The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta took his book tour to the Tuesday edition of CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip where he warned that Evangelical Christians who support Donald Trump are not that different than Vladimir Putin.
Phillip began by reading a quote from Cal Thomas, “You kind of touched on this in your book. You talk about Cal Thomas, who plays a pretty important role in the rise of modern evangelicalism. And he said this to you about evangelical Christians. He says, ‘you can't have a legitimate conversation with these people who are all in on Trump, because if you find any flaw in him, even flaws that are demonstrable, they either excuse it or attack you.’”
It should be noted Thomas does not have a problem with Evangelicals supporting Trump, he has a problem with people thinking Christianity and supporting Trump are the same thing. Alberta goes beyond that. For instance, Alberta condemns Evangelicals for not embracing gun control and allegedly not caring about poor people while voting for Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin which is, ironically, doing the same thing he accuses conservative Evangelicals of doing: confusing his own policy preferences for Christianity.
As for his repose to Phillip, Albert proclaimed, “Well, especially, Abby, yes, I mean, it makes me worry, and I think especially when you take the elements of authoritarianism, but then you inject the religious zealotry and the religious justification, not from Trump himself but from this base of conservative, right-wing, white evangelicals, whom he has cultivated over the past eight years.”
When it came time to provide an example of what this might look like, Alberta reached for the Putin card, “And these are folks who, if you look at January 6th, some of the religious imagery around the siege of the Capitol, if you look at the language he deploys when he's in front of explicitly evangelical audiences talking about giving back power to Christianity, wanting to sort of take on Christianity's enemies in the culture, I mean, this is loaded language. And you don't have to look far to see just overseas in Ukraine, Russia's invasion was loaded with this sort of religious, identitarian rhetoric, and Trump, in some ways, is borrowing from that same playbook. So, it's very worrisome.”
Only Tim Alberta could think voting for the candidate who will enact conservative policies about abortion or transgenderism is analogous to invading another country.
Here is a transcript for the December 5 show:
CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
12/5/2023
10:13 PM ET
ABBY PHILLIP: You kind of touched on this in your book. You talk about Cal Thomas, who plays a pretty important role in the rise of modern evangelicalism. And he said this to you about evangelical Christians. He says, “you can't have a legitimate conversation with these people who are all in on Trump, because if you find any flaw in him, even flaws that are demonstrable, they either excuse it or attack you.”
I mean, does that what he's describing there make you or him worry that that's a recipe for authoritarianism?
ALBERTA: Well, especially, Abby, yes, I mean, it makes me worry, and I think especially when you take the elements of authoritarianism, but then you inject the religious zealotry and the religious justification, not from Trump himself but from this base of conservative, right-wing, white evangelicals, whom he has cultivated over the past eight years.
And these are folks who, if you look at January 6th, some of the religious imagery around the siege of the Capitol, if you look at the language he deploys when he's in front of explicitly evangelical audiences talking about giving back power to Christianity, wanting to sort of take on Christianity's enemies in the culture, I mean, this is loaded language. And you don't have to look far to see just overseas in Ukraine, Russia's invasion was loaded with this sort of religious, identitarian rhetoric, and Trump, in some ways, is borrowing from that same playbook. So, it's very worrisome.
