Evangelical leaders defended Trump by recasting the tape as trivial compared to Clinton

Evidence

Other evangelical leaders were steadier, finding ways to diminish or dismiss concerns from the start. Ralph Reed, head of Trump’s religious advisory board, admitted that as the father of two daughters he was “disappointed by the ‘inappropriate’ comments,” but Clinton was still worse. He surmised that “a 10-year-old tape of a private conversation with a TV talk show host” ranked “pretty low” on faith voters’ hierarchy of concerns. Franklin Graham acknowledged that Trump’s “crude comments” from “more than 11 years ago” could not be defended, but then again neither could “the godless progressive agenda” of Clinton and Obama. Eric Metaxas tweeted out his initial response: “BREAKING: Trump caught using foul language, combing his hair oddly.” He later deleted the tweet, agreeing that the comments were “ugly stuff,” but he did not rescind his support. David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network offered another line of defense: “This just in: Donald Trump is a flawed man! WE ALL sin every single day. What if we had a ‘hot mic’ around each one of us all the time?” Robert Jeffress acknowledged that Trump’s comments were “lewd, offensive, and indefensible,” but they still weren’t enough to make him vote for Clinton. Sure, he might not pick Trump for a Sunday school teacher, but that wasn’t the point. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 597

Categorization

• XREF: Direct evidence for the central continuity-not-hypocrisy thesis: the defense strategies here (flawed-man framing, relative-evil calculus, Clinton as worse) are the same rhetorical moves throughout the book. — connects to: Evangelical leaders defended Trump’s moral scandals as a political trade-off for cultural power. — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 230