Speaker 1: All right.
Let's look at what it looks like when a nonreligious person who is a Republican tries to pander
to religious voters.
It's actually quite depressing.
Donald Trump appeared on the.
I never fully understand what show.
This is the flash point victory show.
It's a religious Christian thing and it's actually hilarious what happens.
They one of the questions is framed about how important Trump's faith is to him.
And it's really funny because obviously it's not true.
Trump has never been religious, but he started to pretend to be religious because he ran
as a Republican.
This just gets like really awkward.
And Trump spits out a word salad about religion.
Speaker 3: Your faith is very important to you.
You've said that publicly.
Your faith is.
Speaker 1: Important.
Trump has said a lot of things that aren't true.
Speaker 3: But what does that mean to the man?
Donald Trump Well, I think it means a lot of things, but more to perhaps your listeners
and the people that will watch this show.
And it's a very large group of people.
For instance, I was the only president ever go go to go to the big rally they had in Washington.
Right.
Which they have on a yearly basis.
Speaker 1: But I guess he means the March for Life.
Speaker 3: I guess the only one ever to go as a president sitting president for life.
And people were shocked.
But even Ronald Reagan didn't want to take that step.
And it was very close, always very close, as you know, to the White House.
It's almost like walking distance.
But I went and I was proud of that.
I think we've been given credit for doing that.
Speaker 1: But you can tell Trump is deeply religious, deeply spiritual.
From this answer.
Speaker 3: People would say that was a courageous thing to do.
It was courageous.
I viewed it as the right thing to do.
But I was born into a family where my father was religious, my mother was religious.
I wouldn't say they were, you know, going to church every single day.
They were you know, they were believers.
Speaker 1: They were very privately religious, such that no one knew it.
Speaker 3: Even me and strong believers.
I went to Sunday school, which was good and which was expected.
Like you, everybody goes to high school, right?
And when you think about it, the world is so different now anyway.
Speaker 1: So, you know, you get the gist.
They slammed Hillary Clinton for adopting a sort of Southern drawl when she would speak
in front of some Southern crowds.
In my mind, that's nothing compared to pretending to be devoutly religious and against abortion
when clearly you aren't and you haven't been your entire life.
TRUMP Of course there is no you never waste the opportunity to claim that the left is
simply against religion.
Speaker 3: They're against religion.
They're totally against religion.
How do you get elected on these things?
They get elected by cheating, right?
Speaker 1: Of course.
The truth is what my listen, you can ask different people on the left, you'll get different answers.
I'm against religion playing a role in civil government.
I love freedom of religion, freedom to follow any religious doctrine that speaks to you
or not to follow any and to have none of that impact public policy nor how you were treated
under the law.
That's what I'm for as a member of the left.
I'm not against religion.
Trump then said.
He's the only person who can stop Israel from getting nuked by Iran, which is interesting.
And there's a lot to say about this.
Speaker 3: Under the Democrats, Israel will be destroyed because Iran will have a nuclear
weapon and they will destroy Israel.
They will use it too.
So when you say fight a fight because we have no choice.
We have no choice and there's nobody else, I don't believe that knows how to do this.
Speaker 1: Right.
So it's really important to understand that the way in which Trump supporters are, quote,
pro-Israel is a very specific thing from the evangelical Christian community.
The viewers of this show.
Okay, The viewers of this show support Israel not because of any concern about antisemitism
or Jews or it's because they believe that supporting Israel will precipitate the second
coming of Christ, after which most or all of the Jews die, depending on which belief
system you adhere to.
That's why they are, quote, supporters of Israel.
And that's what Trump is paying lip service to.
And then lastly, Trump saying the Johnson amendment is a terrible thing.
If you don't know what that is, I'll tell you in a moment.
Speaker 3: I'm asking, why don't you use your power so that you can be treated better?
And then one person said, well, we have the Johnson Amendment, which basically would take
our tax exemption and our tax basis away from us, which is unbelievably severe.
We put put you out of business.
I said so that actually the people and I was at the top of Trump Tower way up high, and
I looked down at the sidewalk and you see all the people.
I said, So anybody off the street, then you're saying has more power than the people in this
room?
Because.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let me explain to you what Trump is saying here.
The Johnson Amendment is a tax code provision from 1954.
When we say nonprofit churches aren't allowed to do politics or they jeopardize their tax
exempt status.
What we're talking about partially comes from the Johnson Amendment.
The Johnson Amendment said if you're a five, a1c3 nonprofit organization, you can't endorser
oppose political candidates.
And of course, as we know, dozens and dozens, hundreds, thousands of churches, particularly
evangelical churches and other forms of Christianity, Protestantism regularly do politics and often
overtly endorse or oppose candidates.
They should lose their tax exempt status.
Trump is saying, No, it's too harsh because then it actually makes them impotent in some
way relative to random people.
Well, the whole point is we will give you something special, something privileged under
the tax code, which is nonprofit status.
But you can't engage in politics because that's a way to circumvent all of the campaign finance
infrastructure that is there for a particular reason.
So Trump doesn't like that Trump wants to get rid of that.
This is the height or the bottom of the barrel, depending on your view of pandering to a group
of voters that, yes, Trump does need.
He rightly assesses that he needs them in the most pathetic
way possible.