US primaries start with Iowa
Go with Trump, go with God
By Roland Peters
January 15, 2024, 8:13 p.m
He may not be the most ethical candidate – but for the majority of faithful Republicans, Donald Trump is still the best presidential candidate. Some even exalt him as a messenger from God. Trump obviously likes to take this up.
The camera zooms in on a virtual planet Earth. “And on June 14, 1946, God looked at his planned paradise and said, I need a steward.” Fade to a baby photo. “So God gave us Trump.” The scene is part of an unofficial video that the ex-president shared on Truth Social on Friday. His team also showed the compilation entitled “God created Trump” during election campaign appearances in the state of Iowa.
In the US media, several evangelical pastors made critical comments in the caucus over the weekend, shortly before the start of the primary election. “He is definitely not the Messiah,” said one of them on the “Christian Broadcasting Network”: “More humility would be appropriate.”
In contrast to dubious heavenly support, Trump certainly has secular arguments on his side. In the last polls in Iowa before the Republican primaries, Trump got 51.1 percent, according to “fivethirtyeight”, followed by Nikki Haley with 17.3 percent and Ron DeSantis with 16.1 percent. Everything looks as if the ex-president will win the caucus with a historic lead. So far the record is around 13 percent.
The Americans will decide in all states about their favorite for the Republican candidacy before he runs in the presidential election in November, most likely against the current head of state Joe Biden. Iowa is not a representative state for the country, but it is important for Republicans, where the white evangelical vote is concentrated. An overwhelming majority of conservatives there are Christians. The largest group is evangelicals, who are estimated to make up about two-thirds of the caucus participants.
Moving to Iowa, the Republican primaries will take place in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina in the coming weeks before expanding to the rest of the country in the spring. The final candidate will be confirmed at the party’s national congress in July. If Trump celebrates convincing successes in the first few states, it will be almost impossible for his competitors to stop him.
Trump represents evangelical interests
For many Christian believers, Trump is the best choice – despite his fallibles and 91 charges against him in four trials. The president of the influential Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition told the BBC that Trump had stood up for religious conservatives and expected him to do so again. “Evangelical voters know that we live in a society where things have gone wrong,” he is quoted as saying: culture war, gender, wokeness. “They believe that things are very bad and if they don’t intervene, they will get much worse.”
During his presidency, Trump had even breathed more life into evangelicals. Nationwide, white Americans who viewed the then-president positively converted to evangelicals – their share rose from 25 percent when Trump took office in 2016 to 29 percent at the end of his term, noted Pew Research. During his time in office, he actively sought the support of believing Christians, prayed with them in the White House, received blessings, and emphatically mentioned God in his speeches.
A distant fourth in the polls, but still with a religious campaign in Iowa: Vivek Ramaswamy.
(Photo: picture alliance/dpa/ZUMA Press Wire)
Trump doesn’t go to church often, but the majority of Republicans still see him as a “person of faith”; more than any of the other Republican candidates for the presidential nomination, more than the Democrat Biden, an avowed and practicing Catholic. In 2020, Trump announced that from now on he sees himself as a “non-denominational Christian” – like many evangelicals.
With God against “the Marxists”
This base in Iowa is white, Christian and culturally conservative, but not necessarily practicing. More and more people like this are leaving churches but still holding on to their faith. “People who love their country and believe in God, but are not the typical churchgoers – these are the people he added to the fold,” the New York Times quoted the founder of the national organization Pastors for Trump as saying. Only one percent of the population in Iowa professes another faith.
The ex-president’s support has, among other things, to do with the fact that Trump brought the justices to the Supreme Court during his term in office, who then overturned the nationwide abortion law. The controversy over abortion has mobilized US voters for decades. A clear majority of believing Christians are against it. In Iowa, abortion opponents only want to allow abortions up to the 6th week. Most recently, they narrowly failed with this project.
Trump openly describes his campaign for the White House as a retaliatory campaign and has spoken about having his political enemies persecuted after an election victory. He also drifted into right-wing extremist territory: immigrants who entered the USA illegally were “poisoning the blood of our country,” he said. Nevertheless, many believers see Trump as their candidate. The speaker in the video says it like this: He is carrying out the Lord’s will, is a “shepherd of humanity” who fights “the Marxists”. With “poor people strong enough to wrestle with the deep state.” The deep state is this alleged conspiracy in institutions that undermines the separation of powers and thwarts the true will of the voters.