French Friday: A Unified Theory of Trump  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Holy Post]] - Full Title: French Friday: A Unified Theory of Trump - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/14725e1c-1dee-42e1-9220-f0d201324185 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Trump's Ukraine Reversal** - Trump's reversal on Ukraine is a major shift, siding with Russia and North Korea. - This switch undermines US credibility with allies and changes international relations. Transcript: David French The biggest thing that has caught my attention is the reversal on Ukraine. I mean, this is, you know, back sky in the election season, we had a conversation talking about like why I voted for Kamala Harris for the first time, voting for a Democrat for president For the first time in my life in 2016 and 2020, I'd voted third party. And I brought this up and I said that, look, historians looking back at this race 100 years from now, we know there is one issue that they will be focusing on. 100 years from now, people will be talking about the Ukraine war. I said, although I have my problems with the way the Biden administration has handled the war, I think that aid was too little, often too slow, often. But they're backing Ukraine. And everything that I can tell from Trump is that he will not. Well, I was pessimistic about Trump in Ukraine. I was not pessimistic enough. Because what appears to have happened is, for all intents and purposes, he appears to have switched sides. He sided with Russia and North Korea, two of the combatants in the war against Ukraine, because North Korea sent troops in a vote in the UN. He has extorted a minerals deal from Ukraine. It's very unclear what that does to help Ukraine in any way, shape, or form. He's already begun negotiations with Russia without Ukraine present. Many of his officials appear to have already conceded key points to Russia without asking for any concessions from Russia in return. It's just entirely fair and accurate at this point to say that it looks on balance. The United States has switched sides to join with and serve the interests of the aggressor in this conflict, Russia. ([Time 0:02:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7ec65312-c473-4326-aac9-e21c244ddfbd)) - **Broken Commitment** - The US breaking its commitment to Ukraine is unprecedented. - This jeopardizes the network of alliances built over decades, shocking international partners. Transcript: Skye Jethani Yeah. And one thing to keep in mind here is when we look at it from an American point of view, we think, well, there is a change in administration, there's a new president, all that. But from an international point of view, from an outsider's point of view, forget administration or who's in the White House, the United States made a commitment to Ukraine. The Congress passed bills to support Ukraine and both militarily, financially, and in multiple ways. So you can say, well, there's a new president, so there's a new policy, but it's not a new country. We don't have a new regime, as they put it. It's not a completely new government here. We made commitments to an ally. And in the course of a few weeks, we, the United States, have rescinded that commitment. We have broken that commitment. And not only have we denied help that we promised to our ally, we have thrown in our lot with the enemy, which is... I can't think of another time in American history where anything close to this has ever happened. ([Time 0:04:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/71a19cca-8909-4ef4-a5c2-b2b083f9e295)) - **Trump 1.0 vs. 2.0** - Trump's second term cabinet is filled with sycophants, unlike the more serious figures in his first term. - This enables his worst instincts and creates a very different dynamic. Transcript: David French You know, there's that old saying, personnel is policy. And so if you look at Trump 1.0, who surrounded him when he started his presidency. General Mattis, a person of extreme integrity and stature. I didn't necessarily love the Rex Tillerson pick for Secretary of State, but he was a very serious man. If you go down the line of a lot of his cabinet picks, by and large, they were serious people. They were people who had considerable international experience. H.R. McMaster is National Security Advisor, one of the most respected generals in the military. Again, you just go down the line. Well, now what do we have? Hegseth, Kash Patel, Dan Bongino. Even the serious people like Marco Rubio, he's not behaving in a serious fashion. You cannot behave in a serious fashion and remain in good standing in this administration. And what happened slowly over time, Sky, is that Trump began to feel more self-confident in being president. He got more angry at the people who were telling him no. That by the end of his presidency, you actually began to see the real Trump. The real Trump you began to see by the end of his presidency. All those people who are like, 2017 to 2019, that's the Trump I want. Well, he was gone by 2020. When the George Floyd riots broke out, when COVID happened, when he lost the election, you began to see the true colors. This is where his tensions with the military really picked up. Because he was suggesting, for example, shooting protesters in the legs. He was suggesting, for example, shooting unarmed migrants in the legs as they try to cross the Rio Grande. He was engaging. He tried to, in the very last weeks of his presidency, yank all the troops out of Afghanistan, parts of Africa, Germany. I mean, just wild, wild stuff. And consistently, the few remaining establishment figures in the administration were throwing their bodies in front of all of this. Just no, no, it cannot happen. None of those voices are present anymore. None of them. And this is by design. And so, he is absolutely, I mean, this is what we're experiencing now is the Donald Trump that kept trying to peak out in much of the first term and really, you know, really came to the fore In 2020. ([Time 0:08:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bdb497f0-c6e7-4a08-b900-5e0754839034)) - **Patrimonialism as a Lens** - Jonathan Rauch suggests 'patrimonialism' as a unifying theory of Trump, viewing the state as an extension of the ruler. - This lens helps explain Trump's domestic and international actions. Transcript: Skye Jethani But who knows? He says that you can't break the law if you're trying to save your country. So there's all the constitutional stuff we've talked about before. But ever since Trump appeared on the scene back in 2015 and 2016, there have been various attempts to try to create what we'll call, for lack of a better term, a unified theory of Trump. What is it that explains how he operates, his decisions on the international stage, his staffing decisions, all that? And I mean, early on, there was a conspiracy theory of sorts that the Russians had compromise on him, like compromising material, which is why he was always seeming to defer to Putin's Wishes. And that all blew up during the Russiagate fiasco in his first term. And there wasn't quite the evidence that people were hoping for to prove that theory. Then there's the isolationist Trump theory that he just wants to do what's right for America. And he doesn't care about international relations. I said, well, that doesn't exactly hold up either, because he's also saying he wants to annex Greenland and take back the Panama Canal. That's not exactly an isolationist posture. So there's been these various theories. And Jonathan Rauch just wrote a piece for The Atlantic that presents another one. And this is one that I find somewhat compelling. It might work. So I want to talk about it a little bit. He has a piece that we'll post in the show notes titled, One Word Describes Trump. There are many words that may come to our minds, but the one he wants us to think of is patrimonialism. So I assume you've read the article and there's other words we could substitute for that, but describe what is patrimonialism and in what ways do you think that accurately describes The way Trump thinks and operates both domestically and on the world stage. ([Time 0:11:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8611df90-f926-47b5-8086-94e769fd1ba1)) - **Shifting Power Dynamics** - Trump and his supporters want to change the American social compact, placing the president as the ultimate power. - This is self-defeating in a democracy as it grants excessive power to future presidents. Transcript: David French Was creepy. What you're beginning to see is this move in the Trump world to essentially say, to change the terms of the American Social Compact. If you go back to the American founding, I've described in a course recently, the American founding has sort of having the first founding. The second founding is a similar pattern, but here, let's talk about the first founding. And that's the 1787 Constitution, Revolution, etc. It had three distinct sort of conceptual stages. Stage one would have been declaration of principle, and that's the declaration of independence. These are the principles. Then you have the codification of the principles in the Constitution. And then you have the judicial affirmation of the structure of government in Marbury versus Madison, which is, to me, you can't really complete the founding cycle, which includes The Declaration, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, without Marbury versus Madison. Skye Jethani Okay. For those who aren't familiar or they forgot from high school history class, Marbury versus Madison is a very early Supreme Court ruling that essentially granted or affirmed that The courts had the right of judicial review. In other words, the court is the final arbiter on what is constitutional. Correct. David French The court tells both branches of government, both the president and the legislature, what the Constitution means. So if there's a disagreement. Exactly. They're the final judge, literally. They're the final arbiter. Right. They can disagree. So it's not that the president or the Congress has no role in interpreting the Constitution. They should be only proposing, for example, legislation they believe to be constitutional. They should be only issuing, presidents should only be issuing executive orders that he believes to be constitutional. So, it's not that they have no role, but the final arbiter is the court. The court is the final arbiter over legislation. Court is also the final arbiter over executive actions. And this is where I'm getting very, very worried about the future of rule of law. If you're talking about a Russ Vought and some of the others, Russ Vought being the head of OMB, Office of Management and Budget, very influential in Trump world, they don't like this Precedent. They don't like this. And Vought has said, we need to sweep away 200 years worth of precedent. And so, you're in a situation where they want to change the role of the president in America's constitutional government to put the president front and center, the tip of the spear, The apex, the pinnacle of power. They want it to be the president of the United States. Now, what's so weird about this guy, this is actually really self-defeating if you believe that we're going to have a functioning democracy going forward. Because all of the power and authority you give to Donald Trump now will be in the hands of the next Democratic president. Skye Jethani Well, that's assuming they think there's going to be a next Democratic president. David French These guys, I think, are really so drunk on their own Kool-Aid right now that they think they've accomplished some sort of permanent realignment. I think that they really believe that they have permanently crushed their enemies and that they will be the ones wielding all of this power now and into the future. And that's just I mean, if modern American history teaches us anything is that that triumphalism has a shelf life of about five or six months before it becomes pretty clear that backlashes Are brewing. No one's denying, ([Time 0:15:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f9f8af09-e0cf-4352-939d-f1932f52cf8b)) - **Trump's Resilience** - Despite impeachments, indictments, and norm-breaking, Trump still won in 2024. - Some argue that this demonstrates a desire for realignment, surpassing past political norms. Transcript: Skye Jethani To my knowledge, that Donald Trump legitimately won this election. And he won the majority of the vote. But it was not a decisive victory. It was not. No. Compared to other presidential elections in our lifetime, this was a very narrow win. It's hard to say that they've permanently realigned American politics and permanently defeated their progressive enemies. That's ridiculous. We've seen this go back and forth, back and forth for 20 years now. David French Oh, it's so funny. Sky, the other day I was doing some research to talk about how irrational all this triumphalism was. And if you go back the last 20 years, the triumphalist rhetoric from Republicans and Democrats is laugh out loud funny. So in 04, you had a number of people who are saying the Republicans are about to have a generational majority. They called a generational change or sometimes they are even saying permanent majority. They lost the House in 06. OK, so then 2008 rolls around and Obama wins a much bigger victory than Trump won, much bigger victory than Trump won in 2016 or 2024. There's this sort of sense that the Democrats after 06 and 08 have really cracked the code. And then they get routed in 2010. Republicans get all excited, lose in 20. I mean, you just go back and forth. Skye Jethani It's absolutely amazing. OK, I agree. But let me let me perhaps give a devil's advocate response. If I were one of these MAGA people, drunk on my own Kool-Aid, as you put it, and I look at this last election and how it's different from what we've seen in the last 20 years, here's what would Come to mind. We have a guy who was impeached for trying to squeeze a foreign leader to do his political dirty work. We have a president who was impeached a second time for inciting a riot trying to overthrow a legitimate election in which there was a violent assault on the Capitol, including calls To execute his own vice president. We have a president that has violated norm after norm after norm and has broken every convention of the American presidency imaginable. We have a guy who was indicted, what was it, 93 times and actually found liable for sexual assault. We have somebody who has just broken everything imaginable in the American political system and yet still won the popular vote after all of that in 2024. Isn't that to be taken as the American people are saying, we want this guy so badly that we will look past all of those things because this is the realignment we really want. Like, I don't see Barack Obama surviving that kind of behavior and double impeachment and everything else and getting reelected in 2012. There's no way. So I can understand why the MAGA faithful would look at this and go, well, and we're not even counting the ridiculous stuff around God's protection of him in the assassination attempt In Pennsylvania back in the summer in July. Like there's they look at all that and go, well, clearly not only is God on Trump's side, but the people want him because they've thrown everything you possibly can to destroy this man's Political ambitions. ([Time 0:19:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5e50dc98-1990-407e-8f85-24028d0152d8)) - **Mob Boss Analogy** - Trump's foreign policy resembles a mob boss gathering the five families, dividing territories. - He sees the world as run by strongmen and rejects principled bureaucracy. Transcript: Skye Jethani Impermanent their permanent majority is. Okay. So that analysis fits with what Jonathan Rauch is arguing in his piece about patrimonialism, this notion that a government is all about allegiance to and loyalty to the father figure, To the head of the household. And he makes a parallel to the structure of mafia bosses. This is exactly how the mob works. There's a godfather. And people who've seen all the movies know how this works. It's about loyalty to that figure. And it begins to make sense then of how Trump is operating both domestically and around the world. So at one point, Rauch says that patrimonialism's antithesis is not democracy, it's bureaucracy. And you mentioned this in Trump's first term, he kept bumping up against the bureaucracy of the government and people within that bureaucracy that refused to do his bidding, that were Throwing their bodies down in front of his worst instincts to remove troops from all over the world and to shoot protesters in American cities and to unleash violence against people Seeking asylum on the border or whatever. Him. But now in his second term, Trump's figured this out. And he's remaking the government bureaucracy into this patrimonial structure where it isn't proficiency or experience or wisdom or even congressional approval that gets you appointed Anymore. It's personal loyalty to Donald Trump. We still can't figure out who gave the authority beyond the president to Elon Musk to do his doge stuff. And the courts are wrestling with that now, but it's personal loyalty to Donald Trump. And it also makes sense then in his actions overseas. And Rausch gets into this, and I think Jonah Goldberg and others have talked about how when you look at what Trump's doing on the international stage, it's almost like he's gathering The five families. And he's the head of one family, Putin's the head of another, Xi's the head of another, and they're looking at the world and going, okay, you've got your territory. I've got my territory. And the attitude is essentially, well, yeah, the US shouldn't be doing anything in Ukraine because that's Putin's territory. And as the boss, he should be able to do whatever he wants in his territory. And Trump's looking at North America or the Western Hemisphere and going, well, you know, Greenland, that's my territory. And Panama, that's my territory. Canada. Mexico. Right. I should be able to do whatever I want there. And for the first time, I feel like there's an explanatory system that makes consistent sense of how Trump operates. He's a mob boss. And he sees the world as being run by mob bosses. And the great enemy then is anyone who is looking for a principled bureaucratic system that stands on the rule of law rather than the personal whims of the godfather. Do you see any cracks in that explanation? Is there something that it doesn't explain in Trump? Yeah, ([Time 0:25:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/39d4b75e-70b6-4cf5-b9a2-230b7350f4dd)) - **Megachurches and Patrimonialism** - Many megachurches operate on patrimonialism, potentially influencing some evangelicals' attraction to Trump. - This model, reflecting ancient governance, clashes with modern bureaucratic systems. Transcript: Skye Jethani Christians think about this. And one of the other benefits, and Rausch doesn't talk about it in his piece, but when I read it, it helped me also make sense of perhaps why, at least in part, why so many white evangelicals Find Trump's form of leadership appealing. And I think part of it's because so many of our churches, especially megachurches, operate this way. They're really systems of patrimonialism where it's all about this usually male figurehead, and the church is a system that orbits around him. And that even finds some, not justification, but some reflection in scripture. Because as Rausch talks about in others, the current form, the modern form of bureaucratic kind of law-based government is fairly recent. Most of world history has been patrimonialism. Caesar was the head of the giant household of the Roman Empire. Herod was the head of a household governing Judea. There's that model of strongman identity that permeates the ancient world. And so you read parts of the Bible and you go, yeah, this is how it's supposed to be. And then unthoughtful, uncritical Christians read the Bible and they look at their church structures and their pastor at the top of this hierarchy and they go, yeah, this is how the World's supposed to operate. And of course, I want a president that operates that way too. But they're ignoring thousands of years of cultural formation that has been guided by Christian values and principles, which then takes us to something that you've written about And talked about. And that's this really remarkable book by Jeffrey Rosen called The Pursuit of Happiness. That phrase comes from the Declaration of Independence, and Rosen investigated what did the founders mean by that? Understand why Trump's form of leadership or even the highly patriarchal mobster kind of form of leadership is antithetical to what the founders of this country ([Time 0:32:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fb66669b-890d-43a3-b1cc-e329ba002122)) - **Virtue and the Republic** - The founders linked "pursuit of happiness" to virtue, crucial for the republic's survival. - They understood human vulnerability to demagogues and stressed personal virtue. Transcript: David French Wanted. Right. It really does connect. And you noted this to an extent, Sky, it really does connect with kind of our human nature, with sort of the darker parts of our human nature, that we do look for that big leader. We do look for that strong person to rescue us. We do tend to adopt friend-enemy distinctions when we're talking about politics. All of this kind of comes naturally to us. Skye Jethani You see this, sorry to interrupt, but you see this in the Old Testament when Israel goes to the Lord and says, we don't want you as our king anymore. We want a king like all the other nations. And he's like, you don't want to do this. It's not going to go well. It's going to end in slavery and abuse and corruption. And he's like, all right, but if that's what you want here, and they pick Saul, the biggest, strongest guy in town, and make him king. It's exactly our human nature to do this. And God warns us, this is not a good way to run a society. David French Yeah. When you feel distressed, give us a savior, give us a king. Right. I mean, it's a common phenomenon in American history. Southern populism, for example, is very much centered around the man on the white horse who's going to rescue his people from the outsider attacks. That was a big part of the resistance to the Civil Rights Movement, was this Southern populism, the man in the schoolhouse door who was standing in for you. That was an element of Southern populism, the great man is going to stand up for his people, not the people, his people. What the founders were wrestling with was they understood very well what human beings were like. Madison wrote it, if men were angels, there would be no need for government to rule over them, for example. They knew very well that we were prone to demagogues. We're vulnerable to them. And so, at the same time that they're creating a limited government in protecting individual liberty, they were at the same time advocating for personal virtue and character. And that brings us to that book, The Pursuit of Happiness by my friend, Jeff Rosen. And he's saying that phrase, the pursuit of happiness has been misunderstood for a very long time as sort of the pursuit of pleasure. And he said, no, no, no. The way they understood the pursuit of happiness was as the pursuit of virtue. This was the core of the pursuit of happiness, was the pursuit of virtue. And they also knew that absent the pursuit of virtue, this constitutional republic was going to be in a perilous state. So, John Adams writes in 1800 that without morality, without religion, human vices like avarice and greed, etc, would cut, and this was the quote, to cut through the cords of our constitution Like a whale goes through a net. And so the founders knew that they were asking something of the people, that they were asking something. This would only work, this experiment only works if the people, not perfectly, because of course people are not perfect, if the people and the leaders pursue virtue. Right. Skye Jethani This is why Benjamin Franklin famously said when he came out from the Constitutional Convention and was asked, you know, what kind of government do we have? He says, a republic, if you can keep it. There was an expectation that the people had some responsibility to maintain the system through their virtue. Exactly. David French And so what the book does is it really walks through how the founders, what was their vision of this? How did they put this into practice? And some of the parts that are interesting is you find out that some of the founders created a very personal inventory where they would list virtues like temperance, prudence, chastity, Humility, honesty, fidelity, and literally keep a diary on how well they were living up to these virtues. And the precise list of virtues would change. They might be Aristotelian virtues, or they might be virtues more rooted in, say, the fruit of the spirit, for example. But there was this concept that the pursuit of virtue is core to the enterprise of this nation, and that it's core to the structure of the nation. It's core to the identity of the nation. And the absence of virtue places the entire American social compact in jeopardy. And so when you look at it like that, from the very founding of the country, character ([Time 0:34:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/679f8885-b424-4697-8674-8b03e905f1d7)) - **Church Failure and Politics** - The current state of the American republic may stem from the church's failure to make disciples. - The church has prioritized comfort over character formation, leading to political failures like supporting Trump. Transcript: Skye Jethani Was never a luxury. Character was always a necessity. So this then intersects with another book I'm reading right now. And I know you've read by Jonathan Rauch again, the guy who wrote the Atlantic article I was referencing. It's called Cross Purposes. And we're going to have him on the show soon. But his essential argument is that in order for American democracy to thrive, Christianity needs to thrive. And he juxtaposes what he calls thin Christianity and thick Christianity. Thin meaning it's informal. It's not serious. Doesn't really follow the teachings of Jesus with any rigor. And I'm partway through the book, and I've heard him talk about it in other places. But when I put that together with what I've heard you say from Jeffrey Rosen's book about the pursuit of happiness and how the founders understood these things, is it possible to put Forward the hypothesis that the weakness slash failure we are currently seeing in the American Republic, in no small measure, is the result of the failure and weakness of the American Church to actually make disciples of Jesus? Oh, yeah. David French I mean, Skye, it's grim. It's grim. I mean, think about this. We are, if you look at the current presidency, it is in power because 82% of white evangelicals, self-described white evangelicals voted for him. That is a super majority beyond a super majority. 82% of white evangelicals voted for him, self-described. If you look at everyone else, they rejected Trump 58% to 40%. So, everyone else, that includes Black Christians, non-white Christians, non-white evangelicals, everyone else, 58% to 40 against him. The Donald Trump presidency is in a very concrete, tangible way, the white evangelical church's delivery to America. All of this is, we're getting this, not exclusively, but in large part because this is what the church has said that they're going to give America, which the white evangelical church Has said they're going to. And there's just no way around that. There's no two ways about it. So when you're hearing stories like Andrew Tate, the pornographer who is accused of rape and sex trafficking, is now being allowed to come to the United States after American diplomatic Pressure. That is what the church has done. That's what the church has done. And it's done it in part because a large segment of American Christians don't just reject the idea that character is a necessary element of leadership. They scorn it. They mock it. And that is something that would shock the founders, shock them. Absolutely. ([Time 0:39:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/66d19edd-2de9-4c0a-ab22-bb0f1691911a)) - **Two Types of Christianity** - 'Fight the world' Christianity fosters a friend-enemy distinction, attracting people to Trump, the ultimate fighter. - This contrasts with 'love your neighbor' Christianity, which emphasizes empathy. Transcript: David French Not the world. And it's also how do we orient our disciples that we're making? What are we discipling them in, in this sort of, and I've put it like this, the longer we walk through this moment, the more I realize what we are dealing with is the fruit of a kind of Christianity That really has been taught in evangelical churches for 30, 40 plus years. And that is fight the world Christianity versus love your neighbor Christianity. So this is how, if you come up from the beginning to sort of say, you need to get ready for the coming persecution, you need to know that the world hates you, you need to put on the full armor Of God in the sense of like getting ready for culture war, getting ready for culture war. What that's created is a kind of fight or flight church where everyone is alert for danger, alert for persecution, alert for oppression. And so then what does that do? What that does is it creates that friend-enemy distinction that is antithetical to scripture. And so it creates this friend-enemy distinction. And at the end of the day, you begin to get to this point where, for example, empathy is beginning to leave the church. There's actual attacks on empathy as a concept. Skye Jethani It's a sin now. David French Because how dare you try to manipulate us by exposing us to the suffering of other people that we might be causing? What? What on earth are we talking about here? But that's the fight the world Christianity. And so when fight the world Christianity meets the ultimate pugilist in Donald Trump, then like calls out to like. And that's how you see that bond that is created when fight the world Christianity meets the ultimate political fighter in Donald Trump. ([Time 0:45:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a8087382-5e46-4707-9cdc-be61083afa21)) - **Capitulation to Backlash** - Pastors often prioritize avoiding conflict over standing for justice. - French recounts an experience with the PCA, highlighting their quick capitulation to online backlash. Transcript: David French Oh, it's, you know, it's even less justifiable because very few pastors truly really could lose their job by standing up against a angry fringe. What it's unpleasant. It's hard. It's difficult. They don't want that unpleasantness. They don't want that difficulty. Look, from a human standpoint, part of me gets this. I've been through the attacks and the online mobbing and everything, and there's nothing pleasant about it. But at the end of the day, if you can't, you know, the apostles withstood beatings to build the church, and we have people who can't withstand tweetings to sustain the church. And, you know, I'll give you a perfect example. Like when I was invited to speak on a panel at the PCA General Assembly about polarization, I warned them. I said, you're going to get blowback for inviting me. Look, it's going to happen. It's going to happen. And I remember talking to one of the senior PCA guys and talking about the blowback that was coming. And they laughed it off like, ha, whatever. And then it came and the capitulation was instantaneous. I mean, like so fast, so fast. And, you know, look, it's one thing to think in your mind. What will it be like when all these nasty people tweet at me? Then all the nasty people tweet at you and you read some nasty articles and it's very painful and you don't like it and you don't want it to happen anymore. And so your immediate thought is like, how can I get them to stop hitting me with this Twitter hammer? And so, and we have seen this again and again and again in religious institutions, you get blowback from the fringe and it's the quote, good people that capitulate. It's the good ones. It's the nice ones, Sky. It's the people that if you met and you'd spent time with them, you would think they've got a heart for the poor and for the gospel and all of this. But man, when it comes to actually standing up for justice, when there's difficult confrontation inside the church, many of them are just nowhere to be found, the nice ones. And this is how injustice perpetuates. This is how abuse perpetuates, because there's always an excuse for the nice person to kind of bow out, to try to soothe over the feelings, to try to get past the conflict. And, you know, I am all for peacemaking, but we are also called to act justly. Yeah. And if peace comes at the expense of justice, it's a false peace. ([Time 0:48:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/948fc2ed-0115-4c05-8c20-de01eb3e7bec)) - **Tipping Point and Prophecy** - Trump's actions could reach a tipping point where even Christians no longer justify the ends. - However, many support Trump based on prophecies, making it hard to change their minds. Transcript: Skye Jethani One of the questions coming all the way back around circle to Donald Trump and his policies, domestic and foreign, Do you think there's a tipping point at which his breaking of norms, His violations of international treaties on and on, it becomes so high that enough Christians can no longer justify the ends, justifying the means? Like, at what point do they, here's arguments I've heard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know Trump is a brute and he's terrible and he says awful things about various people. But if he wasn't in office, we'd have, you pick your boogeyman, right? Transgender ideology in our schools, or we would have trans girls in sports, or we would have open borders and we'd be run over by immigrants and our economy can't sustain. So it's better than the alternative. Is there any point at which Trump's abuses and failures and siding with our enemies becomes so undeniably awful that you think it tips the scale and enough people go, no, this doesn't Justify anything? David French It's absolutely the case that he can be so bad and incompetent that it tips the scales to where he's not politically as viable. We saw that in 2020. In 2020, he ran a race where there was an enormous amount of chaos, there was an enormous amount of disruption. He was increasingly unhinged. And he lost. He didn't just lose an Electoral College, He lost the popular vote by about 7 million people. So, we do know that there is a tipping point where at least some segment of people will jump off the Trump train. But, Sky, when it comes to that white evangelical core, I don't know how many of those folks are willing to jump off at any point at any time ever, because there's a factor that we haven't Talked about yet that is just looming out there just massively. We forget how many people are supporting Trump out of conviction that he has been prophesied to be God's man and that nothing about all of his norm breaking or et cetera, does anything But reaffirm the core element of the prophecy, which is Trump using an unlikely person to preserve his people. And so we have to realize that, especially when it comes to a giant number of Pentecostal Americans, they're not in a world right now where it's really truly a policy argument more than It's, say, a prophecy argument. And that's a hard argument to have. And I've told this story before, a friend of mine from law school said to me, David, I was totally with you on being never Trump until the Holy Spirit told me that Trump is God's man to save America. How do you have a conversation about that, Sky? This is where the fanaticism around Trump is tipping over into something truly spooky, is this level of this sort of world of prophecy, a world where Trump is seen as having a particular Divinely anointed purpose so that even if you're opposing Trump, you're opposing God even. And so that's where I get really pessimistic. I do think there's some percentage of people who could peel off, but the big bulk, many of them in the Christian world, to an extent that would sort of maybe shock a lot of your more secular Listeners, many people in the Christian world are operating under an assumption that Trump has been prophesied to be in this position. And that's a tough, tough, tough argument to have. I was listening to the Ezra Klein podcast a couple days ([Time 0:53:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4519f228-89ca-4734-bf3b-525500830094)) - **Gurry's Turning Point** - Martin Gurry's turning point in supporting Trump was the Philadelphia assassination attempt. - He saw Trump's defiance as providential, which resonates with Christians seeking evidence of divine favor. Transcript: Skye Jethani Ago, and he had a guest on recently named Martin Gurry, if you've heard that or listened to it, a former CIA analyst. And he did not vote for Trump in 16 or 20, but he did vote for Trump in 24. And Klein was asking him, like, explain to me why you're on the Trump train now. And he's not a full-throated like MAGA endorser or anything, but he's hopeful that Donald Trump can do more good than harm. But he talked, and I have no idea what his faith is, if he has a Christian faith, anything like that, I don't know. But he talked about a pivotal turning point for him was the assassination attempt in Philadelphia last summer, where the scene of Trump, and he's from Cuba originally, and he talked About how when you're, and you've been in combat, when there's bullets whizzing by, all the talk becomes very cheap, right? All the rhetoric about bravery and strength becomes really cheap. But his sense was that here's Trump, hits the ground after a bullet grazes his ear. He's surrounded by the Secret Service and he has the wherewithal to stand up, ask for his shoes, pump his fist in the air and yell fight, fight, fight in defiance with that flag behind Him. And he talked about it as if it was a providential, divinely orchestrated moment. And it was almost like, how can you deny this guy? Because of his courage and his strength and his clarity of mind in that moment of chaos, he didn't cower and flee like most people would. And the whole moment seemed like it was out of a script. It couldn't have been more perfect. And I get it. A lot of Christians look at that and go, yeah, God's with this guy, clearly. And so... Oh, I saw that all over, all over social media. Exactly. And I understand the impulse to want to believe that, but then you look at what he actually does. And this is the part I struggle with is we get so caught up in spectacular things as evidence of God's presence or blessing. And yet what we're told throughout the Gospels and the New Testament is that the way you actually know where someone is, is by their fruit. And the fruit that's defined, and when Jesus talks about this in the Sermon on the Mount, he's not talking about miracles or spectacular events or power, because in the verses immediately After you will know a tree by its fruit, he rejects people who come to him on the day of judgment who've performed miracles and done spectacular things. The fruit he's talking about is the stuff he's been outlining throughout the Sermon on the Mount. It's not being governed by lust. It's being generous. It's loving your enemies. It's not being consumed by fear. It's not using power over. It's love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentle. It's the fruit of the Spirit. And so when I look at Donald Trump and wanting to know, is this a man aligned with God and his kingdom? I'm looking for evidence of the fruit of the Spirit. And I don't think that's what most people are looking for anymore. They're looking at, wow, he stood up in defiance in this picturesque ([Time 0:57:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c22f4571-ee13-4169-a4d2-35b73965585b))