The Trump Impeachment and my Response to Christianity Today

This will probably be the shortest article I write on this particular subject. I think it is embarrassing to watch what has happened to the House of Representatives. From the Speaker of the House, the “honorable” Nancy Pelosi, to everyone of the committee chairman involved in the impeachment circus, the behavior of each has been appalling. Adam Schiff’s shenanigans when he opened up the Intelligence Committee hearing, to the daily breathless fawning of the marketing agency which has become the press corps, it is a sad chapter in the history of the United States. Speaker Pelosi perhaps thought that everyone took her seriously when she said that this push toward impeachment was done “prayerfully” and “without any joy”, a theatrical act she continued on the day the House on completely partisan lines decided to impeach President Trump. She even dressed in black! Well it’s official, the House of Representatives is nothing more than a theater stage, a colossal joke. And for what reason? From the two articles of impeachment that the House Democrats have passed (namely abuse of power and obstruction of congress), without any proof to justify either or anything else for that matter, the reason for this whole proceeding is just sheer hatred for the President.

Needless to say that I find this whole spectacle terrible. I feel sorry for the President of the United States because this whole thing is just dirty politics. And those two articles could apply to every single President of the United States, from George Washington to the present. This whole thing will fail in due time, after the Speaker of the House decides to send the articles to the Senate. But that said, I was appalled at the editorial by Mark Galli, the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today. Galli insinuated in his article that President Trump needed to be impeached and removed from office for being an “immoral” person – indeed, his action in talking to the President of Ukraine was highly immoral. President Trump is an immoral person and only “uneducated” evangelicals are standing with him because of their angst toward the Democrats and liberals in general.

I do not believe for an instance that Galli was making his thoughts known because he had some principles on the matter at hand. Christianity Today has a readership of around 80,000 – nothing to glory about. From what I have read, Galli was on his way out anyway. Perhaps this was a stunt to generate publicity! Not to mention customers. Why? Christianity Today has written in support of several unbiblical ideas as well as antichristian groups such as evolutionism, LGBT, and Planned Parenthood. I assume their tacit or oblique support for these ideas and groups was also for the same reason! Galli was toasted by most of the press in the subsequent days. Maybe he has his eyes open to new job prospects!
I do not believe his righteous indignation for a second. We have in the course of the last three years seen enough examples of it. When the crisis happened on the southern border of the United States, one mayor after another in such cities as Oakland, San Francisco, and Baltimore cried out against the “immoral” stance of the President in initiating the building of a southern border wall along with other efforts to strengthen border security. President Trump tested the mayor of the city of Oakland by announcing that to alleviate the situation at the holding centers, he was going to order that the thousands of people coming illegally would be housed in Oakland. At this point, the mayor changed her tune completely. “We do not have the facilities or the money!” I believe that was no less true for the situation on the border. Her “moral” stance allowed her to say the right thing, but not much else. Except to say in so many words, “it’s not my problem.” Then why talk at the beginning anyway to and through a mesmerizing media who will run around with a sound bite and insult someone of a different viewpoint generating as obnoxious a response as possible? It is probably the same with Mark Galli.

I can appreciate Mark Galli’s point to a certain extent. Politicians as a general rule will be “Christian” during election time. It should be noted that there are very decent, very moral people who are in politics in this nation who are true Bible-believing Christians, and though I haven’t seen any, I must assume that there may be such people in the Democrat party as well. But they function under a cloud of suspicion and perpetual hatred by the political left and libertines who hate and mock their morality unless politically convenient. And make no doubts about it, when issues such as abortion, sex/gender issues, or any other moral issue comes up, one will find out soon enough who has enough “faith” to stand up for their Christian principles or conscience under the threat of character assassination by the media and their leftist allies.

Donald Trump is a Republican President of the United States. Galli’s sentiments should offend the delicate sensibilities of those Christians (I am assuming) who support Democrat candidates, but it goes further than that. The term “evangelicals” implies (according to Galli, and political strategists in general) a group of people who are mostly (if not all) “white, Bible-believing, Christians”. The implication is that if you are not white you do not really believe the Bible so you are not really the true type of Christian. Galli seems to imply that President Trump is in some special category which deserves special treatment. “Immoral”- Galli seems to have a strange standard in regards to this word. His accusation toward Evangelicals has to do with the response of Evangelicals to the last President of the United States to be impeached, Bill Clinton. Somehow, in Galli’s mind, President Trump’s telephone call with the President of Ukraine in which he asks about former Vice President Joe Biden and his son and their endeavors in that nation in previous times is comparable to the shenanigans that Bill Clinton pulled in the Oval Office and as well as the 11 “possible grounds for impeachment” that were cited by Special Council Ken Starr in the Clinton Impeachment in 1988 (and which passed the Republican controlled House of Representatives with bipartisan support, 31 Democrats joined the Republican majority to vote FOR impeachment), and which ultimately led to President Clinton losing his license to practice law. Galli seems to indicate that the moral outrage of the Evangelicals has somehow, by volition, gone missing from Trump.

To put in easily-understood terms without going into details, at least four women have come forward to say that President Bill Clinton sexually assaulted them while in office both as Governor of Arkansas and President of the United States. Galli seems to forget that during the Clinton impeachment, the President was tried for a variety of issued such as perjury, obstruction of justice, and abuse of power and that there were at least 11 provable grounds for the above.

Furthermore, Galli seem to have forgotten the cynicism of that time. One of Clinton’s main henchman of that time, James Carville, said of Paula Jones (one of the women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault), “If you drag a $100 bill through a trailer park, you’ll never know what you’ll find”.

That became the method of operations for dealing with any and all the women who came out to accuse the President. The amorality (the absence of any moral scruples) was appalling, especially as it was happening at the behest of First Lady, Hillary Clinton. While this attack was happening from one direction, the other weapon that the Clintons used was to lift up before the eyes of the world the sexual prowess of Bill Clinton. There was not the least bit of shame for anything that he did, and since it happened toward the close of his administration, it was for that reason that Evangelicals were outraged at Bill Clinton.

Times have changed. If it had not happened already, it certainly did from that Clinton impeachment forward, namely morality was not going to be substantive issue in the Biblical sense. In the twenty-two years since that time, morality has been considered a joke. If Christianity Today, as said before, were willing to compromise on issues such as abortion and the LGBT, then what is it about Donald Trump that seems inappropriate or shocking?

President Trump never hid who he was or what he was in the last four decades. He never was ashamed of his wealth; instead, he went out of his way to flaunt it. But anyone who ever worked for him in any of the businesses associated with his name never said that the fellow did not work hard at his job and demand the best from everyone while doing his best for his workers as well. In his real estate businesses in New York, he went out of his way to hire and promote women just as he had a persona of being a “ladies man” in public. He was married three times (twice divorced) and I will admit personally, I found the guy in my growing years rather disagreeable, even detestable, particularly after his second marriage ended. It should be said, that during these days before he entered into politics, he was a frequent guest and supporter of politicians on both sides of the aisle. He was the toast of Hollywood tabloids and entertainers. People of the glamor and glitz wanted to be with him or near him. Women found him desirable!

When he ran for President the first time in 2012, I personally thought it was a stunt to garner more attention. He was raking in multiple millions with his show The Apprentice on NBC (which, by the way, had an excellent relationship with him while he was making money for the network) and I thought that he just wanted more publicity, or more of the limelight. In the 2016 election, I was content to vote for Senator Ted Cruz of our state of Texas as long as I was able to, but then I saw Mr. Trump start winning state after state and I called a fellow pastor friend of mine in another state to ask what was he hearing and seeing; why was Trump able to pull so many people? Even he could not explain it! Yet there was a change happening after we heard him speak. We began to see, as millions of others did, that this man had ideas and he communicated them well; and slowly he rose above the narrative of most of the media. There was absolutely no way that he could win, they said. And after all, there was no chance that the Republicans were going to win anyway, especially if Donald Trump was the candidate. After all, then President Obama told us, along with 99% of the press, not to mention the Hollywood entertainment world, that Hillary Clinton was going to win; “she was the most qualified candidate.” Qualified candidate? Qualified to do what exactly?

Galli and his brand of “Christians” may tend to forget this point or not care one iota about it, but after eight years of the Obama Administration, here is what Protestant/Evangelical/Bible-believing Christians knew beyond the shadow of a doubt: 1) There was an all-out assault against Bible-based Christianity from the political left in virtually every field to the highest levels of government. We saw academia, from local school districts to universities, peddle the anti-theism, socialism, and any number of ideas for the purpose of turning this country into a mess like Venezuela or the European Union, and virtually no one could do anything to stop it. “Tolerance” was being forced down our throats for any and every type of lifestyle while no one thought about “tolerating” Christianity or Christian ideas from the Bible. Mobs of leftist protestors attacked Christian businesses and bakeries, trying to put them out of business because they would not sacrifice their convictions to political correctness; and there was no government protection. It was like getting a glimpse into what life under the Antichrist will be like in the last days. America, the nation that began for people seeking to worship without fear of repression, was becoming repressive, with states like Colorado engaging in what justices on the U.S. Supreme Court called religious persecution – it’s sad that it had to go all the way to the top court of the land to finally acknowledge that fact (the case was of a Christian baker who took the state to court because his business was shut down by the left because he would not bake a cake for a gay wedding, and instead of going to another baker, they picketed and destroyed his business, both through public destruction and through the consent of the civil authority in the state of Colorado).

Second, Evangelical Christians learned (and I hope they never forget) that if anyone on the political left (i.e., the Democrats) comes into the presidency or to any other executive position, there is a real risk of losing our freedoms to worship God without fear, to preach the Gospel and win souls to Jesus Christ. In the name of political correctness and “good intentions,” we would be taxed to hell because of one ridiculous scheme after another as politicians who should know better prostitute themselves to leftist’s ideologies and programs. This was no idle threat. A few years ago, the previous mayor of Houston tried to pass the “bathroom bill” that would make all public bathrooms in the city unisex. Only God knows why the mayor decided to make this her crusade, possibly because she was looking to make a splash for herself never to be forgotten. The proposition was completely defeated by the voters but the angry mayor decided to subpoena the sermons of prominent pastors in the city of Houston so that they could be taken to court for “hate crimes.” And this happened in the state of Texas.

President Donald Trump reached out to the Evangelicals. He did not call them “deplorable” or demean them as many in the Democrats did. I was amazed that he allowed them to pray for him, to stand with him. He was not ashamed of them, and they stood with him, and will continue to do so despite what Mr. Galli thinks. He appointed judges to the Supreme and federal district courts who have a respect for the Constitution. And the fears that we have about activist judges and legislation that threatens our freedom have, for the moment, been allayed. But just when we thought everything has settled down, we got a look at the actions of all the Democrats in the House of Representatives and the Senate (and some Republicans) and their actions for the last three years. The corruption, the subversion, all in the name of “love for the country” (a quote from Nancy Pelosi). No President has ever faced this much hatred, and despite it all, the successes he achieved have been extraordinary.

Coming back to Mr. Galli and his diatribe, perhaps he should read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to understanding the meaning of the word of “immoral.” Or perhaps he should read the recent pro-abortion legislation in the states of New York and Virginia and decide if that is immoral. Or maybe he should look back to the several situations and cases that are mentioned in this article about the years preceding and find out if those acts were immoral.

It has been said, the difference between a “whistle-blower” and a “traitor” is a matter of perspective; perhaps it would be good for Mr. Galli to check his perspective. I believe after all of this, the rationale is more prosaic. Mr. Galli and Christianity Today need President Donald Trump for the same reason that the New York Times, Washington Post, and the rest of the slanted, hate-filled, supposedly fact-oriented but truth-free press which ultimately becomes Fake News, need him – he makes good copy, sells papers, and attracts more customers! Be honest and send him a thank you note!