CNN/Politics reports the depths to which President Trump is slipping:
President Donald Trump, facing scrutiny for hush money payments to a porn star and a former Playboy model, pleaded with evangelical leaders for political help during closed-door remarks on Monday, warning of dire consequences to their congregations should Republicans lose in November’s midterm elections.
“This November 6 election is very much a referendum on not only me, it’s a referendum on your religion, it’s a referendum on free speech and the First Amendment. It’s a referendum on so much,” Trump told the assemblage of pastors and other Christian leaders gathered in the State Dining Room, according to a recording from people in the room.
“It’s not a question of like or dislike, it’s a question that they will overturn everything that we’ve done and they will do it quickly and violently. And violently. There is violence,” Trump said, describing what would happen should his voters fail to cast ballots. “The level of hatred, the level of anger is very unbelievable.”
Violence would be un-American and unbelievable – but Trump thinks his evangelical supporters, who have already compromised their morality through their continual support of Trump, are so credulous that they’ll eat that right up and run to the polls.
But how will news of rank lies like this affect independents? Not that there’s a lot of them likely to support Trump in the wake of his relative failures, boastfulness, and possible legal infringements, but this may put those who lean away from Democrats into at least not voting.
But it is a measure of just how deeply President Trump is about the upcoming mid-terms. Now comes the question: how addicted are the evangelicals and, more importantly, their leaders to their taste of influence and even power? Will they continue to ‘bed with the devil,’ as it were, in order to suck down the liquor of power?
