Literally a framed pic on the wall of the candidate and a porn star, as a major evangelical leader endorses him. pic.twitter.com/ErYG57zcFb
— Nathan Lino (@nathanlino) June 21, 2016
When your faith makes you want to facepalm for the rest of the day. pic.twitter.com/D2R3fSeco9
— David Edward (@_David_Edward) June 21, 2016
Thing about dealing with Lord Short Fingers — as so many people have said — there just isn’t enough space to cover all the venality/stupidity/cupidity/dishonesty. He’s like one of those low-on-the-food-pyramid animals whose go-to defense, when captured, is to spray shit in all directions…
Franklin Graham defended Trump's character. Nobody is perfect, he said: Abraham lied, Moses disobeyed God + David committed adultery/murder.
— James Hohmann (@jameshohmann) June 22, 2016
It's amazing how evangelical leaders have warmed to a candidate whose persona is built on 6 of the 7 deadly sins. https://t.co/LJaPjD5Jao
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) June 22, 2016
MoJo, “1000 Evangelicals Gather to Hear the Gospel According to Donald”:
… But there is a sizeable contingent of religious leaders who still oppose Trump’s candidacy: Russell Moore, head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, tweeted criticisms of Trump throughout the day. In May, he wrote an op-ed in the New York Times decrying Trump’s bigotry, earning a direct rebuke from the presumptive nominee on Twitter and the ire of many Trump supporters. Rev. Rob Schenck, president of the evangelical group Faith and Action, also took to Twitter today to warn evangelicals in the New York meeting about Trump: “Trump=Danger,” he wrote. Outside the meeting at the Marriott Marquis, a group of faith leaders from different religions gathered to protest, calling out their support for Muslims, people of color, and the LGBT community, and holding signs that read, “Jesus Doesn’t Build Walls,” “Refugees Welcome,” and “Jews Reject Trump” with the hashtag #We’veSeenThisBefore.
During the meeting, Trump’s campaign also announced the formation of an Evangelical Executive Advisory Board. Its members will include former Rep. Michele Bachmann, Dobson, Jerry Falwell, the president of Liberty University, and televangelist Kenneth Copeland—who said in February that God had anointed Ted Cruz to be the next president.
Trump: When I was a kid, Sunday school was "like, automatic. Today it isn’t. Maybe we can get back into a position where it’s automatic."
— Michelle Boorstein (@mboorstein) June 21, 2016
AND LOOK AT HOW MUCH GOOD IT DID, AS FAR AS TEACHING HIM ETHICAL BEHAVIOR
I'm not a religious person, but I think these are bad personality traits, and my understanding is Christians are supposed to think so, too.
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) June 22, 2016
I’m an animist, not a Christian, and Trump pretending to be a person of faith embarrasses me.
Trump questions Clinton’s religion https://t.co/FcJKJJVuDJ pic.twitter.com/jH6u4BkAJx
— Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) June 21, 2016
At press conference after Trump mtg wo/ religious right, eight organizers asked if they will endorse. ZERO raise their hands.
— Beth Reinhard (@bethreinhard) June 21, 2016
That’s the closest thing to a silver lining I can perceive here: That actual Christians, and even those Christianists who have some self-regard, will sit on their hands rather than going to the polls in November. Making down-ticket Repubs pay for Trump’s sins has a certain elegance.
Feebog
Plus, he wears his ties way too long. Maybe his fly is open?
Origuy
That wasn’t sacred oil that Cruz had in his hair, it was just Brylcreem.
Amir Khalid
@Feebog:
He likes to flout the conventional wisdom on proper necktie length, just as he flouts it on hairstyles.
Incidentally, Hilary is arguably more religious than Donald; she’s certainly more familiar than he with the Bible. It’s fairly obvious that these churchpeople are endorsing him more out of political tribalism than anything else. I haven’t heard of any liberal Christians endorsing him for his Christianity.
opiejeanne
Someone on Twitter pointed out something interesting about the magazine covers on the wall: the Forum cover above Trump’s head is the exact same cover as the one down near the woman’s feet.
? Martin
Says a lot about a person when he has the same photo of himself on the wall *twice*. Forum cover, and then the same Forum cover.
At lunch today talking to a non-wingnut colleague about the election and she was disappointed that she had to choose Hillary, commented how Clinton was a liar. I asked “Okay – tell me one thing she lied about?”. She realized she couldn’t come up with anything, then got really confused about why she thought Clinton was a liar if she can’t recall a single lie.
“Because her enemies want you to think of her as a liar, and a after 25 years, you believe them over her because they were louder.”
I think she’s giving Hillary a 2nd look.
SRW1
@Origuy:
Thing is that won’t prevent Copeland from claiming that he has God’s private phone number and talks to him daily. Neither will it prevent Copleand’s sheeple from buying that claim wholesale.
Obviously, God is a capricious dude.
opiejeanne
Like he ever attended Sunday School. Pfft.
Hillary’s a Methodist. She talks about her faith quite a bit.
opiejeanne
@? Martin: Good job. I wish I knew how to talk to my youngest. She’s pretty bitter about Bernie’s losing; I don’t know how much of his Kool Aid she’s drunk, and I’m afraid to ask.
amk
jesus wept?
Anne Laurie
@? Martin:
That wall is literally a gilded shrine to what the Christianists would call a false idol — He, Trump, in all his ‘glory’. He’s breaking the biblical First Commandment, and they’re standing there grinning along!
Major Major Major Major
@Anne Laurie: Power is a hell of a drug, I’d say, if these people hadn’t sold out to mammon ages ago.
? Martin
@opiejeanne: Take your time. My kids aren’t that enthusiastic yet either, but they’re coming around. My son is really focused on campaign funding and Bernie had a much more focused message there which he heard and Clinton had a much more pragmatic message which he didn’t. Mostly he just needs the time to hear that message. It’ll come. Two things to help:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/28/hillary-clinton-honest-transparency-jill-abramson
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-02-22/young-women-dont-realize-that-hillary-clinton-has-been-fighting-for-them
? Martin
@opiejeanne:
Methodist doesn’t count. Religion on the right is a measuring stick of how many religious policies you’re willing to codify in law. Methodists don’t roll that way.
Major Major Major Major
@? Martin: She could sing the praises of gay-bashing and try to ban abortion all day long, it wouldn’t matter. She’s the wrong tribe.
karen marie
@Amir Khalid: I am surprised nobody’s mentioned HRC’s affiliation with The Family:
Presumably some or all of the people who were at this meeting with Trump are well aware of her affiliation. Odd they didn’t enlighten him.
JGabriel
Josh Barro:
Great. Now I’m going to spend the rest of the day trying to figure out which one of the deadly sins Barro thinks Trump’s persona isn’t built on.
JGabriel
@Feebog:
He’s compensating.
? Martin
@JGabriel: I think sloth is pretty obviously the one. I don’t see any evidence he is lazy. He’s too selfishly ambitious to be lazy.
JGabriel
MotherJones via karen marie:
I’m sure Jesus would just love having his religious philosophy likened to a bacterial infection.
MotherJones via Anne Laurie @ Top:
Note: not Religious or Christian Advisory Board, just Evangelical.
What the hell kind of Christians are these?
karen marie
In addition to Charlie Sheen, Trump gave fake cufflinks, this time in a Bulgari box, to Roy Cohn. The guy who inherited them had them appraised. Fake.
The NYTimes makes you dig for the punchline but the Post doesn’t! http://nypost.com/2016/06/21/trump-has-been-giving-out-fake-diamond-cuff-links-for-years/
? Martin
@JGabriel:
They are effectively a corporation whose product is membership.
Major Major Major Major
@karen marie:
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
He always makes me think of the Simpsons episode where it cuts to the old folks’ home, Abe and some friends listening to the radio, and Paul Harvey(‘s impersonator) says
And they all go Ohhhhhh!
Origuy
Evangelical is one of those words that mean whatever the speaker wants it to mean, but generally it means Bible-centered, proselytizing, conservative, and Protestant. Not necessarily Bible-literalist and not always conservative. There’s a discussion at Patheos if you’re interested. Back at the beginning of the Reformation, Martin Luther referred to the “evangelical church” as opposed to the Catholic Church.
opiejeanne
@? Martin: I know this very well, being a Methodist myself.
I’ve been told that we’re not real Christians by some people who have offered to save my soul if I’d only let them. I tell them I’ll pray for them, which seems to annoy them for some reason.
Anne Laurie
@JGabriel:
Sloth. Barro says so, in a different tweet.
Origuy
Remember the story about Putin keeping the Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s Super Bowl Ring? I can imagine President Trump giving his buddy Vlad a pair of cufflinks that turned out to be cubic zirconium. Atlantic City might get a nuclear renovation.
Amir Khalid
@Origuy:
I have heard of “evangelical Catholics”. How do they differ from regular Catholics?
opiejeanne
@JGabriel: If I understood the article I saw earlier, Dr Dobson was listed as an advisor, but Dobson says he isn’t ready to endorse Trump.
Patricia Kayden
Automatic church attendance? That’s rich for a man who probably only attends church when he gets married.
Shantanu Saha
I’m an atheist Hindu, and Trump pretending to adhere to any moral system other than IGMFY embarrasses me.
JGabriel
? Martin:
Yep, Barro makes that clearer in a tweet Anne Laurie posted @top (thanks, Anne!), but that I somehow missed:
That said, I do think Trump is ultimately very lazy. He keeps himself busy, no argument there, but Trump is intellectually and ethically lazy – you can see it there in the self-contradictions of his policy proposals and defenses, in the lack of knowledge one would think important to the job of President, even in his business endeavors – where Trump consistently goes for the quick buck and cheap scam over building lasting companies, quality products, and strong relationships.
Arclite
I’d hardly call Brandi Brandt a porn star. She appeared in Playboy a few times, that’s it IIRC.
She IS a drug dealer, however, and is currently serving 6 years in Australia for trying to import cocaine I think.
Arclite
It’s no secret why evangelicals are attracted to Trump despite his personality: they’re authoritarian and he’s authoritarian. It’s a match made in heaven.
JGabriel
@Arclite:
Typo alert: I think you may have misspelled hell there.
PurpleGirl
I remember that when the Clintons first moved to D.C. there were stories about how the Clintons had joined a Methodist congregation and there were pictures of them leaving the White House to attend Sunday morning services. And they attended pretty regularly. Their behavior was contrasted to that of the Reagans who seemed to never attend church services on a Sunday.
Major Major Major Major
@PurpleGirl: Hillary strikes me as religious. Obama does not. Trump, I mean come on.
Bernie’s an atheist right?
Origuy
@Amir Khalid: The Patheos article mentions that Pope Francis has been called an “evangelical Catholic”. I am no expert; theology makes as much sense to me as astrology. I found a link to an interview with a Catholic theologian who talks about that.
I’m sick of what ever is causing BJ to be so slow! It’s like the old days using full duplex over a 300 baud dialup.
Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporate Shill
I’m genuinely resentful over what Evangelicals have wrought in Christianity – they’ve destroyed my faith and severed my connection.
I not only see the point whole theology as stupid; I see it as a manipulative, cynical lie that needs crushing, much as Stalin attempted.
Anne Laurie
@Amir Khalid:
Cynical answer, from someone who was escaping Catholic school as the ‘evangelical Catholic’ movement was taking off, back in the early 1970s? Cradle Catholics who want all the IGMFY perks of modern American ‘evangelicalism’ — the cliquishness, the business-building, the social rewards for public piety, the non-stop judgementalism of other peoples’ behavior — without having to learn any new hymns.
More seriously, there was a post-Vatican-II movement to “open up” the encrusted Catholic hierarchy & live more like that Jesus guy asked, in connected communities where members would support each other without the intercession of priests/bishops/cardinals. Tragically, this was also the time when a lot of “social Protestants” in the South & West were looking for reasons to support segregated private “church” schools rather than send their kids to public schools with ‘nigras’… and the American Catholic hierarchy (as shown in the movie Doubt) was looking for ways to keep women ‘in their place’ and away from all the new-fangled methods of fertility management, up to & including legal abortion. So, despite the purity of the original Cath-engelicals, the movement in America was swiftly co-opted into a near-twin of the American fundamentalist movement, only with a nominal adherence to that guy in Vatican city instead of leadership by a board of local ‘deacons’ who hire pastors to instruct the local flock, networked across state or regional lines.
Anne Laurie
@Patricia Kayden:
Form over faith — rich important men don’t need to attend church, because obviously God loves them just as they are. But children, women, peasants & other Not-Important people need to be rounded up & lectured at on a regular basis, because they haven’t earned His “grace” (or else they’d be rich already: the ‘prosperity gospel’).
OzarkHillbilly
@? Martin: Cool.
sm*t cl*de
@Origuy:
Like it was just hair-gel in “Something about Mary”
OzarkHillbilly
@JGabriel: I think sloth is very central to his character. Any time a job comes up that he doesn’t want to do, he gets some one else to do it for him. He can’t even be bothered with calling other rich folks for campaign $s. People will say that is his pride stopping him, and they are right, it is pride which makes it an unpleasant task, but it is sloth that makes not doing that job OK.
I have to do unpleasant tasks every day and it has never been OK to shirk that responsibility.
bemused
What religion does Trump claim to follow? Wiki doesn’t list any. I’ve read Presbyterian.
Baud
Jesus entered the temple courts and welcomed all who were buying and selling there. He sat at the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling Trump steaks. — Matthew 21:12 (New Trump Version)
raven
Woman reunites military dogs with their people.
Makes me think of my buddy whose tracker dog was killed when they were going into Cambodia.
OzarkHillbilly
@Anne Laurie:
The real Bible (Matthew 19:24)
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
And I ain’t saying it a third time.
RK
Trump’s entire candidacy is pretense, which considering its nature is what makes him so vile.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: They stopped listening a long time ago.
OzarkHillbilly
Heh: Release the Measurements.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: Is it wrong that this stuff makes me second guess my opposition to Citizens United?
NorthLeft12
@Baud: I am pretty sure that any of the parables regarding how difficult it is for rich guys to get into heaven, or that people should not covet material wealth and give it to the poor have to be repeated ad nauseum……..and they still don’t take.
NorthLeft12
The entire 2016 Republican campaign must be a slap in the face to long time Republican voters and the American public at large. For those who still don’t get it the leadership on the right [and that includes the religious right] has been thoroughly exposed as hypocritical, ignorant, sycophantic, immoral, greedy, and utterly incompetent.
Those who don’t get it now will never get it.
Zinsky
As someone famously wrote, “Going to church every Sunday no more makes you a Christian, than sleeping in your garage every night makes you a car”. These people aren’t Christians. They are some bizarre hybrid of selective Judaic law fetishists and nihilistic death worshippers.
Richard Shindledecker
Which one’s the porn star?
Baud
The Atlantic just published an article about Hillary’s Christianity.
Just One More Canuck
@Origuy: Obviously, you need more Baud
Quinerly
@Feebog:
The tie thing has bugged me for years.
sherparick
@Amir Khalid: Hillary is Protestant of the United Methodist variety and has been one all her life. In the Park Ridge, Illinois that we grew up in, most people were Republicans and members of the Mainline Protestant Churches such Episcopalian, Methodist, Congregational, and Lutheran, with a large minority of Papists who had moved out from the Chicago. There were only a smattering of Baptists and the “Church as business model,” known as the “Megachurch” had arisen. Their Christianity was liberal and tolerant and not big on doctrine or literal interpretations of the Bible (which by the way, would have been regarded as a “heresy” by the doctors and fathers of the Early Christian Church). For some reason the Conservative base laps up insults to the Clintons’ and Obama’s religious faith and creates memes that they are not “Christians.” It is rather un-Christian.
JosieJ (not Josie)
@bemused:
Trump’s father was Presbyterian and, apparently, took his children to church with him at least a few times. Trump is not a regular churchgoer, so I guess he harkened back to his childhood when asked his religion and called himself a Presbyterian as well. Trump admits liking Norman Vincent Peale and attending Marble Collegiate Church to hear him, but MCC isn’t a Presbyterian church, and Peale’s been dead for over 20 years, so make of that what you will.
Ironic that such an authoritarian as Trump claims membership in a denomination that is democratic to its core–oftentimes to a fault! (I’m a Presbyterian and we do tend to discuss, argue, and process everything to death!)
Droopy
@NorthLeft12: As a Catholic, I of course don’t know my Bible. I listened to Gregory Peck read the New Testament once while I was doing some house painting and it was the first time I “read” it straight through like a regular book. What really struck me was just how many passages there are that more or less say “stop worrying so much about money and work on loving one another” and how few have anything to do with sex or other evangelical obsessions. Also, lots of complaints about hypocrisy.
The Czar of All the Stupids
Go-to defense?
More like the Donald’s take on working the room… it’s how he says hello to everyone…
Matt McIrvin
Hypocrite grifteur, mon semblable, mon frère!
Barbara
@Amir Khalid: They are Catholics like Bobby Jindal who are trying to impress their mostly conservative Protestant constituents by implying that their faith is more “back to basics” rather than being saturated with the usual Roman paraphernalia. There is no separate “evangelical” Catholic denomination.
Chris
Huh. It was my understanding, from the exposure I’ve had to the religious right, that what Christians are supposed to do is huddle together in cliques, talk about how awesome it is that they’re all Christians, and gossip in scandalized voices about how horrifying those Secular Humanists at the gates are, even though most of their values are the same exact “do unto others” ones found in the Bible.
Uncle Cosmo
@karen marie: I love this part:
By his cufflinks shall ye know him…
And FTR, the only deadly sin Don Raper might not be guilty of is sloth. But my guess is that when he’s not self-promoting he’s the laziest SOB on the block, so I’d say he’s 7-for-7 there.
Chris
@JGabriel:
Yeah.
Several times before, I’ve bitched about the fundiegelical creed of “salvation through faith, not acts,” which holds that we’re all so lost and fallen that nothing we do really matters, so the only way to save ourselves is to Accept Jesus Christ As Our Personal Lord And Savior.
Schenck’s quote above is their standard response to people like me who object to a morality that’s completely divorced from your actions and basically amounts to “it’s not what I do, it’s who I am on the inside, that defines me.” Their response is that once you’ve Accepted Jesus Christ As Your Personal Lord And Savior, of course good actions will follow; you’ll just be more naturally inclined to do it because of your new allegiance. “The spirit will move you,” or some bullshit like that.
Chris
@Arclite:
DING DING DING DING!!!
… although I’d add a strong dose of “he’s a bigot and they’re bigots” to go with that.
Chris
@Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporate Shill:
I feel the same way about what the backlash to Vatican II’s done to Catholicism. (At least the current Pope is a major improvement on the status quo and what the USCCB would prefer).
Although truth be told, the rot was probably there long before said backlash. There’s a story from the sixties about JFK having a gap in his schedule and being told that he could fill it by meeting with either the bishops or with some groups of nuns… to which he quipped, “screw the bishops, they all vote Republican anyway.”
dSmith
@JGabriel: sloth
Paul in KY
@opiejeanne: Just tell her that if she does not vote for Hillary in Fall, then she is a fool.
That’s the truth & your child should hear the truth from you.
NorthLeft12
@Droopy: Yes, I was a Catholic too. As a kid in the sixties, I got the love/forgiveness/charity lesson down pat, then as an adult/parent in the eighties and nineties it seemed to twist into no sex/abortion screed. I even had to listen to one Priest praise Dubya for his principled stance on abortion. I asked the Priest after the mass how he feels about Dubya’s warmongering and lack of charity for the poor. This was the start of my exit from the Catholic church.
karen marie
@Uncle Cosmo: Trump stamp/tramp stamp, potatoe/potahto.
Stacy
@Chris: Right about the evangelical bigots. Samantha Bee did a great piece on how the religious right coalesced around school desegregation.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Holy shit.
Pride? Check.
Greed? Double check.
Lust? Dude pervs on his own daughter Check.
Envy? Check.
Wrath? Check.
Gluttony? In a metaphorical sense, yeah, check.
And as several upthread have mentioned, Trump is lazy in several key areas.
Holy shit. And 13 million people voted for him. That has to be hung around the GOP’s neck – your people voted for him. Your people decided that he’s exactly what the country needs right now.
karen marie
@Chris: It’s the money – they all want some. My guess is their endorsements are waiting for checks (see, Dobson, consultant, hasn’t endorsed). Sadly for them, Trump’s such a cheapskate, they won’t get a check. He held onto other people’s money raised for veterans groups until forced to distribute it, and his record of charitable donations is laughable for a “ten billionaire.”
Villago Delenda Est
The worship of Mammon is what all these vile people are all about.
Jesus wept.
Princess (now General) Leia
Somehow I think the Evangelicals forgot this passage…
Mt 7:15-20
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing,
but underneath are ravenous wolves.
By their fruits you will know them.
Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?
Just so, every good tree bears good fruit,
and a rotten tree bears bad fruit.
A good tree cannot bear bad fruit,
nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit.
Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down
and thrown into the fire.
So by their fruits you will know them.”
daves09
@? Martin: During the primaries I kept hearing about how vengeful the Clintons are and about their enemies lists and hit lists. I’d ask people for one example, just one. The ones who had anything all referred to the same bullshit nineties hit piece based on anonymous sources of course. No one could name even one person.
Some of the people came around but in others CDS was just too strong.