Weekly Roundup: Trump Endorses Bible Days Before Easter
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In the first segment, Dan breaks down the mess at NBC where Ronna Romney McDaniel was ousted from her position after protest by numerous on-air figures. While some have labeled this a travesty of a biased news environment, Dan explains why McDaniel should not be on any credible news network because of her track record of undermining elections, democracy, and the free press.
In the second segment, the attention turns to a new bill in South Carolina that provides life insurance for embryos.
In the final segment, the hosts spend significant time on the news that Trump is selling the God Bless USA Bible - the "only Bible endorsed by President Trump." It's blasphemous. It's craven. And it's another watershed moment in a decade of political and religious embarrassments. But, what will its impact be on voters?
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Hello and welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
Delighted, as always, to be with you.
And I am normally joined by my co-host, Brad Onishi.
However, today he is not going to be joining me live.
He is recording a session that we'll, or a segment that we'll put in here, and I'll respond to just briefly here at the end.
Had a mishap.
One of his kids had a mishap.
Will be okay.
Family's okay.
They're all okay.
But it kept him from being here at our normal recording time.
Folks have me flying largely solo today, but I want to welcome everybody here again, in particular our subscribers, those of you who subscribe and support us in that way.
For those who don't, if that's something that you would consider doing, if you're in a position to do that, we'd really appreciate it.
Keeps us going, lets us do so many things that we're trying to do.
So, welcome.
Here we are, end of another week.
My brain is a bit fried.
I think everybody else's brain is a bit fried.
There's always a lot of things in the news to think about and talk about and look at.
I want to start today, and this is going to occupy most of my time, but I want to start today by talking about the sort of media firestorm that has taken shape this week around the figure of Ronna McDaniel.
For those who might recognize the name or maybe you don't place it, Ron McDaniel was until recently the chair of the Republican National Committee, has just recently stepped down from that position.
And I'm gonna say a little bit about her and the Republican National Committee and how she shaped that and the stepping down and then get into the controversies from this past week.
She had had, I think she'd been in that position for something like seven years.
So she'd had a tumultuous relationship with Trump in that time.
If we go all the way back seven years ago, we can remember when there were a lot of sort of mainstream or establishment Republicans who had an uneasy relationship with Trump.
And McDaniel very much fit into that mold, but over time she became a Trump loyalist, she became the good soldier for the Trump movement, for the MAGA nation, and really remolded and remodeled the RNC into yet another tool for Trump.
She had become a Trump loyalist.
How?
In what ways?
One is that she dropped her maiden name because Trump wanted her to.
Ronna McDaniel is, her maiden name was Romney.
Very few of us know her as Ronna Romney.
It's because Trump asked her to drop her maiden name and she did.
Trump didn't want the RNC run by somebody whose name was Romney.
She shifted, as I say, in a number of ways to full sort of MAGA establishment and became a strong advocate for Trump.
When he threatened to start a new political party, she stood by him.
She supported his voter fraud conspiracies.
She supported and was an active participant in efforts to overturn the election.
Folks might remember that in 2020 there was a sort of infamous phone call between high-level GOP operatives to the county officials in the county around Detroit in Michigan to try to convince them not to certify the election results.
And Ronna McDaniel was on that call.
She is the one who famously told them not to sign it.
And said that they, the RNC, would get them attorneys.
So she promised legal support for them.
She consistently downplayed the significance of J6.
She, for years, assailed any kind of mainstream media or media critiques of Trump, or really even just media questioning of Trump.
As quote-unquote fake news.
And so she was very much one of many mouthpieces that Trump and his administration and later his committee, his election committee, would use to try to advance their cause.
But, like everybody else attached to Trump, her loyalty eventually wasn't enough to save her, to keep her in Trump's good graces.
I don't know if I will ever fully understand why people give Trump the kind of loyalty they do, given that no matter who you are, he will eventually throw you under the bus.
The possible one exception to this might be family members.
But that would be the only exception that I can think of.
Cabinet members, lawyers, J6 conspirators, you name it, if you get on Trump's bad side, not even get on Trump's bad side, I guess, if he just doesn't think you're useful to him anymore.
He won't hesitate to throw you away or to cut you loose, and this is what happened with Ronna McDaniel.
She outlived her usefulness for Trump, I suppose.
She, several weeks ago, flew down to Mar-a-Lago, met with Trump in person, and then announced that she was going to step down this spring, and this has now happened, that she was going to step down as chair of the RNC.
Let's just talk about the trajectory he was on.
I said she reshaped the RNC into yet another MAGA organ, helping to mainstream the MAGA cause, helping to turn the GOP as a whole into Trump's party.
This is very much part of the RNC now.
Folks probably know that when she stepped down, His hand-picked successors were put in place as chair and co-chair of the RNC.
The chair is Michael Whatley now, who was chair of the North Carolina Republican Party.
The co-chair is none other than Laura Trump, Donald Trump's daughter-in-law, who is now the co-chair.
And in case there's any doubt that the RNC is really an official organ of the Trump cause at this point, there's reporting this week that current and potential RNC staffers have been asked in job interviews whether they believe the 2020 election was stolen, and this has become a litmus test.
To work at the RNC, to be a staffer, you have to support the big lie.
This is the official position of the RNC, that the big lie is reality.
And it has been clear in reporting that the RNC in the lead up to the 2024 election is going to lean heavily into messages of voter fraud and voter integrity and so forth.
And then finally the RNC has said that they have agreed by acclamation to consider Trump the party's nominee.
Okay, so Ronna McDaniel out at the RNC, but it is very much continuing on a path that she set for it.
This is the trajectory on which she placed it, okay?
Why is that significant?
I think it's important for the background to understand everything that happened this past week.
So, there was a bombshell that she had been hired as a paid political commentator at NBC News.
Okay.
So this was a big deal for a lot of people.
And at first glance, you might look at this and say, well, okay, but why is this news?
People who've worked for political parties, people who've worked for presidents, people who have operated on presidential campaigns, et cetera, they routinely cash in for lucrative media gigs later and the list is it's almost endless of people who do this this is standard practice once your candidate is no longer president or sometimes you know you leave after a new election or something like that or if you're ron mcdaniel you have to step down out of your official position you take a media position
But McDaniel this week proved to be a bridge too far in this development, and I think it's really significant, okay?
So, she made her first appearance on Sunday's edition of Meet the Press.
This is just this past week, okay?
And she sought to present herself—it's very obvious if you know this background of Ronna McDaniel.
It was clear that she was seeking to present herself as reasonable, as mainstream, and as trying to present herself as independent from Donald Trump, as having a distance from Donald Trump.
She, for example, now condemns January 6th, and she affirmed the 2020 election results.
She said, for example, quote, people who violently attacked Capitol Hill police officers and attacked the Capitol should be held accountable.
And she said that in 2020, President Joe Biden won the election, quote, fair and square, end quote.
So she's coming out and very clearly saying, you know, he won the election, J6 is bad, and so forth, okay?
And then she goes on to say, as Politico, an article in Politico sort of had this language and the title of the article, said that she also said the quiet part out loud, okay?
She basically stated that as RNC chair, she had to toe the Trump party line.
She said, just to take a quick quote again, she said, when you're the RNC chair, You kind of take one for the whole team.
Now I get to be a little bit more myself.
Let's pause for just a minute.
What is McDaniel doing?
She's trying to say, hey, all that stuff I did as RNC chair, I did it because, you know, you have to take one for the team.
You've got to go with Trump.
You've got to say what Trump says.
You've got to toe the line.
Now I get to be a little bit more myself.
So she's, you know, this is the real Ronna McDaniel.
The one who says that J6 was bad.
The one who says that we can't do that, that we should have peaceful elections.
The one who says Joe Biden wins the election.
She's like, nope, nope, this is the real me.
Okay?
This is the real me.
It is clearly intended to communicate that now she's free from Trump and that she can be more honest, and I think to show that, you know, as an NBC contributor, here I am, I'm going to be an honest broker here.
Okay?
What's the point?
That it follows the typical pattern of former politicians and operatives and cabinet members in the Trump administration, distancing themselves from Trump only after they're out of their positions.
We see this every time somebody announces that they're going to retire from Congress and then starts being negative about Trump.
We see this with Mike Pence as maybe the highest profile figure lately.
He's been very clearly distancing himself from Trump and so forth.
And again, quoting Jason Rowe, who is a Michigan-based GOP strategist and has butted heads with McDaniel when he was on the state GOP executive board in Michigan, he summed it up This way.
And this is the same kind of thing that we've said on this show for years, but he caught this.
He said, sometimes there's a price to be paid for politically expedient bullshit.
It is the unwillingness, the lack of courage to say these things before that matters most, because these things have taken on a life of their own because people who know better didn't say so and they gain legitimacy.
So that's one piece.
McDaniel, again, completely predictable, standard pattern of people affiliated with Trump, stepping out of their positions, leaving their positions, retiring from positions, and then criticizing Trump.
Okay?
But then things got bigger.
The whole thing caught on fire.
Because her situation went on to blow up more than that.
It was more than just your typical MAGA type person coming along and then distancing themselves from Trump.
And it started the same day on the same show.
So Chuck Todd, who had been the show's former host, he was interviewed on Meet the Press.
And he exhoriated NBC for hiring McDaniel.
He criticized the network and his bosses on air in the interview.
So, Kristen Welker, who was the host, had arranged for McDaniel to interview on Meet the Press weeks before.
So, before there was any announcement that McDaniel was going to come in as a paid contributor on NBC News and various platforms and positions there, she had already made arrangements to interview her.
So then she's put in the position of having to interview McDaniel, but now McDaniel's under contract with NBC.
She's like a co-contributor, and so it put Welker in this very tough position interviewing.
And so the first thing Todd did, Chuck Todd, is he responds to this.
He says that she was put in an impossible situation.
He said that the NBC bosses, his bosses, quote, owe you an apology for putting you in this position.
He goes on to say you got put into an impossible situation booking this interview and then all of a sudden the rug was pulled out from under you and you find out she's being paid to show up?
It's unfortunate for this program and I'm glad you did the best you could.
So he gets, you know, pretty upset with the bosses for arranging this in the first place.
But he goes on to say more.
He wasn't done.
What he did is he essentially sort of channeled the anger and the outrage of a lot of journalists inside and outside NBC.
He goes on to say that he struggled to believe McDaniel due to her, quote, credibility issues.
He said, quote, I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you is because she didn't want to mess up her contract.
And he goes on to say, there's a reason why there's a lot of journalists at NBC News uncomfortable with this.
So basically he says, I can't trust her.
She has this history of fighting, questioning the credibility of mainstream media.
She has this history of towing the MAGA line.
She has this history of election obstruction.
She has this history, and how are we supposed to believe anything that she says, and why in the world did our bosses hire this person?
Right?
So that happens, but the backlash doesn't stop with him, right?
And there was a lot of question.
This comes out, this is like, you know, him coming out with a flamethrower.
And you can find clips of the interview with Todd online.
It's like a couple minutes, two, three minutes.
It's worth watching.
And observers were looking at this and going, wow, this is a big deal to have a mainstream figure on NBC coming out critical of his own people.
How's this going to play out this week?
Here's how it played out is one after another, the most prominent and recognizable figures at NBC News and MSNBC, they piled on.
And again, this was not behind the scenes.
Things were going on behind the scenes, obviously.
But this wasn't behind the scenes.
This was on air.
This was on TV.
This was openly criticizing the network and its leadership for this decision.
And it was sort of capped for a lot of people with Rachel Maddow describing the decision to hire McDaniel as inexplicable.
And by Tuesday, NBC, excuse me, NBC leadership responded by ousting McDaniel.
It said, there was a statement by NBC Universal News Group.
The president, Cesar Conde, said this, there is no doubt that the last several days have been difficult for the news group.
After listening to the legitimate concerns of many of you, I have decided that Ronna McDaniel will not be an NBC News commentator.
So she was ousted from this position that she had just stepped into.
Because of the outcry from figures primarily at NBC News, okay?
And we don't need to worry about Ronna McDaniel.
She's going to get a substantial payout.
Articles about, you know, she and her attorneys are already going after NBC.
I'm sure she will get a very nice golden parachute for effectively doing one interview with NBC.
So that's what happened.
Predictably, the move was attacked as hypocritical By figures on the right.
One after another they came out and said that this was hypocritical, they said this showed that NBC was biased, it showed that they were opposed and afraid of voices from Republican figures, that they were opposed to having any Trump supporters on their payroll, that they were afraid of counter voices, and on and on and on and on.
Okay?
And a favorite line Among a lot of these figures, and a lot of other right-wing news agencies, figures on X, formerly Twitter, and so forth, the favorite sort of foil for this was that NBC had hired former Obama and Biden spokesperson Jen Psaki, okay?
And the idea was this was just as bad or worse, and none other than Megyn Kelly really captured this.
We can all remember Megyn Kelly, another figure who tried to go mainstream after leaving Fox and pretty much failed miserably and now has her own thing on SiriusXM and so forth.
But this is what she said in part.
She said, hey, you had no problem hiring Jen Psaki, who lied for a living for years as an Obama and then Biden spokesperson, so what gives?
That's what she asked.
And so conservatives, again, they accused NBC of banning those sympathetic to Trump.
They also reported that the RNC is now limiting NBC's access at the Republican convention this summer because of the ouster.
So despite the fact that she was forced to step down from the RNC, the RNC is now sort of, you know, they have her back, they're supporting her and so forth.
So, what are some real issues here?
That's the whole story, that's the response to it, what are the issues here as I see it?
So the first is, and lots of people have commented on this, the whole issue of, no matter right, left, center, mainstream, fringe, whatever, whatever news agency it is, giving lucrative contracts to former political actors Is just a problem.
It's a toxic practice.
It's a problematic practice.
It's a problem across the political spectrum, and a lot of commentators have noted that this week.
They're worth taking a look at.
That's true.
I think it's true on all sides.
This is still a false equivalence.
So when Megyn Kelly says, hey, you had no problem with Jen Psaki, what gives?
What's the difference?
You're going to hire her?
She's creating an equivalence.
Jen Psaki is just as bad.
Just as bad as Ronna McDaniel.
Folks, she's not.
Right?
She's not.
Hey, Megyn Kelly, Megyn Kelly's not going to listen to this, but if Megyn Kelly was listening and says, Hey, what gives?
Here's what gives.
Okay?
All political operatives spin.
They all cherry pick data.
They all strategically choose what to talk about.
They all do those things.
And yes, they all take the party line of the person that they work for or the party that That's just part of the game.
And we understand that.
Okay?
We can hate it.
I hate it.
You hate it.
Everybody hates it.
Fine.
But that's a thing.
We get it.
That's how the game is played.
That's just how it is.
But here's the difference.
They don't try to subvert an election.
They don't try to block the peaceful transfer of power.
They don't support armed insurrections against the U.S.
They don't actively advocate the dismantling of democracy.
This is what Ronna McDaniel did.
That's the difference.
It is not an equivalence.
And I challenge you.
I challenge you to find those There's some parallel on the left to what this is.
There just isn't anything there.
And so this is what Oliver Darcy at CNN summed it up this way, and I think this is exactly right.
This is where there is, I think, a very intentional sort of bait and switch on the right.
The move that is always made to try to say that, well, yeah, the what about, or we're just doing what they do, or everybody does it kind of thing.
This is what Darcy had to say.
He writes, as so many of NBCU's staffers have underscored, the objection to McDaniel is not that she's a Republican.
It's not even that she's a Donald Trump-supporting Republican.
It's that she was an active participant in the plot to overthrow the last presidential election.
That is not to even mention McDaniel's years of demonizing the press, smearing the journalists who work at NBC News and MSNBC as she sought to destroy the credibility of the organization that she ran to after being chased out of the RNC.
That's the difference.
And folks, it's not just a quantitative difference.
It's not that she did what other people do but more of it.
It is qualitatively different.
She sought to actively work, worked with others, to stop the certification of the election, to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, to overthrow the decision of a fair and open election.
That's what she did.
She's got no business speaking about politics as a paid consultant of any kind, okay?
So that's the second point.
The first point, the whole situation is toxic of having these figures in there.
It is what it is, okay?
The second point is that it's not the same.
There is no equivalence about this.
And the third is that I think it also continues to prove to us how mainstream GOP radicalization is at this point.
For me, the telling point is not that people on the right like Megyn Kelly try to create these false equivalences.
Of course they do!
We see this all the time, we talk about this like literally every week on this show.
Of course they try to create these false equivalences.
What's more concerning for me is that I think that many, maybe most, actually believe it.
When Megyn Kelly says that she doesn't understand what the difference is between hiring Jen Pisaki and hiring Ronna McDaniel is, I'm afraid that maybe that's true, that maybe she doesn't actually see the difference.
That they may actually, literally believe that any dissent, any disagreement, any political opposition is equivalent to overthrowing the government.
And folks, that is a fundamentally anti-democratic position.
You cannot have a democracy without dissent, without disagreement, without counterpoints, without opposition parties.
It's built in.
You have to have pluralism to have a democracy, and I think this is something that these right-wing figures actually do not understand.
And I continue to believe that it highlights just how radical the American right is.
There is no parallel on the left.
And please don't come at me with like, you know, Hunter Biden's laptop or Hillary Clinton's emails or something.
They just don't stack up.
So, Ronna McDaniels, this week, the media firestorm, big story of the week, going to continue on here in a minute.
First, we need to take a break.
All right.
I want to touch on another issue here relatively quickly.
This is an interesting one.
And as I'll indicate in a minute here, I'm not exactly sure what to do about this or what to think about this.
But we have discussed, everybody's discussed, but we have discussed the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision banning IVF.
We've talked a lot.
About the logical implications of suggesting that unborn embryos are persons?
Excuse me.
We talked a little bit, and I just want to reiterate this, though, that there is the classical, or what has become the sort of standard, sort of classic right-wing position, that human life begins at conception.
Okay.
But this is slightly different, and this is what I think was really significant about the Alabama decision.
This was not just saying that human life begins at conception.
This was saying that personhood begins at conception.
And as we've discussed before, personhood involves more than just biology.
It's a legal and social category that carries real weight, okay?
And we have talked about And others have posed the logical and legal implications of really affirming that unborn embryos are persons.
And that's often been dismissed or mocked as sort of far-fetched, but this week, in South Carolina, a bill was put forward that I think suggests that they are not far-fetched, okay?
On March 19th, House Bill 5725 was introduced, and House Bill 5725 stipulates, it has not been passed, it's just a bill, but it was introduced, and it stipulates that insurers offering individual or group and it stipulates that insurers offering individual or group life insurance policies have to extend the policy to unborn embryos.
Okay?
So life insurance, lots of you listening will have life insurance, I have life insurance, if you have life insurance policies, that any company that issues those policies for individuals or groups would have to issue them for unborn embryos.
The primary sponsor of the bill is Jermaine Johnson, and this is what Jermaine Johnson had to say about this.
He said, over the years, with our own abortion debates here in South Carolina, because in South Carolina, we want to say that life begins at conception and we've been banning abortions.
But when I say that life begins at conception, well, that means that when life begins, that these unborn children should be afforded every single right that you and I have.
That's the quote.
They deserve all the rights of personhood.
And he went on to elaborate.
He said that embryos should be given a social security number, as well as being able to have life insurance.
He said that this should allow them, quote, to have these different types of rights that you and I have.
And he explicitly tied this to Alabama.
He said, we saw in Alabama, where they ruled that frozen embryos could be considered people.
And this is one of the things that we need to make sure that we're protecting individuals here in South Carolina, because we know we kind of follow suit in these, in these states with introducing legislation.
And he goes on to say, we want to make sure that people are protected, that they have the right to IVF, that we want to protect families, however they want to bring forth children or bring forth life, because life is beautiful and we just want to make sure we protect these individuals.
Okay?
So those are the statements by Jermaine Johnson.
Now here's the question.
This is why I don't know exactly what to make of this.
Jermaine Johnson is a Democrat.
So a Democrat is putting forward this bill that would require insurance companies to provide life insurance for embryos.
Jermaine Johnson is arguing that they should have social security numbers and so forth.
That is what Jermaine Johnson is saying, a Democrat.
Now, this is the question, and I don't know the answer to this, folks.
I don't.
I have my suspicions, but I don't know the answer.
One is, is this a political ploy?
Is this a Democrat?
Forcing the GOP and others to face up to the ridiculous implications of the position.
I mean, just think about it.
Are you an insurance company?
Are you going to want to have to insure embryos?
No!
Does that mean every time somebody has a miscarriage, you've got to pay out?
What about embryos that, especially in states that ban abortion, with pre-existing conditions who are forced to be brought to term, who are not going to survive for long or lead fruitful, productive lives?
If you're an insurance company, do you want to insure them?
What happens if they have social security numbers?
We talked about tax implications and things like that.
Obviously, social security numbers are issued by the federal government and that, you know, isn't going to be covered by state law.
But you get the idea.
So is this a political ploy seeking to illustrate what happens when you define embryos as persons And are you trying to trap the GOP?
Because you're going to have GOP legislators who are not going to want to support this, but they're not going to want to come out voting against something that suggests that embryos shouldn't be considered as legal persons.
So is this a political ploy?
Or is it real?
That is, is this a classic blue dog Democrat in the South who maybe is anti-abortion putting forward legislation that he believes in?
I don't know the answer to that.
My guess is it's the former, and this is the kind of thing that I would, you know, put forward as a strategy to use to show how ridiculous these policies are.
Either way, And I'm sure I'll get more time to look at this and more will come out about this and we'll get a fuller sense of Jermaine Johnson.
I don't know anything about Jermaine Johnson.
Kind of came across this in my preparation for today's episode.
But either way, the effect is the same.
Whether he buys into this or really wants this to happen, whether this is a legal maneuver to show the ridiculousness, that's what it does.
It shows the logical and legal implications of granting personhood to embryos.
That this is not just a theological question.
It's not a question of metaphysics.
It's not a question of religion.
It's just not a matter of personal belief.
If you grant people the legal status of persons, there are real and required and necessary legal consequences of doing that.
You have to modify the law and social policy to reflect that.
There's just no choice about it.
So that's the effect.
So I'm going to be watching this.
I invite you to watch it.
If folks know the answer to this, I'd love to hear more about sort of the background on this.
But that was another thing that caught my eye this week was this notion as it moves forward of proving the point that we've been making, that others have been making, that if we define embryos as persons, it's not the same thing as simply saying life begins at conception.
It's bigger than that.
It's more significant than that.
All right.
Need to start getting ready to wind things down a little bit here.
We have one more segment.
Brad is going to join us for this segment.
He's going to join us virtually.
He's recorded a piece that's going to be sort of inserted here.
But I want to give the background to this, and then we'll give an opportunity for Brad's reflections on this, and then I will sort of offer some final thoughts.
Here's the backstory.
This week, I don't know why I laugh, nothing should surprise me about Donald Trump at this point, but this week, a video was released with Donald Trump endorsing the God Bless the USA Bible.
And this is a Bible—people who understand the sort of evangelical, you know, and conservative Protestant subculture in the U.S.
know that there are often these Bibles that are sort of thematic, and, like, they have the text from the Bible, but then they'll have, like, Bible lessons about—like, there used to be the, like, the teen, like, the Purity Bible, the Teen Purity Bible, and it would talk about sexual purity and things like that, or there'll be, like, little windows in the text that tell you things, or they're thematic in different ways.
The Women's Study Bible, the Men's Study Bible, what have you.
Okay, so this is a Bible that includes the King James text of the Bible.
Brad's going to say more about that.
It includes the U.S.
Constitution, the text of the U.S.
Constitution.
It includes the text of the Declaration of Independence.
It includes the Pledge of Allegiance.
And it also includes the chorus to the Christian singer Leigh Greenwood's 1984 song, We Must Make America Pray Again.
And perfect in line for a campaign that says, you know, what, make America great again.
Trump played on this theme of we must make America pray again.
In the video, okay?
So for $60, it's $60, you get the King James Version of the Bible and all these other documents.
One thing I want to note about this is that in surveys about Christian nationalism, one of the statements that is often surveyed is the belief—and then people can agree with it or disagree with it or what have you—that documents like the U.S.
Constitution or the Declaration of Independence are divinely inspired documents And this is a thing that lots of Christian nationalists say yes, that they agree or strongly agree that they believe that these founding documents of the American Republic are, in fact, divinely inspired.
So, if the notion of the God Bless the USA Bible seems strange, it shouldn't if we think of the people who are likely to buy this.
These are people, many of whom actually literally believe that these political documents are divinely inspired, just as the Bible is divinely inspired.
Okay?
So that was this week, and Trump comes out in this video, he also says that religion and Christianity are the biggest things missing from this country.
And so this is offered as a way of reaching out to this.
It's an explicit appeal to Christian identity, an explicit ideal to Christian nationalism, and he hawks this Bible as the sort of solution to this, okay?
It's also worth noting, if you pay attention to Trump, if you've listened to us for a while, if you've watched other media things, you know that this is not the first time that Trump has been linked to a Bible.
There is, for example, the famous incident of him ordering protesters to be cleared from Lafayette Square so that he could go over to St.
John's Church and have that photo op, that picture of him in front of the church, holding the Bible, positioning himself as this kind of Christian president, Christian figure.
You can also remember the story of him autographing Bibles on the campaign trail.
I believe it was ahead of the 2016 election.
It might have been 2020.
It probably was more than once.
I'm not remembering off the top of my head.
But stories of him autographing Bibles.
People bringing Bibles for him to autograph.
So this is sort of in line with that.
It's not the first time he's been tied in with the Bible.
But, Trump, this week hawking the God Bless the USA Bible.
I'm going to throw it over to Brad, who will join us here in this sort of doubly virtual way.
You're all encountering me virtually, and I am now encountering Brad virtually, to share some more reflections on Trump and the God Bless the USA Bible.
Hey, yo.
As Dan said, I had an incident with my older daughter last night where she got hurt and fell really hard and smashed her mouth and her teeth and other stuff.
So we've had a long night and are still kind of making sure she's okay.
Various appointments and things.
So not able to join Dan live today.
Did have time though for a couple minutes here to reflect on the Trump Bible.
Issue.
And I think it's something that is important to talk about because there's some, some aspects of it that, uh, may or may not come to light in whatever news you're reading about it.
So a couple of things, this project has been underway with Lee Greenwood, the singer for a couple of years now, and going back to 2021, there were plans to publish this This Bible with Lee Greenwood and the God Bless the USA Bible had a couple of different passes.
So the first pass was Zondervan.
And some of you out there from the evangelical world will know Zondervan as a kind of titan in the evangelical publishing industry.
Well, Zondervan owns the New International Version translation of the Bible.
So if you're going to publish the New International Version of the Bible in the United States, You have to go through Zondervan.
They have the commercial rights.
The new international version for many of you out there will be familiar.
If you're a kind of more mainstream evangelical is one way I'll put it, the NIV is familiar.
I certainly grew up with the NIV.
It's a more readable translation.
It's a translation that's a little bit more modern.
And it's considered by a lot of evangelicals to be a nice balance between faithfulness to the original text and readability for the modern reader.
Well, of course, Zondervan makes tons and tons of money off of the new international version.
Well, back a couple years ago, they passed on this and said, no, we're not going to do it.
There was blowback.
There was folks who were the gatekeepers of this door in the publishing industry, and they said no.
There were a couple other folks who wanted to sort of jump in on this and see if they could get it published, but it didn't happen.
So I'll read from the Tennessean, which had a nice piece about this a couple days ago.
Greenwood's early business partner on the project, a Hermitage-based marketing firm called Elite Source Pro, initially reached a manufacturing agreement with the Nashville-based HarperCollins Christian Publishing to print the God Bless the USA Bible.
As part of that agreement, HarperCollins would publish the book, but not sell or endorse it.
But then HarperCollins reversed course, a major setback for Greenwood's Bible.
So they said, we're not going to do it.
They said, you know, there's too much controversy.
There's too much surrounding what's going on with Trump and Greenwood and the Bible.
Let me read you a quote about that.
Several years ago, the Bible was going to be printed with the NIV translation, but something happened with the then licensor and the potential publisher.
As a result, this God Bless the USA Bible has always been printed with the King James Version translation.
This is from publicist Jeremy Westby, talking about the God Bless the USA Bible.
That's kind of the backstory.
There's a lot of dynamics here, and I'm sure people are going to have their own takes.
I think there's a couple things that come to mind for me.
Number one, I think that the effort here was to get some of the biggest names in Christian publishing to basically license God bless the USA Bible that would be part of Greenwood's profile and also involve Trump.
That didn't happen, and it's kind of part of the story that's important.
Now, that isn't to say that there aren't other aspects of the Zondervan and HarperCollins and these big industry titans portfolios that are not in what I would call the same genre.
So the Duck Dynasty guys, especially Phil Robertson, have a Bible.
There's the Duck Commander Faith and Family Bible.
So that's out there.
That is in the New King James Version, and it's immensely popular.
I think that leads to a point about this, and that is published by Thomas Nelson, I should say.
I think that leads to a point about this whole Trump Bible thing, is that there are going to be people out there who are fans of it.
They like the Duck Dynasty Bible.
They think that a faith and family Bible is a good thing.
Why not a God bless the USA Bible?
One that includes the Constitution, one that includes the Bill of Rights, one that involves the chorus of Lee Greenwood's song.
This is great.
So, it's crass.
It is blatantly marrying the Kingdom of God and the United States.
But there's folks out there that are walking around carrying a Phil Roberts and Doug Dines the Bible.
So, crass.
And this kind of endorsement of the Bible is not beyond them.
Now, to have a former president saying that I am the endorsing the Bible, that takes it a level further.
Because this is not Duck Dynasty guy.
The Duck Dynasty guy...
The whole selling point is we are everyday rural Americans.
We're the ones that the mainstream media doesn't talk about.
We're the forgotten American.
We're the real American.
We're the guy on the ground wearing camo and, you know, we talk in deep slang with an accent and we're not fancy or highfalutin.
So you can see there the kind of, there's one avenue there.
To have a former president saying, this is the only Bible I endorse.
It's incredible.
It's just incredible in terms of its cravenness.
So, wanted to point out the backstory.
Wanted to point out that when you see this Bible, and it being in the King James Version, I think that part of the story is that that's the version that's available to Trump.
The NIV, which is a very popular translation, It is not available to him because of licensing.
So that's all part of the portfolio here.
Now, the King James Version is also considered a more traditional version.
So there are conservative Protestants out there, people that we might call fundamentalists, and some evangelicals, who only use the King James Version.
They will be very proud of telling you in their church, or in their literature, or their website for their church, or wherever they're talking about how they approach faith, that they only use the King James, because that's the real translation.
That's the faithful translation.
So again, the King James Version is not necessarily a miss here because some of those really conservative folks are going to be happy that it came in this version and not the new international version or another.
Now I just want to make one more comment, or two more comments I should say on this.
One is, I'm not sure that this was a grand strategic plan.
We always play this game with Trump, is this a big strategy to reach evangelical voters and religious people or is this not?
And I'll be honest, I don't think it is.
This is a guy who released Trump sneakers like a month ago.
And there was these really embarrassing and racist clips on Fox News of people saying that he's reaching out to the black community and this will surely reach black voters.
That just seemed like Trump trying to make money.
This seems like the same thing.
I mean, this is a man who sold everything from stakes to a fake university.
He, it's like in his DNA, it's like he can't resist just selling things, hawking anything he can with his name on it.
And this comes at a time when he's especially cash strapped.
I mean, we've all seen the news about him needing to make bond and needing to find the cash to pay in the fraud case.
So whether that's a direct cause and effect, I don't know, but it is a moment where he does seem like he needs money on hand.
But this is a man for decades and decades and decades who has just taken any opportunity to sell anything as embarrassing, as crass, as cringeworthy as it may be.
So there's nothing new here on that level.
I just want to back up to one more reference point and say, this really does send a message, I think, to a lot of folks.
Because here's a former president, and we're so tempted to just view Trump with his own goggles.
But I want to back up and say, all right, let's take Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter in 1978, 1979.
What if Jimmy Carter showed up and said, not even that I'm going to sell Bibles, but I'm going to like give Bibles away.
I'm going to use my time as president to get on television and say, hey, do you want a Bible?
I'll send it to you for free.
Wherever I go on the campaign trail, I'm Jimmy Carter.
I'm handing out a Bible to you.
I don't know you, I don't know who you are, but do you want one?
Here, take one.
I'll give one to anyone who wants one.
I want you to imagine what kind of message that would send to Americans, that here's a president who's like basically imposing his religion on you, saying, hey, I really think you should read the Bible.
I don't know you, but if you want one of these, I'll give it to you.
Are you an atheist?
Are you a Catholic?
Are you Mormon?
Are you Buddhist?
Are you non-religious?
I don't know.
But I really think this is important to being a real American.
Like, think about that message, folks.
Like, think about if George H.W.
Bush had ever shown up and just started saying, hey, I'm rich.
I'm George H.W.
Bush.
Who wants a Bible?
I'll send it to you.
Free.
You don't even have to pay shipping.
Just fill out the form and I'll send you a Bible.
Because this is a really good use of my time as a presidential candidate or as a former president or a current president or whatever.
I just think that something we can't miss here is the message that you're getting that Unless you read the Bible, unless you read the Bible that is endorsed by Trump, unless you are on board with this brand of religion and Christianity, then you're not a real American.
And we've been saying this for years.
This is one of the metrics that is often used on Christian nationalist surveys.
Do you need to be a Christian to be a real American?
And when people say yes to that, academics are like, okay, I think you're a Christian nationalist because you think that to be a good American, you have to be a Christian.
So once again, just think about the message that's being sent here.
Now, I'm not saying that's intentional.
I'm not saying that Trump's playing chess.
I'm just saying that's a clear takeaway.
Now, here's one take I have, and I'm not sure if I'm right about this, but this has been on my mind since I saw the news, and I'll let Dan jump in on this too, is I'm not sure Trump gains voters here.
Like, I don't think anyone was out there like, well, I'm not sure he's for the evangelicals.
I'm not sure.
The man who said he's creating a task force to prevent anti-Christian bias and said, I will protect, with me, you'll need no one to protect the Christianity because no one will touch the cross of Christ.
The man who put out a video saying he was created by God directly to be a shepherd and protect people from wolves and be a servant.
The man who put Coney Barrett and Kavanaugh on the bench and Gorsuch?
Not sure he's really into the evangelicals and the conservative Christians.
Oh, you know what?
He's got his own Bible now.
Well, okay.
Sign me up.
Where do I register to vote?
I'm going to the polls.
I just... I don't think that voter exists.
I'll be honest.
Now I think this voter might exist and y'all might be skeptical and I'm happy for that skepticism and I understand it and I'm not sure if this will play out.
But doing this show has really demonstrated to me that there are many folks out there who are trying to find a place in terms of their Christian home.
I think Tim Alberta's book is a really good case in point of this.
Like, I have my issues with Tim's book, and when I interviewed Tim, you know, we had our kind of back and forth, and I appreciate his work, but I also have my criticisms of it, and there's a lot there that I don't agree with.
But what Tim's book shows, if you read The Kingdom, Power, and Glory, is There's a lot of folks who are in the evangelical world who are considered conservative Christians, and they're not here to do eight more years of Trump and fighting and war.
That's not what they want.
whether it's on reproductive rights, whether it's on religious freedom, whether it's on immigration, they want to worship God and live their lives.
Now, does that mean that they're blameless?
Does that mean that I agree with them?
No, I'm not trying to exonerate anybody.
What I'm saying, though, is those folks are kind of a silent majority.
Are they 20%?
Are they 30%?
Are they 35%, 40%?
I don't know.
But there are people out there looking for a kind of place.
And I think a lot of them have learned over the eight years, if I speak up and I start yelling about this, I'm going to get kicked out of the community.
I'm going to get kicked out of my space.
And there's going to be all this more conflict.
I think a lot of these folks are quiet.
A lot of these folks are not the types to be leading the charge in the church congregation when it comes to the culture wars.
But when you say to them that the former president has a Bible that only he endorses, that might be a moment where people are like, you know, I'm done.
You don't endorse the Bible.
You obey what the Bible teaches you.
If you're an evangelical, that's what you think.
You're supposed to obey the Bible.
Now, all of you listening are like, yeah, right, pal.
We've heard you for five years say that evangelicals do whatever they want with the Bible, and you're right.
But I do think there are people out there that are like, I'm just not sure I want to be in the business of voting for someone or supporting someone who's endorsing the Bible.
Isn't the Bible supposed to be something you humble yourself before in terms of your life?
Now, does that mean they're voting for Biden?
I don't know.
Probably not.
Does that mean they're not going to vote for Trump?
I think some of them won't.
Some of them will just quietly not.
Some of them still will.
I don't know.
But this is a moment that I think is going to give some of those people pause.
And I'm curious what Dan thinks about that, too.
I'm sorry not to be there for the full episode today, y'all.
I am here trying to handle things with my daughter and get back to her.
So I appreciate you and hope you enjoy the rest of the episode.
All right, a couple of reflections.
Brad posed that question to me in his response about, does Trump gain voters from this?
Is Trump playing chess, right, or is checkers?
I think Brad's right.
I think the first and foremost is this is just a chance to sell stuff.
It's a chance to market something and so forth.
I think it is aimed at a particular demographic.
I'm with it.
I don't think that it sort of moves the needle, so to speak, in terms of voters.
I don't think Trump's going to gain people from this.
I think those who are going to buy this Bible Are already the ardent Trump supporters, the people who see him as the kind of embodiment of the Christian American leader, the authentic Christian nationalist and so forth.
I think that's the real market for this.
I don't think that at this point of a kind of Trump-saturated public sphere and media sphere that a lot of people are in a new way going to come to Trump and be drawn to this.
I don't think that there are a lot of, as Brad said, I think I agree.
I don't think there are a lot of undecided voters who are going to come to Trump because of this, who've been sitting on the bench saying, well, you know, I didn't know if he was a Christian or not, but now he's got this Bible that he's going to sell me, so I'm on board now.
I think that might have happened years ago.
I don't think it would happen now.
Brad poses the question that there might be some of those disillusioned Christians.
Bible-believing Christians.
Evangelicals.
Theologically conservative Christians who aren't on board with Trump.
Who might be put off by this?
And I think maybe.
Maybe.
There's a chance of that.
But I'm not sure.
Again, I don't know if it moves the needle.
I certainly don't think, and I think Brad's intuition on this is correct as well, I don't think it drives people to Biden.
I don't know that people specifically sit out the election.
Because of this.
If they do, I'm not sure that there are people who supported Trump in certainly 2020, maybe 2016.
But I will say this, if it does alienate anybody, that's important for Trump.
Trump won the 2016 election because of white evangelical voters.
If he didn't have the historically high percentage of voters that he did among white evangelicals, he doesn't win the 2016 election.
There is no Trump presidency.
Okay?
2020, his percentage of evangelical votes actually went up.
He did not win the election, obviously, but the only person in history who has gotten more votes for president than Donald Trump in 2020 was Joe Biden in 2020.
It was a close election, we know that.
Trump got a lot of votes.
So if this were to in any way alienate somebody, some group of people who might have voted for Trump but won't because they're put off by this, that would be really significant, really bad news for Trump.
I don't know that I think that's going to be the case.
I don't think it's going to move the needle much.
Another thing that we'll watch and see if this sort of just fades, if this is kind of a one-time thing, if it develops into a big issue, if it develops into something that, you know, Trump is really pushing at, say, campaign stops and things like that.
That'll be interesting to watch.
We'll keep an eye on that.
I want to close out here with my reason for hope.
This week.
A few things to look at, but one was that a judge in California, who's an attorney discipline judge, has recommended that the attorney John Eastman be disbarred.
So what is this all about?
This is another one of these cases.
John Eastman was a prominent attorney who led many of Donald Trump's efforts to discredit the 2020 election.
He has been brought up before the Bar Association with the threat of losing his license to practice law because he was acting fraudulently in that, and the court decision that came out from the judge was to recommend that he be disbarred.
Not the first time this has happened.
I don't think it'll be the last time it's happened.
I take hope in it because slowly but surely, I think The wheels are still turning on sort of bringing people to answer for these kinds of things.
It's also significant because Eastman is also one of the defendants in other election subversion cases.
His attorneys, one of the reasons they gave for opposing this ruling is that this is going to make it harder for him because it's going to be more expensive because he can't defend himself as an attorney and so forth.
All that's true.
I think this is more pressure for somebody like John Eastman to perhaps turn on Trump, to try to save his own skin, to testify for prosecutors coming after Trump for election subversion.
I think that that's worth watching.
I took great hope in that.
Want to wind this down, want to thank you for joining us again.
All of you who support us, we value it so much.
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Daniel Miller Swag, danielmillerswaj at gmail.com.
We will be back with you next week.
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We'll be back for another Weekly Roundup next weekend.
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