Don Trump Jr. is stoking people's 'worst instincts’ in desperate bid for father's 'affection': MSNBC analyst
December 28, 2021
Former President Donald Trump's evangelical supporters have "subordinated faith to politics" and "proof-texted the Bible" to fit their agenda, according to Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Wehner appeared on MSNBC on Tuesday to discuss his recent piece in the Atlantic, "The Gospel of Donald Trump Jr.," about a fire-and-brimstone speech by the former president's son at a recent Turning Point USA gathering.
In the speech, Trump Jr. told the crowd that the teachings of Jesus have “gotten us nothing.”
Wehner said Trump Jr.'s 40-minute speech was "not for the faint of heart."
"It was just a cauldron of grievances and resentments," Wehner said. "He led the crowd in a chant — 'Let's go Brandon.' It was filled with anger, aggression."
Wehner added that the speech is important not because of what it says about the Trump family — "we know about them" — but because this type of rhetoric "electrifies the base."
"And it's a powerful base, and they know what they want to do," he said. "They've signaled it in terms of overthrowing elections, both a past one and future ones, and we just have to be alert to that. There's a tendency I think to want to look away from it, to put the Trump family in the rear-view mirror, but I don't think it's the responsible thing to do. These guys are playing for keeps."
MSNBC host Nichole Wallace asked Wehner, an expert on politics and religion, why he believes the overwhelming majority of white evangelicals support Trump. Wehner responded by saying that they not only support Trump, but they've been "his sword and his shield" and the "tip of the spear for some of his worst things."
"I think the simplified version is that a lot of people who describe themselves as evangelicals have subordinated faith to politics," Wehner said. "They've sort of proof-texted the scriptures and decided that they want to use the Bible to defend things that I think ultimately are indefensible."
As for Donald Trump Jr., Wehner said he's "a product of his father" and "a chip off the old block."
"I think he had a complicated childhood," he said. "He's obviously, even for a non-psychologist, you can see how he's trying to win the affection and esteem of his father."
Regardless, Trump Jr. remains relevant because he's been his father's "emissary" to "the MAGA world," he added.
"And he's now stoking the worst instincts of the right, and they're pretty bad as it is, and he's wildly popular with the base," Wehner said. "When Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are far more popular in a party than Liz Cheney, then that party has lost its moral bearings, and I think Donald Trump Jr. is an embodiment and an example of that."
Watch below.
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