Headlines advise that a new faith-based organization called the National Faith Advisory Board has been setup by former Trump officials. To place that into some context for you, permit me to translate the term “Trump Officials”. It is being run by Televangelist Paula White who was his “official” spiritual adviser. She is very much cut from the same cloth as Trump in multiple ways. While she does deny it when asked, she rather famously and very blatantly utilises the prosperity gospel to enrich herself. The essence of that con is that if you give God seed money then God will reward you, and of course “Giving God seed money” means sending her all your cash. Translation; it’s a scam. There is one other thing she is known for, she was caught F**king televangelist Benny Hinn back in 2010.
Her name is also well-known because as Trump’s “spiritual” adviser he brought her to Atlantic City on multiple occasions for “private Bible studies”. As we all know, Mr Two Corinthians is a deeply “spiritual” individual who spends lots of time in “private Bible studies”. Yes, I’m saying exactly what you think I’m saying, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to read between the lines here and join up the dots. His only real interest is the missionary position.
Anyway, all that is background, because I’m building up to a rather fascinating insight.
Trump pronounces Benediction over the NFAB launch
The NFAB is not in any way official. Sticking the words “National” and “Advisory Board” into the name does not magically change that. It does however very much play into the prevailing beliefs of the MAGA crowd that “Catholic” Biden and “Baptist” Harris are in some way “anti-faith”. They, rather wisely, want nothing to do with this rather blatant piece of grifting.
Paula can no longer grift in the White House Rose garden, so she needs a new source, hence NFAB. Naturally she tapped 45 to promote it and so there has been a Prayer Phone Call that he took part in on Sept 2…
To save you the pain of having to listing to him, I’ve taken a hit for the team – here is a transcription of that extract …
..Brian Burch, President of CatholicVote .. and Brian and I did a lot for the Catholics, and er, I don’t know, you know … I guess I’m a little bit, a little bit, surprised that we didn’t do better with the Catholic Votes. I think now they would give us their vote, I think we got about 50% of the vote, and yet we did a lot for the Catholic vote, so we’ll have to talk to them. We’re gonna have to meet with the Catholics …right … Any one of the topics that’s so dear to your hears, we did better than ever before in the history of our country, and hopefully they’ll remember it.
You know I mentioned er Catholicism and you know I was surprised, I think it was a 50-50 vote, and I say how can you vote 50-50, you look at er, the situation with abortion and you look at the abuse, and then you vote 50-50 and so many other things, so you know, I just don’t understand how that’s even possible, but that’s the way it goes …
… with respect to the jewish vote, I got 25% of the Jewish vote, and yet I put in, one thing is nothing to do with the other… Look what I did with the embassy in Jerusalem and what I did with so many other things. Israel has never had a better friend, and yet I got 25% of the votes. So er, I think they have to get together, there has to be a little bit more unity with the religious groups, all represented on this call. …
The 50-50 Catholic Vote split
In this instance, he is rather bizarrely in the correct ball park with the Catholic vote. It was indeed split very roughly 50-50 in 2020, we can verify that via Gallup …
The Edison exit polls estimate that 52% of all Catholic voters went for Biden this year, and 47% for Trump. The Edison exit polls in 2016 showed a 46% Catholic vote for Clinton, and 50% for Trump.
This split however should not be a surprise.
Yes, the Trump administration pandered to official Catholic doctrine. They are opposed to gay marriage and also opposed to abortion. Since the Trump administration aligned, he expected them to reward him by voting for him. That’s not how it works in reality. If you do tune in to Catholic officials and listen to just them, then you will get the official party line. However, amongst those that culturally identify as Catholic, things are rather different. About half do not go along with such thinking and instead support gay marriage and are also pro-choice. As a group they are a mixture of both Democrats and also Republicans, so the vote amongst this demographic is not driven by their religious inheritance but instead by their membership of the political tribe they identify with.
What Trump also fails to grasp is that unlike Evangelicals, pandering to Catholic beliefs will not in any truly meaningful way alter their vote because religion is not what drives their voting preference. If you do pander to religious doctrine, yet also are vocally very anti-latino and anti-immigrant, then it should honestly not be a surprise to find that most of the Latino Catholics went for Biden.
Case in point, Biden himself is devoutly Catholic and has faithfully attended Mass for all of his life. It is part of who he is, his religious DNA. He himself illustrates that you can in fact be deeply Catholic and also not be a rabid homophobe or anti-abortion. As for all the other Catholics, about half of them opted not to vote for the Catholic guy, and instead went for the rather obviously non-religious Trump who very obviously (to most of us) fakes belief to get votes.
OK, so hold this thought and let’s move on to the other demographic he commented on.
The Jewish Vote
Trump comments on the call saying “with respect to the jewish vote, I got 25% of the Jewish vote“. That’s not wholly correct, he actually did better than 25% …
Jewish voters made up 3% of the electorate and went overwhelmingly for Biden, with 68% backing the Democrat compared with 31% backing Trump.
It is indeed true that he also believed that he truly pandered to the Jewish vote by various pro-Israel moves by the administration, for example moving the embassy. Once again he simply does not grasp how truly diverse this demographic is. He seriously thinks that pandering to the desires of rabid zionists will ensure he “gets the Jewish Vote”. What he totally and completely fails to grasp is that the vast majority (two thirds) of the Jewish community in the US do not support what he did in Israel.
The folks who did very much by a clear majority support what he did in Israel were the Evangelicals and also the Israelis. The Evangelicals loved it because they think it brought them one step closer to the Armageddon they deeply desire (Yes really). As for what the Israelis thought, that’s rather irrelevant because they don’t get to vote is US elections.
Where am I going with all this?
Not only do we learn that he simply does not understand why specific people vote, nor does he understand the diversity within various religious demographics, but via this phone call we also have a confession, an admission of the truth.
He knows he lost, he knows how people actually voted, and he knows that his claim about a “rigged” election is totally BS. He is not saying the Catholics all voted for him, but instead recognises that half of them did not vote for him and is confused about why they did not vote for him … but, does recognise that it was not rigged and that this really is how they voted.
Here he is, not at a rally, but on a call saying “that’s the way it goes“.
Whenever faced with the big lie, that the election was rigged, then you can now cite a reliable source that the election was robust and not rigged. When asked, “Oh, so who is your reliable source?“, you can advise that your source is Trump himself.
MAGA devotees will inevitably not accept this but will instead embrace the claim that the election was rigged as “truth” and also at the exact same time embrace these comments made by Trump as “Truth” and thus embrace mutually exclusive ideas simultaneously.