Ultimately, Daniels decided to tell a reporter about the affair during a telephone interview in 2011 because Trump — at the time a reality television star who had flirted with running for president in 2012 — had made comments criticizing people in the pornography business, the transcript said.
.. She is also quoted as saying she felt newly guilty about the encounter at the golf tournament after having a child.
“At the time, I didn’t think that much about it,” Daniels is quoted as saying. “But now that I have a baby that’s the same age that his was at the time. … I feel bad. It didn’t occur to me at the time.”
.. In an interview with the Associated Press in Jerusalem on Monday, Vice President Pence said he would not “comment on the latest baseless allegation against the president.”
A word too far? Some evangelicals may have reached the breaking point with Trump.
Trump is, however, very much what the religious right has long rejected. The moral majority from which modern evangelical political activists descend rose in response to the immorality of the 1960s and ’70s. Sensing that American norms and morals were quickly changing for the worse, Jerry Falwell Sr. and others rallied to push back against a culture embracing sex outside of marriage, pornography and licentiousness. So it is no small irony that Falwell’s son, Jerry Falwell Jr., helped rally many evangelicals to a man who embodies all the things Falwell Sr. stood against. Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, even posed with his wife in front of an old cover of Playboy that featured Donald Trump.
.. Scripture commands we care for the widows, the poor, the orphans and the refugees, but some of the president’s evangelical supporters are cheering on the government breaking apart families through immigration policies.
.. a large number of evangelicals have convinced themselves that their politics and faith are two separate things and they can champion a politician like Trump without it affecting their souls or salvation. They have rationalized their way into a bastardized version of Martin Luther’s two kingdoms theology.
.. These evangelical activists believe God has ordained the two governments and never the two shall meet, so what they do in politics has no bearing on the church or the advancement of God’s kingdom.
.. This will keep a solid base of shallow evangelicals for the president, but Trump won the electoral college by only 70,000 votes spread over three states, while losing the popular vote. There is a sizable though overlooked minority within evangelicalism, and they threaten not just the president’s power, but the GOP’s majority.
.. A subset of evangelicals are increasingly attracted to a Protestantism that derives from reformed theology. The GOP is risking losing some of these “reformed evangelicals.”
.. The party was supposed to be the party that championed the concerns of people of faith. Instead, it is a party that demands people of faith support a party ahead of their God.
.. The point is Trump believes people from these countries are undesirable immigrants. Many reformed evangelicals now have children from those countries, have funded missionaries to those countries, and consider citizens in those countries their partners in ministry and mission. Trump’s attack is an attack on their work to glorify God and care for their children. They believe all people regardless of nationality and background are made in God’s image and deserve honor and respect.
Evangelicals continue to apply moral relativism in dealing with Trump, but at what cost?
When MSNBC’s Alex Witt interviewed the Rev. Franklin Graham Saturday about many conservative Christians’ silence about the reports, the son of evangelical icon Billy Graham said, “I can promise you he is not President Perfect, and I don’t think I’ve seen a ‘President Perfect’ yet [ . . .] But I appreciate the fact that the president does have a concern for Christian values.”
.. When she asked: “Do you think with all of the evidence out there and the fact that this president has not always been entirely truthful about everything, do you think he’s telling the truth about this to begin with? Doesn’t he have a lot to lose by telling the truth about this affair?”
Graham replied: “I found the president to be truthful with me. And when he says he’s going to do something, he does it and that is what I appreciate about him. Now, did he have an affair with this woman? I have no clue. But I believe at 70 years of age the president is a much different person today than he was four years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago whatever. We just have to give the man the benefit of the doubt. But we just have to think of our country. We’ve got to move this country forward.”
.. For a group of people who regularly view themselves as soldiers in a culture war, there is some belief that evangelicals could wind up losing the overall fight for moral authority over the country and the world.
.. “At the Family Research Council’s recent Values Voter Summit, the religious right effectively declared its conversion to Trumpism.
.. Who would now identify conservative Christian political engagement with the pursuit of the common good? Rather, the religious right is an interest group seeking preference and advancement from a strongman — and rewarding him with loyal acceptance of his priorities. The prophets have become clients. The priests have become acolytes.”
Now on Stage, Stormy Daniels: A Strip Club and a Presidency Meet After Dark
GREENVILLE, S.C
.. Better known as 38-year-old Stephanie Clifford to some offstage, the headliner was setting off on what is being called the “Making America Horny Again Tour,” capitalizing on her spin through a Trump news cycle.
.. . Suzanne Coe, 52, a local pub owner, hoped Ms. Clifford might sign her copy of “Fire and Fury,” by Michael Wolff
.. “HE SAW HER LIVE,” an ad for the event read, using the same image. “YOU CAN TOO!”
.. Ms. Clifford, who said she had not danced since the summer
.. “Imagine coming back when you’re the most insecure,” she said of her return. “It’s the only time I’ve ever gone onstage and was actually scared.”