'Not a menace but a messiah': Author explains why Trump rant proves loyalty to white evangelicals

Ex-President Donald Trump has long enjoyed staunch support from a particular Christian demographic: right-wing white evangelicals.

As anti-Trump conservative Pete Wehner recently pointed out in an op-ed for The Atlantic, white evangelicals "remain loyal" to the MAGA hopeful despite his use of "rhetoric" that is "clearly fascistic."

In a Sunday, November 26 op-ed, MSNBC columnist andUnholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behindauthor Sarah Posner suggests that one of the former president's most recent Truth Social rants proves his loyalty to that specific demographic.

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He wrote, "we will demolish the Deep State, we will expel the warmongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the Communists, Marxists, and Fascists, we will throw off the sick political class that hates our Country, we will rout the Fake News Media, we will evict Joe Biden from the White House, and we will FINISH THE JOB ONCE AND FOR ALL! The 2024 election is our final battle."

Posner writes, "Trump's use of 'cast out' will provoke amens from his most loyal constituency: white evangelicals. That sort of term is commonly used by evangelicals, Pentecostals and charismatic Christians to describe the exorcism of demons. That could be in a personal situation, say, to cast out the 'demon' of homosexuality from a family member, or on a bigger stage, to cast out demons, in the form of political adversaries, from Washington."

The author suggests, to white evangelicals, "Trump is not a menace but a messiah — which tells us a lot about what they think the God-ordained Christian nation should look like."

She writes, "While Trump hasin the past used similar language to last weekend's Truth Social post, this one came amid growing awareness that Trump is unequivocally saying that if he gets a second term, he will rule as afascist."

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Posner writes:

Trump's evangelical basebelieves God ordained America as a Christian nation, that the Christian nation is under attack by internal, satanic enemies (including the so-called communists), and that Christian patriots must wage 'spiritual warfare' against these demonic forces to restore the America God intended. Many of them also believe that God anointed Trump to save America at this crucial time in its history.

Furthermore, Posner emphasizes, "When Trump says “Communists, Marxists, and Fascists,” he doesn’t mean actual communists or fascists. He means Democrats."

Posner's full op-ed is here.