She didn’t say that they are morons, but on Friday, Mira Fox, writing for The Forward, noted the tendency of evangelicals to justify their undying devotion to the amoral Señor Trumpanzee by always comparing him to the Bible’s King David. “God,” not the sleazy Jerry Falwell Jr., “called King David a man after God’s own heart even though he was an adulterer and a murderer.”
Fox pointled out that with Trump’s indictment last week, “the comparison seems all the more apt; after all, the charges hang on Trump’s hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, a porn star who alleges that the two had sex while his wife was home taking care of their newborn son, Barron. It’s not quite the same as the David and Batsheva story, but there are certainly echoes. Both tried to, in some way, possess and manipulate an attractive woman, and both tried to cover it up. After impregnating Batsheva, David tried to get her husband to sleep with her so that the pregnancy would appear to be legitimate, and then arranged for her husband to be killed. Trump, meanwhile, allegedly ordered his fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen, to pay Daniels to stay mum. For both men, the fallout from their actions has been extremely public. In II Samuel 12, the prophet Nathan, telling David of God’s displeasure, warns him of God’s impending punishment. ‘You acted in secret, but I will make this happen in the sight of all Israel and in broad daylight,’ he says. Trump’s sins, too, will be aired in public, in court; he may even do a perp walk in front of a bevy of press.
There is a glaring difference between David and Trump, of course. “David, upon Nathan’s castigation, instantly admitted guilt and became penitent, saying, ‘I stand guilty before Hashem.’ Trump, on the other hand, has tried to whip his followers into a frenzy over what he is calling a ‘witch hunt, and disparaged prosecutors investigating him. Of course, David was punished for his various sins: the death of his first child with Batsheva, the betrayal of his son Absalom, the rape of his daughter Tamar by his other son Amnon— who Absalom then killed in retribution— and a pestilence from God… As sinful as David was, he took responsibility for his actions, and was greatly rewarded as a direct result. God ends the pestilence when David tells God to take him instead of his people, because they are innocent and he is not. After God’s anger with David for his actions with Batsheva, Nathan says the punishment will be lighter because of David’s admission of guilt.”
When people compare Trump to David, they imply that, just as with David, God smiles upon Trump despite his sins. They mean that Trump is God’s choice for leader, and that, like David, Trump is ultimately righteous. Both Trump and David may be fallible, but the implication of the comparison is that they are both the chosen messengers of God regardless of their sins.
Trump has missed an important part of the story, though: the apology. Over and over, Trump has denied any wrongdoing and accused his critics of illegitimacy, calling himself a “completely innocent person” and touting his successes. (In 2020, when accused of incitement to violence after the Jan. 6 attack, he said he was “perhaps the most innocent man anywhere in the history of the United States.”)
We no longer live in biblical times, and misdeeds are judged by courts, not God; that means Trump may well be found not guilty of the specific legal charges prosecutors are levying. But even if that turns out to be the case, he’s missing the leadership quality that defined David: humbleness, and a willingness to admit moral, if not legal, wrongdoing.
Yesterday, Ron Brownstein concluded his essay about how Trump is becoming a stronger primary candidate and a weaker general election candidate by noting that “The best-case scenario sketched by Trump supporters is that a succession of indictments will allow him to inspire even higher turnout among the predominantly non-college-educated and non-urban white voters who accept his argument that ‘liberal elites’ and the ‘deep state’ are targeting him to silence them. But even the heroic levels of turnout Trump inspired from those voters in 2020 wasn’t enough to win. For the GOP to bet that Trump could overcome swing-voter revulsion over his legal troubles and win a general election by mobilizing even more of his base voters, [pollster Bryan] Bennett said, ‘seems to me the highest risk proposition that I can imagine.’”
“[M]ost Republicans,” he wrote, “think Trump is also benefiting from an impulse among GOP voters to lock arms around him as the Manhattan investigation has proceeded. In an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist College poll released this week, four-fifths of Republicans described the various investigations targeting Trump as a ‘witch hunt,’ echoing his own denunciation of them. ‘There’s going to be some level of emotional response to someone being quote-unquote attacked,’ [GOP strategist Dave] Wilson said. ‘That’s going to get some sympathy points that will probably bolster poll numbers.’”
Republican leaders, as so many times before, have tightened their own straitjacket by defending Trump on these allegations so unreservedly. House GOP leaders have launched unprecedented attempts to impede Bragg’s investigation by demanding documents and testimony, and even Trump’s potential 2024 rivals have condemned the indictment as a politically motivated hit job; DeSantis may have had the most extreme reaction by not only calling the indictment “un-American” but even insisting he would not cooperate with extraditing Trump from Florida if it came to that (a pledge that is moot because Trump has indicated he plans to turn himself in on Tuesday.)
As during the procession of outrages and controversies during Trump’s presidency, most Republicans skeptical of him have been unwilling to do anything more than remain silent. (Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, a long-shot potential 2024 candidate, has been the most conspicuous exception, issuing a statement that urged Americans “to wait on the facts” before judging the case.) The refusal of party leaders to confront Trump is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy: Because GOP voters hear no other arguments from voices they trust, they fall in line behind the assertion from Trump and the leading conservative media sources that the probes are groundless persecution. Republican elected officials then cite that dominant opinion as the justification for remaining silent.
But while the investigations may be bolstering Trump’s position inside the GOP in the near-term, they also appear to be highlighting all the aspects of his political identity that have alienated so many swing voters, especially those with college degrees. In that same NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey, 56 percent of Americans rejected Trump’s “witch hunt” characterization and described the investigations as “fair”; 60 percent of college-educated white adults, the key constituency that abandoned the GOP in the Trump years, said the probes were fair. So did a slight majority of independent voters.
…The NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist survey underlines DuHaime’s point about the limits of Trump’s existing support: In that survey, a 61 percent majority of Americans— including 64 percent of independents and 70 percent of college-educated white adults— said they did not want him to be president again. That result was similar to the latest Quinnipiac University national poll, which found that 60 percent of Americans do not consider themselves supporters of Trump’s “Make America great again” movement. The challenge for the GOP is that about four-fifths of Republicans said they did consider themselves part of that movement, and about three-fourths said they wanted him back in the White House.
Since we’re looking at polls, Cygnal released one of likely North Carolina voters a couple of days ago. Keep in mind that Trump won, narrowly, North Carolina both times he ran— 49.8% to 46.2% in 2016 and 49.9% to 48.6% in 2020. The pollsters posed several potential on on one matchups:
Biden- 45.4%
Trump- 43.4%
Biden- 41.4%
Pence- 39.4%
Biden- 41.0%
DeSantis- 43.6%
A day earlier, the YouGov poll for The Economist came out. 55% of registered voters (including 28% of Republicans and 54% of independents do not want Trump to run again). Even a majority of rural voters— many of the ones who conflate Trump and King David— don’t want to see Trump run again (52% to 36%).
And here are some favorability numbers for prominent politicians (among registered voters):
Biden- 46% favorable to 52% unfavorable
Kamala- 43% to 53%
McCarthy- 37% to 44%
McConnell- 27% to 62%
Schumer- 40% to 45%
Hakeem- 36% to 30%
Señor Trumpanzee- 49% to 46%
