Nota Bene! Anyone is welcome to read and weigh in on these comments. Given that I am not a political commentator, journalist, or pundit, but rather someone who has been involved in spiritual formation, guidance, pastoral ministry, and leadership for the past forty years, my intended audience and conversation partners are people of faith, especially though not limited to those who self-identify as Christians. I am especially interested in Christians from various perspectives explaining how being a Christian and living the Christ-life influences your political views and actions. This is a presumed conversation, not a soliloquy. Please feel free to scroll down and offer comments below.

I’ve never understood how the stereotypical Midwesterners from “America’s Heartland”—(and scattered throughout the 50 states) with their friendly, welcoming personalities, down-to-earth natures, where your word is your word, where agreements are sealed eye to eye with a firm handshake, where pretentiousness is sniffed out like a foul odor, arrogance the furthest far from godliness, where people would rather lose a ballgame with grace and dignity after their best effort than disgrace themselves with a win by way of cheating, where most people’s trinity of commitments are God, family, and country with apple pie running a close fourth—tolerate, let alone, support or vote for Donald Trump. Folks who want to vote Republican don’t need me to say have at it. But why this deeply troubled, dangerous man who has cast himself as a man of and for “the people.” Really? Really?

I lived in New Jersey for eight years before Mr. Trump earned his full dissolute status as The Donald. You’d only have to live in New Jersey for eight weeks (eight days?) before learning of his unethical, racist, land-lording antics, his real estate scams, his sustaining his businesses when banks would no longer lend him money by selling $675 million of junk bonds, his sinking the United States Football League in search of his own planned financial gain, his bogus Trump University, his philandering and subsequent payoffs, his vulgar Entertainment Tonight inter inner-view, his stiffing—because he could—“the piano man” who sold him $100,000 worth of pianos, his owing $70 million to 253 contractors, sending many into debt, bankruptcy, hospitals, therapist’s offices, and divorce court for the damage he knowingly and callously inflicted on so many small business owners, their employees, and families over the years. This is a small selection from a litany of serious indignities and not-so accidental improprieties. Marty Rosenberg, former vice president of Atlantic Plate Glass said of Mr. Trump, “If ethics or morality has nothing to do with business, he’s a very good businessman.”

The question is Why are the thousands upon thousands of Marty Rosenbergs out there who have been laid out by the cold-bloodied villainy of Trump like a carpet of dead soldiers on Normandy Beach ignored by Trump’s supporters? The question is Does the kind of treachery and guile routinely perpetrated by Trump for decades have any import on his selection as the leader of a nation, as the leader of the United States of America? How low will we let the bar go before it costs us more than we can imagine?

Trump’s stalling tactics were already well-honed long before his Presidency, refusing for as long as possible to pay what he owed real people, with real lives, and real families, and—thanks to The Donald—real struggles, devastating struggles, knowing he could break those who didn’t have the means or the time to sue him. Now he’s stalling the courts. Typical Trump chicanery. Calculated. All and always calculated. This man’s decades-long track record for unflinchingly stiffing “the little guy” is legendary and not something that can be waved off like a little fly—“Well, we all have our flaws.” These are not flaws. These are conscious, intentional tactics with blatant, repeated disregard for others to protect the eighth wonder of the world—The Donald’s fragile ego. Why, then, such blatant, widespread disregard for qualities and qualifications befitting a dignified leader of character on a national and global stage by people who not so long ago called themselves The Moral Majority?

This is the Presidential candidate who ran in 2016 as the “law and order” man who promised to “drain the swamp.” Yet, by the time DT “left” the Oval Office in 2020 the D.C. swamp was the swampiest ever and The Donald was the most putrid of Swamp Things in American presidential history. The watchdog organization CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) asserts that Trump’s administration was uniquely and egregiously corrupt with multiple people working in the Trump administration or within his orbit being indicted, convicted of crimes, and going to prison. These were Trump’s Yes people. It’s like locking up prostitutes instead of the pimp.

CREW reported Trump was responsible for 3,737 conflicts of interest saying for four years the presidency was essentially opened up for business, influence was for sale. They found cold, hard facts (not alternative facts) validating that the Trump administration was characterized by a grotesque abuse of power, ”marked by placing self-interest and profiteering at the highest levels above the public interest,” culminating in a deadly insurrection. We would not tolerate such behavior and moral bankruptcy among townspeople in our local communities, business dealings, schools, kids’ athletic programs, or church communities. Why is it tolerated when it comes to the highest position of leadership and power in the land? Could anything justify complicity in such blatant, ongoing misconduct and malfeasance?

The price of forfeiting one’s integrity by checking the box marked “Win at All Costs” is indeed COSTLY—personally and collectively. But this is not at all what Dietrich Bonhoeffer had in mind when he spoke of “the cost of discipleship.” Quite the opposite. Bonhoeffer’s famous phrase refers to what happens when we choose defeat in the eyes of the world rather than succumb to the dominant culture’s ignominy. In the end, Jesus appears to be The Biggest Loser. But in the New Beginning after the apparent end, God’s ways are shown to be contrary to “the ways of the world” as Jesus’ humiliating death is transformed into “The Magnificent Defeat” by which the good, the true, and the beautiful ultimately triumph.1 The cost of violating one’s most noble principles by opting to “Win at all costs” is called selling out (or selling one’s soul), whereas risking defeat by abiding by what is right and just, for example, as Liz Cheney did, is called buying into a more difficult but more edifying and dignified way of being.

So, when it comes to filth, whether it is his being habitually dishonest, morally debased, ethically challenged, politically corrupt, and filthy rich due to his unscrupulous business practices including his multiple bankruptcies as a strategy not as a failure, The Donald deserves cuts to the front of the line.

In these last few days, we have seen a recent manifestation of Trump’s duplicity and strategic calculations. Trump’s political platform (I use the last word loosely) boils down to two guiding principles: one, Vengeance is Mine; two, Sheer Expediency—a personal opportunity for self-promotion and self-gain. In other words: It’s All about Me. If tomorrow Mr. Trump woke and read the results of a reputable study that said political decisions making it easier for more immigrants to flee daily terror, physical violence, and personal harm and enter the United States would undoubtedly prove politically expedient, Mr. Trump would turn on a slippery dime and begin the chant “BUILD THE BRIDGE, NOT THE WALL!”

We’ve seen this very political about-face in a slightly different context the last few days by DT. But the modus operandi is the same and it has a long history. As a brief preface to these recent occurrences, remember that Trump once called himself a Democrat. Before entering the political arena, Trump described himself on “Meet the Press” as being “very, pro-choice.” Neither were burning issues for him. Nonchalance was his M.O. on such matters. He doesn’t hold views about many things with much personal conviction, except a view that serves his self-interest at a particular point in time. This is why around 2012 when he first began to test the Presidential waters, Trump said, “I am pro-life.” Because he had made the calculation that he had a better chance of political success and challenging the Copernican Revolution by putting himself at the center of the universe by running as a Republican. And we’ve seen how little interest, dedication, or allegiance he had for Republicanism. He’s interested in Trumpism (as if we needed one more pathological, destructive -ism). That’s the extent and depth of it for DT. Before we heard the word electability every night on the news, it had become foremost in Trump’s reptilian brain.

Anyone who does a minimal amount of research on the matter would not be presumptuous to say that for the last decade or so, the issue of abortion for Donald Trump has never been a religious, moral, ethical, or important one. It has been a politically expedient issue. Developing a moral compass whichever side of an issue one is on, doesn’t just happen overnight nor is it pulled out of thin air. The direction of the needle on Donald’s moral compass is determined by licking his finger, holding it in the air, and feeling which way the political wind is blowing. And when it comes to political opportunism, self-interest, and personal fame, Donald is always going to go with the flow. When it served his ego and political purpose, he championed overturning Roe v. Wade. Only a few days ago he said he is “proudly the person responsible” for this decision.

But now it is “Woah, Nelly!” Why? Because the breeze blowing against his wet finger now feels like it is blowing in a different direction. And he’s all about one thing—The Donald and what The Donald wants. What Donald wants is to put his fanny in that big chair behind the big desk in the Oval Office. What he wants is power, prestige, and possessions. I seem to recall those were at the core of the three temptations that the satan swung on a string in front of Jesus like a hypnotist swinging a carrot in front of a glazy-eyed rabbit. He wants revenge. He wants to be a dictator, if only for a day. He wants payback even though he is due no such thing.

I don’t think Donald Trump’s inner mantra has ever been “Let’s  Make America Great Again.” I think it’s more along the lines of “I’ll Show Them.” “I’ll stick it to them—I’ve got my list.“ And you know he has one. “I’ll do whatever I damn well please”—halt, reverse, or undo the American experiment, kiss the justice department goodbye, surround myself with Yes people who know how to salute me and click their heels together, put more value on what Putin says than the advice of American advisors, not allow dissenting voices in my company despite their being required for the health and maturity of any organization or collective.” When DT doesn’t get his way, he throws a tantrum like the four-year-old who drops to the ground in aisle 4 of the grocery store and starts screaming and swimming in place on the tile floor because his mom wouldn’t buy the Fruit Loops. We’ve seen DT swimming on the shiny linoleum for the last four years. Why? Shrink it down to Little League or Girl Scout Cookie Selling or the 5th-grade Spelling Bee or First Prize at the school Science Fair or the Homecoming Court: only losers (read—only the perennially immature) can’t admit they lost.

All jest aside, this is very serious, very dangerous. And whatever your deep conviction or deep wrestling with the issue of abortion, it’s about a whole lot more than abortion. The wielding of power is a very sensitive matter. Our world already has too many immature, unformed, insecure, passive-aggressive, and aggressively aggressive leaders (most of them men) with way too much power. Power and Insecurity make for a very bad, toxic, and lethal marriage. Almost all the danger or hope that are concomitant with the crucial relational, social, political, environmental, moral, and religious issues today can be traced to the issue of power—the controlling and destructive abuse of it or the wise, discerning, and healthy sharing of it for the common good as part of a viable solution.

Do not underestimate in a leader the constitutive place of personal integrity, dignity, character, humility, kindness, the willingness and capacity to listen, to engage with different opinions and convictions, deep sympathy, compassion, wisdom, neighborliness, and concern for justice for all now and seven generations hence. Should the world begin to turn in a more loving, caring, hope-filled direction, especially for the least of these, as Mary prayed in the Magnificat, then intimations of the reign of God that Jesus preached and embodied will begin to break forth and will be encouraged and modeled by those we deem noble, whole-hearted, courageous, modest leaders. We shall see.

1 The Magnificent Defeat, Frederick Buechner.

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