides say that in private, Señor T has spoken with cynicism and contempt about religious believers, mocking their leaders as charlatans, recognizing them as they same kinds of hustlers and scam artists that he's been for his entire life? Trump, never one for nuance, didn't mince words: "They’re all hustlers."

Coppins wrote that his unlikely "alliance with religious conservatives has long been premised on the contention that he takes them seriously, while Democrats hold them in disdain. In speeches and interviews, Trump routinely lavishes praise on conservative Christians, casting himself as their champion. 'My administration will never stop fighting for Americans of faith,' he declared at a rally for evangelicals earlier this year. It’s a message his campaign will seek to amplify in the coming weeks as Republicans work to confirm Amy Coney Barrett-- a devout, conservative Catholic-- to the Supreme Court. But in private, many of Trump’s comments about religion are marked by cynicism and contempt, according to people who have worked for him. Former aides told me they’ve heard Trump ridicule conservative religious leaders, dismiss various faith groups with cartoonish stereotypes, and deride certain rites and doctrines held sacred by many of the Americans who constitute his base."

From the outset of his brief political career, Trump has viewed right-wing evangelical leaders as a kind of special-interest group to be schmoozed, conned, or bought off, former aides told me. Though he faced Republican primary opponents in 2016 with deeper religious roots-- Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee-- Trump was confident that his wealth and celebrity would attract high-profile Christian surrogates to vouch for him.

“His view was ‘I’ve been talking to these people for years; I’ve let them stay at my hotels-- they’re gonna endorse me. I played the game,’” said a former campaign adviser to Trump, who, like others quoted in this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

It helped that Trump seemed to feel a kinship with prosperity preachers-- often evincing a game-recognizes-game appreciation for their hustle. The former campaign adviser recalled showing his boss a YouTube video of the Israeli televangelist Benny Hinn performing “faith healings,” while Trump laughed at the spectacle and muttered, “Man, that’s some racket.” On another occasion, the adviser told me, Trump expressed awe at Joel Osteen’s media empire-- particularly the viewership of his televised sermons.

In Cohen’s recent memoir, Disloyal, he recounts Trump returning from his 2011 meeting with the pastors who laid hands on him and sneering, “Can you believe that bullshit?” But if Trump found their rituals ridiculous, he followed their moneymaking ventures closely. “He was completely familiar with the business dealings of the leadership in many prosperity-gospel churches,” the adviser told me.

The conservative Christian elites Trump surrounds himself with have always been more clear-eyed about his lack of religiosity than they’ve publicly let on. In a September 2016 meeting with about a dozen influential figures on the religious right-- including the talk-radio host Eric Metaxas, the Dallas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, and the theologian Wayne Grudem-- the then-candidate was blunt about his relationship to Christianity. In a recording of the meeting obtained by The Atlantic, the candidate can be heard shrugging off his scriptural ignorance (“I don’t know the Bible as well as some of the other people”) and joking about his inexperience with prayer (“The first time I met [Mike Pence], he said, ‘Will you bow your head and pray?’ and I said, ‘Excuse me?’ I’m not used to it.”) At one point in the meeting, Trump interrupted a discussion about religious freedom to complain about Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska and brag about the taunting nickname he’d devised for him. “I call him Little Ben Sasse,” Trump said. “I have to do it, I’m sorry. That’s when my religion always deserts me.”

And yet, by the end of the meeting-- much of which was spent discussing the urgency of preventing trans women from using women’s restrooms-- the candidate had the group eating out of his hand. “I’m not voting for Trump to be the teacher of my third grader’s Sunday-school class. That’s not what he’s running for,” Jeffress said in the meeting, adding, “I believe it is imperative … that we do everything we can to turn people out.”

The Faustian nature of the religious right’s bargain with Trump has not always been quite so apparent to rank-and-file believers. According to the Pew Research Center, white evangelicals are more than twice as likely as the average American to say that the president is a religious man. Some conservative pastors have described him as a “baby Christian,” and insist that he’s accepted Jesus Christ as his savior.

To those who have known and worked with Trump closely, the notion that he might have a secret spiritual side is laughable. “I always assumed he was an atheist,” Barbara Res, a former executive at the Trump Organization, told me. “He’s not a religious guy,” A. J. Delgado, who worked on his 2016 campaign, told me. “Whenever I see a picture of him standing in a group of pastors, all of their hands on him, I see a thought bubble [with] the words ‘What suckers,’” Mary Trump, the president’s niece, told me.

Greg Thornbury, a former president of the evangelical King’s College, who was courted by the campaign in 2016, told me that even those who acknowledge Trump’s lack of personal piety are convinced that he holds their faith in high esteem. “I don’t think for a moment that they would believe he’s cynical about them,” Thornbury said.

Trump’s public appeals to Jewish voters have been similarly discordant with his private comments. Last week, the Washington Post reported that after calls with Jewish lawmakers, the president has said that Jews “are only in it for themselves.” And while he is quick to tout his daughter Ivanka’s conversion to Judaism when he’s speaking to Jewish audiences, he is sometimes less effusive in private. Cohen told me that once, years ago, he was with Trump when his wife, Melania, informed him that their son was at a playdate with a Jewish girl from his school. “Great,” Trump said to Cohen, who is Jewish. “I’m going to lose another one of my kids to your people.”

One religious group that the Trump campaign is keenly fixated on this year is Mormons. In 2016, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints rejected the Republican ticket in unprecedented numbers. To win them over in 2020, the campaign has made Donald Trump Jr. its envoy, sending him to campaign in Utah and other Mormon-heavy states. The president’s son has cultivated relationships with high-profile conservatives in the faith. Earlier this year, he invoked Mormon pioneers in a call with reporters to describe his father’s “innovative spirit.”

In fact, according to two senior Utah Republicans with knowledge of the situation, Don Jr. has been so savvy in courting Latter-day Saints-- expressing interest in the Church’s history, reading from the Book of Mormon-- that he’s left some influential Republicans in the state with the impression that he may want to convert. (A spokesman for Don Jr. did not respond to a request for comment.)

I’ve been curious about the president’s opinion of Mormonism ever since I interviewed him in 2014 at Mar-a-Lago. During our conversation, Trump began to strenuously argue that Mitt Romney’s exotic faith had cost him the 2012 election. When I interrupted to inform him that I’m also a Mormon, he quickly changed tack-- extolling my Church’s many virtues, and then switching subjects. (He remained committed to his theory about 2012: During his September 2016 meeting with evangelical leaders, Trump repeatedly asserted that “Christians” didn’t turn out for Romney “because of the Mormon thing.”) I’ve always wondered what Trump might have said if I hadn’t cut him off.

When I shared this story with Cohen, he laughed. Trump, he said, frequently made fun of Romney’s faith in private-- and was especially vicious when he learned about the religious undergarments worn by many Latter-day Saints. “Oh my god,” Cohen said. “How many times did he bring up Mitt Romney and the undergarments …”

Our old friend Frank Schaeffer is always who I consult about these kinds of things, basically because he always has a solid, well-informed perspective and can tell me what I'm missing. This morning he pointed out that "Trump mocks evangelicals behind their backs. Duh! Ask yourself this: when Trump is out of office do you think he’ll ever call Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell Jr. (in rehab) or Ralph Reed just to chat? Will he drop by First Baptist in Dallas for old time’s sake? Evangelical's delusion about Trump begins with their delusions about their own pastors and leaders who-- as I well know because I grew up as one of them-- also mock rank and file church goers. The grifters who run the Big Time God Biz are cut from the same cloth as the Trump clan. They too run nepotistic family businesses. They too run fake universities and pad expense accounts. And they too 'love the uneducate' as Trump said he does. The Trump clan and the evangelicals leaders share a lot and one thing is utter contempt for the people who trust them, fund them and worship them."

A little note about why Trump is courting Mormons. It isn't because of Utah. He has those 6 electoral votes locked up. Same with Idaho, which has the third biggest Mormon population. The second biggest Mormon population is in California and they're not go to swing that state's votes for him. But the big Mormon populations in Wyoming, Montana and Alaska are part of Trump's base in those in-the-bag states. What Trump's efforts are all about are the 423,056 Mormons in Arizona (6.1% of the state's population) and, to a lesser extent, the 182,617 Mormons in Nevada (6.21 of that state's population). Mormon voters are not likely to deliver Nevada to Trump but without a massive turnout by Arizona's Mormon voters, that state's 11 electoral votes are going to Biden. Ditto for Florida's 154,921 Mormons. They're only 0.75% of Florida's population but in a state where elections are won by the smallest of margins, that many Mormons would be worth Trump, Jr. pretending he's converting.

Now, let me share a Tiny Desk home concert (just one song, "Soccer") by the Good Ones with you. What a ray of sunlight! My old friend Ian Brennan just sent it to me. He produced it, recorded it in Rwanda. By the way, that thermos Janvier Havugimana is using for percussion, is filled with milk.

Will Religious Voters Finally Abandon Their Golden Calf-- The Narcissistic Malevolent Cult Of Incompetence

Frank Schaeffer asks a good question in the video above. With 11% of the evangelicals and conservative Roman Catholics who voted for Trump in 2016 no longer supporting him, Schaeffer wants to know why are any evangelicals or conservative Roman Catholics still voting for Trump. I bet you've wondered that yourself. "If anything comes through from the teaching of Jesus," said Schaeffer, "it was kindness. Donald Trump has never been portrayed as a kind person, or even one with basic civility by anyone. The question for evangelicals is... a very simple one: does your idea of God feed your ego or feed your heart? Has your own self-centeredness grown into a self-righteousness in the name of God? ... Is malevolent narcissism, combined with incompetence, coming from someone who serves only themselfves, something that an evangelical Christian is attracted to. Put it this way: Is the evangelical faith itself changed to the place where we now assume that evangelical Christians themselves are so consumed by an egocentric desire to win politically that, like Donald Trump, they will sacrifice everything to this pyrrhic dream which is turning into a nightmare?"

This week, writing for Politico, Gabby Orr reported that "Trump’s overtures to religious voters appear to be falling flat. Months after worries first exploded inside the Trump campaign over his eroding support among white evangelicals and Roman Catholics, some of the president’s top religious allies are now in a panic-- concerned that Joe Biden’s attentiveness to Christian voters, whom Democrats largely ignored in 2016, is having an impact where the president can least afford it. One prominent evangelical leader close to the White House said Biden’s policy positions on abortion and religious freedom, which would normally spoil how some religious voters view the Democratic presidential nominee, have been overshadowed by the contrast between the former vice president’s palpable faith and Trump’s transactional view of religion. Another chided Trump for his 'cold response' to the nationwide reckoning over systemic racism, claiming the president’s law-and-order messaging has given Biden an opening to connect with churchgoing Americans who are accustomed to calls for courage and justice."

And that brings us to the study of evangelical voters in battlegrounds Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, commissioned by our friends at Vote Common Good. They found that "Trump is poised to lose a sizable chunk of his Christian voters in November, raising questions about his path to reelection and the potential value in religious outreach that Biden’s predecessor Hillary Clinton largely eschewed." That's where Schaeffer got the 11% number-- evangelicals and conservative Catholics who voted for Trump in 2016 and plan not to in November. That has always been Vote Common Good's goal-- to reduce his evangelical vote by between 10 and 20%. They're still working hard to accomplish that.

“The cumulative effect of the convention and the way that faith has been woven into Biden’s messaging speaks to the kinds of numbers we’re now seeing,” said Michael Wear, who directed faith outreach for President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign... Trump’s blunt messaging on coronavirus and race has created an opportunity for the Democratic nominee to “overturn the who-shares-your-values debate that Republicans have been winning.”

...According to the study, evangelical voters are split over which presidential candidate is more virtuous, while Catholic voters selected Biden over Trump by a 21-point margin. The largest gaps in voter perceptions of Biden and Trump emerged when respondents were asked to weigh each candidate against commonly recognized Christian virtues, including generosity, diligence, chastity, kindness, patience, modesty and humility. Only 22 percent of respondents gave the president a higher rating on his displays of humility and modesty versus Biden’s, while the pollsters cited Trump’s perceived lack of kindness-- 44 percent of respondents said Biden is more kind than Trump, while 30 percent said Trump is kinder-- as the leading cause of defections among Catholics and evangelicals who supported him in 2016.

“While it was baked in back in 2016 that Donald Trump was bombastic and crude, he always hinted that he would be presidential when he needed to be presidential,” said Doug Pagitt, a Minnesota-based pastor and an executive director of Vote Common Good, adding that some 2016 religious Trump voters have since “woken up to the fact that [Trump] has not changed one bit.”

“People of faith who didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton saw her as more corrupt and less kind than Donald Trump, and now some of those same voters see Donald Trump as more corrupt and less kind than Biden,” Pagitt said.

The Trump campaign sees it differently. In its view, most religious voters are less concerned with a candidate’s religiosity or virtuosity than they are with the impact of proposed policies. Biden, campaign officials claim, has adopted unreasonable positions on the issues that matter most to Catholics and evangelicals, including judicial appointments, religious freedom and abortion.

...A new book by Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen claims the thrice-married New York businessman once remarked to aides after meeting with evangelical leaders in 2016, “Can you believe people believe that bullshit?” The president was also roundly criticized earlier this summer for waving a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church near the White House minutes after law enforcement officials tear-gassed protesters to clear the area for his arrival.

“This is a different election for several reasons, but one of them is that the sheer disgust most religious voters felt for Hillary Clinton in 2016 doesn’t exist with Joe Biden,” said the Trump adviser. “If President Trump wants to ensure those voters still view him as the best choice, he needs to show he’s not just a champion of their causes but a believer in the cause himself.”

While it’s unlikely Biden will pull in a majority of Catholic or evangelical voters on Election Day, Trump could find himself in serious jeopardy if the Democratic nominee shaves off even a couple of percentage points in the president’s support among white evangelicals and Catholics. A central question of the president’s reelection strategy is whether he can marginally improve his 2016 levels of support among religious Americans, and black and Hispanic voters, to offset anticipated declines in his support among white women and suburban voters.

Pagitt believes the current environment-- with a Covid-19 death toll nearing 200,000 in the U.S. and recent police-involved shootings igniting a nationwide conversation about racism-- will preclude Trump from expanding his appeal among religious Americans before the Nov. 3 election, in addition to making it more difficult for him to maintain his grasp on the evangelical and Catholic voters who backed him four years ago.

“Joe Biden is getting support from religious voters who don’t even know what his religious background is,” he said. “This isn’t tribal voting. There’s an enormous amount of religious Americans who didn’t think there were good options in 2016 and voted for Trump, but now see Biden as the superior option.”

Cathy Kunkel is a progressive populist running in West Virginia against Trump stooge Alex Mooney. "Evangelical voters also share many of the same concerns as everyone else in West Virginia-- healthcare, basic infrastructure needs, and economic security. These issues have not gotten better in the last four years-- and, indeed, the botched response to COVID-19 has only worsened them. It is not surprising that some voters are reevaluating their choices."

Adam Christensen is counting on that reevaluation as well. He's the best shot from a progressive to flip a red congressional seat blue in Florida and he told me that most people following his race already know that he grew up a conservative Republican. "I was in church in the 7th row on the right side every Sunday from the time I was 7 days old. I grew up in Sunday school learning about the fruits of the spirit, learning about how to be moral and live a life of integrity. And as I got older I began to realize that the people who I went to church with lived their lives during the week completely differently than on Sundays. On Sundays they would read scripture and talk about how we are supposed to take care of the hungry and the sick. But during elections they would vote for politicians who blamed the hungry and the sick for their own problems. This was one of the  main reasons that I became a radical progressive. It is the reason so many young people are leaving the church and the Republican Party. It is because we understand that people should come before anything else. That 'Greed is not Good.' And that real 'Christians' aren’t afraid to stand up to the religious leaders and politicians and call them what they are, hypocrites."

Fascism Comes To America by Nancy Ohanian