Longtime CNN analyst Roland Martin, a fervent supporter of the Obamas, showed up on MSNBC on Saturday morning touting a sweater he found in Ghana and trashing all white conservative evangelical Trump backers as "Christian frauds." MSNBC host Ali Velshi brought Roland on to discuss the South Carolina primary.
“You are a man of faith,” Velshi touted, “and one of the issues in the last several years has been Donald Trump has been viewed as an object of suspicion by some people of faith… How do Democrats who are trying to court particularly the black religious vote deal with this?” He trashed all Trump-backing white evangelicals as not just fake Christians, but as racists:
ROLAND MARTIN: Well, first and foremost, look, I'm a Christian author. My wife is [an] ordained minister. And the reality is this here -- white conservative evangelicals are Christian frauds. Let me say it again. They're frauds. If you look at the moral majority from Jerry Falwell and the Pat Robertsons of the world, all we heard from them since the late '70s and '80s, character, values, morals, and all those things. Yet, what they did is they embraced Donald Trump who is immoral, has no values, has no principles, and, frankly, is a fake Christian, okay.
So let's just cut to the chase here. And so black evangelicals see right through this, okay. We’ve always seen through this. Remember it was white conservative evangelicals who held up and supported Jim Crow and who would use the Bible to endorse slavery. What you have are individuals who only care about two things -- white conservative evangelicals care about two things. They can't stand gay people, and they can't stand abortion. And so all they care about are federal judges who are going to drive home their agenda, and that's why they suck up to trump. And that’s why he’s given them and the Federalist Society complete rein to pick federal judges.
A couple of thoughts:
Trump's personal life. Donald Trump was not the first choice of most evangelical Christians when the primaries began in 2016. But voting for a president isn't just voting for a leader, it's voting for an agenda. One party has an agenda that became obvious under Obama, to litigate the conservative Christians into a corner, like suing Catholic nuns to force them to provide contraceptives to employees. Liberals don't acknowledge this, merely suggesting that support for Trump is heresy.
Race. What Roland is suggesting here is that a white evangelical who supports Trump and was born in 1998 can be easily associated with the segregationists and the KKK. (?) As for older Christians, he's not leaving one inch of room for evangelical legends like Billy Graham, who was praised by Martin Luther King.
Abortion and Homosexuality. Opposing homosexuality as a sin isn't the same thing as "they can't stand gay people," but that's how liberals fight. Since Roland is protesting the bending of Bible passages, where is his scriptural support for the Democrats on abortion and LGBT "discrimination"?
He wasn't going to face two seconds of dissent on these matters on MSNBC.
