"The Greatest Threat Posed by Trump"
New York Times - Jan 12, 2024

(Redacted Excerpts)

“Eight years of bitter experience have taught us that supporting Trump degrades the character of his core supporters…the most enduring legacy of a second Trump term could well be the conviction on the part of millions of Americans that Trumpism isn’t just a temporary political expediency, but the model for Republican political success and — still worse — the way that God wants Christian believers to practice politics.”

• Polling data increasingly backs up the reality that the right is abandoning common human decency, in the most alarming of ways. Evangelicals are prime examples. During Trump’s run for president in 2016, white evangelicals went from least likely to most likely to excuse the immoral behavior of politicians.
• An increasing percentage of Republicans are now tempted to embrace political violence.

Trump has escalated his use of indefensible and repugnant language, calling his political opponents “vermin” and declaring that immigrants entering America illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

• A professional poll found that a 42 percent plurality of likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers said the statement would make them more likely to support Trump.
• Most consequential of all is the religious response to Trump. On Dec. 20, The Economist reported on the astonishing number of Christian Republicans who believe Donald Trump is God’s chosen man to save America.

The result is a religious movement steeped in fanaticism but stripped of virtue. The Christian virtues touted in the New Testament — “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” — have been replaced in MAGA Christianity by the very vileness the same passage warned against, including “hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions” and “factions.”