President Donald Trump’s actions in his second term are not explained to the American public, but rather imposed. He makes pronouncements that go against the grain, without elaboration, and many people are left stunned. A prime example is his recent exchange with the heroic President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the Oval Office. From the world’s perspective, this should have been a meeting of respect between two leaders of the free world. Instead, it devolved into the Trump-Vance bizarre theater of disrespect for Zelenskyy peppered with some apparently sincere concern for dictator Vladimir Putin’s woes. It was like a cannon was set off in the very heart of American foreign policy. It wasn’t two leaders of the free world, after all, but rather one—and he was sitting on the left representing Ukraine.
Many in the United States were left shaking their heads wondering what is happening: Where does this smug support for Putin come from? Why is the President of the United States throwing over 80 years of alliances for a brutal autocrat? The obvious answer knowing this President is he has aspirations to make some part of Russia the Trump Riviera of Eurasia. Who doubts that Putin and Trump talk mutual financial gratification behind closed doors? But that can’t fully explain the politics. In fact, the white evangelicals of the religious right can. Christian Nationalism turns out to be pro-Russia.
The press has covered the meeting within the frame of the Oval Office. But let’s broaden the lens: Trump’s behavior toward Zelenskyy and Putin seems alien on the surface; it’s certainly anti-democratic. But it is right in the heart of the religious right’s playbook. Trump, Putin, and the religious right share a platform: hatred of gays. Trump isn’t the only one in his circle who admires Putin. His favorite evangelical, Franklin Graham, also supports the Putin regime. In 2014, Graham praised Russian leader Vladimir Putin for his anti-LGBTQ crusade. Plenty of white evangelicals support Putin for the same reasons they support Trump: they actually admire an autocratic strongman especially when it includes an aggressive anti-LGBTQ agenda. They also see Putin as a family values hero, which is why Graham has met with Russian officials in recent years. The religious right has sought out world leaders who agree with them on “family values” like Putin after definitively losing the culture war in the U.S., where 69-70% support same-sex marriage. Apparently, brutal murderers and autocrats like Putin are just fine so long as they are cruel to LGBTQ. Trump doesn’t care about the cruelty or civil rights so he’s AOK defending poor Putin, who has been through some really tough times.
There was a time when Russia put LGBTQ individuals in prison for being gay; that was repealed, but Russia is now convicting people for displaying LGBTQ symbols and messages.
The country falsely claims that homosexuals are more dangerous to children than heterosexuals, a demonization that can be found among America’s religious right. No doubt that evangelicals are looking at Russia’s relatively new law with genuine interest. Imprisoning gays and censoring their messaging would be the next step for the religious right that has fought so hard to keep gays out of their businesses and lives after they couldn’t win the culture wars through argument or example.
Trump’s blueprint for government—the Project 2025 he “rejected” during the campaign—is steeped in anti-LGBTQ policies, all crafted by the religious right. Soon after RFK Jr. became the Secretary of Health and Human Services, HHS made the idiotic announcement there are only “males” and “females” as a scientific fact. It’s a religious tenet; at least call it what it is. One of the most irritating aspects of the Christian Nationalist operatives is how they lurk in the shadows while trying to suppress a majority of the country’s civil rights and values. Americans historically have given religion the benefit of the doubt, but they now face a catastrophe that cannot permit blind trust in religious actors.
Understanding the politics here makes more sense of Vice President JD Vance’s self-righteous attack on Zelenskyy. That hero threatens the far-right religious agenda Vance embraces, which prioritizes imposition of the religious right’s values on the country whether the rest of us like it or not. In that universe, God is on Putin’s side and GOD is always superior to any other consideration like democracy, diplomacy, allies, or world history. Zelenskyy hit a true nerve when he said that they would regret joining with Putin, knowing as he knows his murderous soul. The man is an expert on Putin’s maniacal cruelty. Trump’s and Vance’s defensiveness was embarrassing, but it was also oddly self-confident, arising as it did out of religious politics, not the greater public good of the United States. How dare Zelenskyy suggest that Putin is a tyrant?
Of course, the rest of the country and world are in shock over this exchange., but we don’t have time for shock or, worse, tuning out. Understand that what is happening here is quite simple. A large majority of the American people have rejected the right’s crusade against women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and other civil rights. White evangelicals and conservative Catholics made their arguments and they failed. The younger the American, the more they lost. Instead of respecting the rest of us, they are going to fix us. They are so convinced of their moral superiority and intolerant of other religions and viewpoints that they view their crusade against LGBTQ individuals as somehow “saving” the country for us. Most important: they are willing to trade democracy for their fundamentalist agenda.
It’s time for the press and the country to see and discuss the religious right’s power behind the Trump throne. They aren’t some benign religious force that is simply receiving favors from Trump. They are setting domestic and international policy. There has never been a time in U.S. history when we needed the separation of church and state more.