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Feb. 26, 2021 - Straight White American Jesus
08:42
Weekly Roundup: Trump is Still King of the GOP

At CPAC this week, there is a golden calf, um, statue of Trump making the rounds. Brad and Dan explore how this emblematizes Trump's continuing reign over the GOP. A majority of Republicans view him as a true patriot. Almost half say they would defect if he started a new party. Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan say Trump is the figurehead of the GOP and will be for the indefinite future. This means, we believe, that the type of violence seen on 1/6 will happen again.  In the second segment we discuss the GOP's and Religious Right's attacks on trans people. This week Marjorie Taylor Greene posted a sign outsider her window proclaiming there are two genders--male and female. Dan breaks down the pseudo-science behind this claim and why it has insidious effects on our public square. Brad links it to other pseudo-scientific movements in American history--most notably eugenics.  We finish by talking about why the term Judeo-Christian is propaganda for Christian nationalists.  Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC Order Brad's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-War-Extremist-Christian-Nationalism/dp/1506482163 SWAJ Apparel is here! https://straight-white-american-jesus.creator-spring.com/listing/not-today-uncle-ron To Donate: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/BradleyOnishi Venmo: @straightwhitejc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
Axis Mundi.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus, hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
I'm Brad Onishi, faculty in religion, Skidmore College.
Here with my co-host.
I'm Dan Miller, Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
It's nice to see you, Brad.
As always, I think we're both a little bit exhausted at this point, but glad to be talking and get a chance to talk to everybody else out there.
Yeah, me too.
I'm feeling pretty tired.
I know everyone is.
I think people are hitting a wall pandemic-wise, and I know for us in the school academic space, March and April can be tough months.
But nonetheless, there's a lot to talk about today, and a lot going on, and I want to start today, Dan, with CPAC.
CPAC is happening this week.
CPAC is the Conservative Political Action Conference, and it is notable for a number of reasons.
I know some of you out there are thinking, hey, why is there so much coverage of CPAC?
Why don't we leave it alone, or why don't we cover Progressive conferences and meetings more extensively like we do CPAC.
And I get that.
And I'm not trying to highlight things that don't deserve it.
But I do think for the purposes of our show, there's some things that have happened this week that are really important.
So Dan, I'll start with this.
Yesterday, many people on social media noticed that there is a huge golden Trump statue or icon at CPAC.
It was being rolled through the lobby.
And the inevitable biblical comparisons emerged, the most notable one being that of the golden calf.
So, you know, there's this episode when Moses is on top of the mountain meeting with God, Yahweh, and Aaron and the other leaders don't trust Moses and his commandments.
And so they and the other Israelites go off and worship a golden calf, right?
And this is one of the first instances in Israelite history of idolatry.
And I think idolatry is actually a pretty good term here.
Now, idolatry in itself is not bad, of course, but in a Christian context, idolatry is frowned upon, to say the least.
And so to have a golden statue of Trump rolling through the lobby here of this conference really speaks to where we're at, in my opinion.
And so the first thing I want to say today is we are at a place where the Republican Party continues to belong to Donald Trump, Dan.
And I'm going to link this to what happened on 1-6 in a minute, but there are numbers out that really back this up.
So this week from PRRI, we have this.
Recent PRRI polling shows that the vast majority of Republicans in the general public remain generally faithful to Trump.
Although Trump's favorability ratings among Republicans dipped in the aftermath of the January 6 events, The vast majority of Republicans agree that Trump is a true patriot, with a narrow majority completely agreeing with that statement.
So 75%, to be precise, agree that Trump is a true patriot.
Additionally, nearly two-thirds of Republicans agreed just before the inauguration of Joe Biden that when President Trump leaves office, America as we know it will be over.
So two-thirds of Republicans believe, Dan, that once Trump left office, America as they know it will be over.
So we've got a situation where 72 percent, I'm sorry, excuse me, 75 percent agree that Trump is a true patriot and nearly two-thirds of Republicans believe that once he left, the country has been changed forever.
We also have this coming out from Suffolk University slash USA Today.
By double digits, 46 percent to 27 percent, those surveys said that they would abandon the GOP and join the Trump party if the former president decided to create one.
The rest are undecided.
We feel like Republicans don't fight enough for us, and we all see Donald Trump fighting for us as hard as he can every single day.
Brendan Keitel, 27, a Republican and small business owner from Milwaukee, says in an interview after being polled.
But then you have establishment Republicans who just agree with establishment Democrats and everything, and they don't ever push back.
So Dan, we have numbers to support the idea that the Republican Party remains the Trump Party, okay?
We also have folks like Jim Jordan, who tweeted out this week that the Republican Party leader, the figurehead of the GOP, is Donald Trump.
Kevin McCarthy, when asked by the media this week, said that he believes Trump should be the figurehead of the Republican Party.
Liz Cheney did not agree with that statement.
But again, we have the minority leader of the House coming out and saying, Donald Trump is our leader.
All right?
Now, this is also evidenced in the ways that some things are happening with people who used to be in the Trump administration or sort of Trump-aligned.
And so we learned some things about what Stephen Miller is up to in recent weeks.
Do you want to maybe take us through what...
Stephen Miller has been up to in the coming weeks.
I mean, has he been banished, Dan?
I mean, has he, the white nationalist, been excised from our politics as the GOP-recognized Stephen Miller?
This guy's a poison pill.
We can't have guys like this around.
He's creating xenophobia.
We don't want to be that kind of party.
Is that where we're at?
Yeah, that's exactly where we're at.
They've turned their back on Stephen Miller and don't like him anymore.
No, I've got so many thoughts about all of this.
On Stephen Miller, the most notable thing is he was basically brought in to sort of brief and more or less kind of train GOP Congress people, members of Congress, about opposition to the immigration reform bills and things being put forward by the Biden administration.
Reform bills and also executive orders and so forth.
Thorny issue of Democrats now using executive orders because you've had, you know, years of Trump using them and so on.
But no, so like his xenophobia, he is the kind of the white nationalist of the Trump administration, right?
Like they're all kind of white nationalistic.
He's a straight up hardcore white nationalist.
That notion that you talked about with those surveys of people who feel like America as they know it is over, he's one of those.
And he's very well aware.
He's aware that until the 1960s, U.S.
immigration law effectively sought to maintain America as a white Christian nation.
That was an explicit part of lots and lots of immigration laws up to that time.
He's very well aware that since the 60s, when quotas were taken away and things like that, we have become a more diverse, more pluralistic, Uh, for my money, richer country for it.
And so for him, he's like them.
He thinks it's the end of America as he wants to know it.
The America where a Stephen Miller is mainstream and is a real American and all, uh, all, all those people that are brown and black and other shades of off white, um, aren't real Americans.
And so, yeah, he's, he's not banished.
He's, as you say, he's now front and center.
Uh, kind of offering trainings, uh, very much in line with this notion that, um, the loser president is also the figurehead of the party according to, uh, party leadership.
I'll just add to that, you know, Mitch McConnell was asked if Trump won the, uh, the nomination in 2024, would he support him?
He said he would absolutely support him.
So it goes across the board.
So yeah, that's where we're at with Trump and white nationalism and Stephen Miller at present.
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