Evangelicals won’t dump Trump over his racist Obama video
Most white evangelical leaders copied Rev. Franklin Graham, who ignored the racist post while praising Trump for “turning to God.” Others, like televangelist Lance Wallnau, reminded their followers that they love the president because “he says the quiet parts out loud.”
Plenty of other prominent preachers and pundits from the evangelical right chose to defend Trump outright. Minister Sean Feucht retweeted a post claiming Trump did it by accident. (While the White House initially deflected on the video before deleting it and blaming the incident on a staffer, the president has refused to apologize.) Turning Point USA executive Benny Johnson called the widespread outrage a “hoax.” Christian podcaster Matt Walsh denied the video was racist, claiming it was merely “edgy.” Instead they all spent far more energy freaking out over Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl, revealing they share Trump’s hostility to non-white people in positions of prominence and esteem.
The video clip’s content was “immediately familiar” to Robert P. Jones, the founder of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), who also studies racism and white evangelicalism. In his newsletter, Jones wrote that the “dehumanizing imagery” evoked a long history of “cartoons, jokes, and serious arguments about the superiority of white people.” As he told Salon last year, a large part of the reason why white evangelicals have long been Trump’s strongest base of support is that they support “the preservation of white supremacy.”
On Monday, the Pew Research Center published extensive polling data showing that white evangelicals remain Trump’s strongest base of support, with 69% saying they approve of the president. This admittedly is down from his 78% approval rating with this group in April, but there’s no reason to think his racism is a factor in the decline.
White evangelical leaders have been among the most enthusiastic in its support of Trump’s mass deportation policies. William Wolfe, the founder of the Center for Baptist Leadership, tweeted last week that Jesus “would support ICE and mass deportations,” adding, “If we want to save Western Civilization, we must become immune to the tears of liberal women,” who supposedly have too much empathy for immigrants. Popular Christian podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey has been scolding her followers not to be “duped by the anti-ICE propaganda” while noting that she also thinks the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 were “nonsense.” Right-wing Christian influencer Riley Gaines also insisted that people should “not let compassion” get in the way of supporting ICE — even as they were seizing five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and taking him to a detention center 1,300 miles away from his home.
As Peter Wehner recently wrote in the Atlantic, “Much of today’s evangelical world sees Trump’s viciousness not as a vice but as a virtue, so long as it is employed against those they perceive as their enemies.” It is increasingly obvious, I would add, that anyone who threatens white supremacy is among those enemies.
Animus toward racial diversity has been an unspoken but just as powerful motivator for the white evangelical movement as opposition to feminism and LGBTQ rights. They don’t like to admit it these days, and so some of their followers will occasionally get embarrassed when Trump says the quiet parts out loud. But no one should mistake the Christian right’s wish that the president would be more subtle about his racism for a larger moral shift against him. He is the same bigot he was when they first fell in love with him.
https://www.salon.com/2026/02/11/evangel...ama-video/
Most white evangelical leaders copied Rev. Franklin Graham, who ignored the racist post while praising Trump for “turning to God.” Others, like televangelist Lance Wallnau, reminded their followers that they love the president because “he says the quiet parts out loud.”
Plenty of other prominent preachers and pundits from the evangelical right chose to defend Trump outright. Minister Sean Feucht retweeted a post claiming Trump did it by accident. (While the White House initially deflected on the video before deleting it and blaming the incident on a staffer, the president has refused to apologize.) Turning Point USA executive Benny Johnson called the widespread outrage a “hoax.” Christian podcaster Matt Walsh denied the video was racist, claiming it was merely “edgy.” Instead they all spent far more energy freaking out over Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl, revealing they share Trump’s hostility to non-white people in positions of prominence and esteem.
The video clip’s content was “immediately familiar” to Robert P. Jones, the founder of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), who also studies racism and white evangelicalism. In his newsletter, Jones wrote that the “dehumanizing imagery” evoked a long history of “cartoons, jokes, and serious arguments about the superiority of white people.” As he told Salon last year, a large part of the reason why white evangelicals have long been Trump’s strongest base of support is that they support “the preservation of white supremacy.”
On Monday, the Pew Research Center published extensive polling data showing that white evangelicals remain Trump’s strongest base of support, with 69% saying they approve of the president. This admittedly is down from his 78% approval rating with this group in April, but there’s no reason to think his racism is a factor in the decline.
White evangelical leaders have been among the most enthusiastic in its support of Trump’s mass deportation policies. William Wolfe, the founder of the Center for Baptist Leadership, tweeted last week that Jesus “would support ICE and mass deportations,” adding, “If we want to save Western Civilization, we must become immune to the tears of liberal women,” who supposedly have too much empathy for immigrants. Popular Christian podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey has been scolding her followers not to be “duped by the anti-ICE propaganda” while noting that she also thinks the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 were “nonsense.” Right-wing Christian influencer Riley Gaines also insisted that people should “not let compassion” get in the way of supporting ICE — even as they were seizing five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and taking him to a detention center 1,300 miles away from his home.
As Peter Wehner recently wrote in the Atlantic, “Much of today’s evangelical world sees Trump’s viciousness not as a vice but as a virtue, so long as it is employed against those they perceive as their enemies.” It is increasingly obvious, I would add, that anyone who threatens white supremacy is among those enemies.
Animus toward racial diversity has been an unspoken but just as powerful motivator for the white evangelical movement as opposition to feminism and LGBTQ rights. They don’t like to admit it these days, and so some of their followers will occasionally get embarrassed when Trump says the quiet parts out loud. But no one should mistake the Christian right’s wish that the president would be more subtle about his racism for a larger moral shift against him. He is the same bigot he was when they first fell in love with him.
https://www.salon.com/2026/02/11/evangel...ama-video/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
