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Since the beginning of Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York, I’ve been drawn to op-eds and interviews about the stubbornness of his support among evangelicals despite it all.
The lurid allegations involved in the trial have been enough to make news anchors blush. And yet, Trump’s evangelical supporters seem undeterred.
Sociologist Samuel Perry offered a compelling explanation for this during an interview with Politico. Explaining how some evangelicals view Trump as one of God’s tools, Perry used the biblical story of Samson:
Samson is just a full-time ass kicker. He’s this rampaging wild man who is like the John Wick of killing Philistines. That’s his favorite thing to do. His other favorite thing to do is to visit prostitutes, and his downfall ends up being this prostitute, Delilah. But that is often glossed over within the evangelical space — he’s still talked about as a hero, because God used him to fight the enemies of his people, and to do it fearlessly and even happily.
As Politico writer Dylon Jones summarized, Trump is seen as the equivalent of a biblical warrior who “struggled with sexual temptation” yet is able to “lead the faithful to glory.”
We’ve seen versions of this view in some of the Republican responses to Stormy Daniels’ testimony.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, for example, said on Fox News last week that “there is no person on planet Earth that believes Donald Trump has been celibate all his life. That is not news. But they want to drag him through the gutter because this is a political smear job; it’s not about the rule of law.”
Other right-wingers have pushed more overtly religious rhetoric, framing Trump as a “martyr” and claiming that he’s being “crucified.”
Such reactions are why I’ve been watching the trial with QAnon on the brain.
The extremist conspiracy theory, which portrays Trump as a Christian crusader against a “deep state” ring of Satan-worshipping pedophiles and is popular among evangelicals, has always seemed to me like a convenient mythology that right-wingers can use in defense of Trump or his associates.
Such reactions are why I’ve been watching the trial with QAnon on the brain.
The New Republic’s Melissa Gira Grant, for example, wrote in 2021 about QAnon believers downplaying the fact that several Trump-associated Republicans had been sentenced to prison for sex crimes. And Mike Rothschild, an expert on conspiracy theories, explained to Politico why QAnon backers have been so eager to tie Jeffrey Epstein to the Clinton family, even with Trump’s well-known ties.
As researcher Jared Holt, who tracks far-right media, told NBC News back in 2018:
What the QAnon theory does, as far as political efficacy goes, is it provides Trump’s most fervent supporters a way to explain away any scandal or slip-up the president may face.
It’s certainly been beneficial for Trump to have a bespoke mythology constructed around him. But prosecutors have effectively been tearing away at that façade in the Manhattan courtroom.
That’s why I think there are layers to Trump’s criminal case in New York. Yes, the former president is on trial. But so is the biblical narrative of victimhood that Republicans have wedded to him.