Sadly, one of the reasons Donald Trump is president is because evangelical Christians, charismatic Christians, and conservative Roman Catholics got behind him because of their pro-life cause.
I say sadly for a number of reasons, but mainly for me personally, because my father, Dr. Francis Schaeffer, the evangelical preeminent leader in the 1970s and 80s, is the reason that evangelicals joined the anti-abortion movement. Before that, it was mostly a Catholic effort. Individual states were legalizing abortion. Some were not. But it was not the litmus test that my dad, and sadly I, by directing the film series Whatever Happened to the Human Race with Dad and C. Everett Koop, turned into a litmus test that then became the issue around which evangelicals gathered, at first, to elect Donald Trump. And this was before the MAGA movement was even a thing.
Fast forward to the present tense. If there is one thing Donald Trump does consistently, it is trash every single thing he touches.
He has trashed our country. We are now a divided country. A small MAGA movement clings on by its fingernails to the myth that Trump is a great president. The rest of us are giving him the lowest poll numbers he has ever had.
Sometimes a small event shows a larger trend in clear relief. We saw that when ICE shot a woman, a mother of three, in the face and then lied about why they did it. We saw that when they gunned down a veteran’s nurse and then lied about what they did. We see it in the appointment of all these feckless nothings to high office, in Trump’s revenge on America for not taking him seriously.
We see this in the lies they tell. No one is more feckless or less endowed with either skill or qualifications than Kash Patel, the head of the FBI, who at your and my expense took a government plane and went to Milan, Italy, so he could party with our Olympic team.
Here is an example of Trump trashing all he touches.
I watched a lot of the Olympics. I was so proud of Mikaela Shiffrin. I was so proud of our women’s hockey team. I was proud of our skiers and the sliders. And I was proud of the athletes of other countries too, because I, like most Americans, admire athletes wherever they are from.
What a disappointment when Donald Trump called the locker room to congratulate the team and could not avoid mocking the U.S. women hockey players who had defeated Canada by grumbling and saying that he guessed if he invited the men’s hockey team to the White House, he would have to invite the women too.
Now that is disgusting from anyone. It deserves a slap down by our country. But when the person mocking women and belittling them has not managed to have one consistent relationship with any woman he has married, when he is credibly accused of molesting 28 women and raping several as well, when his name appears over and over connected to Jeffrey Epstein, an international rapist who trafficked underage girls to his friends, it has a whole different flavor.
Did they compare stories on underage girls they had molested on Epstein’s plane or on his island. Did they joke about it the same way Trump jokes about having to invite the women’s team too.
When someone credibly accused of rape jokes about women, when someone accused of molesting women jokes about women, when someone who cannot maintain a relationship that requires fidelity jokes about women, it lands differently.
It has the same flavor as Elon Musk, his good buddy, who sues the women he impregnates if they do not do what he says. It has the same flavor as someone who attacks governments that try to protect children and women online.
When this rabble of Epstein travelers gets together to joke about women, it has a whole different flavor.
The very fact that Trump ruined what should have been a lovely Olympic moment is part of what I am talking about. This is what happens when the scum boils to the top of the village pond. This is what happens when the sewage system is overloaded and pours raw sewage into the ocean. That is what this administration represents.
If you, like me, are just tired of this, we have to take every opportunity to call it out. Naked, disgusting misogyny carried on by people who in other spheres are accused of trafficking young girls and then redact the names of their friends from the files while leaving the names of the girls in.
How did Jeffrey Epstein die? That is still an open question.
My friend Andrew Lownie, whom I interviewed on my podcast, wrote a book that did more than anything else to bring down Prince Andrew and show the royal family for what it is. Millions were paid to try to cover tracks.
The same girls Epstein trafficked to billionaires are the ones whose names remain exposed.
And while this elite circle protects itself, Trump mocks women athletes.
Meanwhile Kash Patel swigs beer at government expense in what feels like the most corrupt of regimes. Billions made by Trump and his family while in office. Payoffs. Free planes. Gifts.
Enough is enough.
The real state of the union is that we are in the hands of a con artist accused of rape.
We are in the hands of someone who uses a presidential call that should unite us to single women out for belittlement.
My son served in the United States Marine Corps with honor and fought in Afghanistan at the beginning of that war and in Iraq. I knew George W. Bush personally. I have handwritten notes from him and from his parents. I had a close connection with the Republican Party through my youth and through working with my father in big time evangelicalism.
Been there. Done that.
But the stench coming from the White House now, the stench rising above Washington, the body odor of a corrupt presidency led by a man who mocks a women’s hockey team, is something else entirely.
It is the stench of misogyny. It is the stench of corruption. It is the stench of billionaires and connected white males who passed around young girls and now lecture the rest of us.
When a draft dodger prepares for war to distract us from his own scandals. When he says he may not obey the Supreme Court even after it granted him sweeping immunity. When institutions bend around personality instead of law.
Everything degrades.
A tiny fraction of Americans support this man. The polls show it. The cover is blown. We know who he is.
This is a misogynist. This is a failure. This is a man who trashes everything he touches.
