Good Lord

I meant to write about this story when I first read it in Politico three weeks ago, but...well, other Trump News Stories kept showing up even more noteworthy, and then we hit the Ukraine debacle and impeachment hearings and...well, it kept get being pushed back.  But even there are are even more Trump News Stories yesterday -- two, in fact -- one, that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was on the phone calls when Trump strong-armed the Ukrainian president, and the other there is now a second instance of Trump and Pompeo trying to get another foreign leader (this time the prime minister of Australia) to help discredit the FBI investigation into Russian collusion -- I thought that was lull enough (can you imagine??  That would be banner headlines across every newspaper in any other administration) to finally get to this.

The story is how Trump is starting to lose a bit of support in perhaps the most important and loyal part of his base, white evangelicals.  But no, it's not because of what you think, which is what so fascinates me.

Is he losing support of white evangelicals because of putting immigrants in cages?  No.  is he losing support of white evangelicals because he's taking immigrant children from their parents?  No.  Is he losing support of white evangelicals because of his heartlessness toward poor people who were sick and dying in Puerto after Hurricane Maria?  No.  Is he losing support of white evangelicals for surrounding himself with the NRA after three gun massacres over one weekend?  No.

So, what could Trump have possibly done to so deeply offend these supposed God-loving white evangelicals, if not all this???

His use of bad language has gotten worse.

No, really.

When Trump was at a recent West Virginia rally, he was talking about bombing ISIS and told the crowd, “They’ll be hit so goddamn hard.”

That was just finally too much for some of the constituents state lawmaker Paul Hardesty, who said that people in his district were complaining about Trump “using the Lord’s name in vain.”

Hardesty told Politico, “I’ve had people come to me and say, ‘You know I voted for [Trump], but if he doesn’t tone down the rhetoric, I might just stay home this time.” 

I suspect they won't though.  After all, callous hypocrisy is a mighty tall hurdle to get over.  But -- well...if anything can accomplish that -- not taking children from their parents; not ignoring the poor, sick and dying;not ignoring gun massacres and not condemning white supremacists -- then using the Lord's name in vain might just be the thing.  After all, it's one thing to take children and ignore the poor and dying and support hatred all supposedly in the Lord's name -- but for goodness sake, it shouldn't be in vain.

You can read the full article here.