'Trump wears thin after a while': Evangelicals bail on lame-duck president

As the latest polls show plunging support for President Donald Trump among evangelical Christians — the group that has remained most loyal to him through three elections — experts say it’s because a growing number of them are beginning to question his “cult of personality” and asking themselves whether they “have to keep supporting everything he does.”

As Stephanie Ruhle of MSNOW reports, “Evangelicals have stood with Donald Trump through thick and thin,” with over 80 percent voting for him in all three presidential races. Most have even stuck with him through his fight with the Pope. But now, “his hold on the group may be starting to slip. A recent poll from Reuters shows his approval rating with evangelicals is now 52 percent. Back in August the number was 61 percent.” Just before the war with Iran, it was 69 percent. In March 2025, it was even higher at 82 percent. In other words, Trump has seen a dramatic collapse among one of his most essential support groups.

According to Ruhle’s guest, journalist McKay Coppins, who has spent 15 years reporting on the evangelical movement, in order to understand this erosion, you have to look at how evangelicals have evolved to accommodate Trump’s decidedly un-Christian-like behavior.

“There are a couple of things that have changed in the last decade or so of evangelical politics,” says McKay. “When I first started covering them, they were all about family values, character, moral leadership. It was like the white noise of social conservative politics. You would hear the same stuff over and over again. When Donald Trump arrived on the scene, that started to change, and for obvious reason, Donald Trump is very clearly not a moral exemplar, not a Christian example. And so the rhetoric started to pivot. For conservative Christians who wanted to justify their support for him, they started to talk more about populism, cultural issues, about grievance, about political power. And for a while that relationship worked pretty well.”

As long as Trump continued to deliver on conservative social issues, explains McKay, that bargain held. “But Donald Trump is now entering his lame-duck stage, and he hates to hear us talk about that. That's the kind of thing that gnaws at him: the idea that he is fading in relevance. But he is, and evangelicals are looking to the future, and they're starting to wonder: Do we have to keep supporting everything he does? Do we have to be zealous in our adherence to this cult of personality? Maybe not.”

According to McKay, evangelicals have become frustrated with Trump over a number of issues, such as the war with Iran and questions surrounding immigration and refugees. Many Christian ministries in places like Texas, Florida, and Tennessee have long provided assistance to refugees, and Trump’s violent deportation program is “alienating to a lot of evangelicals.”

And for others, concludes McKay, the issue may simply be that “Donald Trump wears thin after a while.”