Amid all the chaos and cruelty, perhaps the one enduring benefit of Donald Trump's presidency will be The Great Unvarnishing. The acidity of Trump's public persona—his blatant narcissism and vindictiveness and lack of ethics and selfishness and greed—has worn on the top coat of paint many people have applied to themselves, gradually exposing what lies beneath. It isn't often pretty. All the pretense has gone straight out the window as the president has seized control of one of our two major political parties while saying the quiet parts out loud.

No one pretends Donald Trump is an ethical person. He and his allies scarcely even pretend he is a president for all Americans. Everyone knows for whom he is the president: The Base, and especially the core Republican constituency of White Evangelical Christians. This is all the more revelatory because no one pretends Donald Trump is a man of God, really. His pantomimes of Devout Religiosity during the campaign were so half-assed that few adult humans could realistically believe he's a believer. The guy who bragged about grabbing women "by the pussy" and OK'd calling his own daughter a "piece of ass" was suddenly pretending to have accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.

"Two Corinthians, 3:17—that's the whole ballgame," he told the crowd at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. "Is that the one you like? I think that's the one you like."

It was all there: the obvious unfamiliarity with the material, and the open disdain for anyone who actually was familiar. Trump, the ultimate snake-oil salesman, couldn't resist calling out his newest and easiest marks for what they were while he made the sale. Except, again, it's doubtful many Evangelicals who pulled the lever for Trump really believed he's a God-fearing man. Nearly half of Republicans might believe God wanted Trump to be president, but that's not the same thing. God has unwitting and imperfect agents, after all. They knew what they were getting.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a rising star in the 2020 Democratic field, said as much recently when he declared of the president, "It's hard to look at his actions and believe they are the actions of somebody who believes in God." Chuck Todd of Meet the Press asked him to square that with Trump's Evangelical support on Sunday.

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ICYMI: How does Mayor Pete Buttigieg explain President Trump's support from the evangelical community? #MTP #IfItsSunday@PeteButtigieg: Scripture talks "about lifting up the least among us, and taking care of strangers, which is another word for immigrants." pic.twitter.com/luMixPxQb7 — Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) April 8, 2019

It's only "hypocrisy" if you believe the most important word in the phrase White Evangelical Christian is "Christian"—as in, you prioritize, above all else, the teachings of Jesus Christ. Of course it isn't. It has always been "White." The current all-encompassing figurehead of the Republican Party has merely laid this bare, because the question, What principles of Jesus Christ does Donald Trump embody? can only be met with derisive laughter. The better question might be which of the Seven Deadly Sins—pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth—does he not embody.

No, the important part of White Evangelical Christian is White. These folks had called themselves Values Voters, which mainstream politicos would accept without much examination even though the most important values seemed to be abstinence-only sex ed and opposition to marriage equality and abortion. Jesus never devoted much time to any of these topics, and all his talk about giving aid to the poor and the sick never got much play in Republican politics. Sometimes, the latter was hand-waved away with talk of Small Government and how it was up to charities, as if philanthropy can substitute for a social safety net and construct a viable ladder for people to change their station in life—you know, The American Dream.

Trump prays devoutly with a group of ministers. Alex Wong Getty Images

These voters are actually, at the core, traditionalists. They believe the United States was at its best in the postwar boom of the 1950s and '60s, but not necessarily because programs like the G.I. Bill—a dreaded Big Government initiative—enhanced social mobility and gave young (white) men the chance to establish middle-class families. They're more interested in who made the rules back then: white, Christian men, who accepted input from other white, Christian men. This is politics, and politics is about power. Elites emphasize these narrow cultural issues to mine that nostalgia for A Simpler Time When Men Were Men, without getting into those thorny issues of how, when it comes to the wealth generated by our economy, a small number of people have eaten up more and more of the pie ever since, all while wages and mobility stagnated. That kind of talk might anger The Donors!

Trump has merely exposed this longstanding force in conservative politics for what it is, even if he pays lip service to the concerns of people in the industrial midwest who've been left behind by globalization. His basic appeal is as a bulwark for White America against a changing world, where The Others—chiefly, Hispanic immigrants and worshippers of Islam—are the villains in American life. That is the potent symbolism of The Wall, which Evangelicals support more than any other group. This is also the psychological thicket of power and identity where America's gun culture resides.



Trump's brash disregard for consequences—a symptom of the collapse of shame as a social force—has also spilled over onto some of the Thought Leaders on the Christian Right. Pat Robertson, who is still alive for the same cosmic reasons as Henry Kissinger, called for the assassination of a foreign leader with a drone strike last week:

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Pat Robertson calls on the US military to take out Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro with a drone strike. pic.twitter.com/jqtdfxIEiJ — Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) April 4, 2019

Like Jesus said: if a foreign leader oppresses their people, and they have lucrative reserves of crude oil, render God's own judgment unto them.

Ol' Pat also had some thoughts on U.S.-resident-journalist Jamal Khashoggi's assassination, which the CIA determined was ordered directly by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

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Pat Robertson responds to reports that the Saudis murdered a journalist by telling everyone to calm down and focus on the important things, like the lucrative arms deal we have with them. pic.twitter.com/06b7s3R6Xe — Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) October 15, 2018

Like Jesus said: if a Washington Post writer is murdered and chopped up with a bone saw, but it's in the embassy of an ally who buys our weapons to use in their proxy war against Iran that is an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe, it's all good!

One thing that never seems to come up is, say, this:

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

"Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

—Matthew 25:35-40

Here's the president this weekend:

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Trump over and over: "Sorry, get out. Sorry, get out. Can't handle it...Our country's full. We're full. Our system is full, our country is full, can't come in. Our country is full." — Daniel Dale (@ddale8) April 6, 2019

Trump enjoyed the support of 71 percent of Evangelicals shortly after his administration embarked on its "zero-tolerance policy," the inevitable consequence of which was to separate children from their parents at the southern border. He continued to enjoy their support after the Mobile Locker Room tape, and after it emerged he'd paid $130,000 to silence a porn star about the affair she alleges they had shortly after the birth of his youngest child. He enjoyed their support after his administration teargassed migrants—The Stranger whom Jesus implores us to Invite In—which apparently was a rare moment of Trumpian praise for Kirstjen Nielsen, the Homeland Security Secretary who also oversaw the family separations but now has been forced out because she's insufficiently extreme.

He will continue to enjoy their support because he is a potent vector of weaponized nostalgia, and he has made it a priority to install Conservative Judges—not to be confused with Great Legal Minds Who Happen to Be Conservative—to enshrine in the judiciary these politics of backlash against the changing world. In February, after an Alabama prison denied a request from a Death Row inmate that his imam be present for his execution, and he filed suit, the United States Supreme Court ruled against him. Only Christians can be guaranteed their Last Rites, apparently.

Yes, Donald Trump has given us one gift: The Great Unvarnishing. Racism cannot be dismissed as some vestigial legacy of America's past mistakes—it is one of the core animating forces in our society, a vehicle for power that still runs smooth as ever. Everything is malleable in the face of power and riches. People who oppose crony capitalism in theory support it in practice—as long as they're the cronies. And self-proclaimed Men of God will support Donald Trump, American president. It's almost like everyone has personal standards of ethics, and what religion you practice doesn't necessarily have anything to do with your morality.

On the bright side, you never have to listen to Political Christians again if you don't want to. Again: what principles of Jesus Christ does Donald Trump embody? Would you even let the guy babysit your kids?

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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