For more than a century, white evangelicals have been unsettled and infuriated by what they view as the nation’s subversion—not by forces outside the nation’s borders, but those within its most powerful institutions. These actors have corrupted and secularized one sector after another, evangelicals argue, especially universities, public schools, and the federal government.
.. Indeed, his ideas about communists were secondary to the conviction that the threat isn’t primarily from outside U.S. borders, but from forces within the country, working stealthily to fundamentally transform the nation.
.. The candidates were mostly sitting and former governors and U.S. senators. They were also, from the perspective of some white evangelical voters, complicit in a corrupt system whose leaders have promised much but delivered little.
.. But for evangelicals, the disappointment is double barreled. The hollowing out of the middle class and the plight of the poor are inseparable from what they perceive as the moral rot of the nation and the political establishment.
.. But the greatest threat comes from the betrayal that lurks within the treasonous, godless heart of the political establishment itself—and that’s why they have largely supported the anti-establishment, billionaire businessman Trump.
Donald Trump, the Great Betrayer
For months Trump’s rivals and other Republicans have either retreated in silence or tentatively and ineptly criticized him for exactly those traits that voters like about him: for being a slapdash, politically incorrect money-hungry bully.
.. Internal Trump University documents suggest that the university wasn’t really oriented around teaching, but rather around luring customers into buying more and more courses.
.. In 2008 a New York State Supreme Court judge ordered Trump Mortgage to pay her the $298,274 she was owed. The bill wasn’t paid. “The company was set up in a way that we could never recover what we were owed,” she told The Washington Post.
.. The betrayal of investors when his casino businesses went bankrupt. The betrayal of his first wife with his flagrant public affair with Marla Maples. The betrayal of American workers when he decided to hire illegals. The people left in the wake of other debacles: Trump Air, Trump Vodka, Trump Financial, etc.