Trump supporting evangelicals silent on revelation that he knew seriousness of pandemic while calling it a hoax

The group of evangelicals supporting Trump have been conveniently silent as his latest scandal tears the country apart.

 

Unless you've been hiding under a rock or in a cave with fingers in your ears, you've probably heard about the latest involving Donald Trump. It's another huge scandal

According to Raw Story:

Watergate reporter Bob Woodward’s new book is coming out next week — and the leaked excerpts in it contain multiple damaging bombshells for President Donald Trump. The new book, entitled “Rage,” contains multiple revelations on a wide variety of topics ranging from the president’s handling of the novel coronavirus to his relationship with the American military to his strange affection for North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. 

Raw Story outlined five shockers in this book, but the one which has virtually taken everyone's breath away is the following:

Trump said that he knew the coronavirus was five times more deadly than the seasonal flu — then admitted to playing it down in public.Audio recordings show that Trump told Woodward in early February that COVID-19 spread through the air and was much more deadly than the flu. Despite this, he continued to downplay its significance in multiple public statements. Just over a month after that, Trump admitted to Woodward that he deliberately downplayed the virus because he didn’t want to create a “panic.” “I wanted to always play it down,” Trump said on March 19th, shortly after he declared a national emergency. “I still like playing it down.” 

Trump lies so much that there is little doubt that he downplayed the pandemic - even when knowing how serious it was - to help only himself regardless of what he claims. The following video expresses it better than I can:

 

 The video captures just a small extent of the brutal tug of war Woodward's revelation has led to. There are some folks, especially the contributors and employees of Fox News, bending over backwards to defend Trump via talking points which induce more shock than agreement.

But I've noticed that one group has been conveniently silent - Trump supporting evangelicals.

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Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters celebrates 14 years of calling out homophobic liars and keeping receipts

Sunday marked the 14th anniversary of this blog. It's been a bunch of wild, successful, and at times, very frustrating years.

I've had much success (waves to my 2017 GLAAD Media Award from across the room), lots of positive press (The Advocate, Newsweek, MSNBC), met lots of new friends and allies, and raised a little ruckus (blocked on Twitter by Tony Perkins, Bryan Fischer, 'Porno' Peter LaBarbera, Ryan T. Holmes, Matt Barber, multiple members of the Alliance Defending Freedom, Mass Resistance, and the Liberty Counsel. Blocked from commenting on Lifesite News and World Net Daily.)

I hope that I've succeeded in my original aim, which was to shine a bright spotlight on how religious right groups distort and cherry-pick science to denigrate LGBTQ people as unhealthy, diseased others out to 'recruit children,' 'wreck Christianity,' and cause general chaos.

So how long will I do this and what's my next move?

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Richard Grenell

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Michael Cohen: Trump made fun of his evangelical supporters before winning the 2016 election

 

According to some reports, our fighting men and women of the military aren't the only group that Donald Trump has a low opinion of behind closed doors. 

Conservative evangelicals make up a gigantic amount of his base and led by folks like Franklin Graham and Robert Jeffress and groups like the Family Research Council, they have stuck by Trump in spite of every discovery of dishonesty, every lie, and every bit of chicanery learned about him.

And Trump definitely appreciates their support. In front of cameras, of course. But, if his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, is to be believed what you see in front the cameras isn't exactly true: 

 President Donald Trump spoke condescendingly about evangelical Christians after holding a meeting with religious leaders before the 2016 election, his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen has said in a new book. Cohen, who broke with Trump to cooperate with the special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, is releasing a memoir Tuesday titled "Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump." The Washington Post, which obtained a copy of the book before its release, reported one passage in which Cohen details what he says happened after Trump met with prominent evangelical leaders at Trump Tower in 2016 before winning the presidency. After the meeting was over, Cohen says, Trump said: "Can you believe that bulls---? Can you believe people believe that bulls---?" 

"The cosmic joke was that Trump convinced a vast swathe of working-class white folks in the Midwest that he cared about their well-being," Cohen added, according to The Post. "The truth was that he couldn't care less." It's unclear what meeting Cohen was referring to, but Trump did meet with conservative Christian leaders in New York City in June 2016, according to NPR, which was allowed inside the private event.

Of course if this excerpt gains legs, expect evangelical leaders to engage in the usual rationalizations of their support of Trump. From "God chooses imperfect people" to "He was a baby Christian then. His faith is stronger," my guess is that their explanations will be epic and totally transparent. Cohen's revelation simply reveals the predatory relationship Trump and conservative evangelicals have. Most likely, Graham, Jeffress, and the rest know what Trump thinks about them. And while they can claim he has changed, they know he hasn't. One can easily measure Trump's behavior from the beginning of the 2016 campaign until now and easily come up with the the fact that Trump hasn't changed for the better. If anything, he's gotten worse.

If there has been any change since Trump took office, it's within the evangelical community. They no longer talk about values as much as they used to. They no longer pretend to look heavenward because their eyes are more on Trump than Jesus.  And in some ways, they are working to somehow mingle Trump with Jesus. And it's not working. They are so busy trying to point to the halo they claim exist over his head that they are totally oblivious to horns and tails which have appeared on their persons due to their close proximity to him.

But they don't care. As long as he gives them power and appoints judges they think will rule their way, particularly against LGBTQ equality and abortion, Trump could urinate publicly on the White House lawn and they would call it nectar from heaven.

'Georgia church splits from United Methodists over gay rights' & other Fri midday news briefs

21 Gay People And Couples That You May Or May Not Know Have Children - LGBTQ celebrities and their children. This is so cute! And it embraces how important visibility is. No matter what some fools try to tell us or mandate for us, we can have families. And we should have families if we want them. 

 Georgia church splits from United Methodists over gay rights - Faith and religious beliefs are two more things we should have regardless of what some people think because when it's all said and done, only God gets to judge us.

This Former Log Cabin Republican Is on a Mission to Stop Trump - Good for her!

The 100 Greatest Movie Insults - How many do you recognize?

 As I've said so many times during this awful pandemic, one can't allow himself to get so serious. While it's true that we have no idea if it will end any time soon, keeping ourselves from going insane with fear involves taking some time out from the seriousness of it all to laugh.

And while this blog mainly focuses on calling out the lies of the anti-LGBTQ industry, I also want people to come here for comfort as well as knowledge. With that in mind, the above video is embraces the gay stereotype of "scary bitchy." One hundred movie insults? Come on. You know there's a gay one in there somewhere.