Do Many People Still Think Trump Is Good? I’m Afraid So.

(And Why It Bugs the Hell Out of Me)

By LONNIE KING

I recently read an article in The Atlantic that, once again, put a magnifying glass on a question that seems to rattle around in my head almost daily:

How can so many people, especially those who call themselves Christians, continue to defend Donald Trump—not just as a political preference, but as some kind of moral savior?

David Brooks, the article’s author, doesn’t frame it in purely religious terms. Instead, he builds his argument around the idea of moral structure and the decay of shared ethical frameworks.

Once upon a time, in societies like ancient Greece, people inherited their moral roles. You knew your duties to your family, your city, your community. Morality was tied to how well you lived within those roles, how honorably you contributed.

But in modern Western society, we’ve mostly shed those inherited roles. We’re all free agents now, picking and choosing our identities, our tribes, our moral codes.

And when that happens? People become desperate for some kind of structure, some code to live by. And if no unifying, meaningful moral tradition is available, they’ll cling to whoever offers them belonging, power, and identity.

Brooks uses this framework to explain why Trump’s supporters—despite his lies, cruelty, and corruption—don’t seem to care. It’s not that they don’t see those things. It’s that they’ve recalibrated morality around loyalty, grievance, and tribal victory. It’s the morality of “winning,” not of character.

The Drum I Keep Banging…

And that brings me right back to my recurring frustration, the drum I keep banging over and over and over again:

How can a country that keeps claiming to be becoming more Christian actually be becoming less moral?

A majority of Trump’s base claims to be Christian and they’ll argue all day long that America is a Christian nation. But if Christianity means anything, it’s supposed to mean a life shaped by two foundational imperatives: Love God. Love others.

And yet the version of Christianity that has wrapped itself around Trumpism—and more broadly around Christian nationalism—seems to have thrown both of those out the window.

I can’t reconcile a faith that follows a homeless, enemy-loving, mercy-granting Jesus with a movement that cheers cruelty at the border, dismisses poverty as laziness, and shouts down any mention of justice as “wokeness.”

If your Christianity demands loyalty to a nation, a race, or a political party before it requires compassion and mercy, it is a hollowed-out faith.

…And Why I Keep Banging on It

I also have to admit part of the reason I keep banging this drum is because I carry a sense of guilt.

I was entangled in that version of Christianity for years, and I saw hints—sometimes glaring signs—that it was sliding down a slope of immorality. Not the kind of immorality that gets preached from pulpits, but the insidious kinds: xenophobia, racism, white supremacy, and a cruelty disguised as righteousness.

I didn’t have the guts to call it out back then. I stayed silent when I should’ve spoken up.  Ultimately, I walked away and burned bridges.  But I never truly stood up and called out the evil that was being passed off as ‘holiness’.  

And that silence haunts me.

So when I rant about it now, it’s not just performative anger—it’s partly an attempt to make up for the opportunities I squandered.

Don’t misunderstand: I’m not a victim in this story.  But I am someone trying to avoid another regret. If I can help someone else see it sooner, if I can spark a reckoning in even a few hearts, then maybe my belated voice will count for something.

That’s why I keep shouting, even if it feels like everyone I ever knew has turned on me or that no one’s listening.

Moral Decay Breeds Counterfeits

One of the overlooked accelerants in all of this is the belief, widely held within Christianity, that the Bible is the only legitimate moral authority in the world. I grew up in a religious tradition that didn’t just suggest this—it stated it as fact:  you can’t have a moral society without the Bible.

Never mind that the Bible itself was shaped by cultural thought, including influences from Greek society. And never mind that Christians have shown an uncanny ability to twist scripture to fit their existing ideologies, rather than adjusting their ideologies to align with the text.

This belief—that they have the market cornered on moral authority—fuels the abuses they extract from their sacred text. It gives them a built-in justification to dismiss any competing notions of morality as flawed, dangerous, or ungodly.

In the vacuum of decaying moral structures, this absolutism offers them a counterfeit certainty that feels like conviction, even when it is corrupted.

What Brooks helped me see in his piece, though, is that this absolutism, combined with moral decay, produces an inevitable byproduct. When people no longer have any shared, communal understanding of what goodness actually looks like, they’ll substitute something else: nationalism, partisanship, a cult of personality.

In this case, it happens to be a political figure wrapped in the symbols of religion.

And that’s why I keep coming back to this. I’m not trying to score political points. I’m trying to point out the rot.

Because if I claim to be a follower of Jesus (and I still do, even though I reject the religion that abuses his name for its benefit) then I am obligated to call out the ways this version of Christianity is a betrayal of everything he actually taught and lived.

If the only moral code is power and loyalty to the tribe, then Christianity has become just another brand, a tribal marker with no substance. And if I ever stop calling that out, then I’m complicit.

Why I Won’t Shut Up

So yeah, I know I sound like a broken record. But maybe if I keep repeating it, someone will finally hear it.

Because the real Jesus isn’t found at a political rally, on a flag, or in a voting booth. He’s found in how we treat the least among us.

And that Jesus? That Jesus is getting drowned out by the roar of the (mostly religious) crowd that still worships Donald Trump.

Grace and grit to you! — LK