This morning the Washington Post ran a story with the headline, “Israel’s staunch evangelical allies shocked by Trump’s outburst on Netanyahu.” The title refers to the recent revelation that Trump responded to Netanyahu’s congratulations to Joe Biden after his November 2020 election victory by saying, “Fuck him.”
The significant thing here is not that Trump tossed aside his old “friend” Bibi so harshly over something so minor and diplomatically expected, but that parts of the evangelical community seemed so surprised by it.
Trump gained the respect of a large portion of the right-wing evangelical community when he moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 and made various other gestures of support for Israel. But what they failed to understand at the time (or perhaps chose to ignore) was that Trump’s moves had nothing to do with religion or ideology but were simply about enlarging his base of adoring followers and feeding his narcissistic hunger.
It seems unlikely that most evangelical Christians really believe Trump is personally in line with their theology, or that he even knows much about it. Instead, they must believe he is an unwitting but powerful means to their ends and that he is being “used by God” for those purposes.
But, at least from my non-evangelical, non-Republican perspective, this seems a very precarious and unwise position. It’s like trusting a rattlesnake in your basement to take care of your home’s rodent problem. Sure, the snake might eat a few rats, but that’s only because he’s hungry, not because he wants to assist you or is being directed by some benevolent force. It’s much simpler than that. He’s a snake and he’ll look after his own needs, not yours. And if you get in his way, he’ll do his best to kill you.