Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive U.S. coverage and analysis delivered to your inbox
Receive our free Inside Washington email
Donald Trumpthe closing message of Iowa before the first votes of 2024 presidential election was familiar. He convinced his supporters that his legal issues are theirs, and that he is the only one who can stop them, while spreading a false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from them.
As he targets a key Republican voting bloc of evangelical Christians, the former president is tapping into a fantasy among his supporters and social media influencers depicting him as some kind of messianic figure, sent by God as a ” shepherd of humanity” which ends his mandate. week in the Oval Office “by going to church on Sunday,” according to a video shared by his campaign.
Mr. Trump has never joined a church during his presidency and has never been seen attending religious services more than a handful of times. Nevertheless, he shared the video, of a group of meme creators who worked closely with the former president’s campaign, hours before votes were cast in Iowa.
The caucuses are “your personal chance to achieve the ultimate victory” against his political enemies, he said at a Jan. 14 rally. “The Washington swamp has done everything in its power to take away your voice,” he said.
His campaign relied on a mountain of criminal charges and lawsuits against him for presents himself as a victim of political persecution. His evangelical support has cast him as a biblical David against the “deep state” Goliath, as he echoes manifestos of white supremacy And prepares his revenge against the judicial system.
In 2016, when evangelical Christian voters made up about two-thirds of the votes cast, Mr. Trump lost the Iowa caucus to Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
Eight years later, polls show the former president consolidate support among evangelical Christians in the state. Fifty-one percent support Mr. Trump. Ron DeSantis, who has spent months in the state reviewing every count and seeking evangelical support, trails with 22 percent.
“It is disheartening, even surprising, that Donald Trump and other MAGA politicians have been able to consolidate so much evangelical Christian support in Iowa, after years of lies portraying their violent cause as a holy war,” the Rev. said Nathan Empsall, executive director of Faithful America, says The Independent.
In Iowa, the number of people joining a congregation has fell almost 13 percent from 2010 to 2020, creating a void for fringe influencers on social media and making political partisanship – not religion and community – a governmental identity.
About half of evangelicals surveyed in an AP-NORC poll conducted in October said they had a favorable opinion of the former president. This view is even higher among white born-again Christians, at 56 percent.
“When we elected Donald Trump in 2016…we didn’t know what we were going to get. » according to Rob Vander Plaats of Iowa, the influential right-wing Christian leader of Family Leader, who has supported Mr. DeSantis.
Vander Plaats supported in an opinion article for the Register of Monks that the “system” and “the vast number of Trump haters will never allow him to win the presidency” and that Mr. DeSantis could “guarantee justice” for Mr. Trump. But Mr. Trump also argues to evangelicals that these are the very same reasons he should be elected, while promising “retaliation” to his supporters, undermining the case for a kingmaker among Christians in the Iowa.
People raise their arms in prayer during a rally for evangelical supporters of President Donald Trump at King Jesus International Ministry Church, Friday, Jan. 3, 2020, in Miami.
((AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, file)
“I think they are doing the same thing they did to Jesus on the cross,” said one Christian voter. said The Associated Press.
“I am indicted for you.” My first thought was, “Well, Jesus Christ died for my sins. Jesus died for me'”, another voter told MSNBC. “So it connects in my brain that way, like, OK, he’s doing this for us…and he’s the target, where we don’t need to be.”
Right-wing Christians won a long-standing victory with Mr. Trump’s appointment of three justices to the United States Supreme Court, where the new large conservative majority revoked a constitutional right to abortion by overturning the precedent of several decades in the Roe v. Wade case. He also recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and approved a plan to annex large swaths of the West Bank, measures he promoted among evangelical Christians during his 2020 re-election campaign.
He has also called immigrants, the civil rights of marginalized Americans and the federal government itself threats to Christian America, telling his supporters in Iowa this month that “Christians and Americans of faith are persecuted and the government is being used as a weapon against religion like never before. »
These supporters, seeing the criminal charges against him, are resolute in their support out of “loyalty” to him, and “support him and say: ‘if the government is against you, if it is used as a weapon against you, it is actually a weapon against you. us, so we will support you,’” according to Mr. Vander Plaats.
His support among white evangelicals in Iowa is tracking in line with national polls. The Public Religion Research Institute’s 2023 American Values Survey found that 44% of white evangelical Republican voters preferred Mr. Trump.
“People think this is an election for right and wrong” and “need a strong man,” according to Tim Lubinus, executive director of the Iowa Baptist Convention, speaking to The New Yorker.
Mr. Trump was courting evangelical votes in Iowa hours before planning his appearance for the opening day of a second defamation trial in New York, where a woman he sexually assaulted could recover damages for her statements about him. His lawyers spent the weekend trying to convince a judge to postpone the hearing so he could attend his mother-in-law’s funeral. His campaign, however, continued to schedule events throughout the rest of the week.
He also tried to postpone closing arguments in his civil fraud trial last week for similar reasons. He also attended, falsely claiming he was forced off the trail to be there, and then used the courtroom as an extension of his campaign.
Mr. Trump’s language is being echoed by Christian nationalists in Congress and among elected officials across the country, intersecting with widespread denial of the election and conspiratorial propaganda that risks inflaming threats of political violence, according to a report. coalition of religious leaders who warn their congregations about the threats that Christian nationalist campaigns pose to religious communities and democracy.
“While most of his opponents may not share his vulgarity or grandiloquence, Donald Trump is not the only dangerous Christian nationalist candidate in this race,” Rev. Empsall said. The independent. “Most American Christians reject the Christofascism and Christian nationalism championed by Trump and MAGA, and will continue to do so throughout this election season and beyond. »
