Despite facing legal and ethical scandals, including hush money payments and sexual abuse allegations, former President Donald Trump continues to enjoy unwavering support from America’s evangelicals.
Donald Trump has been indicted over hush money payments to a porn star and found liable in a sexual abuse lawsuit in a tumultuous start to his reelection campaign, but America’s evangelicals just can’t quit Donald Trump.
The 45th President of the United States, who is vying to be the 47th, has spent years mired in legal and ethical scandals, from accusations that he abused his office and tried to subvert a free-and-fair election to alleged affairs.
Yet, the 77-year-old Republican remains as popular as ever on the Christian right, his appeal abundantly evident at Road to Majority, a weekend gathering of 3,000 evangelicals from the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Washington.
“Together we’re warriors in a righteous crusade to stop the arsonists, the atheists, the globalists, and the Marxists,” Trump said in characteristically apocalyptic language, as he delivered the keynote address at the closing gala to rapt applause.
“That’s what they are. And we will restore our Republic as one nation under God.”
It took some persuasion for white evangelicals to come around to Trump when he announced he was running for president in 2015. But once they were in, they were all-in.
Non-Hispanic white Republicans who attend church regularly backed him by 81 percent in 2016 and 76 percent in 2020, statistics that astonish those who question the former reality TV star’s religious credentials.
Trump’s famously devout vice president Mike Pence, who is running a distant third in the race for the 2024 nomination, would seem the more obvious fit for evangelicals. But he was booed at the 2021 Road to Majority for refusing to help Trump overturn his election defeat, and received largely polite applause this year.
Two theories of the case for another Trump term emerged: first, that he fights for his supporters like no one else in politics, and second, that he delivered more of their policy priorities than any other modern president, from protecting religious freedoms and nominating three of the Supreme Court justices who gutted abortion rights.
Miroslava Salazar with AFP
