Former Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., recently declared President Donald Trump to be the most "biblical" president in a generation.
"In my lifetime, I have never seen a more biblical president than I have seen in Donald Trump," the founder of the House of Representative's Tea Party Caucus said last weekend in an interview with a Christian radio station, which was shared online by the progressive watchdog site Right Wing Watch. "He has so impressed me in what he has done – and we haven't even talked about Israel – what he has done to advance Israel."
"He is highly biblical, and I would say to your listeners: We will in all likelihood never see a more godly, biblical president again in our lifetime," she added. "So we need to be not only praying for him. We need to support him, in my opinion, in every possible way that we can."
Bachmann, a former far-right congresswoman and one-time Republican presidential candidate, previously advised Trump during his presidential bid on evangelical issues. She prayed that God would expose the "deep state," a right-wing conspiracy theory claiming there is a covert network entrenched inside the government working to undermine Trump, and claimed these clandestine figures want to "advance cultural and economic Marxism or to advance the goals of Islamic jihad, for instance."
Conservative white evangelical Christians make up a significant and consistent percentage of Trump's base of support, as Salon's Amanda Marcotte previously reported. Trump's support of Israel, particularly his recent decision to reverse longstanding U.S. policy by announcing his administration's support for Israel's claim to sovereignty over the Golan Heights, the contested territory that Israel seized from Syria during the Six-Day War in 1967 and formally annexed in 1981, has been praised by his Christian supporters.
Conservative evangelical leader Tony Perkins gave Trump a "mulligan" when it comes to his bombastic rhetoric or extramarital affairs, while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently suggested God may have sent Trump to Earth to protect the Jewish people. "I am confident that the Lord is at work here," Pompeo said.
But Trump — a thrice-married former real estate mogul who has been accused of sexual assault, harassment and misconduct by multiple women, as well as of inciting violence and stoking racial tensions among immigrant and other minority groups — through his actions suggests a less than a tenuous commitment to promoting the Christian faith.
The religious right's hypocritical embrace — and defense — of Trump may cost them the future, Salon's Amanda Marcotte previously argued.
"In the short term, the defenses of Trump from the Christian right will do what they're meant to do: Keep the believers punching the ballot for Republicans out of loyalty to their leaders and their tribe," Marcotte wrote. "But in the long run, these moral contradictions will continue to alienate more people, especially younger people. The religious right base will rally around their shameless pastors and the president with whom they've made a devil's bargain, at least for now. But there will be a steep price to pay for that bargain in the not-too-distant future."
Shares