Donald Trump’s presidential victory in 2016 had many causes, but a bargain he made with religious conservatives belongs at or near the top of the list. Their support was crucial, especially once the death of Justice Antonin Scalia meant whoever won the election would tip the Supreme Court in his party’s favor. And that is exactly how it played out.
For a while, it seemed like a good deal. Christian leaders spoke of Trump in the most generous terms and frequently acted as ambassadors between him and their followers, many of whom were uneasy about his uncouth persona. And Trump, with much guidance from his advisers, prioritized protecting religious liberty, restoring faith in public life, and, most importantly, appointing judges to the Supreme Court whose originalist understanding of the Constitution coincided with the religious Right’s long-held desire to overturn Roe v. Wade and strike down the federally protected right to abortion.
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Even after the ugliness of the 2020 election and the nastiness of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, it wasn’t clear the partnership had fully run its course. Trump’s three Supreme Court picks, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, were the backbone of the majority that overturned Roe last summer, a 50-year mission for the Right and of great significance to Christians. And in the lower courts, Trump’s judicial picks ruled on a string of topics with favorable decisions concerning prayer at public meetings, the freedom of religious expression, and a raft of sexual and social issues — all dear to religious conservatives.
Even Trump’s own commitment seemed personal — as if over the course of his presidency, he had come to adopt the religious Right’s views as his own. This became especially pronounced during the early weeks of the pandemic when Trump frequently stood up for churches burdened by lockdowns. (At one press conference, he all but shouted that he would “override” any governor who attempted to keep churches closed, a task that Attorney General William Barr approached with zeal.)
But now that Trump is out of office, his calculation has changed. The deal is off. And, as is often the case, he is the one who broke it. Religious conservatives should see this as a blessing, however — an opportunity to break from Trump and correlate their politics with their values.
The trouble started where this whole story began, with abortion. In the hours after the Supreme Court delivered the decision that overturned Roe, in a case titled Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, there was a conspicuous silence from Mar-a-Lago, especially since Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion was leaked about a month in advance, giving the former president ample time to prepare a response. Within an hour of the court’s announcement, dozens of elected officials on both sides had released statements or held press conferences either praising or decrying the decision. But not Trump. He waited until the media came to him and, when asked about his own role in one of the biggest cases in the last 50 years, was uncharacteristically modest. “God made the decision,” he said.
The comment struck many people as odd. But it was consistent with Trump’s increasing hesitancy between the draft leak and the decision drop to brand himself as a pro-life warrior. “I never like to take credit for anything,” he said when asked about Alito’s draft. And while virtually every other person in the country was coming to terms with the fact that the status quo on abortion was changing forever, Trump held out hope that the draft was just a bad dream. “I don’t know what the decision is,” he said. “Nobody knows what that decision is. A draft is a draft.”
Even when Trump did eventually release a statement covering himself in glory, published late in the evening and only after pro-lifers had spent all day praising his leadership, it sounded like a threat, or at least a stern reminder, to his pro-life cohorts that he had upheld his end of the deal and they had better remember theirs. “Today’s decision, which is the biggest WIN for LIFE in a generation, along with other decisions that have been announced recently, were only made possible because I delivered everything as promised,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform.
In the following months, Trump became even more combative. Reports dribbled out of Florida as the 2022 midterm elections drew nearer that the former president was dismayed at the enthusiastic response of the pro-life movement, and particularly of its religious arm, to the Dobbs decision. Trump had always stressed that abortion was for state governments to decide and that the problem with Roe, ultimately, was that it was the product of judicial activism. But most of the people who voted for him on the issue did not see it that way. Religious pro-lifers see abortion as primarily a moral problem where concerns over constitutional interpretation are often of secondary importance. And so, in the weeks and months following the decision, many pro-lifers began pushing for a more ambitious strategy. Working it out in the states was good, but to keep energy in the fight, abortion had to remain a national issue. Not long after Dobbs, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) introduced a bill that would ban abortion nationally at 15 weeks. It won widespread approval within the movement. That included former Vice President Mike Pence, who during the administration often played liaison to Trump’s evangelical voting bloc. Pence praised the initiative as “profoundly more important than any short-term politics.”
But this kind of talk freaked out Trump. He was already mulling his next presidential run, and he started to see the very voters who propelled him to victory in 2016 as a liability in 2024. In private, it was said, Trump frequently fretted about abortion and especially the vigor with which pro-lifers were reacting to Dobbs. If they wanted to be “really smart,” Trump said, they would focus on limiting late-term abortions, a position that is more popular than heartbeat bills and early trimester abortion bans. In general, Trump wondered if Dobbs might end up being “bad for Republicans.”
It didn’t take long for Trump to get the answer he wanted. After the 2022 Republican wipeout in the midterm elections, he was quick to place the blame on the most ardent pro-life activists. “It wasn’t my fault that the Republicans didn’t live up to expectations in the MidTerms,” he wrote on Truth Social. “It was the ‘abortion issue,’ poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters.” And, since that wasn’t harsh enough, Trump specifically pointed the finger at the many pastors, street activists, and rosary-bearing prayer warriors who had been his most ardent supporters since 2016: “Also, the people that pushed so hard, for decades, against abortion, got their wish from the U.S. Supreme Court, & just plain disappeared, not to be seen again.”
This gets at a central quandary for groups considering a tactical alliance with Trump: He considers any deal binding in perpetuity — but only on his partners. Trump, however, is free of obligation. The genie becomes the one making demands, while his discoverer gets to spend 3,000 years in a lamp. All the while, Trump will disown their contributions and express regret at partnership with them in the first place, discarding and staining the cause in the process.
For many of the people who count themselves as pro-life whom I have spoken to since then, Trump’s disavowal of their efforts was the moment in which they consciously understood him as no longer a useful ally. In 2016, he was tethered to the pro-life movement and the religious Right by his promise to appoint originalist judges to the court. In 2020, similar rules applied. But now, as 2024 rolls around, Trump either feels that he does not need these voters — or it’s possible that he simply doesn’t want them.
The latter possibility is the more likely one. In fact, Trump’s own personal attitude toward abortion may explain why he has drawn a line between himself and those who oppose abortion for moral reasons. The former president occupies the same space that most voters do on the issue: The practice disgusts him, but outlawing it entirely makes him uncomfortable. “I hate the concept of abortion,” Trump told Tim Russert in 1999. “I hate it. I hate everything it stands for. I cringe when I listen to people debating the subject. But you still — I just believe in choice.” On top of that, Trump seems to be disgusted by people who have abortions. Before he aligned himself with the pro-life movement’s talking points in 2016, Trump would sometimes make comments to this effect. “There has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions, he told Chris Matthews, emphasizing that he didn’t think men bore any responsibility in the matter. These are the opinions of someone whose opposition to abortion, insofar as he opposes it at all, is not derived from some coherent moral and religious code but rather as a matter of taste. And by the same logic, Trump does not find those with intense convictions on abortion to his taste at all.
That may not end up mattering much. When Trump announced his 2024 candidacy, the most influential pro-life organization in the country, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, responded with a word of congratulations and of warning. After Dobbs, the organization said the standard pro-life position is support for national heartbeat bills. Emphasis on states’ rights is a nonstarter because that position “amounts to a death sentence” for unborn babies in abortion-friendly states. “This is an unacceptable position for any 2024 GOP presidential contender to hold,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America concluded, making clear that if Trump can reject the organization’s position, it can just as easily reject him.
And many religious leaders have made much the same point. Besides, before cultural conservatives and Trump were forced into an alliance in 2016, there was nothing that suggested Trump would ever make a worthy champion for Christianity in America. Even those who became his most passionate supporters during his presidency acknowledged this. Trump was a serial philanderer, a dishonest businessman, and, on the whole, a vain, cruel, old buffoon. This is a common criticism, but it is perfectly legitimate: Trump’s remarks about women in the dressing room caught on the Access Hollywood tape are actually disgusting. So is the Stormy Daniels affair, the topic of a grand jury case that resulted in an indictment of Trump on Thursday for paying hush money to suppress the story before the election. If Trump has any sort of morals at all, they aren’t derived from religious belief or deeply felt conviction. They are purely cultural and change with his moods. His pact with Christians only made sense as a one-time transaction. Those who stick with him any longer will pay a price — and like anyone else who ties himself to Trump will find themselves totally enslaved to his whims.
As Trump began campaigning earlier this year, he complained in an interview that he has run up against “disloyalty” among evangelical leaders who supported him in the past. Their reasons, as with those of the pro-life movement, almost always had to do with his wavering on abortion. In addition, there’s all of Trump’s other baggage — not to mention the bad taste he’s left since leaving office. Mike Evans, a Christian activist who served on Trump’s evangelical advisory board, put a fine point on what changed in the Washington Post.
“Donald Trump can’t save America. He can’t even save himself. He used us to win the White House. We had to close our mouths and eyes when he said things that horrified us,” he wrote. “I cannot do that anymore.”
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Besides, the Republican field is wide open, and every other candidate is trying to win the coalition that the party will need to beat President Joe Biden. Pence, who has long been a pro-life stalwart, is trying his best to brand himself as the most credible Christian candidate, a proud participant in all of the Trump administration’s achievements, and a gentle critic of the president’s post-administration behavior. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), if not claiming to be very religious himself, has positioned himself at least as a defender of the family, a move that has resonated with many people. (DeSantis is expected to sign a state heartbeat bill banning abortion after six weeks that will no doubt draw criticism from Trump.) And the rest of the 2024 hopefuls — Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, and Tim Scott, to name a few — have all trotted out their favorite Bible verses, signed up their various pastors, and bandied their pro-life credentials with varying degrees of success.
It remains to be seen how effective any of this messaging will be — or if religious voters are simply burned out after Trump. The transaction they made with the Manhattan billionaire in 2016 was a brilliant play, but it was the sort of deal that could only be made once. The battle lines for religion and politics are less clear post-Roe, and it’s going to take much more than the promise of judicial appointments to win the religious Right’s loyalty.
Nic Rowan is the managing editor of The Lamp, a Catholic literary journal.
