Before Donald Trump walked into his life, Sean Spicer was known primarily as a professional, a family man, and—most important—a devout Catholic, who hoped a White House job might help him meet the Pope. Trump, of course, ultimately left Spicer off the guest list when he went to the Vatican, leaving Spicer to fume to colleagues over the slight. Despite all he endured while working for the president, however, Spicer has remained loyal in exile, carefully balancing his attempts at reconciliation with the Washington establishment with effusive praise for a man who routinely mocked him.

The tensions inherent in this project would test the faith of a lesser man. Spicer, in such cases, turns to religion. When asked on NBC whether the American people deserve to know about Trump’s affairs, Spicer replied that they did not, because “that’s between him, his wife, and his God.” Spicer, in the hot seat, quickly returned to the unconvincing rhetorical style that ultimately cost him his job. “We are rushing too quick to judge people in society,” he added, repeating iterations of the same phrase as Natalie Morales pressed him on whether Trump’s philandering had damaged the Republican Party’s designation as the party of family values, but seemed to lose the argument under pressure. When asked whether Trump had given up the right to privacy when he was elected, Spicer shot back, “Not if it didn’t happen while he was in office.”

Spicer’s defense is only the most recent apologia offered by the religious right. Back in January, Tony Perkins, the president of the anti-L.G.B.T.Q.-rights group Family Research Council and a member of Trump’s commission on religion, told Politico that he was well aware of reports that Trump had had an affair with adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, as well as rumors that he’d had his former fixer, Michael Cohen, pay Daniels to make the whole thing disappear. “We kind of gave him—‘All right, you get a mulligan. You get a do-over here,’” Perkins said, sounding uncomfortable. “These things that are said about him bother him, and he is one of those people, like most people, looking for acceptance, not rejection . . . there’s an understanding that he has a need, and he wants to be accepted, and these things that are said are hurtful.”

“I think the president is providing the leadership we need at this time, in our country and in our culture,” Perkins added. As a moral leader?, his interviewer asked. Perkins seemed defeated. “As a leader,” he replied.

Jerry Falwell Jr., president of the evangelical Liberty University, went beyond forgiveness, citing the Bible to defend Trump in the wake of Daniels’s allegations. “Jesus said love our neighbors as ourselves but never told Caesar how to run Rome—he never said Roman soldiers should turn the other cheek in battle or that Caesar should allow all the barbarians to be Roman citizens or that Caesar should tax the rich to help poor,” he tweeted.

The hypocrisy is perhaps most pronounced with rank and file values voters, themselves. As I reported in May, even deeply religious Trump voters mostly feel in line in the wake of the Daniels scandal. “The evangelical community feels more under threat now than they have at any point in the past,” Will Chamberlain, the head of MAGA Meetups, told me at the time. “As a result, they’ve embraced a sort of ruthless pragmatism.” Perkins himself has implied as much, telling Politico that evangelicals “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.” Christianity, he added, “is not all about being a welcome mat which people can just stomp their feet on.”