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North Carolina. But you know clearly if one hadn't endorsed Trump
already, being on this advisory board was a clear signal even if they
weren't using the word endorse.
At the same time, there were people like Tony Perkins, the president
the Family Research Council, who was not ready to endorse Trump
yet - but clearly held the possibility open. Perkins had endorsed Ted
Cruz during the primary.
So I think that there were a lot of mixed signals coming from this
meeting. One signal was: oh, look at how happy he made these
evangelical leaders, and you know if they're not endorsing him right
now, they're sending signals that they're comfortable with him. Yet at
the same time, the fact that there were so many leaks and the fact
that there were not explicit endorsements indicates a lot of dissension
in the ranks, the level of which I think we haven't seen in a while.
[WG]: Several questions I want you to answer while we're together.
Let's just begin: what about the attack on Hillary Clinton's religion?
[SP]: Well, I think that in general, Trumps attacks and Hillary Clinton
this week involved a lot of projection, right? So there was a lot of
projection about her alleged corruption and her alleged unsuitability to
be commander-in-chief and also her religion. So its funny to hear
Trump say, Well, we don't really know anything about Hillary's
religion - which is so far from the truth! I mean, there's been so much
ink spilled about her lifelong Methodism and even about her reaching
out to the Fellowship or the Family and going to a prayer circle or
prayer meetings with them. I mean, the historical record on Hillary
Clinton's religion and deep commitment to her Methodist faith is
There's a huge public record on that! There is not a public record on
Trumps religion. I mean, it's very very thin. And notably I would point
out that Clinton has not attacked him on that basis.
I think that what he was trying to do there was trying to pull the same
sort of thing that Republicans have hinted at for a long time about
Obama: that he's not really a Christian, or maybe he's a Muslim, or
maybe he's an Atheist. But it just doesn't work. I mean, I think it
worked with the fever swamps with Obama - who's also a Christian but it doesn't really work with Clinton because there's no Jeremiah
Wright tape, there's no birtherism. She's such a straight and narrow
Methodist that it's laughable that he would attack her on that basis.
[WG]: But you know, that's fairly consistent in his campaign because
he talks about what he doesn't know - what he hasn't heard. And
there's a whole lot of that in relation not only to Hillary's religion but to
a lot of other pieces of information he should know as well. After what
we heard from Trump on Tuesday, Sarah, I've got to wonder is there
any part of the Constitution that he actually agrees with.
[SP]: So you know, I think that Trump's biggest pander to this group
was his discussion of the Johnson Amendment, which is the 1954
amendment to the internal revenue code which prohibits tax-exempt
churches from using their tax-exempt resources to endorse political
candidates. So this is a big deal with the Christian right. They charge
that its a violation of their free speech rights for pastors not to be able
to endorse candidates.
And you know, this is not about your free speech rights. You are
perfectly free to actually go across the street from your church
property and take out a bullhorn and endorse a presidential
candidate. You can't do it with tax-exempt resources: you can't do it
on your church letterhead; you can't do it when you're giving a
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litigated and talked about and been the focal point of religious right
activism for about three years. He demonstrates no knowledge of
that, and so that's why I find it surprising that these religious leaders
would just say, oh he's on our side on religious liberty. When all he's
done, really, is talk about how when he's president hell make it OK to
say Merry Christmas again, and that he will apparently
singlehandedly reverse a piece of legislation that he disagrees with.
[WG]: So Sarah, does a cynical interpretation actually offer some
hope that this is all just for Trump?
[SP]: I think that it's for Trump - I mean, obviously it benefits Trump or
Trump thinks that it benefits him - but I think that this is also a struggle
by these religious conservative leaders to maintain their relevance
when they basically have a candidate who won the Republican
primary without doing anything to pander to them; in fact, did a lot the
opposite of pandering to them.
So I think that it's kind of everybody involved with this is using it to
pad their resumes, if you will, or bolster their relevance. Because I
think that Trump made it pretty clear that he could win the primary
without their help. And they're trying to convince him now that he can't
win the general election without their help; but he might lose the
general election despite their help. So it's kind of a complicated
calculus that might, at the end of the day, involve everybody just
looking completely irrelevant - which is what they're all trying to avoid.
If that makes sense.
[WG]: You know, this really fits perfectly with some of the things that
you've said and written in the past about why far right religious
leaders were supporting Trump. You've said that ultimately, they're
just sick of losing and will find a way to make a winning candidate
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[SP]: Well, you know, he was asked about immigration - and nobody
really held his feet to the fire. There was no evidence that there was a
strong pro-immigration reform contingent at this meeting - and there
is such a contingent among evangelicals. But they didn't seem to
either be there in force, or their questions didn't make it through the
screening that I understand happened for questions to be asked of
the candidate.
You know, he paid a lot of lip service to their issues; but he also
rambled a lot. If you listen to the audio recordings which are now out
there on the web, he's asked pretty specific questions and he doesn't
give very specific answers. And he wanders off a lot and there's no
follow up, nobody's really pressing him on anything. And it's hard to
believe that people with supposedly very strong convictions about
these various values or issues were satisfied with some of these
answers that were vague, rambling, incoherent at times. So it was
pretty fascinating to see this.
[WG]: I always want to find out what you're thinking about and what
you're looking at before we get off the air. So what else are you
paying close attention to at this point in the campaign?
[SP]: Just really looking at where the Never Trump evangelicals are.
Are they really going to come up with an independent candidate to
run against Trump? What's their endgame there? And then what's
really going to happen to the evangelicals who arent in the Never
Trump camp, but they're not in the cheerleading Trump camp and
they're feeling pretty ambivalent; and whether they'd end up going
with Trump because of their antipathy to Clinton - which I think is a lot
of what's driving many of these evangelicals over to the Trump side.
But I think that all of this will have ramifications for the movement. I
think it's going to have ramifications for their cohesiveness, and their
previous unwillingness to publicly criticize each other. I think there's
going to be more recriminations than we've seen in the past.
[WG]: Sarah Posner is an investigative journalist at the intersection of
religion and politics. Her writing appears in Rolling Stone, The
Washington Post, The New York Times, The Huffington Post and
elsewhere. Sarah is the author of God's Profits - P R O F I T S God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values
Voters.
Sarah, the updated version of your book is writing itself right before
our eyes. Listen, as always, thank you for being with us on State of
Belief Radio. Its always helpful and insightful and enjoyable.
[SP]: Thank you, Welton.
Sarah Posner
Sarah Posner is an investigative journalist, author, and expert on the
intersection of religion and politics. Her work has appeared in the
Atlantic, Al Jazeera America, CNN, The New York Times, Rolling
Stone, Politico, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, The American
Prospect, The Nation, Salon, and many other publications. She is the
author of God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for
Values Voters (PoliPoint Press, 2008), which investigated the unholy
alliance between politicians and televangelists. Sarah also has
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and healing role to play in the life of the nation. The show explains
and explores that role by illustrating the vast diversity of beliefs in
America the most religiously diverse country in the world while
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