Rightly Judging the Trump Administration

On the Hot Takes on his first few months in office

Photo by Natilyn Hicks Photography on Unsplash

A couple of tweets about the current administration came to my attention last week that struck me as misguided (at best). The first was by Megan Basham and reads: “Some day, the men leading so many well-known evangelical institutions and publications are going to pretend that they supported Trump all along, because by then he will be as revered among conservatives as Reagan or Thatcher.” Now, everyone is entitled to their own prognostications. I’ve tried (since 2016) to avoid making my own in public because of the tendency of history to unfold in unpredictable ways that result in me eating crow. But Basham’s statement is remarkable not only in its glowing comparison of Trump with Reagan and Thatcher, but in its cynicism about the virtue of leading evangelical figures.

Remember this is the same Donald Trump who sidelined the Pro-Life movement in the RNC’s platform, insisting that abortion is a states issue, but who forced insurance companies to cover IVF (which is opposed by many Pro-Life advocates) by executive order. Now, it seems plausible to me that he will defund Planned Parenthood (The ERLC has a campaign running right now advocating for this!) since he’s defunding lots of programs, which would be wonderful, but time will tell. In addition, the war in Ukraine has no clear end in sight (despite Trump promising to end it 24 hours), with the President cutting off vital intel to Ukraine one day, which cruelly put civilians at risk of Russian bombardment, and then getting mad at the Russians for taking advantage of the intel cutoff the next day. The trade war is a ridiculous back-and-forth that is dizzying to keep up with, no one seems to know exactly how efficient “DOGE” is, he’s made indications that he’d prefer to rule more like an emperor than a president, and people are at risk of dying because we have suddenly cut off aid to programs like PEPFAR (for a first-hand account of the value of PEPFAR, see here). My point here is that we don’t know what will happen yet. It’s awfully early to be crowning Trump among the greatest conservative presidents in history. And it’s grossly cynical to be crowning Trump while imagining evangelical leaders lying about their support of him in the future. I’d go so far as to say that such cynicism is perverse.