Trump's religious pals are 'happy for him to be damned' while they cash in: conservative

Evangelical and Catholic leaders surrounding Donald Trump are complicit in his spiritual destruction — and they know it. Rather than intervene, they've chosen silence and applause, prioritizing access and influence over the gospel they claim to serve.

That's according to longtime conservative commentator Erick Erickson, who wrote in his Substack that the faith leaders allied with Trump have abdicated their most fundamental responsibility: saving a soul headed toward damnation.

"These people who keep excusing this stuff keep creating the permission structure for him to do it again and again and beclown themselves in the process because they are too scared to stand up lest they lose some Twitter followers. And the permission structure they create leads to the President's eternal doom and doom for the agenda they and many of us believe in," Erickson wrote.

Trump shared a profanity-filled Easter message, attacked Pope Leo XIV, and reposted a Jesus meme depicting himself — and was met with silence from the faith leaders who surround him, said Erickson.

With Trump claiming he thought the Jesus image portrayed him as a Red Cross doctor, Erickson refused to accept the transparent lie:

"I support a lot of the President's agenda, including the Iran intervention. But I'm not going to beclown myself by believing he thought he was a Red Cross worker or believing it was all a big joke. If the President really did not know what was being depicted in that picture, it is about as bad as if he really did think he was being portrayed as Christ. It's not like the image of Christ draped in a red shawl is uncommon. If the President did not know, really, how in tune is he with Jesus, even at a culturally Christian level."

During Easter week, Trump's faith leader Paula White, surrounded by Catholic and Evangelical pastors, "openly engaged in heresy in the White House and not a single one of the men in the room denounced it. To date, even out of the White House, none of them have said a thing. On stage they applauded her. Off stage, they stayed quiet," Erickson accused.

Erickson framed the stakes starkly: "It seems more and more that the faith leaders who surround the President are perfectly happy for him to be damned so long as they get something from him in this lifetime."

The spiritual reckoning is simple he wrote, explaining, "If the President's soul is valuable, it would be really valuable for these faith leaders to finally stand up to the President, share the gospel, and make him understand he is not just setting back his agenda and Republican chances in November, but even worse, he is risking eternal hellfire."