https://godanddonaldtrump.com/ CHAPTER 11 FRIENDS AND SUPPORTERS ★★★★★ WHEN THE 2016 presidential campaign began, few Republican voters were willing to resurrect dead horses like Romney and McCain. Both men were tarnished by their losses, and comments each had made since their campaigns surprised many people and reflected attitudes the voters could no longer support. Even the idea of a former governor with a presidential pedigree wasn’t enough to arouse the electorate. Instead, after eight years of the most confrontational and disrup- tive administration in history, conservative and evangelical voters were looking for new blood, fresh faces, and an energetic candidate who could energize the base and attract support from as many communities as possible. Among the early favorites was a group of outspoken Evangelicals who had al- ready won important races, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, and Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas. The GOP brain trust poured millions into the campaign of former Florida governor
Jeb Bush, but the voters weren’t impressed. The last thing they wanted was a Bush family retread. Eventually a total of seventeen candidates made their pitch to the people, and debate platforms looked more like a Brooks Brothers showroom than a contest for the nation’s highest office. When Donald Trump suddenly appeared on the scene, nobody really thought he would have a chance. The outspoken late-night host David Letterman, who had invited Trump on his television show many times, assured his audience, “There’s not a chance . . . that this man will be elected president.”¹ New Yorkers knew Trump. He was one of their own, and so long as he seemed to be just an- other New York liberal and reality-TV celebrity, the media adored him. He was harmless. But the minute he declared his intention to run for the presidency as a Republican, he suddenly became a pariah. Actually many people on both sides had their doubts about Trump. The evan- gelical frontrunners had a strong appeal to Christian voters, but there were doubts whether any of them could stand up to the fury of the Clinton machine. No one really expected the Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders to become the Democrat nominee; as an avowed socialist he was too far out of the mainstream.
But Hillary Clinton, who would have the unquestioned support of the White House, enormous financial resources, and a long-standing history of cheating in every way possible, would chew up anyone who showed the slightest sign of weakness. And many conservatives were afraid the evangelical candidates were, well, too nice. Furthermore, the mainstream media were staunch allies of the Democrats, and they could be counted on to pile on and destroy a vulnerable opponent. The main thing in Trump’s favor when he entered the race was the fact that he was a total outsider. He was brash. He wasn’t afraid to speak his mind. He would be able to pour millions of his own dollars into the campaign, but there was something else in the mix that hardly anyone would have expected. As I have tried to explain in this book, there was a supernatural element to the campaign, and a small group of Christian prayer warriors were convinced Donald Trump was the right man at the right time, and they fully expected a miracle. I discussed in chapter 6 Trump’s surprising early backing by charismatic Chris- tian leaders. Also among his early supporters were old friends such as celebrity coaches Bobby Knight, Bill Belichick, Lou Holtz, Rex Ryan, and Mike Ditka, along
with quarterback Tom Brady of the New England Patriots, and NASCAR CEO Brian France. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani was one of the most influ- ential supporters. Many people had urged Giuliani to run, but he couldn’t be per- suaded. He had made a brief run for the Senate against Hillary Clinton during the 2000 election, but he dropped out after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. During that race Giuliani came face-to-face with the Clinton war machine, and he never trusted either of them, Bill or Hillary, after that. While Trump and Giuliani were never fast friends, they had a longstanding rela- tionship. Trump had been a guest in the mayor’s box at Yankee Stadium, and Giuliani spoke at the funeral of Donald’s father, Fred Trump, in 1999, calling him a giant and a great benefactor to the citizens of New York.² In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, when the mayor had spoken so eloquently about the heroes and victims of that horrendous tragedy, Trump called to thank him and made his private plane available to Giuliani to fly to Washington for President Bush’s televised address to Congress. Giuliani’s support had been hesitant at first, “but once Mr. Trump won the nomination,” as the New York Times reported, “Mr. Giuliani’s tentative embrace became a bear hug.”³
AN IMPERFECT INSTRUMENT Before long Trump’s list of celebrity endorsements looked more like the cover of a supermarket tabloid, featuring the likes of Clint Eastwood, Jon Voight, Stephen Baldwin, Charlie Sheen, Stacey Dash, Willie Robertson, Loretta Lynn, Scott Baio, Gary Busey, Kanye West, Omarosa Manigault (whom I met on November 8, 2016, at the election night party), and even the rockers Kid Rock and Gene Simmons. As the list continued to grow, the early supporters were joined by public figures who made their fame on radio and TV, including Fox News personality Sean Han- nity, talk show host Laura Ingraham, and the firebrand columnist and Fox News contributor Ann Coulter. Trump’s longtime friend and top-rated cable commentator Bill O’Reilly was slower to come around, playing hard to get, while conservative icon Rush Lim- baugh held back in order to appear “fair and balanced.” On his June 21, 2017, radio broadcast Limbaugh said he knew Trump would be the Republican nom- inee from the moment he saw him coming down the escalator at Trump Tower on June 16, 2015, with the sound of Neil Young’s 1989 hit “Rockin’ in the Free World” blasting in the background.⁴ Limbaugh would become a full-fledged
Trump supporter, defending the nominee even when close friends seemed to be backing away, but he held off his support until the nomination was settled. Unlike so many of the candidates who preceded him, Donald Trump refused to run from controversy and seemed to enjoy a well-publicized spat. He has used his Twitter account as a handheld weapon, provoking Twitter cofounder Evan Williams to apologize for giving Trump the tools to wage war on his critics.⁵ But Trump showed that he could also be conciliatory and sympathetic, as he did in October 2016, apologizing for lewd comments he had made about women. He said, “I’ve never said I’m a perfect person nor pretended to be someone that I’m not. I’ve said and done things I regret, and the words released today on this more than a decade-old video are one of them. Anyone who knows me, knows these words don’t reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize.”⁶ For many people Trump remains an enigmatic figure. Liberals can’t imagine how anyone could support the man, while many conservatives see him as a game changer, a scrapper, and someone who has an irresistible sense of purpose. He has an undeniable love for his country and the ability to fight for the country’s values and beliefs, and that means a lot even if it’s sometimes hard to defend his
behavior. As teacher and author Lance Wallnau has pointed out, “Figures like Churchill, Lincoln, and George S. Patton don’t step out of cathedrals onto the stage of history, yet we canonize them later as instruments God raised up to meet a singular crisis.”⁷ None of these men were conventional Christians, and they had many detractors in the clergy, yet each played a pivotal role in history. They stood strong against the enemies of freedom and helped safeguard our way of life and our Christian heritage. Wallnau makes a great point. If you’ve ever seen the movie Patton, you know you wouldn’t want to be around an abrasive military commander like Gen. George Patton. He was often rough and rude, but he had a strong sense of destiny and felt he’d been called to lead men in combat to defeat the Nazi war machine. When rain and cold and overcast skies prevented Allied planes and artillery from firing on the advancing enemy lines during the Battle of the Bulge, Patton sent for an Army chaplain and demanded that he write a prayer imploring God for clear skies and an end to the rain. When the prayer was delivered, Patton read it aloud and commanded the entire Third Army to read it as well. The following morning the skies were miraculously clear, the American Army surged into Germany, and the
Allied rout of Nazi forces went into overdrive. Patton was no choirboy, but he was a strong-willed and powerful man who trusted in the authority and compassion of a powerful God. Donald Trump, with his swagger, cocky self-assurance, and ruthless determination, may well be the George Patton of our age and the one man who could stand up to the leftist insurgents who have done such damage to the republic over the last fifty years. His language and behavior may be disagreeable, but he possesses an undeniable passion to make America great again, and the people have responded to his mes- sage. TRUMP REWARDS LOYALTY The men and women who gravitated to Trump’s message from the outset would have to weather severe turbulence along the way, but if there’s anything Donald Trump values more than money and fame, it’s loyalty, and he was quick to repay his friends and supporters. After the election Trump called my friend Jim Bakker, the broadcaster who went to jail and rebuilt his life after he lost everything. On his new The Jim Bakker Show out of the Branson, Missouri, area, Bakker did
everything he could to rally his very conservative audience, as I documented in chapter 6. Why did Trump call? To thank Jim for his support. Jim was dumb- founded Trump even knew about him. Like me, he supported Trump because he knew how important it was to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House and because he recognized Trump’s leadership capabilities. Trump seems to know everyone who helped him get elected. On January 27, 2016, less than a month before the all-important South Carolina Republican pri- mary, Trump was endorsed by Lt. Gov. Henry McMaster. As I reported in chapter 5, this primary was a turning point for Trump. But it was significant for more than just South Carolina. McMaster was the first statewide elected official in the nation to endorse the New York billionaire, and Trump did not forget. When the Clem- son football team visited the White House on June 12, 2017, to be recognized for winning the national championship, McMaster was in the audience. Trump spot- ted him and thanked him again for his endorsement and said how important it was, not only for his victory in South Carolina but also for the nomination and ultimately the White House. Of course Trump may have already thanked him by appointing South Carolina governor Nikki Haley to be ambassador to the United
Nations. Haley is well qualified, but as I pointed out when I described the South Carolina primary, my sources in that state say it’s pretty accepted that at least part of the reason Haley was promoted was so McMaster could ascend to become the South Carolina governor. Four days after the South Carolina primary Rep. Chris Collins of New York was the first member of Congress to endorse Trump for the presidency. As he said in an interview for the online news site POLITICO, he had been a successful busi- nessman before running for office, and he understood where Donald Trump was coming from. He didn’t know if Trump would want him to go public with his sup- port, so he asked one of his DC staffers to make a call to check it out, and the re- sponse was fast. Later the same day, he received a voice message from Trump ex- pressing his pleasure for Collins’s offer of support. He told the congressman to spread the word and said he was grateful for all the help he could get.⁸ Collins soon discovered that Trump was more than grateful for his help; he also wanted to reward his early supporters for taking the risks and going public. “He absolutely values loyalty,” Collins said, “particularly to those who were with him through thick and thin. Those of us who stood firm in our support, many of
those are being named to some of the top posts, but they also are extremely tal- ented people.” Collins could have been named to a post in the administration, he said, but he decided to hold on to his seat in Congress, where he could serve as an informal liaison with the White House. “I made very clear that the right place for me at this stage in my life was in Congress,” he told Fox News, and Trump ap- pointed him as a liaison to his transition team.⁹ When then-senator Jeff Sessions endorsed Trump four days later at a campaign rally in Alabama, he told an audience of thirty thousand avid Trump supporters that they were participants in an important moment in history. “I told Donald Trump this isn’t a campaign, this is a movement,” he said. “Look at what’s hap- pening. The American people are not happy with their government.”¹⁰ Sessions was the first member of the Senate to endorse Trump, and one year later, on Feb- ruary 8, 2017, he was confirmed by that body as US attorney general and head of the Department of Justice. Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee was another of the early supporters, even offering to serve as Trump’s running mate, if asked. As it turned out, Mike Pence was the right person for that job, but Blackburn was steadfast in her support and
agreed that loyalty is especially important to this president because he is some- one who likes to make the important decisions for himself. “I see him as putting on a personal touch,” she said. “This is not going to be a transition where the decisions are going to [be] delegated. This is one where the leader of the team is going to be involved in choosing a team. He wants to build a team that can work together.”¹¹ Blackburn added that Trump’s loyalty to his early supporters did not stop him from appointing talented people to high office who had spoken against him be- fore the Republican primary, including former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who had once described Trump as “everything a governor doesn’t want in a president.”¹² Despite their brief verbal spat, Haley was picked to serve as ambassador to the United Nations in November 2016, two months before the in- auguration. In her acceptance remarks she said, “When the President believes you have a major contribution to make to the welfare of our nation, and to our na- tion’s standing in the world, that is a calling that is important to heed.”¹³ TRUMP’S CHRISTIAN DEFENDERS
Paula White Cain had known Trump since 2003 and had prayed with him many times. When Trump was thinking about running in 2012, he asked Paula to invite some of her friends to come to New York and pray he would have wisdom on whether or not to run. He decided not to enter the race that year, and as I de- scribed in chapter 6, Paula helped to lay the groundwork in the charismatic community that would be the bedrock for his strong evangelical support four years later. I also mentioned that when the president of Liberty University, Jerry Falwell Jr., endorsed Trump on January 26, 2016, it was such big news the candi- date tweeted about it.¹⁴ In a lengthy interview for the campus magazine, Liberty Champion, Falwell said he understands why the entire political world was up in arms over the Trump presidency. He said, “The establishment is having a seizure. They’re going bal- listic because they are scared to death that they’re going to lose power. . . . They’re scared to death of Trump because he’s the kind of guy that will walk into Washington, kick over the tables, kick over the chairs, throw the bums out, start over, and do things that a career politician would never do.” Leaders of both political parties expressed alarm that Trump had never held elective office, but
this was precisely what the voters wanted. Too often they had put their faith in ex- perienced politicians who let them down. Falwell said it’s the fact that Trump hadn’t held political office that made him their candidate and president of choice.¹⁵ “I think he is what our Founding Fathers envisioned—citizen legislators,” he said, “not career politicians to run this country.” The men who built the country, wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and laid the foun- dation of our government were farmers, tradesmen, and business owners. Gov- ernment was not a full-time job, and when they had made a substantial contri- bution most of them went back to their homes to participate as citizens in the society they helped build. “I think Donald Trump fits that definition better than anybody else because he has been extremely successful in the private sector,” Falwell said.¹⁶ Trump’s personal wealth ought to be a major factor in his favor, he said, be- cause we know for sure he’s not in it for the money. “He’s paying for his own campaign. He’s not beholden to anybody like the rest of them are. He’s made a payroll with tens of thousands of employees, and nobody else on that debate
stage has ever made a payroll and never will. They don’t understand it. They don’t know what it’s like to be a businessman who is trying to survive or a business- woman who is trying to make it.¹⁷ “Now I think conservatives have reached a point where they want somebody who has succeeded in the private sector, not just someone who makes the right promises in speeches,” Falwell said. “That’s why a large majority of them are sup- porting him, and I think maybe after the country is saved and restored, perhaps evangelicals will start voting in traditional patterns again.” Trump’s position on the issues is no secret. He is very much “What you see is what you get.” Saving the country from terrorist attacks, runaway debt, and open borders, Falwell said, ought to be everyone’s first priority. “All the other issues will be moot if we don’t save the country.” He added, “It is sad to see Christians attacking other Chris- tians because they don’t support the same candidate or the candidate who they believe is the most righteous.”¹⁸ The university president acknowledged that many of his peers who are ministry heads, pastors, and Christian leaders, including some on his own faculty, had spoken against Trump and worked to derail his campaign. While he respects their
opinions, he said, he believes Evangelicals really ought to think about the stakes in today’s political climate in a new way. The issues facing this country are deadly serious. But how many times do we have to be let down by so-called evangelical candidates who promise to defend our beliefs and then turn the other way when the going gets tough? This was also the perspective of the African American pastors who spoke for Trump during his campaign. Cleveland pastor Darrell Scott offered his support in 2015 while Trump was just thinking about running and helped organize a meeting between Trump and a group of mostly African American pastors later that fall. Among those in attendance were Texas pastor Mike Murdock and South Carolina pastor Mark Burns, along with charismatic preachers Kenneth and Gloria Copeland and TBN founder Jan Crouch, who were captured in a cell-phone photo praying with Trump around a table with a “Make America Great Again” hat in the middle. When that picture appeared in print, a number of black pastors were crit- ical of the event and accused their fellow preachers of caving in to the Repub- licans. But Scott never wavered. He became not only one of Trump’s strongest
supporters but also one of his most articulate spokesmen. In gratitude for his support Trump invited Scott to speak at the Republican National Convention, and it was no ordinary speech. He articulated a strong argument for why Donald J. Trump should be the next president of the United States, but his message was delivered in a way few could do—with all the passion of an African American ser- mon, ending with an emotional crescendo that brought a roar of approval from the crowd. Four days before the November general election, Rev. William Owens, the president of the Coalition of African American Pastors who had marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, entered the arena to give Trump a personal endorsement. “Donald Trump has humbly asked the African American community to give him a chance. After witnessing fifty years of failure from the Democratic Party, compounded by a growing hostility to religion in their platform, I feel that it is definitely time that we give Mr. Trump that chance to prove he can be a great president.”¹⁹ There was a reason Trump garnered all this support. Despite the negative depictions in the left-leaning media, Donald Trump is, as I learned in my
interview with him, a sincere and generous person, as we will see in the next chapter.