During recent campaigns, arrests and on social networksDonald Trump resumed lies aimed at inciting his Christian right base to oppose Joe Biden. These tirades, centered on the false accusation that the Biden administration is persecuting Christians, are not just Trump’s typically dubious claims. Much like Trump’s lies about a stolen election, they are designed to plunge his loyalists into a grievance-laden alternate reality in which only Trump can save them from an evil government that threatens their freedom.
In a December 19 speech in IowaFor example, Trump promised: “As soon as I return to the Oval Office, I will immediately end the war on Christians. I don’t know if you feel it. You have a war. There is a war. Speaking just after the Colorado Supreme Court disqualified him from appearing on the state’s GOP primary ballot, Trump linked this “war” to his own legal troubles. “Under the leadership of the crooked Joe Biden, Christians and Americans of faith are being persecuted and the government has been used as a weapon against religion like never before. And also presidents like never before,” he added. “I always say Al Capone was treated better than me.”
Trump has promotes the theme of Christian persecution in the past, but he’s raising it again as these legal issues pile up. His clear goal is to distract from his own criminal responsibilities by insinuating that the same Biden administration he wrongly claims is unfairly targeting him for prosecution is similarly persecuting religious Americans.
Not surprisingly, Trump’s ardent supporters view his “war” and theirs as linked. When he was indicted in a Manhattan court for illegally concealing money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, his supporters compared with this alleged persecution to that of Jesus Christ. In a Truth Social video two days after his speech in Iowa, Trump made this pact of persecution. He disputed that under Biden, “Christians and Americans of faith are being persecuted like nothing this nation has ever seen before.” Asset also echoed wild and demystified claims by congressional Republicans on the anti-Catholic bias of the Biden administration and the FBI in particular.
Reinforcing his authoritarian rhetoric, Trump committed to Iowa speech to institutionalize authoritarian repression of the same type that he falsely accuses the Biden administration of implementing. “As soon as I take office, I will create a new federal task force on combating anti-Christian bias, which will be led by a fully reformed, fair and equitable Department of Justice,” he promised. “Its mission will be to investigate all forms of unlawful discrimination, harassment and persecution against Christians in America.”
In other speech, in Reno, Nevada, he vowed to go after colleges and universities for violating his “religious freedom” edicts. “If colleges and universities discriminate against conservatives, Christians, Jews or anyone else,” he said, “we are going to take away their tax benefits, their subsidies and endowments.
Lies about the persecution of Christians are very familiar to Trump’s base. During the presidency of Barack Obama, the Christian right and its Republican allies in Congress accused his administration to target Catholics with policies favoring access to birth control. After the Obama administration issued a regulation under the Affordable Care Act requiring employer-sponsored health care plans to cover contraception, Christian right lawyers successfully sued the administration, arguing that these requirements violated the religious rights of evangelical and Catholic businesses and organizations run by religious opponents of abortion and birth control. When the Supreme Court enshrined marriage equality as the law of the land in 2015, Christian right activists fears stoked of widespread persecution against Christians, including raise the spectrum of an Internal Revenue Service that would remove tax exemptions from nonprofits, including universities, that oppose LGBTQ rights. Needless to say, that never happened.
When Trump took office in 2017, he immediately moved to fuel the Christian right’s persecution complex. A draft decree broadcast early in his presidency proposed a radical expansion of religious exemptions for right-wing Christians, which would have legalized discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, pregnancy status and history of abortion in a staggering variety of contexts. Although Trump discarded After an outcry, he signed a different executive order requiring then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to develop a policy protecting the religious and conscience rights of Christians, binding on the Justice Department and all other federal agencies. The ACLU denounced Sessions’ subsequent memo is seen as “a dangerously broad interpretation of religious freedom laws that will open the door to discrimination against LGBT people, women and religious minorities.”
Although the Christian Right has feared that a Democratic administration would strip educational institutions of their tax exemptions because of their anti-LGBTQ stances, they welcome the idea of Trump’s task force. “It would be good for a federal task force to systematically investigate these concerns and ensure that religious freedom is protected for all Americans. » said Arielle Del Turco of the Family Research Council’s Center for Religious Freedom.
One need only look at Trump’s efforts during his first term, combined with his promises to rule like a dictator for 2024, to see the authoritarian measures he is taking when it comes to “protecting” religious freedom. its base. He leaves no doubt that he will do everything in his power to maintain the loyalty of the base that has supported him through an insurrection, two impeachments and now multiple criminal charges. He says loudly that as part of his broader denigration of the rule of law, he would destroy everyone’s rights in the name of the “freedom” of his loyalists.
