President Trump at the Values Voters Summit: Impeachment, a Threat to Religion?

Donald Trump speaking to Values Voters Summit

During his speech last week to the Values Voters Summit in Washington DC, President Donald Trump promised the leaders of the Christian Right that he would fight for the causes they believed in. However, he spent about half of the speech ranting about the Democrats’ efforts to impeach him over his controversial call to the president of Ukraine. During that call, according to the official transcript, he asked the Ukrainian government as a favor to investigate Hunter Biden, son of his likely 2020 election opponent Joe Biden. By any reasonable reading, the call represented, at the least, a campaign-finance law violation.

Now, people might ask: what does impeachment over a corrupt phone call have to do with religious values? In an obvious sense, nothing! Corruption runs against Christian values. Christians should want to root out corruption. In another sense, however, impeachment has everything to do with values – once we understand how Trump appeals to the Christian Right. It’s not that impeachment is in and of itself a religious question; rather, the Christian Right characterizes any attacks against President Trump as spiritual warfare. If we think about the world as a battleground between the forces of Heaven and Hell, with Trump being God’s warrior, the Democrats’ efforts to impeach him represent their pursuit of evil and their rejection of God. I know that mainstream Christians find that incomprehensible, but bear with me and I’ll show you what Trump did in this speech.

Trump's impeachment diatribe started about halfway through the speech. Trump castigated impeachment as an incomprehensible, “ugly” smear:

“And now it is the outrageous impeachment — look, impeachment.  I never thought I’d see or hear that word with regard to me — ‘impeachment.’  I said, the other day, ‘It’s an ugly word.’  To me, it’s an ugly word — a very ugly word.  It means so much.  It means horrible, horrible crimes and things.  I can’t even believe it.”

He continued with his favorite defense:

“It’s a witch hunt.  It’s based on a single phone call of congratulations to the President of Ukraine, which they fraudulently mischaracterized to sound absolutely horrible.  This crooked Adam Schiff —"

And, hearing Schiff’s name, the crowd booed!

Trump wasn’t done with his personal attacks. Moving from Schiff, he pounced on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Trump said that she was “Not a good person.  I think she hates our country.  Because if she didn’t hate our country, she wouldn’t be doing this to our country.  It’s a fraud.  It’s a fraud.  (Applause.)”

Do you see the spiritual warfare? If we look at the call transcript, Trump clearly did wrong. No question. But spiritual warfare elevated the debate to the idea that Trump stands for God and goodness while Pelosi is trying to remove him so she can pursue evil. Trump continued this line of argument:

“But they’re using that call to impeach your President who won, in 2016, perhaps the greatest election of our time.  (Applause.)  And I won it for you; I didn’t win it for me.  I won it for you and others, I won it for you.  They are coming — I won it for you and others, but I won it for you.”

A little bit of paranoia – “They are coming” – didn’t hurt his persuasive message. In one sense, of course, the Democrats really are coming for him. After all, the Democrats are holding impeachment hearings, are they not? And Trump next tied the paranoia to spiritual values: to the idea that Democrats are trying to impeach him because they hate Christian values:

“They’re coming after me because I’m fighting for you.  It’s a big part of it.  (Applause.)  And I’m fighting for all Americans and our way of life, but I’m fighting for you.  And they don’t like you.  They don’t like you.  And you explain why.  You explain why.  Your values are so incredible.  They don’t like you.” 

“Your values are so incredible,” he said. And so, presumably, the reason Democrats don’t like the values voters is that Democrats don’t share their values. Yet Trump claimed the support of the people:

“And, you know, I am at 94 percent approval rating, but still you have people out there — they don’t get it.” No one can imagine where he got that 94% figure, since approval polls are far lower than that, but the guy was on a roll by then, seeing no reason to let little details like reality slow down his narrative.

Trump ended this remarkable, rambling, angry speech by tying religion and politics together into one nice multi-colored bow:

“And above all else, we know this: In America, we don’t worship government, we worship God.  (Applause.)  Thank you. Forever and always, Americans will believe in the cause of freedom, the power of prayer, and the eternal glory of God.  Thank you.  God bless you.  And God bless America.  Thank you very much.  (Applause.)”

Trump didn’t distinguish between support for him and support for God, which, since he leads the government, might seem to contradict his concluding comment. But if that’s what people think, they are missing the point. On the contrary, here’s what Trump meant: values are good, and Donald Trump supports Christian values. He fights for what his audience thinks are Christian values. He is a spiritual warrior. The Democrats are fighting against him, which means they are fighting against values. Trump’s factual guilt or innocence of impeachable offenses becomes completely irrelevant to his audience once we understand that Trump is neither a role model nor a saint, but a fighter and defender, like a crusader prepared to visit the Holy Land to massacre “infidels” by the thousands.

And that, dear reader, is what, in Trump’s rhetoric, impeachment has to do with Christian values.

Here's my earlier post about this speech, in which I showed how Trump pictured himself as defender of the faith.

Image: White House YouTube Channel

President Trump at the Values Voters Summit: The Donald, Defender of the Faith?

Donald Trump, White House photo

Conservatives like old-time things. Christianity is the United States’ old-time religion. So, many conservatives like Christianity. Unfortunately, Christianity is not a particularly conservative religion. Feed the poor? Show hospitality to immigrants? Love immigrants like your own citizens? The love of money is the root of all evil? Does any of that sound like the Republican Party agenda? No, of course not.

For the most part, Republican Christians do not support Donald Trump because he stands for Christian values. He does not. They support him because they feel threatened and Trump reaches out to them as no president has ever reached out to them. With all the talk of impeachment, betraying the Kurds, and a temporary rebellion in the Republican-controlled Senate, President Trump knows where he can find his closest friends. He finds them among white evangelicals. A few days ago, he visted the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC to give a powerful, rambling, angry speech at the Values Voters Summit. Mainstream reporters and rhetorical scholars probably don’t even know that such a summit exists. But it does. Trump speaks to the group regularly, and it is important to Trump's continuing success with his core voters.

Trump told the Values Voters Summit that they are under attack and he is their defender. He promised to be their hero. In Trump’s vision, people who oppose him oppose Christianity. And the values voters loved it.

Here is how Trump began his argument:

“You are the warriors on the frontiers defending American freedom. We meet tonight at a crucial moment in our nation’s history. Our shared values are under assault like never before. Extreme left-wing radicals, both inside and outside government, are determined to shred our Constitution and eradicate the beliefs we all cherish. Far-left socialists are trying to tear down the traditions and customs that made America the greatest nation on Earth. They reject the principles of our Founding Fathers — principles enshrined into the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims that our rights come from our creator. (Applause.)”

Trump did not speak language of mercy, forgiveness or turning the other cheek. Trump told his audience that they were “warriors.” They were “defending American freedom.” They were fighting because “our shared values are under assault like never before.” Trump welded conservative religion and conservative politics together as if they were the same thing: “extreme left-wing radicals . . . are determined to shred our Constitution and eradicate the beliefs we all cherish.” He cleverly linked the Declaration of Independence with religion: “the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims that our rights come from our creator.”

Religious tradition + political tradition = Trump. A simple equation!

Trump did not pretend that he spoke for Jesus' teachings. That wasn’t his point. Why would anyone think it was? His point was to fight for tradition as the values voters understood tradition. Period.

Have you ever read a spiritual warfare book? I’ll bet that most of his audience members had. Democrats were, in Trump’s frightening vision, opponents of all religion, and, Trump warned, values voters needed to fight them:

“On every front, the ultra-left is waging war on the values shared by everyone in this room. They are trying to silence and punish the speech of Christians and religious believers of all faiths. You know it better than anyone.”

"On every front" was war talk, like the Western Front in World War I, or the Russian Front in World War II. That was powerful: Trump told the Values Voters that the left wing was at war with them. Indeed, the left wing, he said, wanted to attack them, deprive them of their livelihood, and threaten their families:

“They are trying to hound you from the workplace, expel you from the public square, and weaken the American family, and indoctrinate our children. They resent and disdain faithful Americans who hold fast to our nation’s historic values.”

How about violence? Now, I recall that the Bible makes various statements about weaponry. Here’s one of them: “Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” But we all know that conservatives favor an armed citizenry. Implicitly rejecting Jesus' teaching about weaponry, Trump spoke for the Second Amendment, which protects the right to keep and bear arms:

“We want a powerful Second Amendment, which they don’t want. (Applause.) Right, Dana? They don’t want — I wouldn’t say they’re too much into the Second Amendment, the world of the Second Amendment. I will tell you, if certain of these people — I would say almost anyone — your Second Amendment is in serious, serious trouble. Serious trouble.”

What does that have to do with Christianity? Not much that I can see. The conservatives like the old-time things, and one of the old-time things is the old-time religion, and the values voters also like the old-time Second Amendment, so there Trump goes!

Christian conservatives do not support Trump by accident. They support him because they want a Christian warrior to fight for what they believe. They want someone to oppose the liberals who they think are out to crush them. In the 2016 election, white Christian evangelicals could have thrown their support behind Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush, both of whom were churchgoing conservative Christians. Instead, they lined up behind Donald Trump. For that matter, they could have lined up behind a Methodist Bible study teacher named Hillary Clinton. They rejected all of those candidates. No, Trump was the fighter they wanted, the hero they craved, the defender of their faith. He was the Crusader who would stomp on the infidels.

And what about values? Trump’s speech never mentioned mercy to immigrants or compassion for the poor. He talked, instead, about liberal indoctrination, risks to the Second Amendment, and the right of conservative families to raise their children as they see fit. Those are values. Yes, the Values Voters want someone to stand for their values. But the values they stand for are not the values that liberal Christians expect them to stand for. Instead, they have stirred patriotism, the Founding Fathers, violence, resentment, and sexual morals into a conservative Christian values recipe that they feel – perhaps correctly – liberals reject.

Mainstream pundits, not to mention most of my academic colleagues in communication, are mystified that conservative Christian voters don't merely support or tolerate Trump, but love him to pieces. It shouldn't be a mystery. Just pay attention to what they believe and how Trump talks to them.

Also, Trump devoted much of his speech to the impeachment controversy. What does that have to do with Christianity? In some sense, nothing! In some sense, however, impeachment had everything to do with the values that the Values Voters craved. I'll talk about how Trump worked the impeachment issue into this Values Voters Summit speech in an upcoming post.

The October 15, 2019 Democratic Primary Debate: Superficiality Ruled the Stage

How do debates help us choose a president? Hmm...

What the public wants:

When the American public chooses someone to be President of the United States, they mostly want someone who will represent their interests, keep the country safe and secure, and improve our mutual prosperity. The problems that face our country today are many and complicated. There are no easy answers to any of them.

Unfortunately, the public does want easy answers. Politicians are happy to oblige.

What candidates want:

Political scientist Dan Nimmo cynically comments that the way to get elected is to campaign as a candidate who has brand-new ideas to solve problems that cannot be solved. I almost believe that he is right! But let’s not get too cynical. Although intelligent solutions will not get rid of all our problems, they could help a lot. All the same, the pile of candidates debating at Otterbein College last night for the Democratic nomination for the presidency excelled at giving superficial solutions to difficult problems. The debate format encouraged them to be superficial. The moderators’ ridiculous and inconsistent questions shoved the debaters off the cliff and tumbled them down into Superficiality Valley.

Example #1:

Let us look at one of the evening’s better answers. Moderator Erin Burnett asked Bernie Sanders about all the jobs supposedly lost in Ohio due to automation. Here is Sanders’ entire answer, which was restricted by the 75-second time limit:

Bernie Sanders

SANDERS: Damn right we will. And I'll tell you why. If you look at what goes on in America today, we have an infrastructure which is collapsing. We could put 15 million people to work rebuilding our roads, our bridges, our water systems, our wastewater plants, airports, et cetera.

Furthermore - and I hope we will discuss it at length tonight - this planet faces the greatest threat in its history from climate change. And the Green New Deal that I have advocated will create up to 20 million jobs as we move away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

We need workers to do childcare. We need workers, great teachers to come in to school systems which don't have the teachers that we need right now. We need more doctors. We need more dentists. We need more carpenters. We need more sheet metal workers. And when we talk about making public colleges and universities tuition fee and cancelling student debt, we're going to give those people the opportunity to get those good jobs. 

During that quick, well-prepared answer, Sanders gave two sentences about the United States’ “collapsing” infrastructure. Infrastructure failure is indeed a big problem, and it is a new one – when I was young, highway bills passed automatically. Today, they fail automatically. Congress won’t spend money to keep the roads open. And, yes, we could put many people to work rebuilding our public facilities. We need that badly. But only two sentences? And no details at all?

Also, Sanders spoke two sentences about climate change. Global warming does threaten our economy, and, yet, millions of conservative voters won’t even admit that it is happening. A coming existential catastrophe is worth only two sentences? Sanders said that he would try to talk about the issue more later in the debate, but time didn’t allow him to do so.

And don’t forget that Burnett’s question was about job losses supposedly due to automation in Ohio! Sanders never hit the question head-on, did he?

Example #2:

Here is Pete Buttigieg’s entire answer about President Trump’s policy in Syria, which is much in the news this week:

BUTTIGIEG: But this is really important, because what this president has done shows that American leadership shapes the behavior of our allies, or sometimes allies, too. Remember, the problem right now is not just that - with our competitors. And, for example a place like China, the people of Hong Kong rise up for democracy and don't get a peep of support from the president. It's just not the behavior of adversaries like Russia.

But our one-time allies, like Saudi Arabia, which the CIA just concluded was responsible, as we all knew, for murdering and dismembering an American resident and journalist.

And Turkey, which was an American ally. That's the point. We had leverage. But when we abandon the international stage, when we think our only choices are between endless war or total isolation, the consequence is the disappearance of U.S. leadership...

COOPER: Thank you, Mayor.

BUTTIGIEG: ... from the world stage. 

Buttigieg raised important points, which all deserved more time. But he left important questions unanswered. With respect to Turkey, what leverage should the United States apply? How did President Trump’s policies represent a choice between “endless war or total isolation?” Trump’s Syria policy was even briefly criticized by some of his closest supporters. But what is the best solution? What should be done now? How could the problems have been avoided? Buttigieg didn’t have time to tell us – even if he knew, of which I am unconvinced.

Superficiality reigned supreme

The debate’s superficial format encouraged the candidates to give the superficial answers that most of them preferred to give. Former Vice President Joe Biden, who gave some of the evening’s most articulate answers, summed up the debate’s format problems like this:

BIDEN: And this is one of the reasons why these debates are kind of crazy, because everybody tries to squeeze everything into every answer that is given. The fact is, everybody's right about the fact that the fourth industrial revolution is costing jobs. It is. The fact is also corporate greed is they're going back and not investing in our employees, they're reinvesting and buying back their stock.

Biden, and most of the other Democratic candidates, were quite confused about basic, high-school level economics. They weren’t as wrong as the Republicans are, but wrong enough. At the same time, economic issues, job losses, and income equality are difficult questions that no one can answer in a 75-second speech. Biden was right that the debate format was "kind of crazy." And, yet, this is how we expect the public to choose a president.

I have commented several times that a debate format needs to offer all the debaters equal chances. Once again, that didn’t happen. That’s partly because the ridiculous format for last night’s debate prevented the debaters from having a good discussion, but also because the moderators, as usual, did a terrible job. Let’s look at the figures from FiveThirtyEight. Front-runner Elizabeth Warren spoke 3695 words during the debate. Joe Biden, running second in the polls, spoke 3084 words. Tulsi Gabbard spoke only 1497 words, while billionaire candidate Tom Steyer squeezed in only 1318 words. If readers think that Gabbard and Steyer had little worthwhile to say, I agree. The fact remains that a good debate format should offer everybody an equal chance. By giving more speaking time to the front-runners, the moderators guaranteed that the front runners will still be the front runners tomorrow. As a retired debate coach, I would like to think that the best debater, not the most popular debater, would emerge from the event. Once again, that couldn’t happen. A bad format always means a bad debate.

Were things better in the old days? 

I have been thinking about the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates. At that time, many people seemed disappointed in them. Compared with the nonsense going on today, however, the 1960 debates were paragons of excellence. My question: was last night’s debate awful because the candidates were awful, because the dreadful format prevented the candidates from being good, or because American political life in general has deteriorated over the last 69 years? Stay tuned, because I plan to talk about those issues in coming weeks.

Photo of Bernie Sanders: United States Senate
Phto of Pete Buttigieg by Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons

The Queen's Speech: A Curious Affirmation of the British Constitution

Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth gave the Queen’s Speech this morning to a joint meeting of the United Kingdom’s House of Commons and the House of Lords. In this ancient tradition, the Queen reads a speech prepared for her by the Prime Minister – in this case conservative Boris Johnson. It functions something like the State of the Union speech that American presidents give every January to a joint session of Congress. Following a parade and extensive ritual, the Queen puts on her royal robe and crown, and delivers her speech among much pomp and circumstance. Because the Queen no longer has much political power, she is expected to read the Prime Minister’s speech word for word. She performed her duty, perhaps with an extra scowl on her face.

So, the Queen laid out a conservative legislative program some of whose provisions probably horrify her, while giving the impression (because the Prime Minister wrote the speech that way) that she endorsed the policies that he hopes to implement. However, Johnson does not control a majority in the House of Commons, and it is therefore unclear that he can pass any of his proposals. The most controversial is Brexit: United Kingdom’s voted in a plebiscite to withdraw from the European Union, largely at the behest of the United Kingdom’s notoriously irresponsible conservative newspapers, and, so far, all attempts to negotiate a deal for the withdrawal have failed.

Let’s look at a few of the ritualistic ways that the speech was phrased to create the false but culturally important impression that the Queen was not merely the head of state, but also the government’s leader. She (speaking for Johnson) started with Brexit:

“My Government’s priority has always been to secure the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union on 31 October. My Government intends to work towards a new partnership with the European Union, based on free trade and friendly cooperation.”

Interesting phrasing, is it not? “My government’s priority has always been…” The Queen (speaking for Johnson) made this sound like a long-standing policy, which it certainly is not. But the Queen’s speech is all about tradition, so I guess it fits in that sense.

Similarly…

“My Government will bring forward proposals to reform adult social care in England to ensure dignity in old age.”

“My Ministers will ensure that all young people have access to an excellent education, unlocking their full potential and preparing them for the world of work. My Government will take steps to make work fairer, introducing measures that will support those working hard.”

“My Government will continue to invest in our gallant Armed Forces.”

And so on as she laid out Johnson’s program.

“My government … my government … my ministers ... my government.” The Queen is still head of state, which differs from the American system in which the president of the United States serves both as head of state and head of the government. She took ownership of the government's policies, putting her own privately-held political views aside. 

The Queen’s speech seems curious, and the British public seems to find it as curious as the rest of us. Still, this ritual serves important functions. Those functions make little difference to policy, which Johnson seems to be too inept to implement in any case, and everything to do with reinforcing the British system of government:

First, during the Queen’s speech, the British government affirms a sense of unity and tradition. That sense doesn’t exist in real life, but it is reassuring to pretend that it does.

Second, the Queen publicly endorsed the government’s policies. Her endorsement was purely theoretical, since the Queen has little political power, but, again, it reinforces British social and political cohesion. The British government, which has become as divided and dysfunctional as the United States government today, badly needs cohesion. So, that’s a good thing.

Finally, by meekly subordinating her own views to those of the elected government, the Queen implicitly reminded her subjects that she reigns but does not rule, and that elected Members of Parliament, not the hereditary monarch, control the kingdom’s affairs. She called it "my government," but the ritual made it clear to everyone that she did not control the government. Adding to this, the leader of the House of Lords has the door of the Commons symbolically (and literally) slammed in her face before she is admitted, proclaiming that the elected Members of Parliament are now supreme over those who inherited their seats. That seems a bit unfriendly, but there you go. 

Since most of the British Constitution is unwritten and exists merely as tradition, the ritual of the Queen’s Speech reinforces the United Kingdom’s role as one of the world’s oldest democracies.

Marie Yovanovitch Attacked Her Critics Head-on

Marie Yovanovitch

Any experienced teacher can tell you that it is harder to get students to unlearn bad information then it is for students to learn new information. The bad information – the mind gremlins – block out knowledge and insight. It is more important to make your own case then it is to refute objections. However, if bad ideas have planted themselves into the audience’s minds, a speaker must address them directly. Debaters call this pre-empting objections.

Former United States Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch’s opening statement to a group of congressional committees yesterday specifically refuted several unsupported accusations and conspiracy theories that conservatives have made against her. Her positive points, that democracy and opposition to corruption are important, were the most important. However, no less a personage than the president of the United States had been smearing her and she confronted the smears directly. The underlying issue is that President Trump wanted Ukraine to prove that Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son, was corrupt.

Yovanovitch began by making a general point: “I want to categorically state that I have never myself or through others, directly or indirectly, ever directed, suggested, or in any other way asked for any government or government official in Ukraine (or elsewhere) to refrain from investigating or prosecuting actual corruption.” She cited her Ukrainian critic, former Prosecutor General Lutsenko, who had withdrawn his accusations against her, to prove her point. She denied being disloyal to President Donald Trump. She also denied that the Obama administration asked her for help in the 2016 campaign and stressed that she would not have done so even if asked.

Continuing, she said that she had never met Hunter Biden, whose actions are at the center of Republican conspiracy theories, while also denying any political conversations with Vice President Biden. She lashed out at Rudy Giuliani, stressing that, “I do not know Mr. Giuliani’s motives for attacking me. But individuals who have been named in the press as contacts of Mr. Giuliani may well have believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine.” Ouch!

Yovanovitch said that her supervisor, the Deputy Secretary of State, told her that there had been a concerted campaign against her and that the president had wanted to remove her for some time: “He also said that I had done nothing wrong.”

Those last two points not only attacked her critics, but, more importantly, set the stage to turn the tables and investigate them. Very clever. Giuliani is already facing criminal inquiries. It will be interesting to hear what the Deputy Secretary of State has to say.

Finally, Yovanovitch expressed that she was “incredulous that the U. S. government chose to remove an Ambassador based, as best as I can tell, on unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives.”

That was an important point. "Unfounded and false claims." Conspiracy theories have dominated American politics for too long. Indeed, many of the things we call conspiracy theories hardly rise above the level of wild accusations. Partisan people believe them without evidence only because they want to believe them. It was refreshing to hear Yovanovitch strike back against the falsehoods. I can pretty much guarantee that conspiracy theorists will come up with new accusations against her, while the old ones will continue to circulate. That doesn’t mean that Yovanovitch wasted her time, just that falsehood will play whenever its turn comes up.

Yovanovitch met her critics head-on. That’s the only way to do it. Emotions are running too high for halfway arguments to do any good. Her refutations were clear and specific. She did not wander around the issues, as political people often do, but instead attacked her critics directly. She gave details and her denials were clear-cut. Some of the accusations against her are of the “he said-she said” variety, and those could linger. She gave evidence against other smears. Those will still linger, since people who want to believe falsehoods willingly believe falsehoods even after they are proven wrong.

This is also why she spent so much time establishing her credibility as a faithful, nonpartisan public servant. I wrote about that yesterday. Persuasion often comes down to deciding who you believe.

Of course, millions of people will never believe Yovanovitch because she said things that they don’t want to believe. Mind gremlins at work! But let’s remember the burden of proof: people who make vicious accusations against Yovanovitch are obligated to prove them. They haven’t. So why should they expect her to refute their unproven, unsupported, and implausible accusations?

Social media are emphasizing that Yovanovitch had the courage to defy attempts to silence her. She spoke out to defend herself when so many of President Trump’s targets meekly fall into line behind him. Sometimes one courageous speaker is all it takes to open the floodgates of truth. 

Image: United States Department of State