Mother Jones: Michael Cohen Fixed Jerry Falwell Jr.’s Problem. Then the Evangelical Leader Went to Bat for Trump.
Donald Trump’s onetime lawyer and fixer helped line up a crucial endorsement for his boss on the eve of the Iowa caucuses in 2016, securing the support of prominent evangelical Jerry Falwell Jr. According to Reuters, Falwell’s endorsement came months after Cohen had done him a very big solid: Cohen helped Falwell and his wife prevent racy “personal” photos from becoming public.
Cohen, who reported to prison earlier this week to serve a three-year sentence for federal campaign violations and lying to Congress, told comedian Tom Arnold, who surreptitiously recorded the conversation on March 25, that he had prevented someone with compromising photos of the Falwells from releasing them to the public.
Before Falwell officially endorsed Trump, he was featured in a 60-second radio advertisement from Trump’s campaign. Falwell made an appeal to evangelical voters, who were expected to vote for Ted Cruz, by comparing Trump to his father, popular conservative televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr., who founded Liberty University, one of the largest Christian universities in the world. “I see a lot of parallels between my father and Donald Trump,” Falwell says in the ad, which used audio from Falwell’s introduction of Trump at a rally at Liberty University. “He speaks the truth publicly, even if it is uncomfortable for people to hear.”
Falwell continued to support Trump even after the leak of his lewd comments about women in a tape from Access Hollywood, blaming the leak on a conspiracy to harm the Republican candidate. Although he called Trump’s comments “reprehensible,” he did not rescind his endorsement, saying, “We’re all sinners, every one of us. We’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t.”
Falwell has continued to stick by the president in office, even after Trump called white supremacists “very fine people,” and after he began separating children from their parents at the US–Mexico border. In an interview with the Washington Post published on Jan. 1, 2019, Falwell said of Trump, “I can’t imagine him doing anything that’s not good for the country.”
Just this week, Falwell tweeted that Trump should have two years added to his term as “reparations” for Robert Mueller’s investigation.
i know Falwell's shittiness is no suprise to anyone but i am still kinda sick over this, as an Evangelical-adjacent.
Trump never would have won without people like my family. My family are smart, decent people, except for two, and they were extremely happy with Cruz (the "except for two" are actually friends with him
and personally delivered Montgomery County to him in his original Senate campaign)
They were all hold-your-nose Trump voters, and i believe they are sincere Christians. They put their trust in their leaders and are now implicated in the family separations, which horrify them, especially my dad, who knows about being an orphan.
To find out now that the leader their leaders trusted acted so cynically, and associated their Lord-- not just their church, but their
Lord-- with atrocities that may very well hasten the deaths of millions of people-- all to cover up his likely bisexuality-- just offends me to my core.
I mean, i don't really know day-to-day what my religion is, but even seeing Jesus as a strictly historical figure, it is crazy-making how boldly people warp his legacy and turn it to purposes that would devastate him if he knew. Like, just as a fan and not necessarily a born-again or even a full believer, i still want to be shouting scriptures at these people all day every day, because they are doing the opposite of everything they claim to support.
Like, i understand my parents are adults with their own free will, but they were indoctrinated into obedience and conformity at an age when they were defenseless against indoctrination. My issue is that this obedience and conformity would not be dangerous if their leaders were faithful to the the red-letter (words of Christ) parts of the Bible, which very specifically forbid hypocrisy ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-NINE TIMES.
But, like, if the Lamb sent to save the world becomes the banner under which the world is destroyed, that is also in line with scripture-- not with the red letters, but with the end times prophecies, which are largely outside the red letters, but which are actually far more popular among Christians?
I guess it is the irony of it all that i can't get past.