'Desperate' defense of 'a convicted felon': Expert explains Trump's Christian supporters

Former President Donald Trump is aiming to shore up support among what is arguably the most important foundational bloc of supporters in the MAGA movement — conservative Christian evangelicals.

The Guardian reported Saturday that Ralph Reed, who is the founder and chair of the far-right Faith & Freedom Coalition, has promised to deliver millions of evangelical voters to Trump's side in the handful of battleground states that will decide the November election, calling it "the biggest turnout of Christian voters in American history." This includes a promise to knock on 10 million doors of conservative Christian households, to make 10 million phone calls to drive voter turnout, send 25 million text messages and have 30 million voter guides placed in approximately 113,000 churches.

"This time there aren’t gonna need to be any lawsuits," Reed said at an evangelical gathering in Washington, D.C. on Friday. "We’re not going to have to go to court and we’re not going to have to wait until 2.30 in the morning for Donald Trump to declare victory. He’s going to do it at 9 o’clock at night!"

READ MORE: 'Holy war': Former federal prosecutor compares evangelical Trump supporters to ISIS

At the gathering, far-right commentator Monica Crowley framed the 2024 election as a "war" against an insidious "enemy within" that's dead-set on "infiltrating, undermining and destroying" the country with an army of "godless pedophiles." She additionally placed blame at the feet of the "deep state," which she said unfairly targeted the reviled late Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin), who led an anti-Communist crusade in the 1950s before he was ultimately censured.

"Senator Joe McCarthy was right, and he was trying to ring the bell in the 1950s about communist infiltration in our government and the same deep state that is now going after Donald Trump," she said. “The same deep state that removed Richard Nixon, the same deep state that went after Ronald Reagan and anybody else who stood up to them."

Trump is hoping to rally his evangelical base around culture war issues like displaying the Ten Commandments in public schools — as Louisiana Republican Governor Jeff Landry did earlier this week. He has, however, declined to endorse a national abortion ban, which has been a longtime goal of the Christian right. 60-year-old Stephen Sandrelli, who told the Guardian he was a former Democrat and federal government employee from Fitchburg, Massachusetts, was at the conference, and made it clear that he's still pushing for a full abortion ban in all 50 states.

"Anybody who supports abortion is supporting murder," Sandrelli said.

READ MORE: Ten Commandments governor declares no church-state separation in rough Fox News interview

Trump's embrace by the Christian right comes despite his conviction on 34 felony counts in late May. The 45th president of the United States was found guilty on all counts in his first criminal trial for falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to women claiming to have slept with him.

One of those women — adult film star and director Stormy Daniels — testified that she was paid $130,000 to keep quiet about a night with Trump at a Lake Tahoe hotel in spring of 2006. According to Daniels, she slept with Trump after he suggested that he would cast her on his show, The Apprentice, and help boost her career. The night Trump and Daniels allegedly slept together (he maintains the two never had sex), Trump's wife, Melania, was at home nursing their third son, Barron, who had been born just weeks before.

In a post to his Substack newsletter, Public Religion Research Institute founder and president Robert P. Jones wrote that, for evangelicals, Trump has ascended from just a politician to a symbol of a struggle they view as righteous.

"The transformation of Trump from a person to a symbol is the key to understanding the power of the Maga movement and the internal logic of the upside-down world where a unanimous guilty verdict in a fair trial results in solidified support, record fundraising, and desperate Christian defenses of a convicted felon," he wrote.

READ MORE: Donald Trump guilty on all counts in New York criminal trial

Click here to read the Guardian's report in full.