Monday, April 08, 2019

Trump told his people to break the law in separating immigrant families but he is still a good Christian. Right?

In the age of Trump in the White House, we are sadly learning that to right-wing evangelicals - especially their leaders - religion nothing more than as a weapon to undermine LGBTQ equality and safety and to serve as an excuse for the excesses of a horrible leader.

Presidential nominee Pete Buttigieg has raised many eyebrows with his calling out of the hypocrisy of Trump and his evangelical conservative supporters. And he is pissing off the right people:


And then there is the fake news "Christian" publication One News Now:

It is widely contested that evangelicals were the main demographic group that put Trump in the White House, and most have justified their support for him by pointing to his vows to champion biblical principles while in office, while recognizing that the president is a sinner – like all Christians – with a repentant heart to do what is right before God. 
 . . . Evangelical leaders, including Rev. Franklin Graham, Dr. James Dobson and Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr., have often come under attack by the leftist media for supporting the president – as reporters typically either resurface actions the president has admitted and apologized for or recite anti-Trump allegations that have been vehemently challenged as false.

Lastly, there is Fox News host Laura Ingraham:


It's rather ironic, but also fitting that on the same day in which these folks are attacking Buttigieg for calling out Trump and the hypocrisy of  his Christian evangelicals supporters that we find out Trump was ordering border patrol agents to break the law and lie to judges, pushing hard to resume forced separations of immigrant children from their parents at the border, and firing his Secretary of Homeland Defense when she tried to prevent him from breaking the law.

This doesn't sound like someone whose "faith" needs to be defended:

Two Thursdays ago, in a meeting at the Oval Office with top officials -- including Nielsen, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, top aides Jared Kushner, Mercedes Schlapp and Dan Scavino, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and more -- the President, according to one attendee, was "ranting and raving, saying border security was his issue." 
Senior administration officials say that Trump then ordered Nielsen and Pompeo to shut down the port of El Paso the next day, Friday, March 22, at noon. The plan was that in subsequent days the Trump administration would shut down other ports. 
Nielsen told Trump that would be a bad and even dangerous idea, and that the governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, has been very supportive of the President. 
She proposed an alternative plan that would slow down entries at legal ports. She argued that if you close all the ports of entry all you would be doing is ending legal trade and travel, but migrants will just go between ports. 
According to two people in the room, the President said: "I don't care."

And any person or group seeking to defend this mess, particularly on religious grounds, needs to be called out and figuratively dragged from one end of the public debate to the other.

"Repentant heart," my foot!


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