Monday, January 29, 2018

Conservative evangelicals want to give Trump a 'mulligan,' but they gave Obama hell

One very important component missing from the debate of conservative evangelical hypocrisy in supporting Donald Trump in spite of his morally questionable behavior is how they acted towards Obama.

With Trump, they are all "well he isn't God" or "I trust his word when he says he has changed," or "we are all entitled to make mistakes."

Not so with Obama. With him, they weren't so open-hearted as the videos below show. They weren't so eager to trust his word because they were too busy implying that he wasn't a Christian ergo he danger to America, particularly its moral image.

First, let's look at Family Research Council president Tony Perkins. Perkins, whose talk of giving Trump a "do-over,' or a "mulligan" for his questionable behavior, wasn't so conciliatory to Obama's morality, values, or words in 2012:



People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch also pointed out that in the same year:

Before the 2012 election, Perkins said that voters in 2008 “chose the economy over the moral foundation of the country when we selected Barack Obama as president, and it did not work out,” claiming that Obama had set himself up “in defiance to everything that is biblically oriented in terms of the history of our country and the word of God.” He called for Christians who had voted for Obama in 2008 to “repent” by voting against his reelection and declared that Obama had a “disdain for Christianity.”
And then there is this lovely, yet insane, claim about how the re-election of Obama could mean "the end."




And let's not forget Franklin Graham. Graham, who defended Trump's questionable behavior by saying that he's not "President Perfect." hemmed and and hawed about Obama's Christianity in 2012:



After much criticism, Franklin later apologized. But around that same time, he defended Rudy Giuliani when the former New York mayor claimed that Obama doesn't love America:

 Franklin Graham, President and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, recently took to social media to defend Rudy Giuliani's controversial comments that President Obama does not love the United States and "lacks moral clarity." 
 On Tuesday, the 64 year old speaker and author wrote on his Facebook page, "Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has taken a lot of heat from the media for his remark that he's not sure if President Obama really loves America. I don't know if that's true or not, but I do know that the president defends Islam and chastises Christians, rebukes our allies and befriends our enemies, and fully supports gay marriages and abortion but denies the religious freedoms of those who don't agree. Our nation is ridiculed abroad and morally crumbling within. We are in trouble. We have turned our back on God."

In 2015, Graham  attacked Obama's deceased mother, implying that he had a hesitancy to fight the terrorist group ISIS because she was allegedly a Muslim.

Evangelical conservatives who support Trump want to have it all. They want to seize the high moral ground and the ability to defend a leader who seems to have no moral ground. And they don't want to be questioned about the blatant hypocrisy of it all.

 They aren't fooling anyone but themselves.

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