An Experiment in Persuasion

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this post are the authors’ alone, not attributable to any institution or organization of which they are a part.

The Nature of Cumulative Case Arguments

Over the last three weeks, we have attempted to offer evidence for the conclusion that Donald Trump should not be the Republican nominee. Note that our conclusion has been consistently delimited to the Republican primaries. Our target audience wasn’t, say, Democrats who have no intention to vote in the Republican primaries. Nor were we simply trying to preach to the choir, those already filled with enough qualms about Trump that they would never vote for him. Those two audiences probably already agree with us, and we weren’t simply trying to bolster their convictions.

Instead, we were aiming, if we could, to dissuade those from voting for Trump in the primaries among those who were deciding between Trump and, say, Haley or DeSantis. We were not talking about the general election, but simply the primaries. Our conclusion, in this sense, was quite unambitious, which has the advantage of requiring the evidence we’re adducing to do less work. By reining in the conclusion, we strengthen the argument.

We also weren’t putting all of our proverbial eggs in one basket. We instead intentionally identified one piece of evidence after another, posting one each day and ending up with twenty evidences in total. There was nothing mystical or magical about the number twenty; we could have offered fewer or more. But we thought twenty was a good enough number to make our case. We are convinced that each piece of evidence identified offers reason not to vote for Trump in the primary. Some of the pieces of evidence, taken alone, may well be enough to make our case, but we did not assume this to be so. Rather, we laid out each piece of evidence—publicly accessible facts—in the hope that, eventually, readers would feel their cumulative effect. Our case was not built on just one or a few reasons, but a wide range of them.

This is the way a cumulative case argument works, which is often used in the context of doing Christian apologetics. There’s a constellation of reasons provided, and perhaps each piece of evidence makes the conclusion more likely: not necessarily more likely true than false, but more likely than it was before. So after the first piece of evidence, we have a certain reason to take the conclusion at least a bit more seriously. After the second, more reason to take the conclusion more seriously still. Etc.

Publicly Available Evidence on Offer

In this discussion, we have now offered twenty rather independent reasons, the collective force of which is considerable. Since we have delimited the conclusion to voting in the primary, and since we have offered no less than twenty compelling reasons against voting for Trump, we submit that the case is a strong one. The quality of the case is a function of the combined strengths of all the pieces of evidence taken collectively. Taken together, all of these reasons, we submit, provide a compelling multi-faceted reason not to vote for Trump in the primaries. The picture of Trump that emerges from the evidence on offer is not the best candidate for the Republican nomination. So we have argued.

We have attempted to cite evidence that is widely accessible, empirically verifiable, and publicly knowable. We realize that political decisions can be complicated and feature lots of moving parts, and that, in addition to the sorts of facts that we have identified, interpretation of such facts is also required. We have intentionally emphasized time and again that we respect those who disagree with us, whose interpretations may differ from our own. It was not our aim to depict such folks—including many dear friends—in negative ways. We refrained from trying to do other people’s thinking, and to respect mental space for others to come to different conclusions. All we could do was offer the reasons that we think make a strong cumulative case for our conclusion, and we respectfully ask others to consider carefully the evidence themselves.

It is not too late to change one’s mind.

Whether anyone changes their mind or not, though, we have offered this short experiment in persuasion as a model for how to engage in political conversations that can avoid the animus and divisiveness that so often mark such dialogue. We find ourselves inspired when we see others conduct themselves in this way, and we wanted to follow suit. There really is a way to talk about such matters that keeps the focus on the relevant issues.

Rules of Engagement

It’s often said with at least some measure of seriousness that sex, politics, and religion shouldn’t be discussed in polite company. We disagree. These are all vitally important to discuss, but to discuss (and disagree about) well. Christians, of all people, should be able and willing to practice arguing well. They should be the last to emulate the worst examples of animus, divisive contention, or inflammatory rhetoric on the ascendancy in our political moment. Insulting interlocutors is not an effective way to persuade. Presuming to know the motivations of others is a failure of the Golden Rule. Ad hominem attacks against those with whom we disagree brings rational, cordial conversation to a grinding halt. Invading the mental space of others is off putting. Christians should aim to avoid doing such things, including not responding in kind when others do it to us.

In contrast, respecting the autonomy of others to think for themselves and come to their own conclusions can strengthen relationships, even when people end up disagreeing. Expressing disagreement with others in a way that is respectful can show that you take their ideas seriously. Keeping the focus on evidence can show that you think others are able to assess the evidence for themselves. Confining criticisms to ideas rather than those holding the ideas can remove offense.

The Bible gives us a range of solid advice along such lines. Speak the truth in love. Treat others as you’d like to be treated. Love your neighbor as yourself. Colossians 3:12-13 says, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” Proverbs 31:26 adds, “She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.” Niceness is admittedly anemic, but kindness is a nonnegotiable.

As we move into what is likely to be a contentious political year, let’s remember that, though it’s important and proper to participate in the political process with great energy and principled conviction, culture wars are no excuse for Christians to abandon fundamental convictions about the dignity of other persons, the priority of loving our neighbor, and the need to exude the aroma of Christ—even, and especially, when we disagree. We forget this to our peril. We may win some political battles, but we risk losing the spiritual war.

Donald Trump Should Not Be the Republican Nominee in 2024:
A Cumulative Case

Evidence #1: Trump advisor Steve Bannon, speaking on Oct 31, 2020, outlining Trump’s plan to declare victory before the absentee votes were counted:  

And what Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory, right? He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner. He’s just gonna say he’s a winner... The Democrats-more of our people vote early that count. Theirs vote in mail. And so they’re gonna have a natural disadvantage, and Trump’s going to take advantage of it—that’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner. So when you wake up Wednesday morning, it’s going to be a firestorm.... Also, if Trump, if Trump is losing, by 10 or 11 o’clock at night, it’s going to be even crazier. No, because he’s gonna sit right there and say ‘They stole it. I’m directing the Attorney General to shut down all ballot places in all 50 states.’ It’s really going to be, no, he’s not going out easy. If Trump—if Biden’s winning, Trump is going to do some crazy shit. 

Evidence #2: On the same page with Steve Bannon, also in advance of the 2020 election, Roger Stone, another outside advisor to President Trump, made this statement:

I really do suspect it [the election result immediately after election day] will still be up in the air. When that happens, the key thing to do is to claim victory. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. No, we won. F#@* You, Sorry. Over. We won. You’re wrong. F#@* you.

Evidence #3: Trump was found liable for defamation E. Jean Carroll, for claiming that she was lying about being sexually abused by him in 1996. The jury found that Trump did assault Ms. Carroll and (on any definition except the narrowly technical legal meaning of the term in New York Penal Law) did in fact rape her. Here is a snippet from Judge Kaplan’s dismissal of Trump’s counterclaim:

It [the jury’s unanimous verdict] found that Mr. Trump “sexually abused” Ms. Carroll, which is defined in the New York Penal Law as sexual contact by forcible compulsion and is a felony punishable by a term of imprisonment and registration as a sex offender. It determined also that Mr. Trump defamed Ms. Carroll in his 2022 statement. It awarded Ms. Carroll $2.02 million in compensatory and punitive damages on her sexual battery claim and $2.98 million in compensatory and punitive damages on her defamation claim.

The only issue on which the jury did not find in Ms. Carroll’s favor was whether she proved that Mr. Trump “raped” her within the narrow, technical meaning of that term in the New York Penal Law. The jury in Carroll II [this specific case] was instructed that it could find that Mr. Trump “raped” Ms. Carroll only if it found that he forcibly penetrated Ms. Carroll’s vagina with his penis. It could not find that he “raped” her if it determined that Mr. Trump forcibly penetrated Ms. Carroll’s private sexual parts with his fingers - which commonly is considered “rape” in other contexts - because the New York Penal Law definition of rape is limited to penile penetration. As the Court explained in its recent decision denying Mr. Trump’s motion for a new trial on damages and other relief in Carroll II, based on all of the evidence at trial and the jury’s verdict as a whole, the jury’s finding that Mr. Trump “sexually abused” Ms. Carroll implicitly determined that he forcibly penetrated her digitally - in other words, that Mr. Trump in fact did “rape” Ms. Carroll as that term commonly is used and understood in contexts outside of the New York Penal Law.

Evidence #4: A group of prominent Republicans issued a report “examining every count of every case brought” in the six battleground states in the 2020 election by Trump and his allies. It concludes “that Donald Trump and his supporters had their day in court and failed to produce substantive evidence to make their case.” Trump and his legal allies “failed because of a lack of evidence and not because of erroneous rulings or unfair judges.... In many cases, after making extravagant claims of wrongdoing, Trump’s legal representatives showed up in court or state proceedings empty-handed, and then returned to their rallies and media campaigns to repeat the same unsupported claims.”

Evidence #5: After Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election, Republicans in Michigan and six other highly contested states launched attempts to overturn the results. GOP operatives signed certificates falsely stating they were the state’s Electoral College representatives and tried to claim that Trump had won their state.

Internal campaign emails reveal how extensive Trump’s involvement was in the plot. The messages show Trump’s campaign staff helped organize the state Republican Party meeting that resulted in the fake electors. Trump’s team also tried to mail the document falsely certifying he had won Michigan to then-Vice President Mike Pence and the National Archives.

The recently revealed campaign emails show that Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, who came up with the fake elector plan, told Trump advisor Boris Epshteyn that the actual goal was to boost the conspiracy the election had been rigged. Doing so could eventually “void the results” showing Biden had won.

Evidence #6: A Trump nominee, Judge Stephanos Bibas of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, rejected an appeal by the Trump Campaign claiming that Pennsylvania officials “did not undertake any meaningful effort” to fight illegal absentee ballots and uneven treatment of voters across counties. Judge Bibas wrote in his decision that “calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”

Another Trump nominee, Judge Brett Ludwig of the Eastern District of Wisconsin, ruled against President Trump’s lawsuit alleging that the result was skewed by illegal procedures that governed drop boxes, ballot address information, and individuals who claimed “indefinitely confined” status to vote from home. Judge Ludwig wrote in his decision that “[t]his Court has allowed plaintiff the chance to make his case and he has lost on the merits” because the procedures used “do not remotely rise to the level” of breaking Wisconsin’s election rules.

Yet losing these court cases and dozens more like them (60 of 61) never slowed Trump down from claiming the election had been stolen for reasons that had been debunked in court. Trump was free to pursue these cases in court, but he never let losing in court impede his inflammatory public rhetoric.

Evidence #7: Just prior to Jan 6, Trump and his closest aides knew about the political power of various pro-Trump sites, which is where much of the violent rhetoric and planning for Jan 6 happened. On December 30, 2020, Jason Miller--a Senior Adviser to and former spokesman for the former President--texted Chief of Staff Mark Meadows a link to such a site, adding “I got the base FIRED UP.” The link connected to a page with comments like “Gallows don’t require electricity,” “if the filthy maggots try to push their fraud through, there will be hell to pay,” and Congress can certify Trump the winner or leave “in a bodybag.” Symbolic gallows were constructed on January 6th at the foot of the Capitol.

The “certification” that Trump and the site were pushing for would have been illegal and without precedent: certification that included illegally generated false slates of electors from the swing states, where none of Trump’s legal efforts to challenge the results had been successful (he lost 60 of 61 cases, and the one victory was of little consequence). But Trump kept claiming it anyway, and it was because of his debunked allegations that most involved in the January 6 debacle were infuriated.

Evidence #8: Trump waited over three hours on Jan 6 before telling the rioters to go home. We’ll talk about that more later. Finally, at 4:17 pm he broadcast a video message in which he asked those attacking the Capitol to leave. His Deputy Press Secretary, Sarah Matthews, said this about her reaction to his message: “[H]e told the people who we had just watched storm our nation’s Capitol with the intent on overthrowing our democracy, violently attack police officers, and chant heinous things like, ‘Hang Mike Pence,’ ‘We love you. You’re very special.’ As a spokesperson for him, I knew that I would be asked to defend that. And to me, his refusal to act and call off the mob that day and his refusal to condemn the violence was indefensible. And so, I knew that I would be resigning that evening.”

Evidence #9: that his behavior surrounding the 2020 election and his resistance to the peaceful transfer of power did change the minds of many who previously voted for him or saw him as harmless to the democratic pillars of our society. Hunter Baker’s post from January 2021 is a nice encapsulation of that shift:

The debate on the right for four years has been this: Is Donald Trump worth the trouble or will he leave you worse off because of his destructive tendencies?

I was totally on the “worth the trouble” side because I approved of much of the public policy. I approved of the judges, the tougher engagement with China, the tax policy, and the rollback of the regulatory state. From my perspective, my fellow conservatives who continued to strongly oppose the president were overly emotional and psychologically incapable of looking past his crude personality.

What I saw in these last few days is that Donald Trump really expected Vice President Mike Pence to seize the moment and try to derail the normal, peaceful transfer of power. He also encouraged people to come to DC to protest and create a potentially intimidating physical presence that had every possibility of getting out of hand and did.

All of this is to say that I was wrong in my assessment of Donald Trump. The friends of mine who perceived a greater threat from him than I did were correct. I apologize to them for thinking they were intellectually or emotionally weak.

In these last several posts, I see the response of outrage from people who think I am ignoring claims of fraud. I am not a scholar of the elections process, but I do have many friends who are deep in the machinery of campaigns and elections. These are friends, like me, who did not want to see Joe Biden win. None of them are telling me they think Joe Biden won because of fraud.

However, let’s say you really believe there was fraud. The answer is not to attempt to overturn a national election in a desperate sprint before inauguration. I don’t think that is really possible. The answer is to commit yourself to learning about the process of elections in our country and passing reforms to make the process ever more impervious to fraud. There are productive steps that could be taken and that people of good will would likely support.

If you say that’s impossible and that the titans of the tech industry will simply cause the machines to spit out whatever result they want, then I don’t know what productive avenue remains. At that point, you are in a contest with the devil instead of your fellow human beings and ordinary democratic processes lose all meaning. My advice is to strongly resist that impulse. I believe in the real presence of evil and in the existence of the Satan. But it is all too tempting to assign that identity to people with whom we disagree instead of continuing to work through differences constructively.

Evidence #10: Trump has a recurring penchant for resorting to false “birther” claims to delegitimize opponents he feels threatened by, and inexplicably is never held to account for it.

A day or two ago, Trump, true to form, reached for the most reflexive slur he could find via the far-right news site Gateway Pundit, reposting on Truth Social the false claim that Haley is not constitutionally eligible to be president because her parents were not US citizens when she was born in South Carolina. The requirement to be a “natural born” citizen to be eligible to run for president means being a citizen at birth rather than through naturalization later.

John Avlon writes, “Trump’s repeated, knee-jerk lies reveal the desperate, hollow core of his character. This month voters in Iowa and New Hampshire will have the opportunity to demonstrate their character and determine the direction of not just the Republican Party, but our democratic republic. When casting their vote, they should keep in mind the old adage, ‘fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.’ If the GOP falls for Trump’s lies again, the shame will reflect on all of us.”

Evidence #11: In a reckless dereliction of duty on Jan 6, Trump tweeted at 2:24 p.m., after the riot was under way: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.” That was a reference to the vice president’s refusal to illegally block the certification of President Biden’s election win in the joint session of Congress that day.

“The tweet looked to me like the opposite of what we really needed at that moment, which was a de-escalation,” Matt Pottinger, Mr. Trump’s former deputy national security adviser, told the committee.

Sarah Matthews, a former White House deputy press secretary, argued that the tweet gave Mr. Trump’s supporters permission to continue their assault on the U.S. Capitol. “It was essentially him giving the green light to these people,” she said, adding that Mr. Trump’s supporters “truly latch on to every tweet and every word he says.”

Both Mr. Pottinger and Ms. Mathews said the tweet prompted them to decide to step down.

Evidence #12: He is currently under 4 indictments, at both the state and federal level, with a combined 91 counts.

The indictments are publicly available, and if you’re voting in the Republican primary, we encourage you to read them.

Whether Trump is convicted remains to be seen, but these indictments offer prima facia reason to believe that he has a rather casual attitude, at best, toward the rule of law. Haley and DeSantis lack any such baggage.

Here is a rundown of the Trump indictments:

New York state (Stormy Daniels hush money): 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree

Federal indictment #1 & superseding indictment (classified documents):

• 32 counts of unlawful retention of national defense information

• One count of conspiracy to obstruct justice

• One count of withholding a document or record

• One count of corruptly concealing a document or record

• One count of concealing a document in a federal investigation

• One count of scheme to conceal

• One count of false statements and representations

• One count of altering, destroying, mutilating or concealing an object

• One count of corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating or concealing a document, record or other object

Federal indictment #2 (2020 Election/January 6th):

• One count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S.

• One count of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding

• One count of obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding

• One count of conspiracy against rights

Georgia indictment (2020 election):

• 3 counts of solicitation of violation of oath by public officer

• 2 counts of conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree

• 2 counts of conspiracy to commit false statements and writings

• 2 counts of false statements and writings

• Violation of Georgia RICO Act

• Conspiracy to commit Impersonating a public officer

• Conspiracy to commit filing false documents

• Filing false documents

Evidence #13: Trump’s recent appeal in his conspiracy and corruption case (RE: 2020 election) claims “absolute immunity” for the president.

Trump’s argument is that presidents have immunity against criminal prosecution for any acts done under cover of the office. Although legal experts anticipate this appeal being rejected, it’s worth considering how Trump views the powers of the presidency in light of the claims being made. A good exchange to listen to in the hearing itself runs from minute 8:00 through minute 11:30 or so:

JUDGE FLORENCE Y. PAN: Could a President order a SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival? That’s an official act, an order to SEAL Team Six.

SAUER (Trump’s lawyer): He would have to be, and would speedily be, impeached and convicted before the criminal prosecution.

PAN: But if he weren’t [impeached], there would be no criminal prosecution? No criminal liability for that?

SAUER: Chief Justice’s opinion in Marbury v. Madison and our Constitution and the plain language of the impeachment judgment clause, all clearly presuppose that what the founders were concerned about was not—

PAN: I asked you a yes or no question. Could a president who ordered SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival, who was not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution?

SAUER: If he were impeached and convicted first.

PAN: So your answer is no?

SAUER: My answer is qualified yes.

Evidence #14: Time and again the reasons adduced by Trump for claiming a stolen election were shown to be without merit, and his lawyers were consistently unsuccessful in making their case in court. But repeating them, even if they were untrue, proved lucrative, as Trump raised a quarter of a billion dollars between the election and Jan 6, 2021 with solicitations that persistently claimed election fraud he could not substantiate and that was denied by the Justice Department. More than one judge, including several of his own appointees, noted the paucity of evidence to back up his conspiratorial allegations.

Evidence #15: As Donald Trump’s campaign sought to overturn his loss of the state of Georgia in the 2020 presidential election, it hatched a particularly cruel and reckless conspiracy theory.

At its center were a clerical worker in a county election office, and her mom, who had taken a temporary job to help count ballots. The alleged plot: Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and mother Ruby Freeman cheated Trump by pulling fake ballots from suitcases hidden under tables at a ballot-counting center. In early December, the campaign started its allegations against the two Black women, who were later cleared of all wrongdoing.

Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, falsely claimed that video footage showed the women engaging in “surreptitious illegal activity” and acting suspiciously, like drug dealers “passing out dope.” In early January, Trump himself singled out Freeman, by name, 18 times in a now-famous call in which he pressed Georgia officials to alter the state’s results. He called the 62-year-old temp worker a “professional vote scammer,” a “hustler,” and a “known political operative” who “stuffed the ballot boxes.”

“The president of the United States is supposed to represent every American. Not to target one. But he targeted me, Lady Ruby, a small-business owner, a mother, a proud American citizen, who stood up to help Fulton County run an election in the middle of the pandemic,” said Freeman.

Freeman made a series of 911 emergency calls in the days after she was publicly identified in early December by the president’s camp. In a Dec. 4 call, she told the dispatcher she’d gotten a flood of “threats and phone calls and racial slurs,” adding: “It’s scary because they’re saying stuff like, ‘We’re coming to get you. We are coming to get you.’”

Two days later, a panicked Freeman called 911 again, after hearing loud banging on her door just before 10 p.m. Strangers had come the night before, too. She begged the dispatcher for assistance. “Lord Jesus, where’s the police?” she asked, according to the recording, obtained by Reuters in a records request. “I don’t know who keeps coming to my door.”

“Please help me.”

The threats hurled at Freeman and Moss were part of a broader campaign of fear against election administrators. Previous reports detailed how Trump supporters, inspired by his false stolen-election claims, have terrorized election officials and workers in battleground states. In all, Reuters documented more than 800 intimidating messages to election officials in 14 states, including about 100 that could warrant prosecution, according to legal experts.

The story of Moss and Freeman shows how some of the top members of the Trump camp – including the incumbent president himself – conducted an intensive effort to publicly demonize individual election workers in the pursuit of overturning the election. For his part in the tragic debacle, Giuliani has been ordered to pay the women $148 million dollars.

Relatedly, see this press conference from Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling who pleads for Trump and other elected Republicans to call off the attacks on election workers because of the danger they are in from violent threats by supporters.

Evidence #16: The high number of former Trump officials or allies who have since denounced him. A small sampling:

Mark Esper, Secretary of Defense under Trump: “I think he’s unfit for office. … He puts himself before country. His actions are all about him and not about the country. And then, of course, I believe he has integrity and character issues as well.”

John Kelly, Trump Chief of Staff: “A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law. There is nothing more that can be said. God help us.”

Tom Bossert, Trump Homeland Security advisor: “The President undermined American democracy baselessly for months. As a result, he’s culpable for this siege, and an utter disgrace.”

HR McMaster, Trump National Security advisor: “We saw the absence of leadership, really anti-leadership, and what that can do to our country.”

Bill Barr, Trump Attorney General, speaking of Trump’s actions surrounding January 6, 2021: “Someone who engaged in that kind of bullying about a process that is fundamental to our system and to our self-government shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office.”

Evidence #17: Trump’s consistent use of manipulative moral rhetoric, which has the effect of trivializing matters of right and wrong. Take, for just one example, his speech on January 6 and what he said about Pence—no less than eight references. “I hope Mike is going to do the right thing.” “[I]f Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.” “He has the absolute right to do it.” “So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do.” “And Mike Pence, I hope you’re going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country.” Etc.

Trump wrapped his appeal to Pence not to certify the legal slates of state electors in the language of patriotism, fidelity to the Constitution, legal prerogative, and, perhaps most troubling of all, moral imperative and courage—when Trump had been informed time and again that the claims of a stolen election had not been demonstrated.

Trump was pressuring Pence to do something patently illegal and unconstitutional, and he wrapped it in moral terminology, as if Pence had not just a legal right to do it, but a moral responsibility to do it. This manipulative use of moral rhetoric is just the sort of thing that can lose and arguably already has lost the moral high ground. And those who care deeply about the promotion of certain conservative values should find this deeply troubling.

As polls are showing that both DeSantis and Haley would fare better than Trump in the general election against Biden, that’s one more compelling reason not to support Trump in the primaries. Neither of these alternatives is saddled with Trump’s baggage or has his troubling track record of recklessness and moral and legal improprieties. Trump’s dereliction of duty, subversion of the Constitution, litany of indictments, and illegal efforts to change the outcome of the election provide compelling reasons not to vote for him in the primaries.

Evidence #18: Trump readily turns on and attacks former members of his administration who try to hold him to account or critique him.

These are people who were hand selected by Trump that find themselves mocked, dismissed, and bullied when they speak up about what they have seen from him. Good leaders know that guardrails are crucial and that iron sharpens iron.

But to Trump, what matters is loyalty to him alone.

A few examples:

Regarding John Bolton, Trump’s former National Security Advisor (after Bolton warned against a second Trump term): “I found John Bolton to be one of the dumbest people in Government but, I am proud to say, I used him well. A total & unhinged WARMONGER, the red faced ‘boiler ready to explode’ was one of those very stupid voices that got us into the Middle East quicksand, Seven Trillion Dollars, & Millions of deaths later, NOTHING! The good news is that I won big negotiations with this moron by my side. When I brought him into a room with hostile foreign leaders, they thought I was going to war, CONCEEDED ALL!”

Regarding Mark Esper, Trump’s Secretary of Defense (after Esper’s appearance on 60 Minutes, where he called Trump a threat to democracy): “Mark Esper was weak and totally ineffective, and because of it, I had to run the military. I took out ISIS, Qasem Soleimani, al­ Baghdadi, rebuilt the military with $2.5 trillion, created Space Force, and so much more. Mark Esper was a stiff who was desperate not to lose his job. He would do anything I wanted, that’s why I called him ‘Yesper.’ He was a lightweight and figurehead, and I realized it very early on. He was recommended to me by some very weak RINOs and that is what he turned out to be.”

About Bill Barr, Trump’s Attorney General (after Barr rejected Trump’s claim that it’s unfair to try him during a presidential campaign): “Why does FoxNews constantly put on slow thinking and lethargic Bill Barr, who didn’t have the courage or stamina to fight the Radical Left lunatics while he was A.G., and who, even more importantly, refused to fight Election Fraud. He knew what was going on, just look at his past remarks! Unless FoxNews starts putting the RIGHT people on, their Ratings will never recover.”

Evidence #19: His consistent use of dehumanizing language.

In just one example among many, here’s Trump, from a December rally in Durham, NH, talking about immigration:

They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country.

This issue is distinct from the need for border security. This speaks to Trump’s tendency to use dehumanizing terms to instill fear, contempt, and paranoia.

Christians especially should resist such dehumanization. In the push to secure the border, or undertake any legitimate government initiative, there are certain lines that cannot be crossed.

Evidence #20: The arguments by conservatives, especially evangelical leaders, for voting for him in the general election of 2016 focused on stopping Clinton and supporting conservative policies broadly shared by all Republican nominees.

A few representative examples: 

Wayne Grudem (10/19/2016): “Since I find both candidates morally objectionable, I am back to the old-fashioned basis on which I have usually decided how to vote for my entire life: Whose policies are better? Do I agree more with Trump’s policies or with Clinton’s? It isn’t even close. I overwhelmingly support Trump’s policies and believe that Clinton’s policies will seriously damage the nation, perhaps forever. On the Supreme Court, abortion, religious liberty, sexual orientation regulations, taxes, economic growth, the minimum wage, school choice, Obamacare, protection from terrorists, immigration, the military, energy, and safety in our cities, I think Trump is far better than Clinton.”

Franklin Graham (10/8/2016): “On November 8th we will all have a choice to make. The two candidates have very different visions for the future of America. The most important issue of this election is the Supreme Court. That impacts everything. There’s no question, Trump and Clinton scandals might be news for the moment, but who they appoint to the Supreme Court will remake the fabric of our society for our children and our grandchildren, for generations to come.”

Eric Metaxas (7/18/2016): “Sometimes you have to hold your nose and vote for the person who is going to do the least damage or who is maybe going to pull you back from the brink.... You can even hate Trump, but I’m saying you better be sure that you understand what a Hillary Clinton presidency brings.”

Revisiting these 2016 justifications for voting for Trump reminds us that reticence about his character was commonplace among conservative evangelicals who still saw him as preferable to Clinton. But these moral qualms have largely fallen silent, even in a primary where other, less scandal-ridden candidates are on the ballot. A vote for Trump in this year’s primary, when one’s preferred policies are available from other options, is a vote for the candidate himself and an implicit approval of his character.

Appendix: “The Colorado Court Decision: A Test Case for Arguing Well”