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Scott Lively of thoroughly debunked Pink Swastika fame – yes, the guy who not only says gays invented Nazism, apparently so they could throw themselves into concentration camps – but wants to kill gays to boot, says that Donald Trump, the most unlikely Evangelical hero EVER, has faced [imaginary] “persecution” from [non-existent] “Marxist elites” and has therefore “walked in the shoes” of a Christian conservative.

Which is true. They also face imaginary persecution and fight non-existent Marxist elites. So yes, Trump stands proudly in their company. Now, as with any rhetoric surrounding Trump you have to endure a painful load of lies and a shocking break with our shared reality, but that’s the price you pay this election season, and Lively’s World Net Daily op-ed is no exception:

Many of the people announcing an intention to vote for Donald Trump are adding a disclaimer to distance themselves from his unsavory comments or actions of the past. I’m not going to do that. In my view Donald Trump is today a far different and better man than the one who threw his hat in the ring at the start of this election cycle. I credit that to the unprecedented level of public vilification – the “borking” of Donald Trump – he has endured and appears to have been transformed by.

This is interesting: “his unsavory comments or actions of the past.” The comments and actions are not of the past but ongoing and getting worse. Yet somehow, imagines Lively (who has no trouble picturing jack-booted gay Nazis or, in his words, “militaristic male homosexuals”), Trump is not the same guy who declared his nomination. Despite the fact that nothing has changed.

Whatever his worldview and the context of his past experience might have been, and regardless of the level of his sincerity at the beginning of his campaign, this man has made himself the spokesman for numerous positions and values that Christian conservatives (at great personal cost) have advocated for years.

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What…sexually assaulting women? Is that some commandment that’s been tacked on with no memo sent?

To imagine, moreover, that it is Trump who has endured an “unprecedented level” of public vilification while insulting 281 people, places and things since he announced his candidacy in June – and counting – is fantastical. Like those jack-booted gay Nazis, it beggars belief. As does what follows:

It is certainly possible that after the flame and fury of this election has subsided, a President Trump could drift back into his old ways of thinking and acting, but I doubt it. For those who face it with courage and fortitude, persecution is the “refiner’s fire” of character. This has been true of Christians throughout history and appears to be true of rapidly maturing Donald Trump, who has openly and unashamedly claimed Christ.

This is outrageous claim and demonstrably untrue. Trump does not need to “drift” back into his “old ways of thinking” because he has never abandoned them. It is a peculiar sort of reality in which Lively finds himself. Nor has there been any “refiners fire” let alone even a hint of contrition or the necessary repentance of past deeds.

Trump’s entire story is like a poorly written novel which lacks any character development at all, and Lively’s endorsement of Trump as a Christian conservative is the review of a literary critic who never read the book.

It is perhaps not so surprising then that for Lively, Trump, perhaps the worst candidate in American history, is a “better candidate” than Reagan.

Needless to say, when Lively concludes that “the former New York libertine” is “deserving of the presidency,” you have to wonder if Lively is even aware of behavioral norms (like not touching people sexually without their permission), let alone has bothered to crack open his copy of the Bible, where Jesus has a few things to say about rich guys and worldly power.