We are at a hard, cold place in America that has been fifty years in the making. In my youth, I was part of the project that brought us to this hard, cold place. I was part of the evangelical New Religious Right. That morphed into the Tea Party, that morphed into the MAGA movement, and that morphed into the Trump presidency.
I am standing in a winter landscape in New England, where I live, and this is a perfect place to talk about the fact that we have a president who, in his effort to cover up what he did with Jeffrey Epstein, and to cover up the fact that he has made a billion and a half dollars in the first year of his presidency for himself and his family, gives us one chaotic destruction after another as a distraction from who he really is.
His presidency is based on revenge and lies.
The chaos and the con artistry. The molesting of women. The criminality that has marked his entire life. And now he talks about going to war with our NATO partners over Greenland. He says that because he did not get a Nobel Prize, he wants Greenland. He claims that if he had gotten a Nobel Prize from Norway, everything would have been fine, when it has nothing to do with the Norwegian government. It is an independent committee.
It is like me saying that I did not get an Oscar, so I am going to war with the United States if I happen to be a foreign filmmaker.
Trump is like something out of the J.R.R. Tolkien books. He is too petty and venal to be Sauron of Mordor. He is more like Wormtongue. Or perhaps Gollum. Though that role fits JD Vance even better. Weeping, crying, sucking up, saying that someone who shot a woman in the face has absolute immunity. Backing everything Trump does, including wanting to steal Greenland, because he needs another distraction.
We are in a hard, cold place.
My family, the Schaeffer family, was part of the making of this. My father, Francis Schaeffer, through his anti-abortion work, primed the Religious Right to oppose the legalization of abortion. That opposition became a litmus test, and that litmus test helped put Trump in the White House.
A molester of women. A friend of Elon Musk, who has fourteen to sixteen children by six different women through in vitro fertilization, using the very embryo testing that so-called pro-lifers claim to oppose. Chinese billionaires with hundreds of children through American surrogates because our laws are so lax. A decadent group of people, like Prince Andrew, entangled with Jeffrey Epstein, with power, money, and sexual corruption.
And this is what evangelicals and so-called conservative voters put in power.
Now we are talking about making war on NATO, our allies, and going forth friendless into the world. Long after Trump is gone, our nation will not be trusted again for a hundred years. This is what he leaves behind.
And slithering behind him is JD Vance. JD Vance. This little Gollum figure from Tolkien, creeping around the edges looking for the ring of power. “My precious.” That JD Vance might be our next president.
We are in a hard, cold, dark place.
My son was a Marine. He fought in Afghanistan alongside Danish troops, Italian troops, Australian troops, and British Marines. Standing by his side.
And now we are going to war with them over part of the Arctic Circle, as a distraction created by a demented president, with JD Vance going along with it no matter what. Shoot a woman in the face? Fine. Absolute immunity. Go to war with NATO? “I never liked Europe in the first place.”
We have billionaire friends who have absorbed all the wrong lessons from Tolkien and science fiction, saying, “Count me in. I want to be lord and master. One ring to bind them all.”
There is no line left to cross. Republicans go along with everything. Again and again and again.
Attack Greenland. Kill our alliances. Is anyone going to object? The Supreme Court has not. The Supreme Court gave this man carte blanche. Do whatever you want. Absolute power. Absolute immunity.
Will Amy Coney Barrett ever say she is sorry? Will JD Vance ever draw a line? When children are dragged from their homes by their hair? When daycare centers are gunned down? When we attack Denmark?
We are in a hard, cold, dark place.
My family helped make this, and I am sorry. I have spent forty years warning about this moment. Saying that the evangelical far right is deranged and delusional and would lead us here.
Now we are led by Gollum and Wormtongue and Sauron, all with absolute immunity.
Resist.
