Why Evangelicals Should Think Twice
October 27, 2020
Most white evangelicals support Donald Trump for reelection. Ignoring some of the craziest arguments, like Trump is “God’s chosen one”, Trump’s evangelical supporters emphasize his opposition to abortion, support for religious liberty, and appointment of conservative judges. Fair enough. Most Democrats are pro-choice and favor LGBTQ calls for acceptance, including the right to marry, over conservative Christians’ rights to not participate in something they believe is sinful, such as gay marriage.
But abortion and religious liberty are not the only issues that Christians should care about. What you also get with Donald Trump is a man with a narcissistic personality disorder. He has an inflated sense of his own importance, an excessive need to be admired, and little or no sense of empathy. As a result, his administration is the epitome of incompetence and corruption. More specifically, the Trump administration has given the country a disastrous foreign policy, a catastrophic climate change policy, a fiasco in health care, and poor stewardship of the economy. Even worse: Trump is dividing the country, attacking the rule of law, and threatening our democracy.
The Trump administration is fundamentally incompetent. While Trump began his term with competent people, such as General Mattis as defense secretary, he has since replaced them with sycophants, such as Pompeo and Barr. From the start, he surrounded himself with family members, as if the U.S. government were his family business, or a Mafia syndicate. Because of his grandiosity, he refuses to listen to his advisors unless they tell him what he wants to hear. The botched response to the Covid-19 crisis is an especially glaring, and deadly, example of the administration’s ineptitude.
The Trump administration is corrupt. As a narcissist, Trump believes the normal rules of political behavior do not apply to him. And so instead of putting his business assets in a blind trust, as his predecessors did, he turned them over to his sons. Foreign governments curry favor by booking events at his hotels and golf courses, as do domestic and foreign businesses. According to Forbes senior editor Dan Alexander, Trump daughter Ivanka’s trademark requests in China were approved 40% faster than before his election. Just a week ago, the New York Times reported that Trump has a secret Chinese bank account. Corruption, of course, is not just about money: Trump’s strongarming of Ukraine’s president to get politically usable dirt on Joe Biden is a prime example. There are good reasons why Democracy21’s Fred Wertheimer calls the Trump administration the most corrupt in history.
Moving on to foreign policy, the record is somewhat better. Trump did have some successes: for example, he brought the campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, started by President Obama, to a successful conclusion. But his abandonment of our Kurdish allies, who spilled most of the blood in the fight, may have undone everything he accomplished, and it certainly smashed our reputation. Trump has also managed to avoid new wars, although he came close to starting one with Iran by killing General Soleimani. Moreover, Trump did sell tank-busting Javelins to Ukraine, but the sales agreement prohibits Ukraine from using them against the Donbas separatists. These successes are overshadowed by the Trump administration’s strategic failures. From the start, Trump has cozied up to dictators, such as Russia’s Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un, and Chinese Communist Party chairman Xi Jinping. At the same time, he has attacked long-standing allies, such as Germany, and ignored others, such as Australia, which had to wait two years until an ambassador was appointed. As China continues its economic and political global expansion, backed by a growing military capability, the U.S. needs its allies more than ever. Instead, Trump has trashed our alliances. Can we count on them when we need them?
With the command to “till it and keep it”, God gave humanity dominion over the earth. Our stewardship of the planet has not been good. Climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, is already causing droughts, fires, and extreme weather patterns. It will continue to get worse. For that reason, world leaders came together and signed the Paris Agreement to keep global warming below 2° by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Despite the counsel of scientists, Trump denies climate change and so withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement. While China has overtaken the U.S. as the world’s greatest polluter, there is no hope for success in the fight against climate change if the U.S. is not onboard.
On health care, Trump has promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – and replace it with “something better”. At the end of his first term, his promised replacement is still a secret. But the threat to Obamacare is real, with a lawsuit pending before the Supreme Court to overturn the law.
Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic is a classic case of dishonesty and incompetence. Trump knew back in January that the novel coronavirus was a serious public health threat, but he chose to downplay it to protect his reelection chances. When Democratic governors took action to limit the damage, he attacked them, calling on supporters to “Liberate Michigan!” Even now, amid the predicted autumn wave of rising Covid-19 cases, he still argues that the virus is going away. The U.S. leads the world in Covid-19 cases and deaths, largely because of its slow response to the pandemic. Trump’s narcissistic focus on reelection has killed thousands of Americans.
Polls show that Trump gets his highest marks for the economy, which was doing well until the pandemic hit. But he does not deserve credit for it. Trump inherited a strong and growing economy from the Obama administration and juiced it up with massive tax cuts. But as any economist will tell you, an economic boom is not the time to increase the deficit. Trump’s tax cuts have raised the government’s debt immensely. When interest rates rise, which will happen someday, the interest burden will be hard to bear. Moreover, due to the high levels of government debt, which the tax cuts fostered, Trump’s Republican allies in the Senate refuse to pass a second stimulus package, which the economy now desperately needs. To maintain its position as the world’s strongest economy, the United States needs to invest in infrastructure – roads, rails, communication, and education – and in industries of the future, such as renewable energy. We are falling short. Another massive economic problem is the growing gap between the rich and the rest. Rising inequality threatens our social cohesion, which threatens our economy. But he does not seem to care about it, nor do his fellow Republicans.
Trump has been called the “Divider in Chief”. He has attacked Mexicans, calling them rapists and criminals. He has banned immigration from Muslim countries. His signature policy is to “build the wall” to deter illegal immigration and has taken money from the Defense Department to do it. Trump is anything but forthright in condemning white supremacists. Not surprisingly, racial incidents against Latinos, Blacks, and Asians have climbed substantially since Trump took office.
Trump denies that Blacks are more likely than whites to be victims of police violence. And when a 17-year-old white male shot a protestor in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Trump supported him. Instead of trying to calm the country in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in police custody, Trump fanned the flames. The result was a wave of protests that sometimes turned violent. Trump responded by sending DHS paramilitaries into Portland, Oregon, and encouraged the white nationalist Proud Boys to “Stand back and stand by!”
Trump’s disdain for the rule of law is painful to see. It began early in his presidency when he demanded personal loyalty from the FBI director, James Comey. Trump then obstructed the Muller investigation into his 2016 campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia. His widespread corruption has already been noted. Trump has pardoned the likes of Sheriff Arpaio and Roger Stone. Under Attorney General Barr, the U.S. Justice Department has been degraded into Trump’s personal law firm, which now wants to defend him in a civil suit.
But the worst evil of Trump’s presidency is his threat to American democracy. His strongarm response to peaceful protesters so he could have a photo op in front of a damaged church in Washington D.C. was an attack on our consitutional right to protest. He has called for an “army” of poll watchers to descend on voting precincts, presumably to intimidate people who would otherwise vote against him. But worst of all, he refuses to say that he will honor the will of the voters by leaving office peacefully. Instead, he says that, if he loses, it is proof of voter fraud, even though the polls favor Joe Biden to win.
If the loser does not accept the election results, but tries to cling to power, American democracy faces an existential threat. And if he would succeed in staying in power despite losing the election, America is no longer a democracy. We would have descended to the level of Belarus and become a dictatorship. The people would not take this lightly – massive civil unrest, with many casualties, would result. We could even have a second civil war.
If you believe that abortion kills a human being, it makes sense to oppose it energetically, and protection of religious liberty is an important part of our American democracy. But the reelection of Donald Trump would put our country and its democracy at grave risk. The price is too high. Instead, politically conservative evangelicals should strive to reform the Republican Party and renew its commitment to democracy and the rule of law. Then, in good conscience, they can try to win the next election. The country might support them.