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Donald Trump is still the answer to many conservative evangelical leaders’ prayers. Or at least to their continuing grievances.


They embrace Trump the policymaker, despite being uneasy about Trump as a man, says Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a prominent evangelical activist group.

Perkins knows about Stormy Daniels, the porn actress who claimed, in a 2011 interview, that in 2006 she had sex with Trump four months after his wife, Melania, gave birth to their son, Barron. He knows of the reports that Daniels (real name: Stephanie Clifford) was paid off to keep the affair quiet in the waning weeks of the 2016 election. He knows about the cursing, the lewdness and the litany of questionable behavior over the past year of Trump’s life or the 70 that came before it.

“We kind of gave him—‘All right, you get a mulligan. You get a do-over here,’” Perkins told me in an interview for the latest episode of POLITICO’s Off Message podcast.

Weigh a paid-off porn star against being the first president to address the March for Life live via video feed, and a lot of evangelical leaders insist they can still walk away happy.

Evangelical Christians, says Perkins, “were tired of being kicked around by Barack Obama and his leftists. And I think they are finally glad that there’s somebody on the playground that is willing to punch the bully.”

What happened to turning the other cheek? I ask.

“You know, you only have two cheeks,” Perkins says. “Look, Christianity is not all about being a welcome mat which people can just stomp their feet on.”



***

In all the clashes between principles and power over the past two years, conservative evangelicals can seem to have made one of the biggest and more confusing trade-offs—at least to outside observers. After all, they say the roots of their beliefs go far deeper than partisan concerns.

During the primaries, evangelicals turned out in numbers that surprised everyone, and more than 80 percent stayed with Trump in the general election against Hillary Clinton, even after the “Access Hollywood” tape and everything else during the campaign. But their support is starting to waver: According to a Pew poll out in December, Trump’s support has dropped sharply among white evangelical Protestants, from 78 percent in February to 61 percent in December, as his approval rating among the overall electorate has settled in the mid-30s.

Perkins—who started out the 2016 race as a strong supporter of Sen. Ted Cruz—has been a frequent visitor to the Oval Office. He’s prayed with Trump. He says he’s seen the president grow, including in his sense of faith.

What might look like hypocrisy, Perkins says, is actually attention to detail.



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Perkins cheers the White House’s restrictive posture toward abortion rights and its “religious freedom” executive orders (which critics allege are part of a thinly veiled attempt to legalize discrimination against LGBTQ Americans). He says his only gripe with the administration is that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is not doing enough to stop abortions and liberal activism around the world. “We’re seeing Soros dollars being connected with USAID funds, and they’re creating these pro-abortion, pro-communist groups in some cases, working to take down conservative governments,” Perkins says.

According to Perkins, evangelical leaders have no illusions about the nature of their relationship with Trump. “I don’t think this president is using evangelicals. … I think he genuinely enjoys the relationship that had developed. He has found, I think—and he’s a very transactional president. Trust is important to him. Loyalty is important to him, and I think in this transaction, he realizes, ‘Hey, these are people I can count on, because they don’t blow with the political winds,’” he says. “It’s a developing relationship, but I’ll have to say this: From a policy standpoint, he has delivered more than any other president in my lifetime.”

Later, Perkins adds, “I think the president is providing the leadership we need at this time, in our country and in our culture.”

As a moral leader? I ask.

“As a leader,” Perkins replies.

Perkins isn’t the only one pushing this rationalization. “Our country’s got a sin problem,” the Rev. Franklin Graham told MSNBC host Alex Witt in an interview this past Saturday. Graham, son of the Rev. Billy Graham and current president of his Evangelistic Association, said he saw no reason to believe the allegations about Trump and Stormy Daniels, nor the reports that the president called certain countries “shitholes,” despite the fact Trump reportedly bragged about saying it in private phone calls. Graham deflected questions about whether he was holding Trump to a different personal standard than he might for a politician he disagreed with more.

Click here to subscribe and hear the full podcast, including Perkins’ case against Rex Tillerson and what he’s proud Donald Trump did as president that George W. Bush never did.

“We certainly don’t hold him up as the pastor of this country, and he’s not,” Graham told the network. “But I appreciate the fact that the president does have a concern for Christian values, he does have a concern to protect Christians—whether it’s here at home or around the world—and I appreciate the fact that he protects religious liberty and freedom.”

Plus, there’s Vice President Mike Pence, an evangelical himself and the constant reassurance many evangelical leaders cite, who while traveling in Israel on Monday said he wouldn’t talk about the “latest baseless allegations” in the Stormy Daniels confessional.

Many evangelical leaders have struggled with Trump’s position on immigration, including several on his own advisory council. Last week, after a meeting with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), several religious leaders joined her and other Democrats for a news conference pressing Trump to protect the Dreamers.

“To those members of Congress committed to life: It doesn’t finish when the baby is born,” said National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference President Samuel Rodriguez, who was one of the speakers at Trump’s inauguration. “Womb to tomb.”

Though Trump kicked off his campaign by railing against Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists, Perkins says, “It’s not—a lot of people think, ‘Well, they don’t want Mexicans down here; they don’t want people from south.’ That’s not what it is. It’s the ‘OTMs’—the ‘other than Mexicans’—that are crossing the borders, who are coming from Islamic countries that are coming into this country to do harm to this nation.”

A father of five, including a 10-year-old son, Perkins says the president has posed a challenge in what to tell his children. None of them like all the tweeting, and Perkins says he’d change that if he could, though he understands it.

“These things that are said about him bother him, and he is one of those people, like most people, looking for acceptance, not rejection. That’s why his reference to the polls and stuff like that, and so when someone on TV, a talking head is saying things about him, his natural reaction is to respond, and I think that’s what he’s done with Twitter,” Perkins says. “And so, in terms of my family, my kids growing up in a Christian home, and as we talk about these things, there’s an understanding that he has a need, and he wants to be accepted, and these things that are said are hurtful.”

Is that forgiving attitude in keeping with conservative Christian teachings?

“We see right and wrong. We see good and evil, but also among evangelicals, there’s an understanding that we are all fallen, and the idea of forgiveness is very prominent,” Perkins says. “And so, we understand that, yes, there is justice, but there is mercy.”

Mercy in politics can be harder to find.

Perkins recalls the day in July 2015, at a religious forum in Iowa, when Trump snapped back at John McCain’s criticism by saying he didn’t consider the Arizona senator and former POW a war hero. Perkins, who was waiting to go on stage following Trump, figured that those remarks alone would end Trump’s candidacy. What he underestimated, Perkins says, was the anger at McCain, whom he considers a friend, but who’s “been extremely disappointing politically” to evangelicals for years.

The evangelical reaction, according to Perkins, was “‘Look, I agree with [Trump]. I can’t stand John McCain.’ I think that’s what people were connecting with.”

He acknowledged that doesn’t seem very Christian, “but again, I think this president, in his authenticity, is what has connected with people.”

As long as Trump doesn’t disappoint evangelicals politically, Perkins predicts, they’ll stick with him. “Whenever the policy stops, and his administration reverts to just personality,” he adds, “that’s where I believe the president will be in trouble.”