There’s yet another new Trump book available.
Paul A. Pomerville has written Why Didn’t Evangelicals “See Him Coming”? with the subtitle Donald J. Trump’s Deception and Dismantling of American Democracy.
Why bother with another Trump book?
Rodney Kennedy
Books and articles about Trump have become a burgeoning niche. When I did a subject search on Trump prior to writing my first Trump book, I found at least 300 titles. More have proliferated since then.
As a larger-than-life, made-for-television character, Trump is our political P.T. Barnum. He’s the greatest show on earth. He’s like a horrific traffic wreck on the interstate, and people can’t stop looking. People can’t stop gawking at him. I call this “Trumpnecking.” It’s an excess of emotion.
People don’t so much listen to what he says as get drawn into his emotions of resentment, anger and outrage. Trump is the triumph of pathos over logos and persona over prose. Too many Americans have imbibed the cup of Trumpian toxic emotion.
If we agree Trump has been disastrous for the nation and our world, and I think we should, then, according to Patricia Roberts-Miller, we should “want to understand what happened, we need to understand what enabled him to rise to power.” We need to know why people are attracted to a man who has earned the opprobrium of demagogue, fascist, dictator, Hitler-like, con artist and tyrant.
How did Trump the television villain become the hero of millions?
The New York Times labeled Trump “a human breaking-news event.” Newt Gingrich claims Trump is “ratings gold” because he is “interesting.”
Trump is extremely self-conscious about how he is represented on TV. Not only does he watch an average of six hours of television per day, he spends his time constructing his image the way he wants to be perceived.
Why Didn’t Evangelicals “See Him Coming”? has the authentic ring of truth. Pomerville’s depictions of Trump as tyrant, con man and fascist are honest and accurate. In short, he is right about what is wrong about Trump. He also is a voice from a much more conservative background than the usual Trump writer. Fuller Seminary and the Assemblies of God are not breeding grounds for most anti-Trump material.
I applaud Pomerville’s conclusions, which match those of a broad spectrum of rhetorical scholars. Refuting the pernicious power of Trump’s created reality via media/television/larger-than-life persona requires more books like this.
As to the main claim of Pomerville’s title, I suggest evangelicals did see Trump coming. While he was still in the wilderness, prior to his baptism as the evangelical candidate of choice, evangelical Lance Wallnau cried, “Behold, the Anointed One of God.” Paula White claimed she baptized him. Franklin Graham saw him as “a baby Christian.” Robert Jeffress endorsed him as the strong man of God — “the meanest SOB I can find to be my president.”
The independent Pentecostal prophets were falling over one another to anoint and bless Trump. Prophet Cindy Jacobs, after Trump’s first win, shouted, “The prophets are in the house.”
“Welcome to victory!” Jacobs said, launching into a general prophetic statement. “This is what God is saying to me: ‘It’s your escalation time. It’s your time where you go from zero to a thousand.’ Hallelujah!”
Chuck Pierce, a longtime collaborator with Jacobs and head of the Corinth, Texas–based group Glory of Zion International, recounted his 2008 prophecy in which he says God showed him how dire the situation in the U.S. had grown. He told the audience he had asked, “Lord, how will America survive?” and that God had answered, “They will have to learn to play the Trump card.”
Pigeonholing Trump supporters has become a popular pastime in the United States. The characterizations have ranged from the benign (Trumpers are naïve, childlike) to the calamitous (Trumpers are xenophobic, unable to cope with their rapidly changing neighborhoods). Trumpers are said to be resentful of the “New Class” that emerged in the postwar United States, a class with more education, more wealth and greater comfort with new technologies than their working-class brethren.
“Evangelicals were not duped. Their eyes are wide open, and they know exactly what they are doing.”
Evangelicals were not duped. Evangelicals are not newcomers to the rough-and-tumble world of Machiavellian politics. Their eyes are wide open, and they know exactly what they are doing.
Trump supporters understand political dynamics. Trump supporters read every criticism of Trump as a “lie.” Trump supporters easily dismiss accusations of tyranny, fascism and racism as absurd. Everything is reduced to winning or losing. Trump is a winner for evangelicals who have been tired of being losers for more than a century. There may not be a more pragmatic bunch.
Evangelicals cannot interpret the signs of the apocalypse but they read the shifting winds of politics with surprising agility.
My perspective is that the evangelicals managed to give birth to a prodigy of their own making. He bears no family resemblance, but don’t be fooled by the genes. In gesture, tone and attitude he is the son of evangelicals. Trump is exactly the president evangelicals wanted.
It’s about politics and theology, but mostly it’s about pragmatism. This is about winning, the take-no-prisoners, bare-knuckled, no-holds-barred kind of winning. This is the story of the lines of connection, the merging of styles, the similarities in the rhetoric, the smooth alliance of two entities of wealth and celebrity, and the potential destructive tendencies of this aligning of the stars.
Coursing through both Trump and MAGA are age-old assumptions of evangelicals: Resentment, claims of rational superiority, honesty, truth-telling and rough politics.
“It’s about politics and theology, but mostly it’s about pragmatism.”
Evangelicals claim they are the most rational of all thinkers. A primary evangelical and Trump appeal is to “common sense.” In their view, everyone should agree with everything they say. In evangelical eyes, there is something self-deceptive and dishonest about liberalism, biblical criticism and socialism. This hard-nosed claim to objectivity, literalism and rationality provide the building blocks of evangelical ideology.
Evangelicals assume they are the most rational and moral of all God’s people. Truth and morality are combined with traditional and biblical Christianity, and American patriotism became a single package having to be saved from the delusion of the critics.
In Trump, evangelicals found a rock on which to build a kingdom. They no longer felt the need to be nice, always ready to forgive, to sacrifice for the needs of others, to be gentle and kind. These are warriors fighting to preserve a vision of the nation.
For evangelicals this is a conflict more serious than life and death. The battle is over who will rule — and if it takes a tyrant, a bully, a fascist, then the price has to be paid. I’m not kidding when I say evangelicals have become the apocalyptic “beast kings” of Daniel. They are determined to destroy all who stand in the way.
Trump’s destructive persona has unleashed a mix of primal forces turning millions against democratic institutions. His MAGA movement shows no signs of abating and will live on.
There’s no such thing as too much resistance to Trump. In response, we must do everything possible to deconstruct the illusion of Trump’s persona. So we take up “our pens” and we write on behalf of a beleaguered nation.
That’s why we needed yet another Trump book.
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.