Trump Is Handling The Pandemic As Badly As Any Deranged Narcissist Would

During his coronavirus briefing today, Trump blamed hospitals-- where doctors and nurses are literally dying trying to save patients-- for selling ventilators and masks (which is, of course, exactly what he would do himself). "It’s a New York hospital, very-- it’s packed all the time. How do you go from 10 to 20 thousand masks per week to 300,000? Ten thousand to 20,000 masks, to 300,000-- even though this is different? Something is going on, and you ought to look into it as reporters. Are they going out the back door?" He's a monster. Writing for the Daily Beast this afternoon, Rick Wilson noted that "Trump’s handling of the Coronavirus has veered between tragicomic and insidious in the past weeks. Disturbingly-- and even now, it’s disturbing-- all while still leaving him seemingly unmoved by the brutal realities facing us in the coming months. He’s made a few pro-forma nods to the deaths to date and to come, but expressed no genuine human sympathy for either the dead or the army of heroic doctors, nurses, EMTs in viral war zones in almost every hospital in the nation. Nothing changes him. Nothing moves him unless it gives him adulation, money, or an erection." CNN caught him lying his ass off all through the briefing.

Yesterday, the Washington Post published a piece by their DC-based health reporter, Amy Goldstein, Desperate for medical equipment, states encounter a beleaguered national stockpile, about a previously unreported shouting match in the White House Situation Room between broke out between Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and an unnamed Office of Management and Budget official. "Azar," she reported, "had asked OMB that morning for $2 billion to buy respirator masks and other supplies for a depleted federal stockpile of emergency medical equipment, according to individuals familiar with the request, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about internal discussions. OMB was angry because they claimed that Azar had improperly trespassed on their turf by lobbying Congress for money for what he saw coming, namely the COVID-19 disaster.

The Trump regime peremptorily cut the $2 billion request to a completely inadequate $500 million when the White House eventually sent Congress a supplemental budget request weeks later.

The dispute over funding highlights tensions over a repository straining under demands from state officials. States desperate for materials from the stockpile are encountering a beleaguered system beset by years of underfunding, changing lines of authority, confusion over the allocation of supplies and a lack of transparency from the administration, according to interviews with state and federal officials and public health experts.

The stockpile holds masks, drugs, ventilators and other items in secret sites around the country. It has become a source of growing frustration for many state and hospital officials who are having trouble buying-- or even locating-- crucial equipment on their own to cope with the illness battering the nation.

...The federal cache has been overwhelmed by urgent requests for masks, respirators, goggles, gloves and gowns in the two months since the first U.S. case of covid-19 was confirmed. Many state officials say they do not understand the standards that determine how much they will receive.

Anecdotally, there are wide differences, and they do not appear to follow discernible political or geographic lines. Democratic-leaning Massachusetts, which has had a serious outbreak in Boston, has received 17 percent of the protective gear it requested, according to state leaders. Maine requested a half-million N95 specialized protective masks and received 25,558-- about 5 percent of what it sought. The shipment delivered to Colorado-- 49,000 N95 masks, 115,000 surgical masks and other supplies-- would be “enough for only one full day of statewide operations,” Rep. Scott R. Tipton (R-CO) told the White House in a letter several days ago.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency inherited control of the stockpile barely a week ago from HHS. Lizzie Litzow, a FEMA spokeswoman, acknowledged the agency maintains a spreadsheet tracking each state’s request and shipments. Litzow declined repeated requests to release the details, saying the numbers are in flux.

Florida has been an exception in its dealings with the stockpile: The state submitted a request on March 11 for 430,00 surgical masks, 180,000 N95 respirators, 82,000 face shields and 238,000 gloves, among other supplies-- and received a shipment with everything three days later, according to figures from the state’s Division of Emergency Management. It received an identical shipment on March 23, according to the division, and is awaiting a third.

“The governor has spoken to the president daily, and the entire congressional delegation has been working as one for the betterment of the state of Florida,” said Jared Moskowitz, the emergency management division’s director. “We are leaving no stone unturned.”

President Trump repeatedly has warned states not to complain about how much they are receiving, including Friday during a White House briefing, where he advised Vice President Pence not to call governors who are critical of the administration’s response. “I want them to be appreciative,” he said.

At briefings, Trump and Pence routinely say material is being purchased for the stockpile, supplies are being shipped out and manufacturers under federal contract are ramping up supplies. On Thursday, Pence said the stockpile had shipped 9 million N95 masks and 20 million surgical masks, as well as “millions” of gloves, gowns and face shields.

But Trump and Pence also urge states to buy supplies on their own. During the March 19 briefing, Trump said governors “are supposed to be doing a lot of this work... You know, we’re not a shipping clerk.”

State officials say the advice is unrealistic.

“Allowing the free market to determine availability and pricing is not the way we should be dealing with this national crisis at this time,” said Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D). “This is why we need a nationally led response.”

Leaders in the District, Maryland and Virginia say their requests for aid from the stockpile have come up short. They have been competing with their counterparts to try to buy gear on the open market.

“The federal government has the keys to the front door,” said Nirav Shah, Maine’s state health officer and director of its own Center for Disease Control and Prevention. He said the state has been scouring the country and overseas for companies that can supply protective masks. The stockpile, he said, is a critical “leg of the stool.”

Hospital industry executives agree.

“There is no [protective gear] to be bought on the private market through vendors,” said Kevin Donovan, president of Lakes Regional HealthCare, which has two hospitals in central New Hampshire. “We order but don’t have any money to pay for it,” because companies manufacturing masks and other emergency gear are demanding cash payments on delivery. Donovan said his hospitals, like others, are low on cash because they have canceled the elective procedures that are their moneymakers.

“Unless we start getting material from the national stockpile,” Donovan said, “I don’t know where we are going to get it.”

...HHS officials have sparred for more than a year with White House budget officials over money to buy more stockpile supplies.

In February 2019, the White House was planning for a presidential executive order on preparing for a potential flu pandemic. HHS requested a more than $11 billion investment over 10 years for ASPR, including $2.7 billion for “treatment and control,” according to a document read by a Washington Post reporter that said some of those funds would go toward “better protective devices, manufactured faster.”

But the executive order issued by Trump in September 2019 did not include that money.

In late January, Azar began telling OMB about the need for a supplemental budget request for stockpile supplies-- and was rebuffed at a time when the White House did not yet acknowledge any supplemental money would be needed, according to several individuals familiar with the situation who spoke anonymously to discuss internal conversations.

...In mid-March, Trump declared the coronavirus outbreak a national emergency. As a result, control of the stockpile shifted again-- from HHS to FEMA.

Since then, FEMA’s administrator, Peter Gaynor, has been asked frequently how many supplies have been shipped to states and how allocation decisions are being made.

To a question about masks from ABC News on March 22, Gaynor replied, “Well, I mean, there’s hundreds of, thousands of, millions of things that we’re shipping from the stockpile. I mean, I can’t give you the details about what every single state, of what every single city’s doing.”

State officials and federal lawmakers are demanding to know.

“We don’t know how the federal government is making those decisions,” said Casey Katims, the federal liaison for Washington state, the site of the nation’s first confirmed case on Jan. 21 and of an early deadly cluster at a nursing home.

Since the state made the first of several requests-- 233,000 respirators and 200,000 surgical masks-- the supplies have been arriving piecemeal and without any explanation of the numbers.

The state is now awaiting more, including a plea for 1,000 ventilators, and has been told 500 are en route, Katims said.

The Minnesota congressional delegation wrote on March 22 to Azar, also perplexed: “How is HHS determining which states receive certain medical supplies? When will Minnesota receive the full order of medical supplies that state officials have requested?"

The next day, the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), sent a letter to HHS and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA. The letter demanded to know the stockpile’s inventory of protective gear and ventilators, how much has been distributed, how the allocations are being made and how much is on order from manufacturers.

Explanations of the decision-making process have been inconsistent.

Gaynor told the homeland security committee during a conference call, according to Thompson’s letter, that states would be receiving protective gear based on each state’s population and that state needs would be factored in. The letter did not provide further detail.

While the stockpile still was under HHS as the virus began spreading in the United States, the department for the first time used a formula, according to individuals familiar with the system. Under that formula, 25 percent of a state’s requests were fulfilled based on its population and 25 percent on its number of covid-19 cases. The remaining supplies were held back so the stockpile would not be depleted.

These individuals said that, even before FEMA took over, the formula had changed again to put more emphasis on need.

Asked to explain the current process, a statement from FEMA on Wednesday said, “The allocation process of PPE (personal protective equipment) to states is now focused on meeting future demand models where patient levels are expected to strain state and local medical conditions in coming weeks.” Asked which models FEMA is relying on, Litzow said Thursday, “future modeling is mostly based off of data from HHS and CDC that is continually updated as more information about this emerging disease becomes available.”

For the coronavirus outbreak, California has asked for 20 million N95 respirators-- more than the stockpile’s entire inventory, estimated at about 12 million.

California has received 358,381 N95 masks and about 1 million surgical masks and face shields, according to the governor’s office. The state is now scouting the global market. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has noted that California is in a better position because its size gives it purchasing leverage.

California officials said they welcomed FEMA’s involvement because they already had a strong working relationship with the agency after months of fighting the state’s catastrophic wildfires.

Minnesota’s manager of public health emergency preparedness, Deborah Radi, said FEMA has been clearer about stockpile deliveries than HHS. She said her state’s first shipment from the stockpile had arrived one night at 1 a.m., when the state’s warehouse to receive it was closed. When FEMA handled a more recent delivery of protective gear, she said, it alerted the state about a delay and then again when the truck was one hour away.

States continue to press their cases with federal officials. They point out the severity of the outbreak in their state, or the vulnerability of their population. As of mid-March, West Virginia had not reported a confirmed case, but it has one of the nation’s oldest populations. It received an initial shipment of slightly more than 1 percent of its request for 160,000 masks-- 2,220 N95s.

Trump’s warnings for states not to complain have not subdued Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D), who has been particularly outspoken during the crisis. Illinois has received 10 percent of the N95s and surgical masks it has requested from the stockpile.

“I will continue to pound the table to get the federal government to acquire the supplies our states so critically need and allocate them accordingly,” Pritzker tweeted on Tuesday. “Lives depend upon it.”

Robert Mackey, reporting for The Intercept Friday, noted that in exchange for aid, Trump is demanding praise from governors he can use in campaign ads, a low even for him. "As he increasingly tries to shovel blame for the shortage of medical supplies onto the governors of states with densely populated areas that are suffering the most from the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump was asked on Friday what more he wants them to do. It was, he said, 'very simple: I want them to be appreciative.' Trump singled out two Democratic governors in particular for criticism: Jay Inslee of Washington and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. After mocking Inslee for failing to catch on as a presidential candidate, Trump faulted the governor battling one of the nation’s most deadly outbreaks for 'constantly chirping-- I guess complaining would be a nice way of saying it.'... The president also attacked Whitmer, for the second day running-- apparently still miffed that she told MSNBC ten days ago that 'the federal government did not take this seriously early enough, and now it is on us to do everything we can.' Michigan’s governor, Trump said, has no idea of what’s going on. He then launched into the sort of broad imitation of a female rival’s voice that was a staple of his act during the 2016 campaign. 'All she does is say, Oh, it’s the federal government’s fault,' the president said."

Trump spoke as the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Michigan spiked on Friday, to more than 3,600, triple what it was on Monday. The day before, Dr. Deborah Birx, a retired Army Colonel advising the White House, had identified Michigan’s Wayne County, which includes Detroit, as a potential hot spot for new infections.

While Trump maintained that he was not expecting the governors to be appreciative of just his efforts, but those of the federal government he leads-- which, he claimed, “has done a hell of a job”-- his monologue eventually returned to his discontent with their lack of personal gratitude to him. “We have done a job the likes of which nobody’s seen,” Trump said. “I think they should be appreciative, because you know what, when they’re not appreciative to me, they’re not appreciative to the Army Corps, they’re not appreciative to FEMA, it’s not right.”

Trump contrasted those two Democratic governors, who have been blunt about the federal government’s failings, with two others who have appealed to the president’s vanity in an attempt to get his help. Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, has been “appreciative,” Trump said. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, had also spoken well of him, Trump noted. “I appreciate his nice words,” the president said. “I really appreciate it.”

Trump’s choice of those two governors was probably not coincidental. Earlier on Friday, his reelection campaign unveiled a schmaltzy new ad [with Gavin Newsom sucking his cock live on video]-- entitled, of all things, Hope-- that cast his response to the pandemic in heroic terms, and featured video of both governors praising him.





While Trump approved Newsom’s request to declare the coronavirus outbreak in California a major disaster within hours of the governor asking on Sunday, freeing federal funds, the president failed to respond to a similar request from Whitmer on Thursday. Instead, he belittled her in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News Thursday night. “We’ve had a big problem with the young, a woman governor from-- you know who I’m talking about-- from Michigan,” Trump told Hannity. “She is a new governor and it’s not been pleasant.”

“She doesn’t get it done, and we send her a lot,” Trump complained. “Now she wants a declaration of emergency and, you know, we’ll have to make a decision on that,” Trump said.

Whitmer responded to Trump appearing to not even know her name with a Twitter plea for the personal protective equipment and other medical equipment the state desperately needs from the national strategic stockpile. “Hi, my name is Gretchen Whitmer, and that governor is me,” she wrote. “I’ve asked repeatedly and respectfully for help. We need it. No more political attacks, just PPEs, ventilators, N95 masks, test kits. You said you stand with Michigan-- prove it.”

The governor told WWJ-AM in Detroit on Friday morning that she had been trying to get on the phone with Trump at about the same time he was lambasting her in a call to Hannity. “I reached out to the White House last night, asked for a phone call with the president,” she said, but never heard back.

Earlier in the week, Whitmer told a local radio station that one hospital in her state had received a shipment from the federal government last week with just 747 masks, 204 gowns, 64 face shields and 40,467 gloves. “With the exception of the gloves, that allotment of PPE didn’t cover one shift,” she said.

On Friday, the governor told CNN that, after Trump had asked governors to procure their own medical supplies, her state had placed a large number of orders-- only to be told later by suppliers that they had been instructed to send the items to the federal government instead.

A short time later, Trump used the White House briefing on the public health emergency to vent more at Whitmer and Inslee. He concluded his rant by saying that he had advised Vice President Mike Pence, the head of his coronavirus task force, to not even bother speaking with them. “I say, ‘Mike, don’t call the governor of Washington, you’re wasting your time with him. Don’t call the woman in Michigan,” the president said.

“If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call,” Trump said of refusing to speak to the governors of two American states during a global pandemic.

Before calling it a day on Friday, Trump approved major disaster declarations for South Carolina and Puerto Rico, but not Michigan.

He then took out his iPhone and tried to escape blame for the outbreak in Michigan, which has already killed 92 people, by tweeting insults at the governor. “I love Michigan, one of the reasons we are doing such a GREAT job for them during this horrible Pandemic,” the president wrote. “Yet your Governor, Gretchen ‘Half’ Whitmer is way in over her head, she doesn’t have a clue. Likes blaming everyone for her own ineptitude!”

Trump’s apparent demand that the governors of U.S. states do him a political favor, though-- by praising his response to the crisis on television, in exchange for him unlocking federal aid-- strongly echoed the scheme he was impeached for last year. In that case, Trump withheld aid from Ukraine to coerce its president into agreeing to go on CNN and announce a sham investigation of Joe Biden, his likely rival in the November election.

In fact, the situation with Michigan’s governor is almost identical to a hypothetical the legal scholar Pamela Karlan asked members of the Judiciary Committee to consider during the impeachment hearings in December.

“Imagine living in a part of Louisiana or Texas that’s prone to devastating hurricanes and flooding,” Karlan said. “What would you think if you lived there, and your governor asked for a meeting with the president to discuss getting disaster aid that Congress has provided for-- what would you think, if that President said, ‘I would like you to do us a favor. I’ll meet with you, and I’ll send the disaster relief once you brand my opponent a criminal.”

“Wouldn’t you know in your gut that such a president had abused his office,” Karlan asked, “that he’d betrayed the national interest and that he was trying to corrupt the electoral process?”

Update: Saturday, March 28, 5:55 p.m. EDT

On Saturday afternoon, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer reported on Twitter that she had spoken with Vice President Mike Pence and thanked the White House for declaring a major disaster declaration for Michigan, freeing up federal assistance for the state, two days after it was requested. She also thanked the FEMA for a new shipment of 112,000 N95 masks to her state’s emergency operations center.

AND... ANOTHER UPDATE

This one is an update to a post from last Wednesday about how the scurrilous and deranged Jerry Falwell had opened the doors of Liberty University up again. I don't understand why the state of Virginia allowed him to get away with it but now some the future little fascists have tested positive and have been infecting other Liberty University students. Presumably Lynchburg, Virginia will soon be another COVID-19 hotspot. About half the students who returned have now fled, some, no doubt, bringing the disease with them back to Tennessee, Mississippi, Kansas and to other places full of evangelicals. Keep in mind that Falwell spent months derided the pandemic as an "overreaction" driven by liberal desires to damage Señor Trumpanzee.

“We think it’s irresponsible for so many universities to just say ‘closed, you can’t come back,’ push the problem off on other communities and sit there in their ivory towers,” Mr. Falwell said on Wednesday on a radio show hosted by a far-right conspiracy theorist, Todd Starnes.

“We’re conservative, we’re Christian, and therefore we’re being attacked,” he said.

...Mr. Falwell echoes Mr. Trump’s talking points on the coronavirus, which he often calls the “flu.”

“It’s just strange to me how many are overreacting” to the pandemic, Mr. Falwell said on Fox & Friends on March 10. “It makes you wonder if there is a political reason for that. Impeachment didn’t work and the Mueller report didn’t work and Article 25 didn’t work, and so maybe now this is their next attempt to get Trump.”

...Lynchburg is particularly ill-prepared to become a hot spot. Hospitals in the region have a total of 1,174 beds, only 55 of them intensive care, according to a recent analysis by the Harvard Global Health Institute. Those must serve 217,000 adults, nearly 50,000 of whom are 65 or older. Tests for the coronavirus remain in short supply.

Mr. Falwell has played down the dangers of his decision in interviews with the news media, where he has even suggested that the coronavirus is a North Korean bioweapon. On Fox News, he blithely asserted that the cure rate for Covid-19 “is 99.7 percent for people under 50,” adding that “We have talked to medical professionals, numerous medical professionals, before we made this decision.”

An archived version of Liberty’s website said those medical professionals included the school’s own public health faculty and campus health providers, as well as “Dr. Jeffrey Hyman of Northwell Health, New York’s largest health care provider.”

When contacted by the New York Times, Northwell Health denied that Dr. Hyman provided any formal guidance to Liberty, adding that he is not an infectious disease specialist. In a statement, the hospital system said that Dr. Hyman was a personal friend of the Falwell family, who told them in private conversation “that reconvening classes would be a ‘bad idea.’”

Tales From The GOP Death Cult: Onward Christian Soldiers

A new poll by Morning Consult released this morning, indicates that a huge majority of Americans support a national quarantine. There is a shocking disparity though, between Republicans and normal people on what kind of a job Trump is doing in responding to the pandemic. 56% of Republicans say he's doing an excellent job an assessment shared with only 16% of independents and 6% of Democrats. Overall, 52% of registered voters approve of the job Trump is doing in a general sense and 45% approve and, asked who they would vote for if the election were held today, 32% said definitely Trump, 9% said probably Trump, 7% said probably someone other than Trump and 43% definitely not Trump.

Meanwhile, this should not make you laugh or cheer... but thousands of future fascists are returning to school-- or something pretending to be a school-- prematurely.

Reporting for the Lynchburg News and Advance, Richard Chumney wrote that "As the coronavirus threatens to spread across the Lynchburg region, Liberty University officials are preparing to welcome back up to 5,000 students from spring break this week. Defying a national trend of campus closures, President Jerry Falwell Jr. has invited students to return to residence halls and has directed faculty members to continue to report to campus even as most classes move online."

In an interview Sunday night, Falwell said somewhere between several hundred to more than 5,000 students are expected to live in campus dorms, where they will continue coursework online rather than in classrooms.

Meanwhile, hundreds of professors and instructors without a valid health exemption will come to campus to hold office hours.

“I think we have a responsibility to our students-- who paid to be here, who want to be here, who love it here-- to give them the ability to be with their friends, to continue their studies, enjoy the room and board they’ve already paid for and to not interrupt their college life,” Falwell said.

Falwell’s decision leaves Liberty as an outlier among the scores of colleges and universities across the country that have shut down to help limit the spread of the disease known as COVID-19.

The threat of the coronavirus became more immediate for the region this weekend when the Virginia Department of Health announced cases in Amherst and Bedford counties. Statewide, as of Monday evening, more than 250 people have contracted the disease and seven have died.

In response to the pandemic, several nearby institutions have instructed faculty to work remotely and have limited dorms to students unable to return home. At the University of Lynchburg, 19 students continue to live in dorms while at Randolph College just five remain on campus.

In contrast with other schools, Liberty’s dorms, academic buildings, library and fitness center remain open.

...On Monday, [Virginia Governor Ralph] Northam directed all non-essential businesses to close by the start of Wednesday. Non-essential services were identified as all places of indoor public amusement as well as fitness centers, and salons that cannot comply with social distancing guidelines. It is unclear how that order will affect Liberty.

Falwell, who has publicly downplayed the threat of the virus in recent weeks, said he is confident the school has taken the proper steps to prepare for a campus outbreak. He said Liberty officials have identified an old hotel owned by the university as a place to quarantine students who fall ill.

“I think we, in a way, are protecting the students by having them on campus together,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent of them are not at the age to be at risk and they don’t have conditions that put them at risk.”

Some Liberty faculty members have questioned whether Falwell’s actions have gone far enough.

In a blunt opinion piece published by Religion News Service on Sunday, longtime English Professor Marybeth Davis Baggett called on Liberty’s board of trustees to overrule Falwell’s decision to keep campus open.

“Many students, faculty, and staff have health conditions that would make COVID-19 difficult to fight,” Baggett wrote. “And of course, Liberty is not a bubble where the virus would be contained. Instead, its population comes into regular contact with those in the Lynchburg community, putting their health and lives at risk as well.”

In an interview with the News & Advance, Baggett said she has refused to return to campus during the course of the pandemic.

“Lives are at stake,” Baggett, who plans to join the Houston Baptist University faculty this fall after 17 years at Liberty, said. “I think this decision is a recipe for disaster and I have been trying to push that as much as I have been able to internally.”

Doug Pagitt is an evangelical pastor in Minnesota who founded Vote Common Good. He told me today that "This is the kind of decision that is pitched as being in the best interest of the students is 'blind-to-science-faith.' It is a willful  disregard for what we know to be in people’s best interest. Falwell shows his lack of understanding of the Christian faith and his incompetence as a head of University."

A few words for Rev. John Pavlovitz's blog helps put this rush to reopen into some context: Their Money or Your Life (The Fraudulence of Pro-Life, Christian Capitalists). "Some people," he wrote yesterday, "adore capitalism so much, they’re willing to sell their souls to support it. They’re willing to spend other people lives in service of it... Republicans are trying to ram a slush-fund trojan hose disguised as economic crisis aid through the Senate; one that pads the already heavily buffered nest eggs of corporations and does little more for day laborers and the working poor, than give them the cheap buss of a one-time token gift."

This is the repugnant sham of pro-life Christianity revealed in all its grotesque ugliness.

This is what the Religious Right really thinks about human life: if the price is right, it is all expendable.

This is the economy of soul capitalism: their money is worth your life.

Other’s supply can meet their greedy demand.

For all their tearful, showy displays of phony religion, all their impassioned pleas about embryos in the womb being sacred-- they will let sentient human beings with grandchildren and spouses and decades of wisdom, die on the altar of their 401Ks.

They’re actually lobbying to send millions of people back into the swirling chaos of an infectious disease even before the peak of its spread-- because their identity and the President’s base is so beholden to a group of numbers and a ledger ending up in the black, that it sees no value in sick, elderly, and vulnerable human beings, for whom relaunching business as usual would be a certain death sentence.

Jesus said you cannot serve both God and money.





I never see these pro-life Christian Republicans wearing that verse on their chests or plastering it on their bumpers or brazenly broadcasting on social media, because then they’d be forced to face their fraudulence, they’d be forced to admit their hypocrisy-- and they’d have to confess that the teachings of Jesus and the sanctity of life aren’t all that critical when there’s a buck to be made or a bailout to be brokered.

Call me strange, but I don’t think the sick or the elderly are expendable just so Republicans can hold the presidency or so some already wealthy people can become even wealthier.

I don’t see my mother or your grandfather or your next-door neighbor or your co-worker’s spouse as the acceptable collateral damage of temporarily boosting the Dow or nudging Donald Trump’s poll numbers or providing a one-day national emotional placebo that allows a virus to keep killing. I don’t believe older people’s lives are chips for someone else to cash in.

Maybe I’m not a proper, card-carrying Evangelical “pro-life” Christian-- just a decent human being who takes the teachings of Jesus seriously; one who values elderly and sick and vulnerable people who are living here right now, who deserve to be here as long as anyone else.

I don’t give a damn about the economy if it costs us humanity.

I’ll be okay with that balance in my ledger.

I can look myself in the mirror.

I can sleep at night.

And we can all get ready for the Grand Trumpian Easter Sunday... by using the rest of the lockdown to learn how to sing along with Ministry:

Falwell, Jr. Is A Dangerous Crook-- Perfect For White Evangelical Trump Sheep Waiting To Be Shorn. Also, Why Does The Falwell Billion Dollar Financial Empire Still Get Away Without Paying Taxes?

Falwell "invests" in personal trainers, pool boys & gay brothels-- cool, huh?

Today, Jerry Falwell, Jr. claimed he's asking the FBI to investigate what he termed a "criminal" smear campaign orchestrated against him by several disgruntled former board members and employees. Falwell claimed he has evidence that the group improperly shared emails belonging to the university with reporters in an attempt to discredit him. He said the "attempted coup" was partially motivated by his ardent backing of President Trump.

"I’m not going to dignify the lies that were reported yesterday with a response, but I am going to the authorities and I am going to civil court," Falwell said, referring to the reporter as a "little boy."

He added that Liberty has hired "the meanest lawyer in New York," whom he declined to identify, to pursue civil cases. Falwell also declined to identify the people he said were spreading the emails.

No one at Liberty "University" wants to rat Jerry Falwell Jr. out but, according to a stunning post by Brandon Ambrosino, a graduate of Liberty, published by Politico yesterday, Falwell is "all anyone can talk about." Ambrosino says things are starting to change and now people are willing to rat him out. Despite non-disclosure agreement Liberty forces employees and trustees to sign, some ratted him out to Ambrosino. “It’s a dictatorship,” one current high-level employee of the school said. “Nobody craps at the university without Jerry’s approval.”

He wrote that "based on scores of new interviews and documents obtained for this article, concerns about Falwell’s behavior go well beyond [racy photos and suspicious business deals]-- and it’s causing longtime, loyal Liberty University officials to rapidly lose faith in him. More than two dozen current and former high-ranking Liberty University officials and close associates of Falwell spoke to me or provided documents for this article, opening up-- for the first time at an institution so intimately associated with the Falwell family-- about what they’ve experienced and why they don’t think he’s the right man to lead Liberty University or serve as a figurehead in the Christian conservative movement. In interviews over the past eight months, they depicted how Falwell and his wife, Becki, consolidated power at Liberty University and how Falwell presides over a culture of self-dealing, directing university resources into projects and real estate deals in which his friends and family have stood to make personal financial gains. Among the previously unreported revelations are Falwell’s decision to hire his son Trey’s company to manage a shopping center owned by the university, Falwell’s advocacy for loans given by the university to his friends, and Falwell’s awarding university contracts to businesses owned by his friends. 'We’re not a school; we’re a real estate hedge fund,' said a senior university official with inside knowledge of Liberty’s finances. 'We’re not educating; we’re buying real estate every year and taking students’ money to do it.'" But nothing about the pool boy and the personal trainer? There is a little something about the Falwells owning a gay whore house in Miami gay-friendly youth hostel in Miami.

Liberty employees detailed other instances of Falwell’s behavior that they see as falling short of the standard of conduct they expect from conservative Christian leaders, from partying at nightclubs, to graphically discussing his sex life with employees, to electioneering that makes uneasy even those who fondly remember the heyday of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., the school’s founder and Falwell Jr.’s father, and his Moral Majority.

In January, the Wall Street Journa reported that in the run-up to Trump’s presidential campaign, Cohen hired John Gauger, a Liberty University employee who runs a private consulting firm, to manipulate online polls in Trump’s favor. Not previously reported is the fact that, according to a half-dozen high-level Liberty University sources, when Gauger traveled to New York to collect payment from Cohen, he was joined by Trey Falwell, a vice president at Liberty. During that trip, Trey posted a now-deleted photo to Instagram of around $12,000 in cash spread on a hotel bed, raising questions about his knowledge of Gauger’s poll-rigging work. Trey did not respond to requests for comment.

...“Everybody is scared for their life. Everybody walks around in fear,” said a current university employee who agreed to speak for this article only after purchasing a burner phone, fearing that Falwell was monitoring their communications. The fear is not limited to Liberty’s campus. Several people who lack any tie to Liberty but live in the school’s hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia, refused to go on the record for this story, fearing Falwell would take revenge upon them and their families. “Fear is probably his most powerful weapon,” a former senior university official said.

But even those who fear have their breaking points.

In speaking out, said one longtime current university employee with close ties to the school’s first family, “I feel like I’m betraying them in some way. But someone’s gotta tell the freakin’ truth.”

“We’re talking about the difference between right and wrong,” a current high-ranking university official said. “Not even ‘being a Christian,’ but being a good person, versus people who manipulate the system”

...Liberty University has transformed under Jerry Falwell Jr.’s leadership. When he took over as president in 2007, the school, which is a nonprofit, had listed assets of just over $259 million on its then most recent IRS Form 990; in its filing for the fiscal year ending in June 2017, its assets surpassed $2.5 billion. That number is now more than $3 billion, according to public statements Falwell made in 2018.

That growth is driven largely by a vast increase in the number of online students at the school, who now number some 95,000. Many Falwell confidants are concerned with where they see that university tuition money going: into university-funded construction and real estate projects that enrich the Falwell family and their friends.

...The line between where the Falwell family’s wealth begins and Liberty’s finances end is blurry.

University officials describe Liberty loaning money to the Falwells’ friends, even when these loans arguably are not in the school’s financial interests. According to emails and loan documents obtained for this article, in 2014, the university gave loans of at least $200,000 to Prototype Tourism LLC, a “destination marketing” company founded by Liberty graduate Josh Oppenheimer, whom Jerry Falwell Jr. described to me as “a friendly supporter.” According to emails I’ve reviewed, several high-ranking Liberty officials knew about the loan, including Vice President Trey Falwell. The graduate had difficulty repaying the loan—“not surprised,” Trey wrote in an email.

When asked about the loan, Jerry Falwell Jr. clarified the school’s role with Prototype Tourism. “Liberty University was not simply a lender, but was a minority investor in Prototype Tourism, LLC,” he wrote. Falwell described the company’s goal as promoting tourism to Lynchburg. “Due diligence was performed by multiple individuals who discussed the pros and cons and the consensus was that it was worthwhile to proceed,” Falwell wrote. “In the end, I reluctantly agreed with the recommendation and allowed the transaction to proceed. In hindsight, it was not a good decision. … LU lost its investment and the loan portion of the deal was only partially paid back.”

Other loans were precursors to massive contracts. In 2013, Robert Moon, a friend of Falwell’s with deep family ties to the Falwells, founded Construction Management Associates Inc., a construction company devoted to work on and around campus. Previously unreported is the fact that Liberty gave Moon a loan of $750,000 to form the company before awarding it more than $130 million in contracts and selling it land owned by the university.

...In July 2014, Falwell, Trey and Moon traveled to Miami together. Falwell said in his statement that he recalls “discussing University business” on the trip.

During the trip, photos were taken of Jerry and Trey Falwell partying at a Miami nightclub-- photos that multiple Liberty University officials said Jerry Falwell tried to make disappear.

...In a statement on August 21, Jerry Falwell denied the existence of any photo of him at the club. “There was no picture snapped of me at WALL nightclub or any other nightclub,” Falwell wrote. “I’m sure you already knew that though.”

When told that I had obtained a photo of him for this article, Falwell said I was “terribly mistaken.” “If you show me the picture, I can probably help you out,” he wrote. “I think you are making some incorrect assumptions, or have been told false things or are seeing something that was photo--shopped.”

After I sent him the photo, as well as a photo of Trey at Wall, Falwell responded: “I never asked anyone to get rid of any pictures on the internet of me and I never have seen the picture you claim is of me below. If the person in the picture is me, it was likely photo-shopped.” In a second email sent 23 minutes later, Falwell wrote: “But the bigger question, Brandon, is why would I want a picture like that taken down if I had seen it?”

According to several people with direct knowledge of the situation, Falwell-- the president of a conservative Christian college that frowns upon co-ed dancing (Liberty students can receive demerits if seen doing it) and prohibits alcohol use (for which students can be expelled)—was angry that photos of him clubbing made it up online. To remedy the situation, multiple Liberty staffers said Falwell went to John Gauger, whom they characterized as his “IT guy,” and asked him to downgrade the photos’ prominence on Google searches. Gauger did not respond to requests for comment.

Gauger has worked at Liberty since earning his MBA from the school in 2009. In 2016, he was promoted to become the school’s chief information officer about a year and a half after he was named deputy CIO. To several university sources, his rapid rise to the C-suite was shocking.

“I’m not being disrespectful, but John was a nobody,” one longtime Liberty official said. “And the next thing you know, he’s high up in IT.”

Longtime Liberty officials describe Gauger as a sort of fixer for Falwell, a man promoted because he would do what Falwell asked of him without complaint. But Gauger is more than just a university employee: Since 2009, Gauger has also run RedFinch LLC, an online business he founded that specializes in search-engine marketing and does lucrative contract work for Liberty. Tax records show Liberty paid RedFinch $123,950 during 2016, for what sources described as search-engine recruitment of online students for the university. Gauger did not respond to requests for comment.

...In January, the Wall Street Journal reported that in 2014 and 2015, Michael Cohen hired Gauger’s side business, RedFinch LLC, to rig online polls in Donald Trump’s favor while he considered a run for the presidency. Gauger’s work consisted of writing a computer script to repeatedly vote for Trump in two online polls; his company would get paid $50,000 in return. Instead, Gauger told The Journal that after a meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan, Cohen paid Gauger roughly one-fourth of that amount-- between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash-- and gave him a boxing glove worn by a mixed martial arts fighter.

Through his lawyer, Cohen, who is serving a three-year prison sentence for tax fraud, making false statements to Congress and violating campaign finance laws, declined a request to comment for this article.

Previously unreported about this incident is that Trey joined Gauger on the January 2015 trip to New York, and posted a photo to Instagram showing a large amount of cash spread atop a bed in a hotel room. Liberty officials who saw the since-deleted post and described its contents said it raised questions about Trey’s involvement in the pro-Trump poll-rigging effort.

“The idiot posted [a picture of] money on a bed?!” one current senior Liberty official said. “Why do that if you’re not involved with it?”

Liberty officials also pointed to a tweet sent out by the university’s Twitter account on January 23, 2014, linking to one of the polls that the Wall Street Journal reported Gauger had rigged. The poll was conducted by CNBC and asked readers to vote for the top American business leaders.

As a nonprofit, Liberty University is legally prohibited from engaging in “political campaign activity,” to use the IRS’ phrase, at the risk of losing its nonprofit status.

When asked about the tweet, Falwell told me he authorized the university’s marketing department to send it as way of thanking Trump for speaking at Liberty. “A representative of the Trump business organization asked for Liberty University to use Twitter to encourage followers to vote for Donald Trump in the annual CNBC poll. We often get requests from Convocation speakers to promote their books, movies, music and other projects. And we do it all the time,” Falwell said. “After speaking for free at [a 2012 Liberty] Convocation and being so complimentary to our University in his remarks, I considered Donald Trump to be a friend of Liberty University and was happy to publicize the poll in hopes that Liberty followers would be willing to vote for him on the heels of his very positive recent campus appearance.”

Falwell noted that at the time the tweet was sent, “Donald Trump was not a candidate for president and no one at Liberty even knew he would run for President.” However, as the Wall Street Journal reported-- and as several sources independently confirmed in the course of my reporting for this article—Cohen had hired Gauger, a Liberty employee, to rig the poll in Trump’s favor for the purposes of garnering support ahead of his presidential bid.

“A 501(c)(3) organization trying to influence a poll so that a candidate’s fortunes are promoted or demoted is not permitted,” said Eve Borenstein, an attorney and tax expert known as the “Queen of the 990,” a moniker used to introduce her ahead of congressional testimony she gave about the IRS Form 990 in 2012.

While 501(c)(3) organizations are permitted to “do objective analysis of [an] electoral horse race,” said Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a professor at Stetson University College of Law, “tweeting out a rigged poll if Liberty knew it was rigged probably does not fall into that safe harbor.”

Liberty officials said that the arrangement is characteristic of how Falwell wields power. “This paints a picture of how Jerry operates,” one former high-ranking university official said. “Gauger gets promoted, [Liberty] contracts for RedFinch for online recruitment … and [Gauger] gets hooked up with people like Cohen to make more money via RedFinch.” And in the end, Falwell gets what he really wants: “A guy that will do whatever he is told.”

In May 2019, Reuters reported that Cohen helped Falwell contain the fallout from some racy “personal” photos. Later that month, Falwell took to Todd Starnes’ radio talk show to rebut the claims.

...Longtime Liberty officials close to Falwell told me the university president has shown or texted his male confidants-- including at least one employee who worked for him at Liberty-- photos of his wife in provocative and sexual poses.

At Liberty, Falwell is “very, very vocal” about his “sex life,” in the words of one Liberty official—a characterization multiple current and former university officials and employees interviewed for this story support. In a car ride about a decade ago with a senior university official who has since left Liberty, “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,” this former official recalled. Falwell did not respond to questions about this incident.

More than simply talking with employees about his wife in a sexual manner, on at least one occasion, Falwell shared a photo of his wife wearing what appeared to be a French maid costume, according to a longtime Liberty employee with firsthand knowledge of the image and the fallout that followed.

Falwell intended to send the image to his and Becki’s personal trainer, Ben Crosswhite, as a “thank you” for helping his wife achieve her fitness goals, the employee said. In the course of texting, Falwell accidentally sent the message to several other people, necessitating a cleanup.

...The Falwells’ close relationship with Crosswhite is the source of consternation for some of Liberty’s top brass because of what they characterize as a sweetheart business deal Falwell had the university offer Crosswhite.

On July 23, 2013, Liberty University began renting space to Crosswhite for use as a fitness center. “The facility was specifically built into the old Racket Club for Jerry and Becki to train privately” with Crosswhite, a longtime university official familiar with the arrangement said. Over the course of the Falwells' private training, Liberty began to pay for expensive upgrades to the facility, according to documents reviewed for this article. Eventually, in 2015, Falwell had a university executive draft a proposal for Liberty to sell the property to Crosswhite at a discount, paying him up front for Liberty’s use of the facility for the next seven years.

“We raised his rent some to cover the investment. LU then sold it to Ben,” one senior university official said. “Nobody else was allowed to bid on it.”

In a September 2015 email, Liberty University Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Randy Smith wrote Crosswhite to let him know the terms of the deal. The university would sell Crosswhite “the club and all real estate associated with it” for $1,216,000. Liberty employees would be allowed to use the facility, Crosswhite could decide what the value of that was-- roughly $82,000 per year, he decided-- and the school would pay in advance for seven years of use.

At closing, per Falwell’s approval, Liberty would pay Crosswhite approximately $575,000, which effectively cut Crosswhite’s total cost for the $1.2 million property in half. “The net amount that you would need at closing is $641,062 more or less,” Smith wrote. “After reviewing, if the terms are acceptable to you, then I will get final approval from Jerry to proceed,” Smith wrote Crosswhite.

“Hell of a deal,” a former high-ranking Liberty official told me. “We gave Ben everything he asked for.”

... It will be a surprise to no one that Jerry Falwell, Jr. is a Republican. He has that in common with the vast majority of people connected to Liberty. But sometimes his partisan allegiances manifest in ways that directly influence the governance of the school-- which, as a nonprofit, must not endorse or oppose candidates for public office.

Just days after the 2008 election of Barack Obama, top university officials were already considering ways to ensure that Liberty students voted in 2010 local elections in Lynchburg. Falwell and university officials weren’t simply talking about the sort of voter-registration drives common at many college campuses; they wanted students to tilt the balance of the election.

In emails obtained for this article, top school officials shared a local newspaper article documenting “concerns in some quarters [of Lynchburg] about the overwhelmingly conservative LU students and the possibility they could alter the balance of power on council and change the course of the city.”

“FYI-- The challenge we will have in 2010 is [Lynchburg’s local Election Day] is finals week,” a top Liberty official wrote in a November 9, 2008, email to Falwell and other school leaders. “We would either need to get a polling station at LU or try and make this a reading day to get the kids out to vote.”

Falwell responded to the message just under four hours later, announcing that the problem was now solved: “We changed the calendar by one week. School will now let out on May 14 instead of [M]ay 7.”

This wasn’t a fluke. According to a former high-ranking university official who participated in some of these discussions, Falwell often takes “aggressive efforts … to register students in an effort to gain political influence.”

Similarly, in a 2014 email exchange, Falwell complained that Liberty’s commencement date meant that most students would be gone for the summer by the time voting began for Lynchburg’s local elections. “Why did we schedule commencement a week earlier this year?” he wrote in an email to several school executives. When one replied that commencement usually happened during the same weekend each year, Falwell pushed back. “We need to get that corrected for the 2018 graduation or else we will have no students in town to vote in local elections again,” Falwell wrote. “Let’s work on it.”

In the past, Falwell has defended any political actions he’s made as personal stances disconnected from his leadership of Liberty University. “I think our community is mature enough that they understand that all the administrators and faculty have their own personal political views,” he told the Washington Post after endorsing Trump. But it is as the president and chancellor of Liberty that Falwell changed the academic calendar to influence local politics.

In a statement, Falwell admitted to amending the academic calendar “so that students would not be prevented from voting in local municipal elections that used to be scheduled after their spring term exams.”

“They and their parents pay some of the highest taxes in the nation when it comes to the City meal and hotel taxes,” Falwell said. “It’s only fair that they have some say about who is elected to represent them.”

When I shared my reporting on the school’s date changes, legal experts reached different conclusions as to its propriety.

“This paints a picture of an organization that is intervening on campaigns more than it should,” said Pitt Law’s Hackney, although he added that other universities have “presumably” taken student voting into consideration when creating their schedules.

“Doing anything with the resources of a 501(c)(3) organization to promote or oppose candidates for elective public office is not a permitted operation by a 501(c)(3)-qualified organization under federal tax law,” Borenstein, the tax attorney specializing in nonprofit organizations, wrote in an email.

Still, Falwell’s actions here are “likely fine,” said Torres-Spelliscy, the law professor at Stetson University. “Many schools try to cancel classes or hold no classes on Election Day to encourage students to vote or be poll workers or engage in election protection activities. Though the IRS might consider Falwell’s stated partisan motivation if the IRS investigated Liberty to challenge its 501(c)(3) status, this type of investigation is highly unlikely.” In fact, according to Ellen April, a professor of tax law at Loyola Law School, a very small number of 990 Forms are ever investigated. “The IRS is able to do very little enforcement of the rules applicable to 501(c)(3) because of their limited" resources.

Observers nicked when Donald Trump visited Liberty's campus in 2016, veered off script and infamously referred to the Bible's Second Corinthians as “two Corinthians”—making it appear as if he were learning of the biblical book for the first time. But his promises to religious conservatives—chief among them, his guarantee that he would fill Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court empty seat with a justice who opposed abortion rights—and his choice of Mike Pence as his running mate mobilized evangelicals to support him in 2016. In CNN’s exit poll from that November, 26 percent of the electorate described themselves as white born-again or evangelical Christians; 80 percent of them voted for Trump.

In 2017, with Trump in office and evangelicals strongly supporting him, the Falwells saw a branding opportunity, according to emails obtained for this article.

That spring, after Trump was invited to deliver the school’s commencement address, Becki Falwell asked university counsel Corry to look into whether Liberty could “permit third-party vendors to sell t-shirts and hats [on campus] during commencement weekend.” Corry advised that because of a contract between the university and Barnes & Noble, which had the exclusive right to sell “clothing, including any and all such items bearing Liberty University emblem, logo, insignia, or other identifying mark” on campus, the answer “depends upon who is selling them and whether Barnes & Noble consents.”

“I want to make sure that we have a lot of options available to purchase,” Becki Falwell replied, adding additional Liberty officials to the email thread. “It’s great advertising for Liberty to be on products with Trumps name.”

In a follow-up email to the Liberty officials, Becki wrote, “I spoke to Michael Cohen and he said to make sure any shirts we buy are made in America! He loved the designs!”

The school ended up printing and selling Trump T-shirts and hats. The shirts, in MAGA red with white type, read “TRUMP” in large block letters and “Liberty University Commencement 2017” in a much smaller font size. Another design, used on both hats and T-shirts, borrowed Trump’s campaign slogan and signature style: an all-caps “Making America Great Again,” then in a script font: “One degree at a time.”

...Told about the merchandise, experts suggested that the Trump-Liberty T-shirts might cross that line. “A 501(c)(3) organization cannot be selling those shirts or gifting space to someone selling t-shirts with a candidate’s name on it, since that is advertising for a candidate,” Borenstein said.

Ever since Falwell endorsed Trump ahead of the 2016 Iowa caucuses, political pundits have speculated that Trump was simply using Falwell to achieve his own political ends. That might be true: From his regular appearances at evangelical events to his claim that he single-handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas,” Trump seems to be keen on shoring up his evangelical base. What better way to do that than to cultivate a very public relationship with the late Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr.’s son?

But multiple associates of Jerry Falwell Jr. said the popular narrative is backward: It’s not Trump who has the most to gain from the relationship, it’s Falwell. Trump just went along with the arrangement.

Falwell has become known as a Trump loyalist who is willing to put his-- and his school’s-- reputation on the line to defend the president from any critic. In Trump, Falwell said in 2017, “evangelicals have found their dream president.” When asked by the Washington Post late in 2018 if there were “anything President Trump could do that would endanger that support from you or other evangelical leaders,” Falwell said “No.” In a May 2019 tweet about the Mueller investigation, Falwell appropriated the language of reparations for descendants of slaves to argue Trump’s term should be lengthened: “I now support reparations. Trump should have 2 yrs added to his 1st term as pay back for time stolen by this corrupt failed coup.”





In Trump, Falwell has found the opportunity to secure his own status as one of America’s preeminent Christian political leaders-- the chance to finally obtain the national relevance of his father. Now, Falwell is a national figure-- a friend to a president, a man prone to outspoken statements that rile critics and endear him to supporters, a major leader on the religious right despite not being a pastor. He is closer than ever before to the kind of status the Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr. wielded.

But for those at Liberty who know both Falwell Jr. and his late father, there’s no comparing the men.

"Jerry’s daddy was a respectable, honest, decent, hardworking man,” said a longtime Liberty official who worked for both father and son. “Big Jerry hired people that were smart and capable and put them around himself. He made sure you knew you were appreciated. There was never an ego involved. You knew you were working for a higher calling. Jerry’s father was very generous and promoted all of us in an enlightening way.”

With Falwell Sr., "you could feel his passion and love for the Lord and others. He knew everyone’s names, their stories and struggles. He was genuine and loving. And that love bled from the campus,” a former longtime university official said. “It’s a cold place now.”

“With [Jerry’s] dad, there were never questions about his business dealings or whether he was profiting from a business deal,” said still another former longtime high-ranking Liberty official who worked closely with both men. “There was never a hint or suspicion of that because Falwell Sr. was only doing things that were for the benefit of the university or church-- not for himself.”

The feeling is different with Junior in charge.

One source pointed to a tweet Jerry Falwell Jr. sent out in June 2019 criticizing David Platt, an evangelical Virginia pastor who apologized for welcoming Trump to his church. “I only want to lead us with God’s Word in a way that transcends political party and position, heals the hurts of racial division and injustice, and honors every man and woman made in the image of God,” Platt said. “Sorry to be crude,” wrote Falwell in a since-deleted tweet, “but pastors like [David Platt] need to grow a pair.”

After Falwell came under criticism for his tweet about Platt, he responded to critics with a two-part Twitter thread, which, in the words of one current high-ranking Liberty official, “a lot of people found troubling.”

“I have never been a minister,” Falwell tweeted. “UVA-trained lawyer and commercial real estate developer for 20 yrs. Univ president for last 12 years-student body tripled to 100000+/endowment from 0 to $2 billion and $1.6B new construction in those 12 years. The faculty, students and campus pastor @davidnasser of @LibertyU are the ones who keep LU strong spiritually as the best Christian univ in the world. While I am proud to be a conservative Christian, my job is to keep LU successful academically, financially and in athletics.”

To those who worked for Liberty under the late Rev. Falwell, the sentiment appeared to signal a serious departure from his father’s legacy. “Bragging about business success and washing his hands of any responsibility for spiritual life at the university—that was frankly a pretty Trumpian line of commentary,” said one former university official with longstanding ties to both Liberty and the Falwell family.

Under Falwell Jr., Liberty University is “a totally dysfunctional organization,” one board member wrote in an email reviewed for this article. “Very similar to Trump’s White House.”

Is there hope in the post-Falwellian evangelical world? Reporter Jeffrey Cimmino did a piece on a very different kind of evangelicalism a day or two ago for the Washington Examiner: Liberal pastors optimistic Democrats can rebound with faith voters after lackluster display in 2016. "Doug Pagitt, executive director of Vote Common Good, an organization focused on mobilizing liberal evangelical and other Christian voters, noted a shift in Democratic politicians’ discourse compared to recent election cycles. 'The biggest shift I’ve noticed from 2016, and even from 2014 and 2012: The Democratic Party as a whole and candidates are actually talking about faith voters, talking about their own faith, trying to include someone who organizes their life around their faith considerations, that that’s something you can bring to the Democratic Party,' Pagitt told the Washington Examiner." Some are even smart enough to see where Jesus' message is actually coming from in politics:

“I know that Bernie Sanders is really resonating with a lot of progressive Christians who are concerned about issues of poverty, lack of affordable housing, labor abuses, things like that,” Sarah Trone Garriott, an Iowa-based Lutheran pastor and state senate candidate, told the Washington Examiner.

Rev. John Cager, pastor of Ward AME Church in Los Angeles, was impressed by Sanders’ “message of inclusion and participation” after he spoke at the Islamic Center of Los Angeles in March.

“I have to say it was impressive for me because to this point Sanders has seemed the least likely of the Democratic candidates to appeal to a faith community,” Cager said.