A prominent evangelical supporter of President Trump exchanged a heated back-and-forth with CNN host Chris Cuomo amid the fallout of Christianity Today calling for Trump’s removal.
Author Eric Metaxas, 56, explained to Cuomo on Friday his rationale for supporting Trump despite his character flaws. After listing some of Trump’s sins and inappropriate comments, Cuomo asked, “You back somebody, as a person of faith, who says all of them — how?”
Explaining by way of analogy, Metaxas said, “Well, it’s like my pilot has tattoos, and he’s on his fourth wife, but he’s an amazing pilot. I would prefer a pilot who has been married for 30 years to the same woman. Sometimes things are complicated, and I think that in this day and age, we’ve had such a dramatic choice.”
Metaxas went on to claim that while evangelicals faced “a tough choice” at the ballot box in 2016, the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency was untenable. “It was a tough choice for everybody,” he said. “So you had to think hard about what matters. And I think that given the track record of Hillary Clinton, a lot of people, like myself, were scared to death at the thought of a Clinton presidency.”
[Opinion: Growing number of ‘exvangelicals’ and nonreligious millennials will have dire political consequences]
“Something happened to the Democratic Party over the last 30 years,” Metaxas continued. “It’s not the party that we grew up with, it’s not the party that it was in FDR’s day. It has gone so far Left that, in a way, if you want somebody who let’s say respects the Constitution and is going to appoint originalist judges — not conservative judges — originalist judges who will call balls and strikes, at that point, your only hope is to have a president with the GOP. Now that’s a serious issue.”
Cuomo countered by bringing up evangelical opposition to President Bill Clinton because of his character and questioned whether Christians now support any politician who can forward their agenda. “If you make it that transactional,” Metaxas responded, “I think fundamentally you’re making a mistake.”
Self-interest always plays a part in choosing a candidate, Metaxas condeded, but he maintained, “Somebody who really cares about America doesn’t just vote self-interest. He votes what’s good for America.” He then offered religious liberty as a concept key to American democracy. “In a country that no longer prizes religious liberty, you begin to lose all your liberties.”
[Also read: ‘I think we’re very close’: Freed pastor Andrew Brunson urges young American Christians to prepare for persecution]
Their conversation then pivoted to the cultural battles swirling around religious liberty, sexuality, and abortion, during which both men accused the other of engaging in “sophistry.” Metaxas also brought up the controversial Reproductive Health Act signed into New York law January by Cuomo’s brother, Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Toward the end of their discussion, Cuomo eventually asked Metaxas, “Why get behind a man who makes a mockery of your faith?” to which the author responded, “Most people that I know do not think he makes a mockery of our faith.”
The debate took place in the wake of the furor stoked by the evangelical magazine Christianity Today, which called Trump “grossly immoral” and demanded his removal. Evangelist Franklin Graham, whose father Billy Graham founded the publication in 1956, slammed its position as “unfathomable.“
