'Devil's in the details': How MAGA preachers lose a 'huge source' of power in Trump's win

Far-right evangelical doomsday preachers who hitched themselves to Donald Trump scored a huge victory last week, wrote Molly Olmstead for Slate, but "the devil is in the details" of how they use that power — and furthermore, Trump's return to power wipes out a narrative that had been a "huge source" of their organizing ability, leaving them uncertain of how to move forward.

In 2020, wrote Olmstead, "When he lost, these same Christians were left facing two possibilities: Either they had not worked or prayed hard enough to fulfill God’s will, or Trump had fulfilled the prophecies only in a technical sense, by winning the election, but was being robbed of the office."

This in turn led to extremist evangelicals flocking to "Stop the Steal" rallies, and it led to the end-times rhetoric from conspiracy theorists like former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who became deeply embedded in the QAnon movement. "At these gatherings, Christians who believe they can use faith to summon miracles and access supernatural gifts such as healing spoke in tongues while calling for God’s angelic forces to combat the evil propping up Trump’s enemies," she wrote.

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Trump securing victory in 2024 forces them to rethink — perhaps their prophecies have been fulfilled after all, but they had been preparing for another apocalyptic fight — and now the question is how to keep their flock motivated.

"Evangelicals steeped in Trumpism now face a new question: Where next?" wrote Olmstead. "Until this point, the MAGA Christian movement has thrown vast amounts of energy into not just electing Trump but planning a challenge to the election, assuming he would lose, based on conspiratorial thinking about widespread voter fraud ... But now these Christians have their God-chosen leader in power. They can turn to figuring out what to do with this situation."

Some, like prophet Lance Wallnau, say Trump supporters should now lay siege to the "gates of Hell" in “the DOJ, in the government, in the IRS." Others want to focus on federal abortion restrictions. Either way, wrote Olmstead, "there’s a very small downside to Trump’s victory, experts say. The charismatic leaders who build careers off proclaiming their resistance to the Satanic evil of the Biden administration will now have to pivot to find an appropriate enemy."

There's no telling exactly how they will resolve that, Olmstead concluded — but however they do, "In the next four years, we should expect more talk of demons — and more talk of Trump’s holy purpose."