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| Trump can tell the anti-LGBTQ evangelical right anything and they will treat it like 'The Sermon on the Mount.' |
In reporting about Trump and the religious right's lovefest at the White House last night, NBC demonstrated just how happy evangelical leaders are with the power being associated with Trump gives them.
He will straight up lie to their faces and they will lap it up like ice cream:
In a closed-door meeting with evangelical leaders Monday night, President Donald Trump repeated his debunked claim that he had gotten "rid of" a law forbidding churches and charitable organizations from endorsing political candidates, according to recorded excerpts reviewed by NBC News.
In fact, the law remains on the books, after efforts to kill it in Congress last year failed.
. . . The law that Trump says he got rid of is the so-called Johnson Amendment, a provision inserted into law in 1954 by then-senator and future President Lyndon Johnson of Texas, who was miffed that a conservative nonprofit group was helping his opponent. The law says churches and charities "are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office."
"Now one of the things I'm most proud of is getting rid of the Johnson Amendment," the president said. "That was a disaster for you."
The president doesn't have the power to repeal a law — only Congress can do that. The Supreme Court can also rule a law unconstitutional, but that has not happened in this case. In May 2017, Trump signed an executive order that purported to ease enforcement of the Johnson Amendment. But experts — and the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes repeal of the provision — say the Trump order was basically toothless.
In addition, Trump predicted to them all sorts of violent outcomes if the Democrats win big in the midterms. It's a language they should understand, seeing that many of these evangelical leaders have made similar predictions, continuously claiming mayhem and destruction from on high if LGBTQs got the right to marry, adopt children, be legally free from discrimination, be allowed to serve openly in the Armed Forces, etc. etc.:
At stake in the November midterms, Trump told the audience, are all the gains he has made for conservative Christians.
"The level of hatred, the level of anger is unbelievable," he said. "Part of it is because of some of the things I've done for you and for me and for my family, but I've done them. … This Nov. 6 election is very much a referendum on not only me, it's a referendum on your religion, it's a referendum on free speech and the First Amendment."
If the GOP loses, he said, "they will overturn everything that we've done and they'll do it quickly and violently, and violently. There's violence. When you look at Antifa and you look at some of these groups — these are violent people."
Nothing to see here. Simply more receipts to collect. While the anti-LGBTQ evangelical right wallow in their power like rutted pigs, those days will end. And then they will have to assess the costs of how they freely gave away their integrity.
It will be the LGBTQ community holding the bill that they will have to sign.