Christianity Today is dead wrong about Christians and Trump

As a Christian, I profoundly disagree with Christianity Today’s call for me to support President Trump’s removal from office for this reason—it’s based on flawed premises.

Flawed premise #1: Unambiguous facts

“But the facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents.” ~ Christianity Today

No, the facts are not unambiguous—many Christians do not agree that the president attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of his political opponents.

This premise requires us to believe that Trump feared a political opponent so much that he tried to get a foreign leader to discredit him. As an aside, do even casual political observers believe Trump has ever feared Joe Biden?

Christianity Today’s central premise is simply not supported by the context of the infamous phone call.

A fair-minded reading of the transcript reveals Ukraine’s Zelensky gushing over Trump’s attempts to drain the American “swamp.” Clearly, he’s either enamored with Trump or wants him to think he is. The context shows that Zelensky appears to greatly respect Trump. He even credits his win on his promise to drain his Ukrainian swamp. Sound familiar?

I and many other Christians believe Trump made his request in the context of both administrations rooting out corruption in their respective swamps—and with residual anger over the FBI spying of his candidacy, charges of an illegitimate presidency, and the baseless Russia collusion investigation.

Clearly, the phone call is far from “perfect,” but the context of Trump’s request for Zelensky to investigate the Bidens’ Burisma entanglement is perfectly reasonable given the company’s shady nature and the firing of the prosecutor who was investigating it—at Joe Biden’s demand.

Flawed premise #2: Immorality demands removal

Donald Trump is not a moral man. And neither am I. I’m a sinner saved by grace. Our Constitution, written by immoral men, does not call for the removal of presidents based solely on immorality. It calls for removal based on illegality.

In this case and to this point, it has not been proven that this president committed an illegal act that rises to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors.

If it were, the House Judiciary Committee would have presented genuine articles of impeachment and voted to impeach Trump in a bipartisan manner. They have not and did not. And now the majority leader is hesitating to transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial. Why? Because they know they’re weak, partisan and will not prove the case for removal.

Flawed premise #3: Clinton’s impeachment = Trump’s

Christianity Today mistakenly compares Trumps’ phone call, and their acceptance of the partisan analysis of it, to the immorality—and illegality—of Bill Clinton’s commitment of perjury and obstruction of justice—high crimes that were accepted as self-evident by republicans and democrats.

Again, if there was a legitimate comparison to be made, the House Judiciary Committee would have produced comparable articles of impeachment. In Clinton’s case there was perjury and obstruction of justice—both charges are legally- and constitutionally-recognized high crimes and misdemeanors.

Trump was (almost) impeached for abusing power and obstructing Congress. If abuse of power is a legally- and constitutionally-recognized high crime and misdemeanor, every single president should be impeached.

Obstruction of Congress is not a valid charge because every president can and does turn to the courts regarding the release of documents and witnesses pertaining to executive privilege. Not only is this article of impeachment nonsensical, it would wither under the slightest scrutiny in a courtroom or Senate impeachment trial.

Flawed premise #4: Serve God or Trump

Christianity Today exhorts its Christian readers to “remember whom you serve” and erects a false dichotomy based on the flawed premise that we as Christians either sacrifice our Christian witness by continuing to support Trump or we protect it by supporting his removal from office.

Clearly, Christians are called to serve God, not presidents. This premise is irrelevant because it’s based on a non-argument. We support presidents; we don’t serve them. We serve God, and we do so by supporting our leaders—until we can’t.

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. ~ Romans 13:1-7

Flawed premise #5: Supporting Trump harms Christian witness

Christianity Today encourages Christians who support their president to “Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior.”

Notice how the call for careful consideration is framed with bias and a rejection of any other view other than this: Trump is a moral midget whose continuing sins as president can no longer be tolerated.

Never mind that his presidency has produced greater pro-life and freedom of religion protections. CT refers to these as “political expediencies” and uses the abortion issue in light of our calling as Christians to be witnesses for Jesus Christ in a corrupt world:

“Can we say with a straight face that abortion is a great evil that cannot be tolerated and, with the same straight face, say that the bent and broken character of our nation’s leader doesn’t really matter in the end?”

Yes and no.

This rigged question is another straw man. Who thinks a president’s character doesn’t matter? How is the self-evident evil of abortion affected by whether a Christian supports the president or condemns him?

To be bent and broken is to be human.

Bent and broken? We’re all bent and broken. The question is not whether this president’s character is bent and broken; it’s whether or not it has propelled him to commit high crimes and misdemeanors. So far, the answer is a resounding no.

Based on the legal and constitutional weakness of the articles of impeachment, I cannot support an unconstitutional removal from office of President Trump. And I believe Christianity Today’s call for me to do so as a Christian is intellectually lazy and unbiblical.

Does preserving my Christian witness require me to accept one side’s understanding of a phone call over the other’s? I think respecting the presumption of innocence and the rule of law are necessary to sharing truth in a world of deception and division.

Donald Trump is our president and authority. Until his actions warrant legitimate impeachment and removal from office, as a Christian, I’ll submit to his God-given authority and resist wrong-headed calls to do otherwise.

If you can’t beat ’em, sue ’em. How to avoid personal and political responsibility in the age of Trump.

suing

I’m a courtroom junkie. I watched hours of the “Blade Runner” Oscar Pistorius trial and have been known to frequent the gallery of our county courthouse. I guess you could call me a legal barfly … get it? Legal … bar … fly … on the wall? Stretch.

So when I read that the Democratic National Committee is suing Russian hackers, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the Trump campaign, and anyone else they hold responsible for their 2016 presidential election loss, I perked right up.

After all, it’s not everyday one of our political parties sues the Russians.

And what’s really interesting is that this impressive legal maneuver made news on the same day the DNC’s losing candidate’s election-night lament came to light. Hillary Clinton’s alleged words when told she’d lost:

“I knew it. I knew this would happen to me. They were never going to let me be president.”

The evil they

Who are they?  Wait, let me guess: men? White men? Members of The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy? The Russians? WikiLeaks? The basket of deplorables? The keepers of the glass ceiling? All of the above?

While her party blames the world for her loss, Clinton blames everyone but herself. Let’s look reality right in the face and get real, Hillary. You lost to one of the worst (and surprising) presidential candidates in our history because of you.

The truth is that you were a bad candidate. You’re unlikable because you appear arrogant, calculating, cold, entitled and dishonest—many of the attributes voters loathe in politicians.  Stop blaming others. They did not fail to generate a solid ground game in several key states.

They did not pay more attention to a thirty-something social media and algorithm guru (campaign manager Robby Mook) than to your husband and two-term president who always knew how to connect with voters.

I know—you’re not Bill. You don’t have his charisma. But you do have smarts, determination and grit. Show a little character and take responsibility for your loss. You tried so very hard, but maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.

But don’t try again. America doesn’t like a loser—especially a whiny one.

DNC vs. The World

Speaking of whiny, by suing everyone else for their mistakes and misdeeds, the DNC is taking things to a whole new, hypocritical level. First they cheated Bernie Sanders and his supporters—many of whom were fresh, young voters—by conspiring against the coot and indulging the diva.

Then they failed to safeguard against one of the most basic cybersecurity scams: phishing to gain access to someone’s email account.

Instead of preventing John Podesta (Clinton’s campaign chairman) from falling for this trick, their IT department verified the message as “legitimate.” Legitimate? With a sender email address of ?

And now they’re suing Russian hackers. They should be suing their former IT head. Or themselves … for incompetence and favoritism.

Why go after WikiLeaks? All they did was publish your damning emails; they didn’t create them. Why shoot the messenger when Debbie Wasserman Shultz and associates and several Clinton campaign officials are the ones who wrote and sent the messages?

This is like the Mob suing the FBI for wiretapping them. Or Trump suing Access Hollywood for recording his bragging about groping women.

As I’ve written before, if the Russians and WikiLeaks interfered with our election by hacking DNC servers and exposing the dastardly denigration of Bernie Sanders, please, Russkies and Julian Assange, keep interfering.

If election interference exposes the truth—or as the press likes to say—what we “need to know,” by all means, Russian “Fancy Bear” hackers, hack away. Teach us silly Americans to secure our servers and email accounts. We relish challenges and relations were kinda boring post Cold War.

It’s always about politics

DNC chair Tom Perez defends the lawsuit as “not partisan, but patriotic.” Critics, many in his own party, think it’s “ill-timed” because of the ongoing Mueller investigation.

Bad timing or no, the DNC can’t afford lawsuits anyway. Despite their financial woes, Perez says his party “can’t afford not to” pursue the lawsuit.

“It’s hard to put a price tag on preserving democracy,” he said. I’d say it should be impossible—democracy is priceless and should never be for sale, which begs the question: Why did the DNC pay Fusion GPS to subvert it?

Here’s an idea for preserving democracy, Mr. Perez: Rather than spend your constituents’ money on silly grandstanding lawsuits,

Secure your servers and email passwords.

Give your primary candidates a fair shake, so cream candidates can rise to the top and secure your nomination honestly and effectively.

Don’t engage in kingmaking—no one deserves the presidency—no matter how long he or she has waited to be crowned.

And above all, when you screw up and your candidate loses, take responsibility for your mistakes, make changes, and go get ’em the next time.

This goes for you, too, Hillary. But if you ever gain a smidgen of self-awareness, there won’t be a next time. Nor should there.

Government shutdown: A political ploy in which the real losers are those who play the blame game

Image may be copyright protected. Will remove upon request.

Well, well, well … The Great 2018 American Government Shutdown is over. After two and a half days of scare tactics and hype, we can all breathe easy again.

Government shutdown. Is there a two-word phrase as overrated? Here are a few that should truly frighten you:

Nuclear war. Terror attack. Aggressive cancer.

Government shutdown? Meh.

Besides, it’s a contradiction in terms. Our government never shuts down; essential services always continue. It’s more of a government slowdown—and a dishonest political ploy designed to dupe the dopes.

Can shutdowns be inconvenient? Sure. Just ask a national park tourist who shows up to reduced hours or a closed special exhibit. Annoying? You bet. So is trying to get past hordes of schoolchildren bottlenecking self-guided tour routes.

Do shutdowns produce anxiety? Of course. Anytime there’s uncertainty about the operation of the federal government, there’s nervousness. This is especially true when the uncertainty is amplified by propaganda, half-truths and fearmongering.

Truth be told, I’m more nervous about a fully operational federal government.

Do shutdowns degrade military readiness due to payroll or allowance delays? I served in the Navy during two of them and have no memory of any problems they caused. This is because neither affected me significantly.

Most military operations and personnel are unaffected by government shutdowns. Ships still patrol. Troops stay locked and loaded.

This reality makes Trump’s first-day-of-the-shutdown tweet look as silly as it is: “Democrats are holding our military hostage over their desire to have unchecked illegal immigration. Can’t let that happen!”

Who suffers?

Are furloughed without-pay government employees paid after shutdowns? According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the answer is YES. From their 2017 study, Shutdown of the Federal Government: Causes, Processes and Effects: “… in historical practice, federal employees furloughed under a shutdown generally have received their salaries retroactively.”

But this doesn’t mean families of furloughed employees aren’t stretched financially, especially younger ones who haven’t set aside funds to tide them over until they receive their back pay.

What about the poor? Do they suffer at the hands of whichever party is more effectively vilified for political gain? Not really. Those who get food stamps or use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) continue to do so.

Head Start, a government hybrid version of day care and preschool for low-income families, has been affected before. The 2013 slowdown caused the temporary closing of locations serving nearly 6,300 children before re-opening with the help of private philanthropists or their state.

How about senior citizens who rely on Medicaid, Social Security and Medicare? There are delays in getting new Social Security cards, but medical benefits are not affected.

Do Veterans Administration services continue for vets? My VA called to verify my appointment while I was writing this post. And it’s for a routine blood panel and doctor visit.

The IRS, however, typically furloughs a hefty percentage of their employees. Imagine: the massive government department that taxes (and overtaxes) us doing its work with fewer people and more efficiently. How frightening.

Who benefits?

Short answer: the political party that’s successful in duping the most voters to retaliate in the mid-term elections. Of course, the real or perceived performance of a president and his party can mitigate the winners of this propaganda battle.

For example, in the mid terms following the great government shutdown of 2013, Democrats lost nine House and 13 Senate seats. This is typical and reflected a politically divided America and normal voter fatigue with the party in power.

It happened to the parties of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and others and will almost certainly happen to our current unprecedentedly polarizing president’s party.

Shamefully, shameless self-serving schmucks like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Shumer know and play the blame game quite well, as do their GOP counterparts. Pelosi referred to the 2013 slowdown as the “Tea Party Shutdown.” Her current creation? You guessed it: The Trump Shutdown.

She even grandstanded it as a snarky “Happy Anniversary” gift to the president based on his May 2017 tweet: “Our country needs a good “shutdown” in September to fix mess!”

shutdown

Contextually, Trump’s tweet has nothing to do with his supposed lack of compassion for poor Americans or his racism or any other Machiavellian political implication Pelosi and other blame gamers try to sell us.

Speaking of Trump and his racism:

Trump as racist

Is he? Here’s an essential question:

Regarding his infamous s***hole country question, is it possible that he used the word to describe countries with failed and/or corrupt leadership, crumbling infrastructure, lack of opportunity, feeble economies, etc. rather than as a description or reflection of their people?

Is it possible that as a president who strongly favors merit-based immigration policies, he’s resistant to letting in large numbers of emigrants who’d be virtually impossible to vet in order to prioritize skilled workers over family members of those with expired visas?

Is it “un-American” to value an emigrant with skills and potential over a DACA “dreamer’s” second cousin twice removed? Former Presidents Kennedy and Johnson didn’t think so. Neither did Reagan. And yes, he signed a bill granting a one-time amnesty for people here illegally in return for tighter border control.

I don’t know the answer to the racism question because I wasn’t inside Trump’s frenetic and often childish brain when he said what he said. I don’t know whether he s***holed people OR their countries because I don’t know him or what’s in his heart or mind.

But I do know this: It’s not racist to describe a country as a s***hole when referring to how badly it’s run or to the poor quality of life it affords its citizens or to whatever makes it so crappy that its people are bailing en masse.

Newsflash: Decrying the sad state of a country can actually have nothing to do with race. The same goes for resistance to piggybacking a DACA/Dreamer deal to a spending bill, which is the cause of this silly shutdown.

Libelous labeling

Yes, labeling someone a racist because he denigrates people of other countries based on their race is a legitimate use of the word.

Labeling someone a racist because you conflate his opinion of a country with your opinion of his opinion of a country’s people is either overly emotional and faulty thinking or calculated dishonesty and character assassination.

Speaking of emotionalism, I watched many politicians and media members engage in precisely this inflammatory political behavior. For the most part, I think journalists are intelligent people. I sure hope so, because I am one.

We’re trained to ask clarifying questions, process information critically and be as fair and objective as possible with the words that come out of our mouths and minds.

What I witnessed in the coverage of Trump’s potty mouth comments about immigration is not genuine journalism. I watched posers trip over themselves to condemn, besmirch and denigrate a president they simply cannot cover objectively, let alone tolerate.

Is it any wonder many media members are complicit in our latest government shutdown blame game? I expect as much from sleazy politicians, but trained journalists should know better. And trust me, they do. They’re following the lead of leaders of one party because they loathe the leader of the other.

Apocalypse or politics?

It’s bad enough that our government is bloated, inefficient and entirely too big for its britches, but for a political party to use its operation as a bargaining chip and threaten its “shutdown” to get what they want is politically immoral and ought to be made legislatively impossible.

To be fair, this practice is partisan, petty and perpetrated by both sides. So is the blaming. House Speaker Paul Ryan pinned it on Democrats by saying, “One party in one house of this Congress is deliberately holding this government hostage.”

No one’s holding the government hostage, Speaker Ryan. It’s not tied up and gagged by ransom-demanding Dems. During a shutdown, our government is free to run on fewer cylinders and at reduced power levels.

If only we could use this “crisis” to make our government a lean, mean, liberty-preserving machine that’s more efficient and less intrusive—and more like our founders envisioned.

Tying essential issues like immigration reform to government shutdowns is a bad way to do the people’s business. It’s playing politics with taxpayer provided government services.

Shut down the shutdown

Instead of shutting down our government, let’s shut down those shut it down for political gain. Let’s fund the government first, and then tackle the hot issues. This would make for more clean and honest fights.

But for now, this should be our message to some government employees who never have to worry about working for free—President Trump and members of Congress:

Stop playing politics with a government that barely runs and does so on borrowed money. Keep the colossal, clunky machine running. Decide on a DACA grace period and extend the work permits for the “dreamers” who are working. Then talk about returning to a smart, merit-based immigration system.

To the dreamers who’ve failed to play by the rules and have not become productive and valuable citizens:

Try again when your dreams are big enough for America. But know this: It’s not your fault our politicians used you and your dreams to shut down a government. They think it’s a way to win, but when it happens, we all lose.