Dan begins this episode with by discussing new polling that reveals how GOP voters see Trump as person of faith. This leads to an investigation into the endlessly growing web of new conspiracies that are now part of conservative religious identity on the American Right. This leads to a discussion of anti-vaxxing getting real funding in government programs, it's role in GOP primary. Dan then touches briefly on the AL and FL redistricting fights.
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Mundy Axis Mundy I am your host, Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College, flying solo today.
My co-host, Brad Onishi, pleased to announce that he and his partner did have their second child this week.
He's posted that on Facebook.
People can go and look at that.
So, congratulations to him.
I'm a bit upset.
I was told, he said in our last Weekly Roundup, that he was going to name this child Daniel Miller Onishi, and I have on good authority directly from him that that's not what he did.
So, you know, Brad and I will be working to mend our relationship over the next few weeks, kind of behind the scenes.
I don't anticipate that it should disrupt what we do too much, but I'm Little hurt by that, but, you know, still glad that he had a little baby, even if he did not name that child Daniel Miller Onishi.
So, in all seriousness, pleased to be with you.
Congratulations to Brad.
He's going to take some time, be with the family.
So, as I say, I'm flying solo today on the Weekly Roundup.
Doing audio only.
Apologize to those who would rather watch it on YouTube.
I had some technical difficulties that I was trying to sort out and I just didn't get them sorted out in time to figure out what I needed to do for that.
So, hopefully we'll rectify that in the future.
As always, I want to thank all of you for listening.
I want to thank the people who support us and all the different ways that you do that.
You can reach me, Daniel Miller Swag, danielmillerswaj at gmail.com.
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Can't do it without you.
We are self-funded.
We depend upon you.
So thank you for all that you do, and especially to our patrons.
And if you're in a position that you could throw some financial support our way, we could use it always.
And we just ask that you might consider doing that.
Certainly, tell the people in your life about the podcast.
We need as many listeners as we can get.
So thank you all.
I want to dive in today.
One look at a number of different issues that I think link together in sort of complex ways.
And for me, the framework for this really has to do with this notion of a certain kind of religious identity and conspiracism and the way that this codes or influences so much of what we see going on sort of in the news at present.
I want to talk about a few issues that I think relate to this, pick up one or two kind of stray items as we get to the end of the time today, and then, you know, go into what I think is a good reason for hope, or what I hope is a reason for hope.
The first thing I want to look at is there was a new poll that came out Excuse me, that found that, and this won't be a surprise on one hand, but it's still worth talking about, that a majority, it was more than half, I think it was 53% of Republicans see Trump as a person of faith, okay?
And that was ahead of what an article I was reading described as more vocally religious figures.
That's a good way of phrasing it.
In other words, the percentage of Republicans who view Trump as a person of faith was higher than the percentage who view Mike Pence that way.
That was a very close second.
Or Mitt Romney or sort of on down the list.
Democrats, not surprisingly, were most likely to pick Biden as a person of faith as opposed to Trump.
Biden, as most folks know, long time observing Catholic, attends mass and so on and so forth.
Independents were most likely to pick Romney.
Again, Romney's not a surprising pick.
He's a Mormon.
This is a well-known fact.
This is part of that quote-unquote more vocally religious figures.
The reason I bring this up is that once upon a time, if you go back and listen to probably our very first episode, certainly our first few episodes, part of what led to the formation of this podcast was work that I was doing and was talking with Brad about.
Exploring what at the time was surprising to me, which was the overwhelming evangelical support for Donald Trump in the 2016 election.
Okay?
The numbers are well known.
There's something like 81% of white evangelicals supported Trump and so forth.
And I wanted to try to explain that because it didn't make sense to me.
It didn't make sense how this guy who Didn't really pass the smell test as a Christian.
He couldn't talk the language.
He was immoral, swears like a sailor.
He, you know, in terms of politics, he had once upon a time supported abortion rights.
He bragged about, you know, sleeping with porn stars.
He bragged about sexual assault and so forth.
And at the time, I was really surprised.
I wanted to try to understand why did all these evangelicals Support him, the same evangelicals who had, you know, decried Bill Clinton because of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and had insisted in the context of George W. Bush that, you know, you needed a person of good moral character to be president and so forth.
All of that, all the way back at the origins.
Since then, it's just a fact that Trump has won this massive support from evangelicals And it is no surprise that now, at this point in time, when the GOP is polled, a majority of them see Trump as a person of faith.
And we've even seen the shift in the GOP from a kind of begrudging acceptance of Trump as a political or religious figure to a very exuberant accept of him, the almost messianic tones that are used about Trump.
So we now know that the GOP views Trump as a leading person of faith.
And I think the question is, the interesting question is, why?
Trump still, to this day, does not exhibit personal faith, right?
But what he says, he said this in a post, I think a social media post this week, he says that he has fought harder for Christians than anyone else ever has.
And he brags about stacking SCOTUS, the Supreme Court, and overturning Roe v. Wade.
And those are true things.
We've talked about that a lot on this show, that Roe v. Wade and being anti-abortion for many Republicans is the issue.
It's the only issue.
So certainly he attacked political issues that mattered to religious conservatives.
He also tapped into, and I've talked about this a lot, written about this, he tapped into pre-existing Christian nationalism.
Trump did not invent Christian nationalism.
I'm going to keep saying that because I keep reading things and running into people who seem to think that Trump invented this out of whole cloth.
He didn't.
It was already there.
It was already just beneath the surface.
It was at the surface for those of us, you know, with the eyes to see it.
He tapped into that.
And so it's no surprise in a certain sense.
But there are still people who I think have confusion about this, and I think there is still a dismissal of this view that wants to say, well, yes, the majority of GOP people will say that he's a Christian because it's not really about Christianity, it's about politics, or it's about power.
There is still, I think, this reluctance to come to terms with the fact That millions of American Christians, as they understand and experience Christianity, identify Donald Trump as one of their own, as a person of faith.
I talk to people who say this.
I hear from students who say this.
I think a lot of journalists still talk this way.
Some scholars continue to think of religion in a way that can't incorporate this.
And I think this is the mistake, because this is what people will say, and I kind of set it up this way.
Well, they say he's a person of faith, but he doesn't go to church, and he doesn't talk about his faith, and he doesn't profess personal beliefs, and he doesn't quote the Bible.
And so there are those who want to say, well, when people say he's a person of faith, there's got to be something besides religion at work here.
And I want to humbly suggest, as I have a number of times, that that analysis is backwards.
What we need to understand is, if millions of American Christians identify somebody who doesn't reflect the kind of personal piety that we might think of as quote-unquote Christian, and yet they identify this person as A person of faith, it means that we need to work better to understand what it means to be a Christian, what religious identity might be.
And this is the key, because all those people who are confused about this, they tend to think of religion or religious identity in terms of belief and personal piety and certain practices and so forth, like going to church or praying or whatever.
And what they still fail to understand is that for many Americans, being Christian is tied in with a certain conception of American identity.
You can't be a real American if you're not Christian, and you can't be a real Christian if you're not a quote-unquote real American.
And that real America piece is all tied in with the nationalistic stuff we talk about all the time.
So for them to support their view of America makes one a Christian.
So when Trump taps into This Christian nationalist streak, when Trump goes after abortion, when Trump stacks the Supreme Court intentionally with conservative justices, all of these, for millions of people, are Christian acts.
Folks, they are as Christian, I would argue for some of these people, more Christian than if he reads the Bible or goes to church or whatever.
I think a lot of those people, if you sat down with them over a beer or maybe a coffee, if they don't drink beer, And said, tell me what Trump has done.
Help me understand why you think Trump's a Christian.
They will say he supports border security.
He built the fence.
He got rid of Roe v. Wade.
He did these things for them.
These are Christian acts.
And I think for them they matter more if they say, you know, so what if he doesn't go to church all the time?
I miss church sometimes.
So what if he doesn't read the Bible as much as he should?
I mean, who does?
What good Christian could honestly say they spend as much time reading the Word as they should or whatever?
What matters to them is those Actions, okay?
So why am I hammering on this?
I'm hammering on this because, number one, that was the poll finding.
A majority of Republicans view Trump as not just a person of faith, but as the GOP candidate who is the most faithful, the most Christian candidate.
Again, Pence was very, very close behind.
No surprise about Pence, but Trump can be.
But the other thing I want to hammer at this Again, is that we need to stop dismissing this as not quote-unquote really being about religion and understand that religion is more complex than we, big we here, lots of regular people but lots of scholars like me, lots of journalists, lots of people who study religion.
Religion is bigger and more complex than we have given it credit for and we have to understand Trump as a religious figure If for no other reason than millions of religious Americans view him to be such and respond to him as such and this shapes their political thinking and their social perception and their political perception.
Why does that matter?
It matters because for me it serves as an important kind of interpretive lens for a number of news events this week and for making sense of those and for the takeaways that I draw about those.
And so I want to dive into some of these, right?
So I want everybody to just take this idea we have to understand Trump as a Christian figure, if for no other reason than lots of people understand Trump as a Christian figure.
Hold that in your back pocket for a minute.
And I want to turn to conspiracy theory.
Another thing we talk about a lot, conspiracism, very much a part of our contemporary social and political landscape.
But I was reading this week about kind of an offshoot, it's a QAnon offshoot conspiracy theory focusing on, wait for it, Trump.
And there was an article in CNN about this, and this is how it opened.
And this is, I'm quoting from the article here, it said, quote, now the family tree goes like this, the man on the tape extolled confidently.
John John and Trump are cousins, and Trump's uncle is JFK Sr., and Joe Kennedy, who is also not dead, and Trump's father is General George Patton, and his brother is Mussolini.
It opens with an excerpt from a radio or podcast episode talking about Trump's kind of family tree.
And it's quoting a woman named Colleen Protzman, whose son, Michael Protzman, is the one promulgating this conspiracy theory.
And I'll just go through it again, right?
John John, that is Kennedy, John John Kennedy and Trump are cousins.
John F. Kennedy, JFK Sr.
is Trump's uncle.
Joe Kennedy is not only alive, but is related to Trump.
And Trump's father is General George Patton.
His brother is Mussolini.
So you see here this weird family tree that is hearkening to, on the one hand, the Kennedys, who are still alive and are Trump's immediate relatives, as well as to the fascist leader Mussolini, who is apparently Trump's brother, and George S. Patton, General Patton, who is, you know, sort of an American hero and all of this sort of stuff.
All this is being wrapped up as part of Trump's Family tree.
What's the point here?
The point is that what this is quoting from is a kind of QAnon offshoot that believes that JFK Jr., John F. Kennedy Jr., is alive.
Remember, he died in a private aircraft crash, that he is alive and working with Trump, has been working with Trump, was working with Trump while he was president to save America from a cabal of sort of deep state operatives.
Sounds crazy.
We've talked about QAnon before, we've talked about the conspiracies before, but they become more and more mainstream.
This one, on November 2nd of 2021, so a couple years ago, Hundreds of people met on the grassy knoll in response to this conspiracy theory.
And why were they there?
They were there because they expected JFK Jr.
to show up to reveal that his parents were still alive, John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy, that they were still alive and to reveal their support for Trump and so forth.
Obviously, JFK Jr.
didn't show up.
Some people were disillusioned by this, but other people hung around, it goes on to detail, stayed in the area for months waiting for JFK Jr.
to show up, okay?
Here's the question, why the draw?
Why the conspiracist draw?
And with this one, why so connected to Trump?
I mean, on one hand, you have these kind of democratic, liberal, you know, sort of heroes in the liberal pantheon, the Kennedys, who are being attached to Trump.
Why the connection?
Here's my first point, okay, about the draw.
I mean, the connection is clear.
It's trying to take sort of Broad American heroes and tie them all to Trump, whether that's Patton, whether that's Kennedy, sort of big names.
But you can also see the hero worship here and how it works among the Christian nationalists when Mussolini is in there as well.
So you have Kennedy, Trump, Mussolini, George Patton, they're all sort of packaged together into this reality of fighting the deep state and everything else.
Okay, let's take that idea about Trump as a person of faith out of our back pocket.
Millions of American Christians believe Trump's a person of faith.
Lots of Americans, millions, follow QAnon or things like it or other kind of conspiracy theories.
We're going to talk about anti-vaxxing here in a few minutes or this conspiracy.
One of the things we have talked about on this podcast is that Christians, in my view, and the kinds of Christians, the same kinds of Christians who support Donald Trump, Are already predisposed to conspiracism.
Now, that's a controversial statement because it sounds like I'm just disparaging religion.
It sounds like I'm just saying religion is conspiracist and so forth.
I don't think I'm straightforwardly saying that.
But I will say that you have millions of American Christians who already believe that there are hidden forces constantly at work in the world.
That beyond the world that we see every day, there are hidden forces that are working for evil, there are hidden forces that are working for good, and that they can discern where these forces are active and who they are.
And so when a conspiracist comes along and says, there are hidden forces at work, and I can show you what they are, and I can show you how they are working for evil, and I can show you how they're working for good, good here being Donald Trump.
The GOP candidate that they believe is the most Christian candidate, it's no surprise, it should not be a surprise that those same people who believe Trump is a good Christian are also predisposed to believe in conspiracies, right?
And here's a second point about conspiracies and conspiracism, and I mentioned this a few weeks ago, I think, a few episodes ago, but it's worth reiterating.
Conspiracies sort of stick, they grab hold, they have lasting power when those who hold to them feel that something sacred is being attacked.
In other words, if you want to spin a conspiracy and you want to convince somebody of it, Make it a conspiracy about how something that really matters to them, something that is sacred to them, something that matters to them more than anything else, it matters at the highest level.
Show them that that is somehow under attack or threat and give the account of the hidden forces that threaten or are attacking it.
And you have the ingredients for a conspiracy that will stick, right?
And here's a third thing about conspiracies, okay?
What conspiracies do, and this is broader, I think, than the answer about why specifically religious or Christian people might believe conspiracies.
But critics of religion, I'm not necessarily putting myself in this camp completely, but critics of religion would say the same point holds about religion.
And here it is.
Part of the draw of conspiracies is they give concrete explanations for complex realities that threaten us and are just beyond our individual control.
So if you're a, let's say you're a white working-class family, and you are just not doing well economically, and certainly not as well as your white working-class parents or grandparents did, It can be hard to understand why that is, and you've got to start talking about neoliberal economics, and you've got to start talking about politics, and you've got the fact that you have an economic model that's been in place for decades that you as an individual simply cannot change.
These things are hard to understand, they are abstract, they are big, they are beyond our control, they are sprawling, and it's just hard to believe, and it is so much easier to believe that the reason you're suffering is because there are too many brown people in the country.
The reason you're suffering is because Democrats don't care about American workers.
The reason you're suffering is we're no longer a Christian nation and God is condemning us.
What conspiracies do is they give concrete explanations for threatening realities beyond our control.
And we've talked about, Brad in particular has talked about, that in many forms of religion, that's what religion does.
It's not just that the world is a scary contingent place and things happen and some are in our control, but a lot are beyond our control.
It's that, again, there are hidden forces at work.
So you put all of this together, okay?
You put all this together and what I'm getting at is you have the contemporary GOP that not only views Donald Trump as the most Christian candidate, But is also predisposed to accept conspiracy theories.
Okay?
Predisposed to accept conspiracy theories.
Why does all that matter?
It matters because if you put it together, you get our contemporary situation where conspiracy theories and a certain kind of Christian conspiracism are potent forces In our political context.
Because, for example, what is the sacred thing that's under attack?
It's Donald Trump.
The most Christian candidate.
God's chosen candidate.
Which is why every time he is perceived as being under attack, instead of swaying his followers, it convinces them more and more and more of his Christian identity.
And conspiracism is so much a part of having to understand what we see going on around us all the time, every week.
Okay.
So one article this week about this, this sort of QAnon offshoot, for me, the relevance is it drew more people than you would think it did.
Why?
Because conspiracists and a certain kind of religious individual, there's a lot of overlap there.
It's no surprise that they accept conspiracism.
And those who believe that Trump is the most Christian candidate, those who believe that Trump is God's chosen vessel for riding the American ship, are going to be predisposed to accepting conspiracy theories about Donald Trump and about perceived attacks on him.
And we've seen this.
We've seen this with the Trump indictments, that the more evidence comes against him, the more it supposedly exonerates him.
It's just signs that this anointed figure is under attack.
This good Christian man is under attack by godless Godless secular forces.
We've seen this in responses to the January 6 attacks, that everything, all kinds of conspiracies about that, whether it's that it's really an Antifa action, a kind of black flag action, what have you.
Conspiracy theories that will do anything to exonerate the Christians who were involved in this, like Donald Trump.
But we also see it, this conspiracism linked together with a kind of Christian nationalist embrace of Trump coming together in other places.
And another one of the places that we see it is in contemporary anti-vaxxing.
Another article this week, Politico.
I invite you to take a look at Politico.
They had like a series of like five articles about anti-vaxxing and the significance of it in our contemporary political discourse.
Really interesting articles.
Not necessarily a lot new there if you listen to this show, but a lot of good stuff sort of pulling things together.
But one of the things they talked about this week is that anti-vaxxing has gone from being a very fringe kind of conspiracy belief to being mainstream.
And it is now a movement that is flush with cash and represents a significant political force.
We know that anti-vaccine goes back some time.
I've talked about this for a long time.
It did not originate among mainstream American religious conservatives.
I've talked about this.
I grew up in American evangelicalism and never encountered anti-vaccine.
It has not been a part of that tradition.
In my experience, this is more anecdotal, The anti-vaxxers I first encountered were mostly people on the kind of cultural left.
There were people who were into sort of holistic medicine, people who are critical of quote-unquote big pharma and, you know, capitalism and so on.
And somewhere it jumped the fire break and spread into the religious right.
But we know It's now, it has been for some time, a mainstream part of right-wing discourse.
And then we had COVID that just blew it up.
And it has become common.
It is no longer a fringe belief.
So you have COVID and all the anti-vaxxers suddenly, you know, there's fuel on the fire here.
Then Trump and the GOP jump on board, despite the fact that Trump was, you know, his administration was spearheading efforts to get a vaccine developed and so forth.
And what we have now is that money is now flowing freely into anti-vaxing non-profits that were once struggling for cash.
And what this does for me is, on one hand, it illustrates how mainstream anti-vax conspiracy theories have become, but it also further enables that mainstreaming.
Because now anti-vaxing non-profits, they can run ad campaigns.
They can put together TV commercials and radio spots and we, you know, regular people hear those and they're like, well, this can't be that crazy.
I'm hearing it on my sports radio station.
I'm hearing it on, you know, my music station right next to ads about, you know, erectile dysfunction medicines or, you know, mortgage companies or whatever else.
Things that regular people are busy thinking about and dealing with in their lives.
It's right there.
It becomes more mainstream and you get this kind of cycle where what was a fringe conspiracism now becomes mainstream.
It can extend its public reach.
You have these agencies now suing federal governments and other organizations.
They are now reaching out abroad.
And again, the political support feeds into this as well.
The politicians see that this is gaining steam.
They throw their support behind it.
Certainly, when they see that Donald Trump is throwing his support behind it, they really jump on board.
And then that adds further legitimacy and so forth.
And we've seen that still depressed vaccination and booster rates have led to more COVID-19 Deaths.
We see these effects.
We see it right now as a part of mainstream GOP arguments are talking about, you know, the threat of new mask mandates and vaccine requirements.
These issues became politicized during the pandemic.
We know this, right?
As a Republican issue, these are attacks on freedom and so forth.
But now the GOP drums up fears of renewed mask mandates, which nobody's calling for, renewed vaccine requirements, which nobody's calling for, and come along in the game mainstream.
And we see this.
And again, this surprises so many people.
I guess my theme for today, or one theme, are all the people who want to, you know, they want to fight this by throwing facts and data at it.
And the facts and data aren't the issue, right?
The identity is.
This is part of Christian identity in contemporary America.
Not all Christians, but the same Christians who believe that Donald Trump is the most Christian candidate, the same Christians who believe he's God's anointed figure to save America, are the same ones who oppose vaccines, vaccine development, vaccine mandates.
I said that conspiracies stick and gain ground and they attack something sacred.
Folks, there's nothing more sacred to Americans than quote-unquote freedom and liberty.
Words like that So, if you can pitch vaccine mandates, mask mandates, even vaccine development as an attack on freedom, and if your leading political figures who you identify as Christians say it's an attack on freedom, it's going to become a mainstream idea, and that is what we have seen.
So much so, as I say, you've got candidates running on this.
I mentioned this in Florida, the DeSantis administration actively trying to dissuade people from getting the new booster.
Let's take a break.
Be back in a minute.
Okay, so, connecting the dots here, people view Trump as a Christian, millions of Christians do, which means whatever Trump is into, and whatever the GOP that is beholden to Trump is into, people are going to put their stamp of approval on it if they view it as Christian, and millions do.
Prime ground for the development of conspiracism, and we see this every day with the mainstreaming of conspiracism, whether it's things that are still more fringe about Trump being related to the Kennedys and Mussolini and Patton, Or whether we see it with the ground that anti-vaxxing has gained in recent months and years.
The mainstreaming, we see the partisan effects of the anti-vaxxing.
I want to sit for just a minute with the significance of this.
Again, I'm looking at Politico here.
They had a poll that showed that before 2020, there was not much partisan difference on vaccination issues, right?
In other words, before the COVID pandemic, there was not much difference on views that somebody would have on vaccinations if they're Republican or Democratic.
Now we know, right, the shift to the present, Republicans are now less likely than either Democrats or Independents to affirm vaccines are safe for children.
And more GOP people now say that they care more about vaccine risks than those who care about their benefits.
Folks, that's mainstreaming.
And we know it is almost entirely partisan.
Somebody will come to me and say, explain to me what, like, what does the anti-vaxxing stuff have to do with Christian identity?
What does that have to do with going to church and praying and so forth?
My answer is like, it may not have anything to do with going to church and praying, but Christian identity is about more than that.
Christian identity in this country, for millions of Americans, for all those Christian nationalists, Christian identity and partisan identity are linked.
And Christian identity and Republican identity are rife with conspiracism.
And so anti-vaxxing, right now to me, probably one of the most prevalent and obvious conspiracy theories, is mainstream GOP policy at this point.
And why don't people give it up?
Why, when you sit down with Uncle Ron and you try to have a talk and you show data about vaccines and you say, hey, you know what?
I've had the vaccine.
I've been boosted a couple times.
I myself, I'm supposed to get my next booster today, right?
What is that?
The third booster, I think.
Nothing's happened.
Here's all the data.
There hasn't been these massive weird side effects that everybody was afraid of and things like that.
Why doesn't that seem to move the needle?
The reason is, folks, because once these things come linked together, once you have Christian identity linked with Trump, linked with conspiracism, linked with science denial and anti-vaxxing and everything else, you can't give up any part of that without threatening your Christian identity.
When you ask somebody to quote-unquote just look at the facts, For them, it's an existential threat because if those facts were true, to rethink their position on vaccines and anti-vaccine means they would be calling their faith into question.
That is why it's so hard to move the needle and that is why it remains such a potent issue coming into a 2024 election cycle where nobody's calling for vaccine mandates or mask mandates.
If there's any good news in this, I feel like we need some good news here as we talk about this.
It's such a partisan issue that that vaccine skepticism stuff is really only effective to the core GOP.
And we've seen that important figures like DeSantis, trying to gain traction in the GOP primary, has tried to make this an issue.
Hasn't moved the needle for him.
He's just not getting people who support him because of it.
If there's good news, it's that it is only a partisan issue, and it's really a GOP issue.
But the bad news is, it is such a partisan issue.
The mainstream GOP is a party not just of Christian nationalism, but of conspiracism and science skepticism, and all of that is wrapped up with the overwhelming support that we see Donald Trump continues to hold among those in the GOP.
Let's keep talking about this theme of conspiracies.
I said conspiracies stick when something sacred is attacked.
That's part of my interpretation of why it is that the response among so many in the GOP to all of Trump's indictments and charges and so forth is dismissal or even going further Where things are turned on their head and the fact that he is charged, the fact that he is indicted, that's the word I'm looking for, the fact that he is indicted is evidence somehow that he hasn't done anything, right?
That's the conspiracism at work, because he is the sacred thing that is being attacked.
And if you want to drive conspiracism, attack something sacred.
Create a class of enemies that are attacking something sacred and an account of how they're doing it behind the scenes, and that's what you have.
Why do I bring that up?
I bring it up because I'm looking ahead.
This week, there was a fraud ruling against Trump and his adult sons.
A huge court ruling against Trump.
A judge ruled in a summary judgment, ruled earlier this week, that Trump and his adult sons are in fact liable for fraud.
That they inflated the value of a number of his properties to get favorable loan terms, interest rates, and so on and so forth.
It's one of the lawsuits that has been going on against Trump in New York.
The judge rejected Trump's arguments that he did not inflate the value of his properties to get those favorable interests and so forth.
And the judge canceled the Trump Organization's business certification, right?
A receiver is going to be put in place.
Excuse me.
To quote, manage the disillusion, end quote, of the corporate entities in question.
It's unclear what that'll look like.
I think it's unclear if this is limited to New York, if it's going to affect Trump properties outside of New York, like say Mar-a-Lago, if Trump can just sort of relocate the corporate headquarters of companies outside of the state and so forth, right?
The trial is still scheduled to take place, but it's a trial to calculate financial penalties, not to determine guilt.
Trump has been found guilty of fraud.
Trump, of course, lashed out at the ruling as part of a sprawling witch hunt against him, okay?
But here's the point.
How will Trump supporters respond to this?
We know it is absolutely predictable.
They will say, As Trump just did.
It's part of a witch hunt.
It's part of a conspiracy to attack Trump.
Why will they defend Trump?
Why do they think that these conspiracies are all directed against Trump?
It is tied in for me with this datum, again, that a majority of Republicans view Trump as the most Christian presidential candidate.
CNN article on this noted—this is their term, so I want to give it to them—that this judgment represents an existential threat to Trump's financial empire, and I think that that's true.
And I think Trump is a huge threat to the country, I think he's a threat to the world, I think he's a threat to democracy, so I'm delighted about this judgment.
But it's unlikely, as we know, to cost him any GOP support.
It might even boost his support.
Why?
Because for millions of American Christians, for all those Christian nationalists who support him, Trump is the sacred thing that is under attack by a liberal and secular godless left.
And I think that we're going to see that this fraud finding falls right into that pattern.
Now, again, different game if we're talking about independence, certainly a different game if we're talking about Democrats.
Lots of findings have said that if Trump is actually found guilty of some of the things he's charged on, that this would hurt him in a general election.
I'll be interested in what the data shows about this moving forward, but among those in the GOP, expect more of the same.
It's going to be more about how this sprawling conspiracy that we've talked about before is aimed at Trump and the witch hunt and all of that sort of stuff.
That's what we're going to see, and again, it's a sign of the mainstreaming of conspiracism within the GOP and the mainstreaming of conspiracism within a broad segment of American Christians.
All right, let me step back from conspiracies.
They're driving me crazy again.
These are just the links I see between conspiracism in America, a certain kind of Christian identity in America, and politics in America.
And as it has been for so long now, Trump is the nexus of this.
Donald Trump, viewed as the most Christian candidate, As God's anointed sort of vessel for riding the American ship, as I say, which means that Trump, who himself spins the conspiracy theories, as we know, becomes the sacred object that these conspiracy theories must defend.
And we find the mainstream conspiracy theories about everything from JFK Jr.
and government plots to fake his death, To anti-vaxxing and how that becomes a potent mainstream political force, to denials of J6 and the significance of that, to celebrations of Trump's indictments as evidence that he's done nothing for which he should be indicted.
That's the Orwellian world we live in.
Those are the connections I see.
Always, danielmillerswedge at gmail.com.
Drop me a line.
I'd love to hear what you think about that.
I want to shift, though, to another topic.
As I said, trying to just draw together a couple threads of other things going on this week.
One of the things we've talked about in recent weeks were issues of gerrymandering, GOP gerrymandering.
And we've seen the GOP in recent weeks and months basically give the finger to courts that demand that they redraw gerrymandered district maps.
And the two that we've talked about in particular are the state of Alabama, which just basically ignored court orders, and the DeSantis administration in Florida, which, again, not only ignored a court order about redrawing their maps,
but the legislature in Florida did redraw their maps, sends it to the but the legislature in Florida did redraw their maps, sends it to the Republican legislature, mind you, redraws their map, sends it to DeSantis, who then rejects it and redraws another map, breaking up a majority black district and helping the GOP to OK?
Why do I bring all that up?
Because this week, the Supreme Court and state courts, right, in two separate cases, made it clear that they're serious about demands to dismantle these gerrymandered districts.
The first one, let's first look at Alabama that I mentioned just a minute ago.
It was ordered by a lower court to redraw its congressional districts, right?
Ignore that.
It goes to the Supreme Court in June.
This past June, SCOTUS in a 5-4 ruling reaffirmed that lower court order.
And then this week, the Supreme Court rejected an emergency bid from Alabama to not have to redraw their map, which is really the sort of final step here.
Alabama has no more recourse to do anything besides redrawing their maps.
So this sets the stage for a new congressional map in Alabama, right?
They've exhausted their legal options.
And again, we've talked about this in the past.
A lot of people were surprised pleasantly about that Supreme Court decision.
I think those of us who were surprised by that can only be glad that the Supreme Court sort of held firm on this.
And it was like a one-page or one-sentence response to Alabama telling them that they weren't going to step in and Alabama needs to redraw their map.
The second case, this one is from Florida.
We talked about DeSantis' administration rejecting this map, kind of forcing through his own map.
A Florida circuit judge, we talked about this on the show, a Florida circuit judge has already ruled that this violates the state constitution.
The Florida state constitution has language in it prohibiting gerrymandering and drawing maps for partisan purposes and so forth.
The administration has appealed that ruling.
But the administration has also been sued in federal court.
And so there were hearings that started this week and that.
So the DeSantis administration and the gerrymandering map in Florida is winding its way through Florida state courts.
But it's also, there's now a federal suit being brought against it.
And this week, Alex Kelly, Who is DeSantis' chief of staff, and was also sort of the chief architect of the map in question, was grilled by a three-judge panel, so one of the first hearings in this federal case, and it did not appear to go well for the DeSantis administration.
He, that is Kelly, faulted Florida Supreme Court rulings about gerrymandering.
And I'm just going to look forward.
This doesn't go well for you, right?
If you have a case, like if you're the DeSantis administration, and at the state level, you're trying to argue that you weren't involved in gerrymandering, and there's a good chance that this is eventually going to go to your state Supreme Court, making statements decrying the state Supreme Court and their rulings and saying that they were wrong and so forth, Not ingratiating yourself to the state Supreme Court.
In other words, it usually isn't going to work well for you when the time comes and you have to stand before the state Supreme Court.
So, fault of the Florida Supreme Court rulings.
He also made comments that appeared to contradict statements in his earlier depositions.
In other words, he'd earlier given sworn depositions about the process that was used and so forth.
He seemed to contradict those.
It'll be worth watching moving forward to see what happens with that.
Will that turn into perjury?
How's that going to play out?
But the point is, he was grilled, didn't seem to go well for him.
DeSantis has boasted on the campaign trail that the map helped the GOP retake the House last year.
In other words, DeSantis has said, That this implied that this is very intentional, this is very explicitly the aim, and has said that this map, this gerrymandered map, is what helped the GOP to retake the House.
I think he's right about that, by the way.
Now, in court, Kelly, representing the DeSantis administration, insisted that it was not drawn for, quote-unquote, partisan reasons.
Again, that would violate the Florida Constitution.
And he also insisted, implausibly in my view, he insisted that he had no idea that by breaking up the district held by Representative Al Lawson, we talked about this a few weeks ago, majority black district in Florida was broken up.
And what that did was increase the percentage of white voters in four other districts, and this is what helped to turn the House.
He insisted that he had no idea that that was going to happen when he broke up this district, right?
Now, remember, they were given a map by the Florida legislature That was already redrawn, that left Al Lawson's district as it was.
They then redid the map and intentionally broke up that district, a majority black district, increasing the white voters in other districts, and then say that they had no idea that that's what was going to happen.
It raises the question of why they did it in the first place, that that wasn't the aim.
The takeaway here for me is the DeSantis administration is on record as saying, or implying, at least, that this was intentional, that it had a partisan aim, that it helped turn the House, and so forth.
They're now being grilled in federal court.
It doesn't look good.
They've already had court rulings against them in circuit court.
My takeaway from this, why I think it's significant, is I think that it shows the courts are serious about this.
Efforts at gerrymandering are obvious here.
And this is, I think, a broader thing about the GOP since 2016, is they have just become, they've come out into the open more, they have become bolder in what they do, more brazen.
There's no need to hide what it is that you're doing, okay?
We see this here, and I think that some of that brazenness is coming back to haunt them as public statements are going to be used against them when they sit in court and try to deny what they've done.
So that was another article this week, another story that I think is worth noting.
Pause here for another break.
All right.
Welcome back.
Briefly, I'm going to wrap this up here with my reason for hope, but I want to talk about this for a couple minutes.
There was a GOP debate this week.
I haven't talked about it at all.
The reason is, frankly, that there's not that much to talk about.
Once again, Donald Trump skipped the debate.
Once again, he looks like the big debate winner for doing so.
The distance between him and anybody who's second in the GOP primary continues to be huge.
Uh, he has a huge lead and there's really nothing to gain from participating in the debate.
The debate was largely, uh, sort of, you know, just a messy affair and, you know, the candidates taking more shots at Trump than they had, more shots at Biden.
Uh, Nikki Haley, uh, comes out with the one-liner of the night, uh, telling, uh, Ramaswamy that, that basically she feels dumber, uh, after hearing the things that he says.
So that was the sort of zinger of the night.
Not a lot of substance, frankly, to talk about, but My reason for hope, and something that was impressive about this, if you follow the debate and the context around it, Ilia Calderon, an anchor with Univision, has come under fire from right-wing media in the context of the debate.
Why?
Why is she under fire from right-wing media?
I'll tell you why she's under fire.
Because she asked serious, probing questions of the GOP candidates during their debate.
For example, so here's a couple examples of Calderon's questions that she posed.
So she posed this question to DeSantis.
Quote, Florida's new black history curriculum says slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.
You have said slaves develop skills in spite of slavery, not because of it, but many are still hurt.
For the descendants of slaves, this is personal.
What is your message to them?
End quote.
In my mind, a brilliant question was, We've talked about these issues related to African American history.
We talked about the issue of, you know, this notion that the slaves learned valuable skills and so forth.
That was the question she posed to DeSantis.
To Pence, she posed this question, quote, The Department of Homeland Security warns that violence against LGBTQ plus people is on the rise and intensifying.
According to a recent study, members of that community are nine times more likely to be victims of violent hate crimes.
As president, how would you protect this community from violent attacks and discrimination?
End quote.
Again, to a guy who once upon a time in Indiana made national news before he was Vice President Pence, when he was Governor Pence, right, for spearheading what became at the time one of the most visible and kind of Robust quote-unquote religious freedom bills that allow discrimination against LGBTQ plus people.
So she posed hard questions.
They were respectfully stated, but they get at real issues.
They get at real things that these candidates have said and done.
They get at their record.
And she has been exhoriated on the right.
She has been criticized basically for refusing to give softball questions, which we know are typical of Fox moderators, the softball pitches across the plate.
And let's be fair, we've seen, you know, when CNN had its brilliant thing to do like a Trump Town Hall and get an audience full of Trump supporters, how effective that was.
She's been decried as asking, quote, liberal and leftist questions.
And so my reason for hope is that there was a debate moderator who went in and did what, in my view, a debate moderator should do.
Even in a GOP debate, I read commentary on this that said, I can't believe that the people heading the RNC let her ask these questions.
This sense that because it's a debate among GOP candidates, everything should be a GOP-friendly question.
Hats off to you, Ilya Calderon, for asking these questions the way that you asked these questions.
Folks, this is what we need.
We need real debates.
We need Candidates, all candidates, candidates on the right, candidates on the left, Republican candidates, Democratic candidates, they need to be forced to answer real questions.
They need to be forced to defend decisions they've made.
They need to be forced to explain policies they support.
So hats off to her for doing that.
That was my reason for hope is that there was a moderator who did this.
I hope looking forward to debates that matter because I don't care about the GOP debates at all.
What I will care about is when we get into the general election and there's a debate between presumably Biden and whoever wins the GOP nomination, which will at this point probably be Trump.
I want real moderators who ask real questions and make candidates answer them.
That was my reason for hope.
I want to thank you all for listening.
I know it's always different when there's one of us here and not both of us together.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you for supporting us.
Best wishes to Brad as he spends some time with his family and gets to know their newest family member.
I know your thoughts are with him, and I know he appreciates that.
As always, again, we can use your support.
If you're in a position to support us financially to become a patron, I would really ask you to consider doing that.
If listening is your support, suffering through the ads, telling friends about us, we'll take that, too.
Value it so much.
Always look forward to hearing from you, Daniel Miller Swadge at gmail.com.
Let me know what you think.
More It's In The Code will be back next week, and until we talk again, please be well and be safe.
