Think Of All The Reasons You Detest Trump-- Many Of Them Are The Reasons His Base WIll Never Abandon Him

Peter Wehner served in the administrations of 3 presidents-- Reagan and each Bushs. Now he's a #NeverTrumper and yesterday he did a piece for The Atlantic, Why Trump Supporters Can’t Admit Who He Really Is, concluding that many Republicans believe-- despite "the corruption, chaos, and general insanity that is continuing to engulf the Trump campaign and much of the Republican Party right now"-- that if Biden wins the presidency "America dies," although I think what Wehner meant to say is they fear that if Biden is elected the America of white privilege dies. He wrote that the "chthonic portrait... allows Trump and his followers to tolerate and justify pretty much anything in order to win. And 'anything' turns out to be quite a lot," beyond just "a four-year record of shame, indecency, incompetence, and malfeasance." He painted a stark picture of severe mental illness in the Oval Office as well. "Trump," he concluded, "because of the corruption that seems to pervade every area of his life and his damaged psychological and emotional state, has shown us just how much people will accept in their leaders as a result of 'negative partisanship,' the force that binds parties together less in common purpose than in opposition to a shared opponent." [That pretty much describes the entire 2020 presidential race-- on both sides, I'm afraid to say.]

In an interview by CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick yesterday, John Bolton warned that Trump's inability to think strategically, is the blame for the severity of the pandemic in America and he warned that if Trump is reelected it could-- he really meant would but was unable to say it-- get worse.

Bolton said that during his tenure, “In many cases, the president came to decisions in the national security space that I agreed with.” “But he did it not because of the merits of the argument in favor of a particular policy, but because of the fear of the political blowback he would get domestically if he went in a different direction,” said Bolton.

He said that if Trump is re-elected, “that political guardrail is, if it’s not eliminated entirely, it’s certainly minimized.”

“And so I think the possibility for erratic decisions centered on what Trump perceives as his own personal good fortune increases and the political pressure to move in other directions decreases,” Bolton said.

Andrew Sullivan may not have been watching, but he noted yesterday that Trump is a metastasizing cancer and urged his readers to vote for Biden as quickly as possible. He wrote that "the complete loss of any moral authority the United States might have once had, along with the collapse of a system of alliances that rallied liberal democracies against foul tyrants for decades, are the consequence" of having elected a man sympathetic to authoritarians to the presidency... Gone is "the kind of basic moral clarity that the West once tried to advance, even if we often failed, and has now been sacrificed tout court for one wannabe tyrant’s depraved, delusional psyche... He has delegitimized capitalism by his cronyism, corruption, and indifference to dangerously high levels of inequality. He has tainted conservatism indelibly as riddled with racism, xenophobia, paranoia, misogyny, and derangement. Every hoary stereotype leveled against the right for decades has been given credence by the GOP’s support for this monster of a human being."

The only way out of this spiral is an unlikely figure, Joe Biden. An old-school moderate representing a party fast moving leftward, he is, quite simply, the least worst we’ve got. I’m worried the far left will eat his lunch in office, but that is a less pressing worry than the potential destabilization of the entire system if Trump wins in November. The potential for spiraling unrest in a Trump second term could prompt the dictatorial nightmare many of us have been worried about for years.

Biden is not perfect. He’s too old. But he understands our democratic system; he loves this country and has a grasp of the Constitution. He’s trusted by African-American voters who gave him the nomination, and has not alienated white voters in the middle who loathed Hillary Clinton. He is not deranged; he is not lacking in basic human empathy; and he does not treat all his opponents as enemies.

Some Democrats mock his vow to restore a semblance of dialogue with some Republicans. And I understand their position. It is not without reason. But I reject it. If Trump is defeated, and a modicum of reason and decorum returns, and the embers of liberal democracy are not completely extinguished, we have a chance to rebuild the republic. But it may be our last one.

CNN analyst Stephen Collinson is seeing a Trump "close to full derailment." So this isn't full derailment, just close to it? This is going to be a scary couple of months! "Trump," he predicted, "will ignite a new uproar soon enough. It's clearer than ever that his platform for this election is his own wild behavior that animates his hyperbolic claim that a Democratic presidency would see the suburbs torched by rioters-- not the statesmanlike script choreographed at the RNC. No President in modern history has gone into a reelection race warning that the process of choosing a government that is the bedrock of American democracy is illegitimate. Trump's conduct risks a full-on post-election constitutional crisis."

[W]hile Trump's constantly disruptive behavior and refusal to play the role of a traditional president horrifies Beltway elites, it's exactly what makes him attractive to supporters who long ago soured on conventional politicians. The more he trolls the media, the more his base and his conservative media cheerleaders love it. The question is whether a President who looked every day for four years like he's waging an endless GOP primary campaign can secure a path to victory without broadening his base.

Traitor In The White House? Or Just A Doofus?

A new Ipsos poll released by Reuters shows Trump losing badly, with just 38% of registered voters saying they intend to back him in November. Not exactly newsworthy. But what is is how undecideds and third-party backers split.

Reuters/Ipsos polling in 2016 found that support was evenly split that summer between Trump and then Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton among registered voters who had not backed a major party candidate. On Election Day, Trump won a majority of voters who said they decided in the final week.

This year, the poll found that 61% of undecided or third-party registered voters said they would support Biden if they had to choose, while 39% would vote for Trump.

Seventy percent of undecided or third-party registered voters say they disapprove of Trump’s performance in office and the same number said they think the country is headed on the wrong track. And 62% said they thought the U.S. economy was headed in the wrong direction.

Trump's response has been desperate, all about deceitful fear-mongering-- and dangerous for national unity, willing to rip apart the fabric of the country to try to persuade a few voters that Biden is an anarchist-backing socialist.




Yesterday, on Joe Madison's Sirius XM morning show, Bobby Rush (D-IL) responded to a question about Department iff Homeland Security thugs occupying Portland by telling Madison he believes Trump's reelection gameplay is "to instigate a race war. He wants to have black folks fighting white folks. So he can rise up and say, 'I'm the real Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan and I'm the President. Re-elect me. That's what he's trying to do. He's trying to play to the fears, to the racial animus that exists among certain white people, and he will do everything and anything to do that, because he wants to be re-elected at all costs."

A day earlier Peter Wehner penned an essay for The Atlantic, Donald Trump is a Broken Man that everyone should read, especially people who missed the disastrous Fox News interview Trump did with Chris Wallace last Sunday. "At the conclusion of the interview," Wehner wrote, "Wallace asked Trump how he will regard his years as president. 'I think I was very unfairly treated,' Trump responded. 'From before I even won, I was under investigation by a bunch of thieves, crooks. It was an illegal investigation.' When Wallace interrupted, trying to get Trump to focus on the positive achievements of his presidency-- 'What about the good parts, sir?'-- Trump brushed the question aside, responding, 'Russia, Russia, Russia.' The president then complained about the Flynn investigation, the 'Russia hoax,' the 'Mueller scam' and the recusal by his then–attorney general, Jeff Sessions. ('Now I feel good because he lost overwhelmingly in the great state of Alabama,' Trump said about the first senator to endorse him in the 2016 Republican primary.)" What a small, sick, ugly man!

Trump is a psychologically broken, embittered, and deeply unhappy man. He is so gripped by his grievances, such a prisoner of his resentments, that even the most benevolent question from an interviewer-- what good parts of your presidency would you like to be remembered for?-- triggered a gusher of discontent.

But the president still wasn’t done. “Here’s the bottom line,” he said. “I’ve been very unfairly treated, and I don’t say that as paranoid. I’ve been very-- everybody says it. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens. But there was tremendous evidence right now as to how unfairly treated I was. President Obama and Biden spied on my campaign. It’s never happened in history. If it were the other way around, the people would be in jail for 50 years right now.”

Just in case his bitterness wasn’t coming through clearly enough, the president added this: “That would be Comey, that would be Brennan, that would be all of this-- the two lovers, Strzok and Page, they would be in jail now for many, many years. They would be in jail; it would’ve started two years ago, and they’d be there for 50 years. The fact is, they illegally spied on my campaign. Let’s see what happens. Despite that, I did more than any president in history in the first three and a half years.”

With that, the interview ended.

...The fact that he is devoid of any moral sensibilities or admirable human qualities-- self-discipline, compassion, empathy, responsibility, courage, honesty, loyalty, prudence, temperance, a desire for justice-- means he has no internal moral check; the question Is this the right thing to do? never enters his mind. As a result, he not only nurses his grievances; he acts on them. He lives to exact revenge, to watch his opponents suffer, to inflict pain against those who don’t bend before him. Even former war heroes who have died can’t escape his wrath.

So Donald Trump is a vindictive man who also happens to be commander in chief and head of the executive branch, which includes the Justice Department, and there is no one around the president who will stand up to him. He has surrounded himself with lapdogs.

But the problem doesn’t end there. In a single term, Trump has reshaped the Republican Party through and through, and his dispositional imprint on the GOP is as great as any in modern history, including Ronald Reagan’s.

...There were certainly ugly elements on the American right during the Reagan presidency, and Reagan himself was not without flaws. But as president, he set the tone, and the tone was optimism, courtliness and elegance, joie de vivre.

He has since been replaced by the crudest and cruelest man ever to be president. But not just that. One senses in Donald Trump no joy, no delight, no laughter. All the emotions that drive him are negative. There is something repugnant about Trump, yes, but there is also something quite sad about the man. He is a damaged soul.

In another time, in a different circumstance, there would perhaps be room to pity such a person. But for now, it is best for the pity to wait. There are other things to which to attend. The American public faces one great and morally urgent task above all others between now and November: to do everything in its power to remove from the presidency a self-pitying man who is shattering the nation and doesn’t even care.

Hardball by Nancy Ohanian

Another new poll just released, this one of likely Georgia voters, shows both Trump and enabler David Perdue both losing to utterly worthless Democratic candidates. Another one, by Quinnipiac of Texas voters, shows Trump losing there too! And, again, Trump's response: hideous and profoundly unpatriotic divisiveness. Ron Brownstein: "On one front, Trump is taking his confrontational approach toward big cities to an ominous new level by deploying federal law-enforcement officials to Portland and potentially other locales over the objection of local officials… On the other, Republican governors, especially but not exclusively across the Sun Belt, have repeatedly blocked mostly Democratic local leaders from locking down their communities, despite exploding caseloads in cities from Atlanta to Phoenix. The common thread in these twin confrontations is that they pit Republican officials who rely on support primarily from exurban, small-town, and rural voters against major metropolitan areas that favor Democrats. In the process, these Republicans-- Trump in particular-- may be hoping to rally their non-urban voter base by defining themselves explicitly in opposition to the cities." Trump is trying to split America while painting himself as a hero combating violent crime in fetid American cities filled with disloyal, threatening minorities.





In his new book, Traitor: A History of American Betrayal from Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump, set for publication in late October, days before the election, historian David Rothkopf wrote how "Trump is unfit in almost every respect for the high office he holds. But what distinguishes him from every other bad leader the U.S. has had is that he has repeatedly, egregiously, betrayed his country. Regardless of how Senate Republicans have let him off the hook, the facts available to the public show that Trump has met every necessary standard to define his behavior as traitorous. He has clearly broken faith with the people of the country he was chosen to lead, starting long before he took office, then throughout his time in the White House. And we may not yet have seen the last of his crimes. But the story we know so far is so outrageous and disturbing that it raises a question that has never before been presented in American history: is the president of the United States the greatest threat this country faces in the world?"

Rothkopf concludes that Trump and his many abettors have committed the highest-level, greatest, most damaging betrayal in the history of the country-- worse than Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr and leaders of the Confederacy!

The Consequences Can Be Very Dire When A President Loses His Mind

Never Waste A Serious Crisis by Nancy Ohanian

Former Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) couldn't stand Trump-- and retired from the Senate because of him-- but was always a die-hard, full-bore conservative and never any kind of moderate. He'll do something many conservative Republicans plan to do: voted for a conservative Democrat for the first time in their lives. On core issues, he has no real problems with Biden. Besides, he told the Washington Post's K.K. Otteson a few days ago, the best thing for the future of the Republican party would be "a sound defeat" for Señor Trumpanzee in November. "No doubt. Long term for the Republican Party, you bet. And for conservatism as well."

Nor is Flake the only strange source of negativity aimed in Trump's direction.Kevin Rudd was the prime minister of Australia twice-- once when George W. Bush was president and again when Obama was president. On Wednesday, Foreign Affairs published a piece he penned, The Coming Post-COVID Anarchy. "[D]espite the best efforts of ideological warriors in Beijing and Washington," he wrote, "the uncomfortable truth is that China and the United States are both likely to emerge from this crisis significantly diminished. Neither a new Pax Sinica nor a renewed Pax Americana will rise from the ruins. Rather, both powers will be weakened, at home and abroad. And the result will be a continued slow but steady drift toward international anarchy across everything from international security to trade to pandemic management. With nobody directing traffic, various forms of rampant nationalism are taking the place of order and cooperation. The chaotic nature of national and global responses to the pandemic thus stands as a warning of what could come on an even broader scale."

Heady stuff to grapple with for a man who George Conway noted this week is burdened with narcissism that "deadens any ability he might otherwise have had to carry out the duties of a president in the manner the Constitution requires. He’s so self-obsessed, he can only act for himself, not for the nation. It’s why he was impeached, and why he should have been removed from office... Trump’s lying, his self-regard, his self-soothing, his lack of empathy, his narcissistic rage, his contempt for norms, rules, laws, facts and simple truths-- have all come home to roost. Now he sees his poll numbers fall accordingly, and lashes out with ever-increasing anger. For deep in his psyche he knows the truth. Because he fears being revealed as a fake or deranged, he’ll call others fake or deranged. Because he fears losing, he’ll call them losers instead. And while Trump’s mind roils in rage, too many Americans are losing their lives. That’s the losing that matters, to everyone but him.

Rudd recognizes the problem and it was reflected in his essay. "[T]he United States’ power, the Trump administration’s chaotic management has left an indelible impression around the world of a country incapable of handling its own crises, let alone anybody else’s. More important, the United States seems set to emerge from this period as a more divided polity rather than a more united one, as would normally be the case following a national crisis of this magnitude; this continued fracturing of the American political establishment adds a further constraint on U.S. global leadership... The world has watched in horror as an American president acts not as the leader of the free world but as a quack apothecary recommending unproven 'treatments.' It has seen what 'America First' means in practice: don’t look to the United States for help in a genuine global crisis, because it can’t even look after itself. Once there was the United States of the Berlin airlift. Now there is the image of the USS Theodore Roosevelt crippled by the virus, reports of the administration trying to take exclusive control of a vaccine being developed in Germany, and federal intervention to stop the commercial sale of personal protective equipment to Canada. The world has been turned on its head."

"The President Is Unraveling," wrote conservative Republican Peter Wehner, who previously worked for the Reagan administration as well as for both Bush administrations, as well as for rightist icons Jack Kemp and Keane Kirkpatrick. His Atlantic essay this week warned that the country is witnessing the steady, uninterrupted intellectual and psychological decomposition of Donald Trump.

"In case there was any doubt," he wrote, "the past dozen days have proved we’re at the point in his presidency where Donald Trump has become his own caricature, a figure impossible to parody, a man whose words and actions are indistinguishable from an Alec Baldwin skit on Saturday Night Live." He noted that the Trumpanzee "pièce de résistance came during a late April coronavirus task-force briefing, when he floated using 'just very powerful light' inside the body as a potential treatment for COVID-19 and then, for good measure, contemplated injecting disinfectant as a way to combat the effects of the virus 'because you see it gets in the lungs and does a tremendous number on them, so it’d be interesting to check that.' But the burlesque show just keeps rolling on."

Trump savaged Bush for his participation in the non-partisan Call to Unite live stream benefiting COVID-19 relief. Bush expressed "gratitude to health-care workers, encouraged Americans to abide by social-distancing rules, and reminded his fellow Americans that we have faced trying times before." he never referred to Trump, but did say "In the final analysis, we are not partisan combatants; we are human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God. We rise or fall together, and we are determined to rise."

Wehner reckoned that was too much for Trump, who tweeted "[Bush] was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax in American history!"

So think about that for a minute. George W. Bush made a moving, eloquent plea for empathy and national unity, which enraged Donald Trump enough that he felt the need to go on the attack.

But there’s more. On the same weekend that he attacked Bush for making an appeal to national unity, Trump said this about Kim Jong Un, one of the most brutal leaders in the world: “I, for one, am glad to see he is back, and well!”

Then, Sunday night, sitting at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial for a town-hall interview with Fox News, Trump complained that he is “treated worse” than President Abraham Lincoln. “I am greeted with a hostile press, the likes of which no president has ever seen,” Trump said.

By Monday morning, the president was peddling a cruel and bizarre conspiracy theory aimed at MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, a Trump critic, with Trump suggesting in his tweet that a “cold case” be opened to look into the death of an intern in 2001.

I could have picked a dozen other examples over the past 10 days, but these five will suffice. They illustrate some of the essential traits of Donald Trump: the shocking ignorance, ineptitude, and misinformation; his constant need to divide Americans and attack those who are trying to promote social solidarity; his narcissism, deep insecurity, utter lack of empathy, and desperate need to be loved; his feelings of victimization and grievance; his affinity for ruthless leaders; and his fondness for conspiracy theories.

...[T]hose traits are defining his presidency, producing a kind of creeping paralysis. We are witnessing the steady, uninterrupted intellectual and psychological decomposition of an American president. It’s something the Trump White House cannot hide-- indeed, it doesn’t even try to hide it anymore. There is not even the slightest hint of normalcy.

This will have ongoing ramifications for the remainder of Trump’s first term and for his reelection strategy. More than ever, Trump will try to convince Americans that “what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening,” to quote his own words in 2018.

That won’t be easy in a pandemic, as the death toll mounts and the economy collapses and the failures of the president multiply. But that doesn’t mean Trump won’t try. It’s all he has left, so Americans have to prepare for it.

Trump and his apparatchiks will not only step up their propaganda; they will increase their efforts to exhaust our critical thinking and to annihilate truth, in the words of the Russian dissident Garry Kasparov. We will see even more “alternative facts.” We will see even more brazen attempts to rewrite history. We will hear even more crazy conspiracy theories. We will witness even more lashing out at reporters, more rage, and more lies.

“The real opposition is the media,” Steve Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, once told the journalist Michael Lewis. “And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

We will see more extreme appeals to the fringe base of Trump’s party, including right-wing militias. For example, after hundreds of protesters, many of them carrying guns, descended on the capitol in Lansing, Michigan, to protest Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order, Trump, summoning the ghosts of Charlottesville, described the protesters as “very good people.” Some of these “very good people” carried signs saying tyrants get the rope and tyrant bitch and comparing the governor to Hitler.

We will see a more prominent role played by One America News, a pro-Trump network that the president has praised dozens of times. And we will see the right-wing media complex go to even more bizarre places—not just people such as InfoWar’s Alex Jones, who literally threatened to eat his own neighbors if the lockdown continued, but more mainstream figures such as Salem Radio Network’s Dennis Prager, who declared the other day that the lockdown was “the greatest mistake in the history of humanity.”

Watching formerly serious individuals on the right, including the Christian right, become Trump courtiers has been a painful and dispiriting thing for many of us to witness. In the process, they have reconfigured their own character, intellect, and moral sensibilities to align with the disordered mind and deformed ethical world of Donald Trump.

And we will see, as we have for the entire Trump presidency, the national Republican Party fall in line. Many are speaking out in defense of Trump while other timid souls who know better have gone sotto voce out of fear and cowardice that they have justified to themselves, and tried less successfully to justify to others.

What this means is that Americans are facing not just a conventional presidential election in 2020 but also, and most important, a referendum on reality and epistemology. Donald Trump is asking us to enter even further into his house of mirrors. He is asking us to live within a lie, to live within his lie, for four more years. The duty of citizenship in America today is to refuse to live within that lie.

“The simple step of a simple courageous man is not to partake in falsehood, not to support false actions,” Alexandr Solzhenitsyn said in his mesmerizing 1970 Nobel lecture. “Let that enter the world, let it even reign in the world-- but not with my help.”

Solzhenitsyn went on to say that writers and artists can achieve more; they can conquer falsehoods. “Falsehood can hold out against much in this world, but not against art,” he said.

But art, as powerful as it is, is not the only instrument with which to fight falsehoods. There are also the daily acts of integrity of common men and women who will not believe the lies or spread the lies, who will not allow the foundation of truth-- factual truth, moral truth-- to be destroyed, and who, in standing for truth, will help heal this broken land.

Neither The Pandemic Nor Trump Has Changed The Republican Party-- Both Have Just Exposed The Base For What It Is

You wouldn't know from the way the mainstream media is constantly, incessantly harping on it, but ending social distancing-- backed by Trump-- is a fringe position among most Americans. Earlier today I was speaking with one of the Blue America-edorsed congressional candidates from Texas, Julie Oliver and she told me, defiantly, that "We aren't going to let Texas be defined by its smallest minds. Sandy Hook truthers and anti-vaccination extremists in no way represent us and the national media is gullibly covering an astro-turfed fringe group as if they're reflective of what people really think. And they do so while there are human rights violations carried out in our name, in our state, every day at the border. We need the media to connect the dots." A new Morning Consult poll for Politico shows that only 14% of respondents say Americans should stop social distancing to stimulate the economy even if it means increasing the spread of the virus (up 4 points from last week). On the other hand, 76%, say Americans should continue to social distance for as long as necessary, even if it means continued economic damage." Politically that translates into 44% of Americans saying they would vote to send a Democrat to Congress and 39% saying they would vote for a Republican. The poll also showed that Americans perceive Biden as a weak and useless candidate/leader, no matter what they think of Trump.

Yesterday, The Atlantic published an essay by Peter Wehner behind its paywall, The Party of the Aggrieved where he makes the point that "the pandemic has revealed the animating forces of the Republican Party in the age of Trump." The forces ain't pretty, but it's important to be aware of them, since they threaten all of our lives and well-being. He began by noting that just one day after announcing guidelines the nation’s governors can use to carry out an orderly reopening of their states, Señor Trumpanzee "openly encouraged protests against the social-distancing restrictions that have saved tens of thousands of American lives," thereby "ceding any semblance of national leadership on the pandemic, and choosing instead to divide the country by playing to his political base." That's Señor T to a t.

Maskless demonstrations-- some featuring Make America Great Again hats, semiautomatic weapons, flags with rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and American and Confederate flags-- have now taken place in state capitals in Colorado, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington. More are being planned.

“They’ve got cabin fever,” the president said of the protesters. “These are great people,” according to Trump. “These people love our country.”

The number of protesters at these rallies has varied from a few dozen to a few thousand. The importance of the protests isn’t so much their size but rather what they symbolize. It is a mistake to dismiss them.

The protests have become a rallying point for the right, encouraged by talk-radio and Fox News personalities such as Laura Ingraham, Jeanine Pirro, Tucker Carlson, and Brian Kilmeade. The anti-social-distancing rallies are drawing comparisons to the early days of the Tea Party movement.

Stephen Moore, who serves on Trump’s economic council to reopen the country, said, “So this is a great time, gentlemen and ladies, for civil disobedience. We need to be the Rosa Parks here, and protest against these government injustices.”

Even if one believes that some of the measures being put in place are too restrictive, this is hardly a Rosa Parks moment. The protesters, for their part, are not distinguishing themselves by making finely calibrated points about epidemiology or offering up more refined social-distancing plans. They are lashing out in frustration and in anger, frustration and anger that is being incited by the president and many-- although not all-- of his acolytes on the right.

Trump's eagerness to light the fuse is nothing new; it’s simply the latest manifestation of the president’s disordered mind, which I have written about before. He finds satisfaction not in resolving conflict, but in increasing it. That has been true for much of his life and all of his presidency.

In the midst of a lethal pandemic, Americans are striving for social cohesion and solidarity. They may yet achieve it, but if they do, it will be in spite of this president, not because of him. Trump is doing everything in his power to divide us, to keep people on edge, mistrustful and at one another’s throats. To that end, he will even cheer on people who are violating his own administration’s social-distancing guidelines.

But there is also method to Trump’s madness. From the moment he took office, the president has pursued a base-only strategy. Rather than trying to win over converts, Trump has decided his path to victory in November lies with inflaming his base, keeping his supporters in a state of constant agitation, even if that requires framing “a complex science/policy debate as evil oppressors vs. heroic victims,” in the words of the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

Progressive Democrat Chris Armitage is running in the eastern Washington congressional district that Trump won in 2106 by a wide margin-- 52-39%. His opponent is Trump doormat Cathy McMorris Rodgers. Armitage told us that "Here in eastern Washington, the majority people have not allowed a pandemic to be partisan. We believe doctors and other medical professionals and are incredibly grateful for people who stand up to protect public health and safety."

In southwest Michigan, Trump's 2016 victory was narrower-- 51-43%-- and state Rep. Jon Hoadley is likely to knock off another Trump yes man, Fred Upton. "Here in Michigan," he told us on the phone, "we are lucky to have Gov. Whitmer leading the response and doing the right thing by listening to scientists and public health experts to keep Michiganders safe. Unfortunately, we also have Congressman Upton who is parroting President Trump and advocating for a rushed reopening that puts the health and safety of our communities at risk. We’re in a public health crisis, we must listen to scientists and public health experts about how to proceed and how to safely phase-out stay at home orders. Congressman Upton's choice to follow the lead of President Trump who called our global pandemic 'a hoax' instead of looking out for us with be one that voters across southwest Michigan will remember in November."

"I could be wrong," Omaha progressive Kara Eastman told us a few minutes ago, "but I think this virus is forcing many Republicans to re-think some of their positions. Many need government relief and the mythology that these are 'handouts' may be dissipating. Many are talking about the need to listen to the scientists (a departure for many climate change deniers). Many finally realize that our current healthcare system is wholly inadequate. All I can do as a candidate is try to speak to the issues that matter most to people and try to puncture these bubbles. I think it might be working..."

Back to Wehner, who wrote that Señor Trumpanzee is, as always, "acting the only way he knows how, but also in a way that resonates with the base of the party. He has succeeded in creating, at least among some significant number of his supporters, an almost cultlike attachment. The response to COVID-19, then, is acting like a CAT scan on the American right. What it reveals is alarming and, for those of us who have been lifelong Republicans, dispiriting." Well... actually most lifelong Republicans are not dispirited at all. They lap it up. Poor Wehner, doesn't get it. Most lifelong Republicans are not #NeverTrumpers like he and his friends, they're eager converts to the Death Cult. The corporate Democratic Party of Obama, Clinton, Biden, Schumer, Pelosi is where Republicans like Wehner belong. And an increasing trickle of his type of Republican has realized that. Wehner may too; something's telling him that his party is a nightmare and Donald Trump didn't make it that way.

I need to add, though, that it’s far too simple to say that what occurred with Donald Trump in 2016 and since was a “hostile takeover” of the GOP. Trump-- the only known con artist, conspiracy monger, and pathological liar in the 2016 GOP field-- gave the base of the party what it wanted, even as he toxified it, amplifying all the worst tendencies of the American right. To what degree Trump fundamentally changed the Republican Party, and to what degree he simply personified what it was becoming, is an impossible question to resolve. What we do know is that the base of the GOP and Donald Trump have now merged. There is no separation. (Trump’s approval rating among Republicans is 93 percent, according to Gallup.) The GOP is as much Donald Trump’s party today as it was Ronald Reagan’s party in the 1980s.

This pandemic and the response to it reveal some important things about the attitudes that animate the Republican Party in the age of Trump.

Trump’s supporters display a deepening mistrust of expertise of any kind, including medical figures such as Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In rallies around the nation, protesters are chanting “Fire Fauci! Fire Fauci!” and holding up signs saying Fauci Lied, Main Street Died.

Fauci is hardly perfect; no one could be when dealing with a novel virus like the coronavirus. But the fact that Fauci is among the most experienced and respected epidemiologists in the world not only doesn’t reassure the protesters; for some number of Trump supporters, it is further reason to doubt him, since he must be part of the so-called deep state, which they view as implacably opposed to the president.

One person I know, who is very sympathetic to Trump and Trump’s supporters and is in constant touch with them, told me yesterday that the people he was hearing from felt a sense of solidarity with the protesters. (This individual asked for anonymity to speak candidly about these conversations.) Trump’s supporters took the president’s previous embrace of such guidelines as evidence that he was “being bamboozled by ‘deep-state actors’ like Fauci,” this person told me. “The natives are getting restless.”

During the pandemic, Trump supporters have relied heavily on Fox News and talk radio, which can be fountains of misinformation. The pandemic has deepened their grievances and tribalistic loyalties. And we’ve seen how eager many of the president’s supporters are to imagine themselves as heroic figures in a make-believe drama, as if demanding the right to go to a bowling alley or a nail salon during a pandemic makes them modern-day Thomas Paines.

“Government mandating sick people to stay home is called quarantine. However, the government mandating healthy citizens to stay home, forcing businesses and churches to close is called tyranny,” reads a statement released by Pennsylvanians Against Excessive Quarantine. One Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, protester’s sign quoted Jefferson: “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.”

But what may be most unsettling just now is this: At a moment when states and local communities are trying to work together, when many churches and religious communities are seeking to be agents of support and healing, when health-care workers are risking their lives to save others, the president and many of his most devoted supporters are fomenting chaos, division, and antipathy. They want COVID-19 to be the latest battlefield in a never-ending culture war.

This is particularly worrisome because while some crises can unify a nation, pandemics have historically caused people to turn on one another. At the very moment we need as our national leader a person who can break down the dividing walls, who can strengthen our bonds of affection for one another, we have a president who is temperamentally determined to annihilate comity, a spirit of grace and self-giving, and feelings of empathy and compassion.

At least as worrisome is the president’s ability to marshal an army of supporters who model themselves after him, who take his lead, and who allow their sensibilities to be shaped by his.

There are exceptions, of course. Some Trump voters who strongly support his policies tell me they are disgusted by his ethical transgressions and antics. I know, too, Republican lawmakers who, in private, speak quite harshly about the president. But the justifications and rationalizations are getting a bit tiresome as Trump confirms with every passing day some of the gravest concerns about him-- psychological, emotional, cognitive, and moral. He is a badly damaged soul who draws energy by acting in ways that are degrading and dishonorable.

This is hardly a secret, and yet almost everyone in his own party-- with a few honorable exceptions, such as Utah Senator Mitt Romney and Maryland Governor Larry Hogan-- are complicit in the president’s desecrations. Donald Trump has broken them.

Whether or not the Republican Party can recover from the Trump years depends in part on how the Trump story ends. As a conservative, I believe the Republican Party can be saved. But it has to be worth saving. An essential step toward restoration is repudiation-- of Trump and of Trumpism. The GOP has to break free of both, and soon.

It may seem paradoxical, but those who care most about the future of the Republican Party need to hope for the defeat of this Republican president.

Of Treason, Of Bullshit, Of Civil War

Congressional Terrorist by Nancy Ohanian

Over the weekend Trump TV reported that "Fox News has learned that the Pentagon, State Department and National Security Council were 'unanimous' in supporting the aid to Ukraine, and that Trump acted alone in withholding the aid over the summer." That was the aid Trump stopped and then used to try to force Ukraine to do his political dirty work against Biden, to-- as Ted Lieu was willing to say before anyone else-- manufacture dirt on Joe Biden. This morning, in an e-mail he sent me, Ted added, "That Trump's recent Tweets threatening civil war are despicable, dangerous and a complete betrayal of his oath of office goes without saying. It is sadly just the latest example of this President shattering our democratic norms. Now is the time for patriotic Americans of every political persuasion to put country above party, and stand up and speak out against this disgraceful rhetoric."  

Personally, I've hated Biden since the '70s and I get some degree of perverse satisfaction seeing him smeared by the raging asshole in the Oval Office-- but, very clearly, what Trump is doing is treasonous, pure and simple. And late last night and this morning, he turned his treason up to 11. Note well-- the first call for civil war is at the bottom of this desperate, crazy tweet storm:

Jamie Raskin (D-MD), is one of Congress' most brilliant members. We should all be very, very happy he's also a member of the Judiciary Committee. This morning, in an e-mail after Trump's treasonous tweet, he noted that "With charity towards none and malice for all, Trump now recirculates the threat of ‘a Civil War like fracture’ if he is impeached.  So now we can see the contributions of our first GOP president and our undoubtedly last GOP president. Lincoln created the Republican Party and gave his life in order to save the Union. Trump ruined the Republican Party and now threatens to destroy the Union in order to save his job."

Like Raskin, Mike Siegel is another brilliant attorney-- except he isn't on the Judiciary Committee yet, or even in Congress; he's running for a central Texas seat held by drunken Trump-Enabler, Michael McCaul. Today he told me that he was "born in 1977, three years after Nixon resigned. I’ve never experienced this level of political instability, inside the United States. Trump’s pandering to white supremacists, to ICE and border patrol, is essentially a call to arms, to gather brownshirts in favor of some sort of fascist dictatorship. He doesn’t respect courts or Congress, journalists, social norms, or the rule of law. We can’t fool ourselves that impeachment is inevitable. We have a major struggle ahead, for the soul of our country and the preservation of democracy-- perhaps the most important struggle of our lives."

Ro Khanna is optimist. From a note he sent me, I'm gathering he doesn't feel Joe Biden is likely to be elected president. "After Trump," he wrote, "I believe we will have a leader who will usher in a new progressive era and a moment of national reconciliation. This nation had Lincoln after Buchanan and Roosevelt after Hoover. I am confident we will have a leader who summons the best of America post Trump."

One of the first reactions from the right, came from Illinois conservative Republican Adam Kinzinger, who served honorably in the Air Force and often seems repulsed by Trump's denigration of our country and the principles and values it was built on. He slammed Trump's outrageous impeachment bullshit.

You know what criticism does to Trump though-- something he learned from his fascist little shit idol, Roy Cohn-- he digs in. In this case, he started carrying on about how Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff should be arrested for exactly what Trump is defending himself from-- treason. Last year Adam won reelection with 78.4% of the vote. There's not much room for growth but Trump's vile attacks will likely mean Schiff will be elected with over 80% of the vote. And, he'll raise all the money he needs for an expected Senate run. He has no serious opposition for reelection and he's already raised $3,125,472 this cycle and has $6,143,791 in his campaign account. All my neighbors want to do fundraisers for him-- thanks in part to Trump's idiotic attacks on him.

Yep, that was a cornered rat screeching to his moron followers that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff could face "arrest for treason."

Rory Cooper is a right-wing Republican, a campaign strategist who used to work at Eric Cantor's communications director. This morning he wrote at the Daily Beast that his party will get what they deserve if they don't distance themselves from Trump now. "As a Republican who has watched partisan politics play out in Washington for over two decades," he wrote, "I’m sympathetic to the argument that Democrats wanted to impeach President Trump since the day he was inaugurated. However, it was just as certain to me that he would eventually do something to justify impeachment. And early appearances suggest he has. At best, President Trump used his office to seek personal and political gain and engage in 2016 conspiracy peddling with a strategic ally engaged in a war with Russia. At worse, Trump held back military aid to Ukraine in order to extract this personal and political gain. It’s a difference without a distinction when it comes to his fitness to serve. The military assistance, authorized by the Congress, was unilaterally held back by Trump, with no coordination with the National Security Council or the Office of Management and Budget, according to the IG’s report. Based on these revelations and what President Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani have publicly admitted, an impeachment investigation is warranted."

Jeff Flake was a member of the House when Cooper was working with Cantor to elect more right-wingers to Congress. Flake was one of those right-wingers and the reason he was the one who got the nomination for a U.S. Senate seat was because he was the most right wing of all the members of the Arizona congressional delegation. His New York Times op-ed today just drips with loathing for Trump, as he warns Republicans there's still time for them to save their souls. He's wrong there. It's too late for them. "In my case," he wrote, "I had not supported the president’s election. One year into his presidency, I knew that I could not support his reelection. While I had hoped that I could still run for reelection to the Senate in 2018 as someone who would help to provide a check on the president’s worst impulses, it soon became apparent that this was not what Republican primary voters in my state were looking for. Whatever reservations they might have had when they voted for Donald Trump, one year into his presidency they wanted a senator who was all in… Our country will have more presidents. But principles, well, we get just one crack at those. For those who want to put America first, it is critically important at this moment in the life of our country that we all, here and now, do just that. Trust me when I say that you can go elsewhere for a job. But you cannot go elsewhere for a soul."

NY Times columnist Peter Wehner was inspired by all this to ask a simple question: What's The Matter With Republicans? Why, he wondered do they still defend an obvious criminal and low-life? "Month after month, with one outrageous, norm-shattering comment or action giving way to another, Republicans who in the past could never have envisioned being Trump acolytes, have been ground down. Accommodation has kicked in, which is a psychological relief to many of them. For those who view Mr. Trump as a model politician who voices their grievances and fights with a viciousness they have long hoped for from Republicans, the accommodation is not just a relief but a source of delight. As the psychologist I spoke to, put it to me, many Republicans 'are nearly unrecognizable versions of themselves pre-Trump. At this stage it’s less about defending Trump; they are defending their own defense of Trump. At this point,' this person went on, 'condemnation of Trump is condemnation of themselves. They’ve let too much go by to try and assert moral high ground now. Calling out another is one thing; calling out yourself is quite another.'" Now conjure up sick little South Carolina closet queen Lindsey Graham, a personal cesspool of psychosis.

Whistleblower by Nancy Ohanian

I spoke to three deep thinkers among 2020 congressional candidates, Jennifer Christie, an indiana scientist and a mother of 4 young children and North Carolina pastor Jason Butler, both of whom we've endorsed and spoken about extensively already; and Chicago community activist Robert Emmons, who we are still vetting but who has impressed us tremendously. Butler first:

From the beginning it was clear that President Trump was a threat to democracy because he may be the first president in the history of our nation that has put himself above the office. It is precisely this self-exhaltatuion that makes him an existential threat to our nation. Because of his ego, he puts himself above our nation so of course it is now obvious that he will stoke the flames of civil war that would result in the suffering of multiplied millions and would almost invariably plunge the world into a global economic depression. But he doesn’t care. All he cares about is himself. This has been clear all along. He’s lived in a penthouse with golden toilets. He doesn’t know what real life is like for us and he has no clue that his actions and words have consequences for so many. To me, the fact that any he, as President, would ever even insulate, and thus condone, the possibility of civil war to protect his position is insurrectionist treason and the greatest threat to any nation. He has already divided us against one another and against our allies in the world - what is next? But it also must be noted that it was an evangelical pastor who he retweeted here, Robert Jeffress, who has been one of his strongest supporters. To my fellow church goers I want to say-- It is time that we collectively walked out of churches that stoke the flames of war of any sort-- but especially civil war. Jesus said, "Blessed are the Peacemakers" not blessed are the war mongers. This marriage of Trump and the evangelical church is leading us nothing but suffering.

Jennifer Christie noted that "Suggesting a civil war over the Constitutional impeachment process smacks of authoritarianism, incites violence, and is irresponsible. What Donald Trump forgets (or doesn’t know) is that Congress is an equal branch of government representing the People. But Trump does not respect the Constitution as we have seen from his attempts to obstruct justice, profit from the presidency, and attacks on free speech and free press. The best thing we could do is to rid ourselves of this era of divisiveness and Trumpian politics. I’m glad to see members of Congress from all parties standing up to his latest tweet."

Robert Emmons is 26 year old and already demonstrating the kind of wisdom that makes me imagine he could be one of the best members of Congress going forward. He told me that Trump "has hurt the ADOS community, the Latinx community, the Muslim community and every single patriotic American, with his hateful rhetoric and treason. He’s sided with White Nationalism and foreign countries, and spat in the face of movements of equality that have taken decades to build. This president and his ideology needs to be impeached swiftly with the full force of the US Federal government. If we continue down a path of racism, bigotry, fascism, profit-over-people, then our country will remain divided. It will be divided between the majority of us that want healthcare, education, a clean world, and justice for all, and those that support division that benefits people like Trump. I know that the people of the first district want unity right now. Impeaching the president will be one step in the right direction to prevent wars in all forms. We will not fall victim to the desperation of a system that is on its last leg; clinging onto an evil orientation that feeds on people as commodities. Instead we will rise to the occasion and build a world that is just and equitable. There will be no Civil War; only a fight to tilt the moral scale to the side of peace. The day of fear mongering is coming to a close because in this moment, and through the inquiry, we choose courage."

White Evangelicals Are Embracing Concentration Camps As Revenge For Their Petty Grievances And Resentments And Because They Feel Mocked And Scorned

Babies in Cages by Nancy Ohanian

Death camps are different from concentration camps; they're worse. But concentration camps are bad enough. If Trump was setting up concentration camps what would you do about it? What are you doing about the concentration camps? Silence, beloved brothers and sisters, is not golden... it's complicity. Our country is complicit in his crimes against humanity, his crimes against these women and children.

What about Trump's evangelical supporters? They may bear more responsibility than other Americans. Do the concentration camps make them uncomfortable? From what I'm reading... not at all, not at all. Yesterday The Atlantic published The Deepening Crisis in Evangelical Christianity-- Support for Trump comes at a high cost for Christian witness by Peter Wehner. Their leaders are reveling in Trumpism. Wehner began with a quote from noted evangelical huckster Ralph Reed: "There has never been anyone who has defended us and who has fought for us, who we have loved more than Donald J. Trump. No one!" And evangelicals are fighting for him too. They believe the concentration camp regime "is spiritually driven" and that "God’s hand is on Trump, this moment and at the election... Donald Trump is God’s man." He's kidnapping children and putting them up for adoption. "God has chosen him and is protecting him." These people want an authoritarian asshole. They welcome fascism and the end to democracy. "Jerry Falwell Jr.: "Conservatives & Christians need to stop electing ‘nice guys.’ They might make great Christian leaders but the United States needs street fighters like @realDonaldTrump at every level of government b/c the liberal fascists Dems are playing for keeps & many Repub leaders are a bunch of wimps!"


Late last night, writing for the NY Times, Thomas Edsall pointed out how the "give-us-our-orders" evangelicals fit into Trump's plans for reelection. "Alex Gage, head of TargetPoint Consulting, a Republican firm specializing in voter mobilization, found that 'anger is a much stronger motivation' than recounting the beneficial things a politician has done. Trump has aligned himself with two overlapping, declining constituencies that are clearly motivated by a combination of anger, resentment and anxiety-- white evangelical Christians and whites without college degrees. If Trump is to win re-election next year, he must raise the stakes for these two sets of voters so that they turn out in unprecedented numbers. Demonizing immigrants and other minorities is crucial to this strategy."

Between 65 and 70% of white evangelicals approve of him-- 25 points higher than the national average. "The enthusiastic, uncritical embrace of President Trump," wrote Wehner, "by white evangelicals is among the most mind-blowing developments of the Trump era. How can a group that for decades-- and especially during the Bill Clinton presidency-- insisted that character counts and that personal integrity is an essential component of presidential leadership not only turn a blind eye to the ethical and moral transgressions of Donald Trump, but also constantly defend him? Why are those who have been on the vanguard of “family values” so eager to give a man with a sordid personal and sexual history a mulligan?"

Part of the answer is their belief that they are engaged in an existential struggle against a wicked enemy-- not Russia, not North Korea, not Iran, but rather American liberals and the left. If you listen to Trump supporters who are evangelical (and non-evangelicals, like the radio talk-show host Mark Levin), you will hear adjectives applied to those on the left that could easily be used to describe a Stalinist regime. (Ask yourself how many evangelicals have publicly criticized Trump for his lavish praise of Kim Jong Un, the leader of perhaps the most savage regime in the world and the worst persecutor of Christians in the world.)

Many white evangelical Christians, then, are deeply fearful of what a Trump loss would mean for America, American culture, and American Christianity. If a Democrat is elected president, they believe, it might all come crashing down around us. During the 2016 election, for example, the influential evangelical author and radio talk-show host Eric Metaxas said, “In all of our years, we faced all kinds of struggles. The only time we faced an existential struggle like this was in the Civil War and in the Revolution when the nation began … We are on the verge of losing it as we could have lost it in the Civil War.” A friend of mine described that outlook to me this way: “It’s the Flight 93 election. FOREVER.”

Many evangelical Christians are also filled with grievances and resentments because they feel they have been mocked, scorned, and dishonored by the elite culture over the years. (Some of those feelings are understandable and warranted.) For them, Trump is a man who will not only push their agenda on issues such as the courts and abortion; he will be ruthless against those they view as threats to all they know and love. For a growing number of evangelicals, Trump’s dehumanizing tactics and cruelty aren’t a bug; they are a feature. Trump “owns the libs,” and they love it. He’ll bring a Glock to a cultural knife fight, and they relish that.

... There's a very high cost to our politics for celebrating the Trump style, but what is most personally painful to me as a person of the Christian faith is the cost to the Christian witness. Nonchalantly jettisoning the ethic of Jesus in favor of a political leader who embraces the ethic of Thrasymachus and Nietzsche-- might makes right, the strong should rule over the weak, justice has no intrinsic worth, moral values are socially constructed and subjective-- is troubling enough.

But there is also the undeniable hypocrisy of people who once made moral character, and especially sexual fidelity, central to their political calculus and who are now embracing a man of boundless corruptions. Don’t forget: Trump was essentially named an unindicted co-conspirator (“Individual 1”) in a scheme to make hush-money payments to a porn star who alleged she’d had an affair with him while he was married to his third wife, who had just given birth to their son.

While on the Pacific Coast last week, I had lunch with Karel Coppock, whom I have known for many years and who has played an important role in my Christian pilgrimage. In speaking about the widespread, reflexive evangelical support for the president, Coppock-- who is theologically orthodox and generally sympathetic to conservatism-- lamented the effect this moral freak show is having, especially on the younger generation. With unusual passion, he told me, “We’re losing an entire generation. They’re just gone. It’s one of the worst things to happen to the Church.”

Coppock mentioned to me the powerful example of St. Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, who was willing to rebuke the Roman Emperor Theodosius for the latter’s role in massacring civilians as punishment for the murder of one of his generals. Ambrose refused to allow the Church to become a political prop, despite concerns that doing so might endanger him. Ambrose spoke truth to power. (Theodosius ended up seeking penance, and Ambrose went on to teach, convert, and baptize St. Augustine.) Proximity to power is fine for Christians, Coppock told me, but only so long as it does not corrupt their moral sense, only so long as they don’t allow their faith to become politically weaponized. Yet that is precisely what’s happening today.

Evangelical Christians need another model for cultural and political engagement, and one of the best I am aware of has been articulated by the artist Makoto Fujimura, who speaks about “culture care” instead of “culture war.

According to Fujimura, “Culture care is an act of generosity to our neighbors and culture. Culture care is to see our world not as a battle zone in which we’re all vying for limited resources, but to see the world of abundant possibilities and promise.” What Fujimura is talking about is a set of sensibilities and dispositions that are fundamentally different from what we see embodied in many white evangelical leaders who frequently speak out on culture and politics. The sensibilities and dispositions Fujimura is describing are characterized by a commitment to grace, beauty, and creativity, not antipathy, disdain, and pulsating anger. It’s the difference between an open hand and a mailed fist.

Building on this theme, Mark Labberton, a colleague of Fujimura’s and the president of Fuller Theological Seminary, the largest multidenominational seminary in the world, has spoken about a distinct way for Christians to conceive of their calling, from seeing themselves as living in a Promised Land and “demanding it back” to living a “faithful, exilic life.”

Right-wing former GOP congressman assesses Trump

Labberton speaks about what it means to live as people in exile, trying to find the capacity to love in unexpected ways; to see the enemy, the foreigner, the stranger, and the alien, and to go toward rather than away from them. He asks what a life of faithfulness looks like while one lives in a world of fear.

He adds, “The Church is in one of its deepest moments of crisis-- not because of some election result or not, but because of what has been exposed to be the poverty of the American Church in its capacity to be able to see and love and serve and engage in ways in which we simply fail to do. And that vocation is the vocation that must be recovered and must be made real in tangible action.”

There are countless examples of how such tangible action can be manifest. But as a starting point, evangelical Christians should acknowledge the profound damage that’s being done to their movement by its braided political relationship-- its love affair, to bring us back to the words of Ralph Reed-- with a president who is an ethical and moral wreck. Until that is undone-- until followers of Jesus are once again willing to speak truth to power rather than act like court pastors-- the crisis in American Christianity will only deepen, its public testimony only dim, its effort to be a healing agent in a broken world only weaken.

At this point, I can’t help but wonder whether that really matters to many of Donald Trump’s besotted evangelical supporters.

Ralph Reed, a follower of Jesus? Give me a break. Falwell, Jr.? You're joking right? What makes Wehner imply they are? Must be something I don't understand.





Also on Friday, writing for The Economist, Erasmus noted "the widening ideological and personal schism within the very group of citizens who should be a conservative president’s most natural supporters... white evangelical Christians, of whom 80% are thought to have voted for Mr Trump. Leading evangelicals are not just sparring over metaphysics, they are also trading insults. Think of the war of words that erupted after June 25th when Russell Moore, a distinguished theologian who heads the Ethics and Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, protested over the fate of migrant children on the Mexican border." Moore wrote that the plight of the kidnapped children at the southern border stuffed into Trump's concentration camps "should 'shock all our consciences' given that all 'those created in the image of God should be treated with dignity and compassion.'" Vicious Trumpist Falwell went on the attack against the man who runs the public-policy arm of America’s largest Protestant denomination immediately: "Who are you Dr Moore? Have you ever built an organisation of any sort from scratch? You’re nothing but an employee-- a bureaucrat." [An inheritor of great wealth, it is notable that Falwell never built anything except an alliance with Satan.] The neo-Nazi evangelicals on the far right fringe joined Falwell by claiming protesting the immigration crisis amounted to an unpatriotic slur on the U.S. Border Patrol.