President Donald Trump has had an uneasy but reliable alliance with the Christian Right for over a decade, MS NOW's McKay Coppins said on Wednesday's edition of "Katy Tur Reports" — and now, after Trump has made clear he doesn't even care to go through the motions of behaving like a Christian, they are running out of excuses to keep going.
"I mean, it's like something that they were sort of used to and that they would not hold him to the same standard that they have," said Lincoln Project adviser Stuart Stevens. And I think all of that's gotten very old. And at a certain point, you do want to look at the White House and feel aspirational. When Bush ran in 2000, that was his number one message that worked well. People want to look at the White House and feel good about it, and I think now forgetting, you know, your own political sense, what is there to feel good about?"
"Yeah," agreed Tur. "I wonder, McKay, do you hear that anymore? Because I mean, we talked about this for a long time, and especially in Utah and the Mormon community, wanting somebody who's going to lead by example. Mitt Romney was so popular, certainly, there. Are you still hearing that or is that coming back among the Mormon community specifically?"
"Yeah, I'm actually in Salt Lake City right now, and I can't tell you how many conservative Latter-Day Saints I have spoken to who are just like, they're trying, you know, some of the really, you know, partisan conservative Republicans have tried for a decade now to make peace with the Trump-era GOP," said Coppins. "And they have fundamental disagreements, but they also can't bring themselves to vote for a Democrat. And they're trying to get on board with him."
"And then when he does something like this, when he starts a feud with the pope, when he, you know, when he posts a meme of himself as Jesus Christ, like, it just it makes it so hard for them to really feel at home in this Republican Party," said Coppins.
Ultimately, he said, "they're all just basically praying and hoping for, you know, a post-Trump revitalization or rediscovery of the importance of character and integrity in our leaders. But that gets harder and harder with every passing week when we see the leaders of the Republican Party making excuses for what's happening. Because every time this happens, you basically reduce the market value of integrity in public life, and it makes it that much harder for you to find new leaders who will rise up after Trump, who will steer the party back to what they want it to be."