Thank you - that was really informative.
I don’t really agree with you on this one.
I think that within the fundamentalist/evangelical community, Trump’s amorality is a feature, not a bug. The fact that he broke the laws of a corrupt godless government to try to steal an election he didn’t win is a feature, not a bug. The fact that he raised an army of evangelicals and attempted to overthrow a secular humanist regime is a feature, not a bug. He’s a weapon sent by God to rescue a fallen country from the throes of godless liberalism. No one wants a gun with a conscience or a sword with morals.
Great info, hard to cram all the crimes into a 1/2 hour. He speaks very, very fast.
But it was hilarious at the end. He talks about how many people may be under house arrest, and goes into a commercial about Hello Fresh. And he actually does a commercial for Hello Fresh for all of those that may be under house arrest to get food at home. 
Exactly. Or to put it another way-hate the sinner, not the sin. He’s doing bad things in a good cause.
The problem is, they don’t hate the sinner.
I heard a clip on the radio of Trump at his rally (last night?) and he claimed to have won both times he ran, the last time by the largest turnout any candidate has ever gotten, and the crowd ate it up.
People used to consider it a virtue to be able to spot a con and not fall for it.
I might steal this.
Maybe, but if people were able to do so in large numbers, side-show evangelists would have been extinct long ago.
I laughed out loud and consider it the best segue evah!
I even watched it all the way through and I’ve seen him push Hello Fresh a number of times.
I’ve heard Evanlegicals compare Trump to Cyrus the Great who is a venerated figure in Herbrew tradition. For those who are unfamiliar, the Babylonians had conquored Jerusalem, destroyed the temples, and forced the Jews to relocate to Babylon. Cyrus the Great of Persia then conquored the Babylonians, allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem, returned the “sacred vessels” that had been stolen, and even gave them money to rebuild their temples. The argument I’ve heard is that Trump is to modern Evangelicals as Cyrus was to ancient Jews. I think you’re spot on about Trump being a weapon sent by God to these people.
Honestly that’s just how he talks. I watch a lot of his videos (I love when he analyzes TV show trials, and he’s a massive Simpsons fan) and he always delivers that way.
Some of the missing SS text messages have perhaps been found.
Statement from Melania Trump regarding Jan. 6.
It’s all her chief of staff’s fault that she wasn’t told what was going on. It was dereliction of duty to leave poor Melania alone without any way to know there was a riot happening. And, of course, just like Donald says of anyone he’s throwing under the bus, she says the woman’s shameful behavior was not surprising or an isolated incident. Makes you wonder why they were they always hiring such awful people who would betray them.
Is that really her signature? It looks like Trump’s.
Yep, we disagree.
I would argue that while the definition of Evangelical has evolved quite drastically in the last six or more years, Trump did not raise an army of Evangelicals (or even the broader category of Christians) to attack the Capitol.
He raised an army of Alt-right activists who as some other poster said in another thread- “mistakenly believe they are Christian” (beautiful truism- very much wish I had coined it!). The people who went into the Capitol and spread feces and threatened leaders of both parties are not and were not (for the most part) Evangelical Christians. They are yahoos who believe that every white person born in the United States of Merika! are born “christian”. They are “christians” the way all Californians are surfers (if they have ever surfed or been to the ocean or not).
They might self describe as Christian, but they (the vast majority of them) are not in mainstream churches on Sunday mornings. They do not attend church regularly, they do not practice any religious rites, they know very little doctrine or theology. They are mainstream Christians the same way the KKK was Christian, similar to how original John Birch Society members were Christian.
I know roughly six hundred mainstream Evangelicals across three or four different churches and while many are low information Republicans – they are almost all decent and DO try to be loving, kind people and sincerely follow Jesus. (They have some skewed ideas for sure, but they are a WORLD of difference from the insane, drunken MAGAs trying to take their country back by force.)
This argument seems like an extension of the discussion in the other thread about the report on election fraud. I agree that most elected Republicans at every level of government are catering to the very vocal and extreme group of MAGA Republicans – but again, not all Republicans are identical any more than the stupid argument that ALL Democrats are Socialists, that Biden is a Socialist!! What is more, the elected ones know for absolute fact what the truth is and they are lying on purpose. Horrible people – every last one of them! But they were the targets and the victims of the violence, not the perpetrators of it. There may have been quite a few Fundamentalists involved in the insurrection, and SOME Evangelicals (genuine, sincere believers) but for the most part the ones who did go to Washington for the rally and were sincere believers – many and I believe most stayed outside the fence lines and left the mayhem to the alt-right military 'want to be’crowd if they were associated with organized in para-military groups like the Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, and Proud Boys, or not.
My view remains that Trumps behavior (apparently on a fairly routine basis) would be repulsive and disgusting to almost any decent US citizen and that does include a great number of butts in the pews Evangelical Christians who actually attend services and sing worship songs and read bible verses. We certainly have some extreme churches here, fricking Charlie Kirk seems to be here about every other weekend- and I do know people who love Greg Locke and his brand of crazy. But most churches I know of are full of sincere and devout people who are painfully conservative – but not evil.
Trump’s amorality was never a feature for mainstream believers (although people have migrated from sane believer to MAGA asshole for sure!)- not a feature but an allowed matter of tolerance. Like buying an indulgencey in the middle ages- it allows true believers to hold their noses and benefit from a sinner without getting any unfortunate collateral damage sin or guilt on them for allowing it because God can use the unrighteous as well as the righteous. It was NOT a bug due to divine intervention, but it was never a feature - just a reluctant truth for them. Of course, MANY believed trump was holy and devout at first, but once it came out that – well, not so much of that is true- they adjusted to toleration for the imperfect man in the role.
Even though the Qanon Shaman said a prayer – as well as others, that does not make them Christians or Evangelicals. Evangelicals have a whole other level of crazy going on with expecting Jesus to reappear and whisk good little boys and girls to heaven soon (a relatively new and heterodox belief that for some reason has a LOT of traction in the United States). But the ones I know, are MOSTLY (but not all) still good, decent, mostly sane individuals who get their information from too limited a pool of sources – like one particular network for example. But they would NEVER excuse seeing the sausage made the way trump made it; just far too unseemly. They tend to get the vapors when the “F” word emerges and “GD” is beyond the bounds of good graces. Someone, anyone throwing food would be to vulgar to tolerate. (On the other hand, I would bet the alt-right crowd would LOVE that shit-- but I only know of one or two possible humans who might fit that description.)
As I always seem to be repeating- not all Republicans are the same. There is no factory stamping them out by the millions. For goodness sake Rusty Bowers is VERY devout and a lifelong Republican who was censured and is no longer “in good standing” as a Republican because he forcefully rejected the pressure from Trump and his genuinely kooky followers to commit election crimes.
Again, this reply is far too long and nobody is going to bother to read the whole damn thing. It will cause more questions in the future when someone finds one sentence they don’t like without bothering to carefully read the context in which it was said. I hope this has clarified my position on the matter. Thank you for the reply Ann_Hedonia.
Oh please oh please oh please…
(oh just do it voluntarily, will ya?)
Go for it. Might as well.
Have Robert Mueller come in and give a brief synopsis of how many times Trump obstructed justice to get to where this ended up.
There are so, so many crimes.
It looks like a seismograph.
That letter reads as if Melania just found out about the riot because of the hearings. At any rate, taking six months to issue a statement seems slow. Maybe she needs yet another new chief of staff.
And she says she’d have “immediately” condemned the violence “if she knew about it”, but in reality, it took her several days to even mention it, and that mention wasn’t anything close to “condemnation”.
As a reminder, for a whopping five days following the shocking events that unfolded at the Capitol, the country heard nary a peep from Melania “Be Best” Trump. When she did release a statement, it was less about condemning the violence and more about expressing how pissed off she was re: perceived attacks on her character.
I like the coopting of “dereliction of duty,” but M is a known plagiarist.