Pandemic Politics: Revisionist History, Lies, and the Abandonment of Christian Witness

 One of my wife's friends sent her the video linked at the bottom of this page and indicated that she and her husband were reconsidering not voting to re-elect President Trump after watching it. My wife shared the video with me and I felt like it was worth analyzing in full. In retrospect, I am sorry to have seen it because it breaks my heart to see men who claim to be God-fearing evangelicals lie repeatedly while supposedly decent Christian men and women react with applause and cheers. The clear lack of Biblical thinking should be apparent to anyone with just a cursory education in the Scriptures. The revisionist history, on the other hand, is simply astounding. These men are clearly the wolves in sheep's clothing that Jesus warned His people about in Matthew 7:15. These men do not care about the people of God. They care about access to the seat of power and one day they will be held accountable for it. 

Pastor Jack Hibbs begins the discussion with a false assertion that 'Trump was down by 20 points' on election night in 2016 and came back to win. That would indeed be a miracle if it were true. It isn't. The final 2016 polls showed Hillary Clinton with anywhere from a 2-4 point lead in the popular vote. Her final margin of victory was 2.1 percentage points. The popular vote polls in 2016 were very accurate. As we all know, the president is elected by the Electoral College, not the popular vote. The only reason Republicans favor keeping the Electoral College is that they cannot win the presidency without it. They have lost the popular vote in every Presidential Election since 1992 except 2004 when George W. Bush was re-elected during the Iraq War. 

Charlie Kirk takes over after that and piles on the falsehood and sloppy thinking for the next five or six minutes. He begins by saying Trump beat sixteen other Republicans in 2016. Perhaps if one plays fast and loose with the truth but only if we count anyone who ever thought about running for the GOP nomination in 2015. By the time of the Iowa Caucus on February 1, 2016, there were just 12 candidates but only four viable ones (Trump, Cruz, Bush, Kasich). By New Hampshire the following week there were just eight remaining in the field. Trump benefited from that huge field early on to collect delegates even though most Republican voters supported someone other than Trump. 

Kirk moves on to claim that Trump won despite being 'spied on', which references the disproven allegation leveled by Trump that the Obama Administration bugged his NY office. Trump has repeatedly made this false allegation even though it has been investigated and disproved. The fact that Kirk repeats the lie indicates he has no allegiance to the truth. He then launches into a laundry list of Trump 'wins' that are either fictions or loosely based in reality. They are:

• Trump 'beat' big tech (what does that even mean?)
• Trump 'beat' big media (how does one score that?)
• Trump beat the 'fake' Mueller Russia probe (the Senate disagrees)
• Trump killed Iranian General Soleimani (True...the military assassinated him in January)
• Trump eliminated ISIS (It is weaker but launched 600 attacks in Iraq/Syria from Jan-May and much of the Trump strategy was a continuation of what President Obama was already doing)
• Trump is the 'most' pro-life president ever, which is impossible to verify, though the president has taken many steps lauded by pro-life supporters, even forcing Planned Parenthood to forego federal Title X funds. Even so, Planned Parenthood reported record levels of reimbursement from federal funds for healthcare services provided to the poor in 2019, though those funds cannot be used for abortion. 
• Appointed Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and over 200 lower court judges. This is important in the long-term as it could reshape the federal judiciary from a political perspective.
• Trump built the 'best economy in American history.' Probably not but they are likely conflating the stock market with the economy. Things were definitely good pre-pandemic as the economic expansion continued (but did not accelerate) after Trump took office. In other words, Trump inherited a good economy and didn't do anything to mess it up. 

Kirk then went on a rant about the virus, the lockdown of the country, and how Trump is a 'vessel' for average people fighting against the ruling class of elites. Seriously? A multi-millionaire who has never known a day of poverty or living paycheck to paycheck is a 'vessel' for working-class folks? We are talking about a man who is under investigation by the state of New York for tax fraud, who has fought every effort to release his tax returns, and maintains he is a billionaire. Something smells fishy here.

Next, it gets really interesting when Kirk claims Trump is the 'bodyguard of civil society.' He claims there was a mob waiting at the door to overthrow civil society before Trump took office and he has acted as its defender. That's not quite the way I remember it. The protests began after Trump took office and emboldened racists and white supremacists. They grew after yet another killing of an unarmed African-American by police officers (George Floyd). The protests grew after Breonna Taylor was gunned down in her home. After Ahmed Arbery was murdered. They grew because the president refused to speak out about these abuses of authority and insinuated they somehow deserved to be killed. That doesn't sound very pro-life to me. He claims that Trump is the placeholder for all that is good and moral in the world. He says we should pay no attention to the tweeter behind the curtain because he is the defender of righteousness. In my opinion, that is acting as an enabler. 

More than a week after the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, WI, the president still has not been able to utter his name. In fact, he compared the police officer's failure as the equivalent of missing a three-foot putt, which is something he knows a lot about. Uh, excuse me, Mr. President?

Look, I get praising the president for his pro-life stance opposing abortion. I am pro-life and would like nothing more than to see an end to the senseless slaughter of the unborn. One million babies terminated each year for convenience is one million too many. I understand there are cases where the mother's life may be in danger and exceptions must be made. They should not be the norm. The president says he is pro-life but it seems he is only in favor of preserving some lives, not all, or he would speak out against racial injustice. But that might cost him some of his white supporters. That speaks volumes about what kind of a man Trump is.

What I don't get is the deception of Trump's accomplishments in other areas. I don't get saying he is the greatest president of all time. His administration has failed miserably at handling the pandemic, at first denying it was a serious threat, saying it would just 'go away.' Then he announced it was a pandemic but opposed wearing a mask and belittled reporters who did. He claimed everyone could get a test that wants a test (not true). The economy had to be locked down, millions of people lost their jobs, more than 185,000 Americans have died, and we're still fighting this virus. Much of the rest of the world has returned to normal but not the United States. 

White evangelicals may base their vote on Trump's position on abortion this November. That's fine for the single-issue voter. But no one should be deceived that Trump is a good man or a defender of what is moral/good. We know exactly who he is. The same man that has cheated on his wives, divorced two of them, lied repeatedly before and since taking office, tried to blackmail a foreign power to investigate a political rival, begged Russia to take down Hillary Clinton, proliferates conspiracy theories as though they were the truth, and much more. Vote for him if you must but don't defend the indefensible. So-called Christians who do only invalidate their witness to a lost world. Our job is to preach Christ and Him crucified then let the Holy Spirit convert men and women into God-fearing Christians who do the right thing. Defending a man like Donald Trump only gives the world more ammunition to point out our hypocrisy. That's a bridge too far for this evangelical Christian.