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Questions the Media Needs To Ask Trump Daily

One of the most maddening (to me and others) since Donald Trump announced his candidacy in 2015 is the abject failure of most of the main stream media to adequately expose Trump for what and who he is and to engage in the fantasy that he was/is a normal candidate. As the media engaged in an orgy over Hillary Clinton's emails Trump's misogyny, never ending lies, grifting and overall unfitness for office were either ignored or under reported.  Fast forward to 2024 and disturbingly, too much of the media seemingly has learned nothing and continues to engage in false equivalency and focus on polls to engender a so-called "horse race."  Meanwhile, Trump continues to be free from being being faced with hard questions and the January 6th insurrection goes unmentioned.  A column in the Washington Post looks at these failures of the media and the questions that should be asked of Trump on a daily basis in order to expose the threat he poses to the nation, both domestically and in the international context.  Here are column highlights:

Are we in La La Land? If I didn’t know better, I might conclude that the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, in which rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election, was merely the act of exuberant “patriots” voicing their displeasure with Joe Biden’s victory — and that Donald Trump had nothing to do with it. What else to think, based on the media’s treatment of the twice-impeached former president and felon and his campaign to return to the White House?

Trump is being covered by the press as if Jan. 6 were old news.

Here we are, back to horse-race journalism and breathless pursuit of polls and other campaign nuggets designed to keep audiences glued to our websites, networks and newspapers — with little attention paid to the character, records of service and moral fitness of candidates who seek the highest offices in the land. To wit: Republicans Trump and JD Vance, and Democrats Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

Fortunately, and for the sake of our democracy and Constitution, special counsel Jack Smith is not going to let Trump slide away from his attempt to overturn Biden’s 2020 election victory. Yes, the ultraconservative Supreme Court majority (cobbled together by Trump himself during his time in office) gave Trump a get-out-of-jail-free card with its ruling granting presidents broad immunity for official acts — a contrived loophole that carefully safeguards several of his actions to overturn the will of the voters.

But the ruling might have left Smith with room to run, including where the allegations concern Trump’s behavior during the ransacking and riot at the Capitol. . . . The new indictment, redesigned to fit under the umbrella of the court’s suspect ruling, still contains enough facts to show that Trump was determined to hold on to the reins of power. Namely, evidence revealing that Trump spread lies about fraud in the election, that he sowed distrust of the results and that he targeted a bedrock U.S. government function: collecting, counting and certifying the votes of the electoral college.

And here, in 2024, we have Trump campaigning in full misogyny, with lewd references to Harris, without being pressed for answers about behavior that unleashed the worst assault on the seat of the federal government since the War of 1812.

Imagine a president singling out his own vice president for the scorn of a bloodthirsty mob and sitting back as Secret Service agents scrambled to protect him and his family. Imagine a president receiving reports of members of Congress fleeing the Capitol for their lives and not immediately sending reinforcements to the Hill. Imagine a president leaving it to a D.C. mayor and her police force to rescue U.S. Capitol Police.

Why would a president ignore findings by his own Justice Department that there was no evidence of significant election fraud, then turn to an ad hoc crew of co-conspirators to try to undo what American voters had done?

Those questions should hound Trump on the campaign trail.

Meanwhile, Trump’s New Jersey golf club is hosting a fundraiser for families of the defendants charged in the attack on the Capitol. Felons — dubbed “patriots” by Trump — whose sentences he has promised to commute if he’s returned to the White House.

Now is the time — not on Election Day, but before voters head to the polls on Nov. 5 — to find out whether Trump will accept the 2024 presidential election results.

We know all too well what happened before.

It was a nightmare that I forecast in a 2021 New Year’s Day column.

Trump, I observed at the time, was desperately scheming to find new ways to alter the 2020 outcome. He had ignored the more than 90 state and federal judges who rejected challenges to the election because there was no evidence to support their claims of fraud. He had scraped together a cult of Republican lawmakers to lodge objections to interrupt congressional certification of the electoral college.

“Imagine Congress assembling to count electoral college votes in the midst of Trump-encouraged chaos,” I wrote. “Nothing would please Trump die-hards more than the eruption of an all-out conflagration around Capitol Hill.” And I warned, “Trump isn’t calling his followers to Washington for sport. Or to make lawmakers nervous. Or to dominate the news cycle. Trump wants to overturn the 2020 election and take the presidential oath on Jan. 20.” Thank goodness Capitol and D.C. police thwarted the scheme.

America does not deserve a repeat of that Trump performance.

The nation needs to know in advance whether, this time around, Donald Trump is committed to accepting the 2024 results. He should be asked that whenever he shows his face in public.

Every. Single. Time. This isn’t La La Land. We, the media and the public, need answers.

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Don’t Ignore Trump’s Dishonorable Use of Arlington National Cemetery

Living in the Hampton Roads of Virginia one is surrounded by a huge military personnel presence.  Numerous friends and neighbors are either in the military - usually the Navy or Air Force - or are veterans.   Some have loved ones buried at Arlington National Cemetery and we have one late friend who is awaiting burial at Arlington.   Arlington National Cemetery should never be used as a campaign prop and indeed, the cemetery rules and regulations bar political campaign activities.  Yet, Donald Trump did exactly what is prohibited when he made an appearance and filmed and photographed there (purportedly at the invitation of family members of a fallen soldier ) in an attempt to blame the Biden-Harris administration for the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle. Trump, of course, left out the fact that it was he himself who had negotiated with the Taliban, did a large troop withdrawal and left Biden in a mess. Those who invited Trump seemingly were clueless as to Trump's role in setting the stage for what happened three years ago. The whole situation underscores the reality that Trump has no honor and no morals and indeed holds the rights of others in contempt as demonstrated by Trump's unauthorized use of the music of over 30 songwriters and musicians who have demanded he cease and desist (some have sued Trump).   With Trump, the only thing that matters is himself and I remain dumb founded by those who support him and in a display of idiocy believe that Trump gives a damn about them. A column in the Washington Post looks at Trump's dishonorable behavior: 

Donald Trump has shown the nation, once again, that he has no shame.  You knew that, of course. But hauling a camera crew to Arlington National Cemetery and exploiting the fresh graves of heroes — using them as props in his presidential campaign — was more than a violation of the cemetery’s rules; it was more, even, than a violation of federal law. It was a deeply dishonorable act by a shockingly dishonorable man.

Just because we are accustomed to this kind of behavior from Trump does not mean we should accept it. Just because he has no sense of honor or appreciation of sacrifice does not mean we have to pretend honor and sacrifice no longer exist. Just because “Trump is an awful person” is an old story does not mean we should yawn at this latest demonstration and quickly move on.

Section 60 at Arlington Cemetery is the resting place of the men and women who most recently gave what Abraham Lincoln called “the last full measure of devotion” to their country.

There is everything wrong, though, with that former president using the occasion to generate visual fodder for his bid to return to the White House. Trump brought along a photographer and videographer from his campaign to capture images of the visit — which his campaign team knew, and he surely knew, was forbidden.

And, of course, there is everything wrong with physically shoving aside a worker at the cemetery who was doing her job and trying to enforce the rules.

“Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign,” Arlington Cemetery officials said this week in a statement. This was made clear to Trump’s team as the visit was being planned, officials said — including the strict enforcement of the rule at Section 60, where grief and loss are still raw.

“What was abundantly clear-cut was: Section 60, no photos and no video,” a defense official told The Post.

Despite that warning, though, the Trump team brought its cameras into Section 60. When a cemetery employee tried to stop them, according to The Post, “a larger male campaign aide insisted the camera was allowed and pushed past the cemetery employee, leaving her shocked.”

No one can dismiss the incident as a misunderstanding by Trump and his aides, since their official position is that Trump is infallible. The campaign’s response, as usual, was a lie — a false and gratuitously cruel statement from spokesman Steven Cheung to NPR, which first reported the cemetery clash . . . .

Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), tried to chime in MAGA-style by attacking Vice President Kamala Harris — the surging Democratic Party presidential nominee — for any role she might have played in the Afghanistan withdrawal. . . . . Vance said at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. “She can go to hell.”

For the record, at that point Harris had not yelled, or said anything at all, about the cemetery incident.

Also for the record, it was Trump who negotiated the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and forced the Afghan government to release thousands of jailed Taliban fighters in a prisoner swap. Those decisions helped make possible the Taliban’s swift return to power.

And a point of personal privilege: The ashes of my father-in-law and mother-in-law, Edward Rhodes Collins and Annie Ruth Collins, are interred at Arlington. He was a Navy veteran who came under fire in the South Pacific during World War II and later in Korea.

Arlington National Cemetery is a place of honor. Donald Trump thinks honor is for suckers and losers — and values sacrifice only if it might help him win an election. Do not become numb to his nature.

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Defeating Trump and the MAGA Movement

Since Donald Trump descended the escalator in 2015 he and his movement have been defined by lies, grievance, racism and hatred towards anyone and anything that challenged Trump and/or the MAGA movement's hate and rage based agenda.  After nine years, many Americans are simply exhausted and want both Trump and his movement to simply shut up and go away.  True, Trump's most loyal base of haters and those motivated by grievance and bigotry will never reject him, but by some accounts the other 67% of the populace long for something uplifting and providing a basis for hope for a more positive future.  Trump and MAGA are always looking backwards and seeking to move the country backwards in time to a period when racial minorities and gays were either subordinate to whites or remained largely invisible.  Enter Kamala Harris and Tim Walz who provide a cheerfulness and sense of optimism that is devoid in Trump and the MAGA base. Moreover, their platform does not look backward and calls for unity rather than division.  A column in the New York Times speculates that the majority of voters are ready to put Trump and MAGA in the rearview mirror.  Here are excerpts:

There is a difference between beating a candidate and sidelining a movement. After nine years of confronting Donald Trump and facing a MAGA movement that has remade the Republican Party I once belonged to, I believe that fear may be sufficient to beat Trump, but only joy can push MAGA back to the periphery of American life.

Let me begin with a confession I suspect many of us could make: I did not expect Kamala Harris to do so well, so soon in her contest with Trump. I did not expect the overflow, exuberant crowds, and I definitely did not expect to see such an immediate and effective pivot from the Biden message of “save democracy” to a Harris campaign that is so plainly emphasizing optimism and hope.

When evaluating American politics and culture, you can sometimes feel the mood shifting before it’s reflected in the data. That was certainly true at the beginning of the Trump era. . . . . He had paid actors in Trump Tower in case no one else showed up. His speech was strange — it didn’t just include the now-famous claim that Mexico was sending its rapists across the border, it also included bizarre asides, like a claim that other candidates “sweated like dogs.” The tone and the content that are familiar to us now seemed disqualifying in the moment.

I’m wondering if the mood is shifting again. I wonder if we’re on the front end of a change in national temperament that could be fatal for MAGA — if we’re leaving the era of the nasty snarl in favor of the broad smile. And it’s not just the Harris surge that’s made me wonder about this.

I’m struck, for example, by the spirit of joy that surrounded the Olympics. The opening moments of the games threatened to pull us down into the divisive mud. . . . . But the fight fizzled, quickly. The rest of America was too busy watching Snoop Dogg.

I felt a spirit of fun and exuberance around the Games that was qualitatively different from what we experienced in Tokyo in 2021 or Rio in 2016. Ratings were up 82 percent from the Tokyo Games, and Americans were neglecting work to watch the events.

It’s also interesting that traffic to political websites is in steep decline. . . . . traffic is much lower than it was at the same time during our last presidential cycle. Yes, 2020 was a dramatic year, but so is 2024, and public interest in the news just isn’t the same. It’s not even close.

Partisans aren’t really shifting their mood, but the exhausted majority of Americans is, and right now the Harris campaign is much closer than Trump’s to capturing their desires and reflecting that mood. . . . . The term “exhausted majority” comes from More in Common’s seminal “Hidden Tribes” survey of American life.

While the partisan 33 percent of America is engaged in the political equivalent of trench warfare, the exhausted 67 percent are tired of polarization, feel forgotten by the political parties and long for some degree of compromise.

For most of the last nine years, the polarized wings have tried to reach these exhausted and alienated voters largely by grabbing them by the lapels and demanding that they wake up to the imminent collapse of the American republic. The messages have been relentless . . . If the two parties continue on this path, a grim fight between two apocalyptic parties’ visions could result in an election outcome — in either direction — that doesn’t alter the fundamental political realities of American life.

But there’s another potential outcome. If the national mood is shifting and if Harris and Tim Walz can maintain their happy warrior posture, then we could see meaningful political change. The era of the snarl could be at an end, and MAGA is nothing without its snarl.

I’m nervous about offering an optimistic take on American politics. . . . . But I’m optimistic nonetheless. Joy alone isn’t sufficient to defeat Trump. The best approach combines joy with tenacity and an appealing set of policies. But it’s plain, to me at least, that Harris’s joy seems to have caught the Trump campaign off guard. Even worse, Trump simply can’t pivot to match the spirit of the moment. He’s too mired in his own grievances and rage. . . . there is simply no bottom to MAGA talk. There is no bottom to MAGA behavior.

For nine years, Trump opponents have tried to make Americans care about Trump’s scandals. I’ve done it myself, constantly reminding readers that Trump’s misconduct doesn’t just disqualify him from the presidency; he also rightfully faces criminal charges, and no person who’s done what Trump’s done should run any institution, much less the executive branch of the United States government.

But you can’t make people care. And you certainly can’t make them share your anger. You can, however, meet them where they are. If they are ready for joy, then give them joy. I can think of few ends more fitting for MAGA than finally defeating it with joy rather than anger and teaching the next generation of American politicians that the best way to reach American hearts is with faith and hope rather than rage and fear.

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What Trump's "Leave Abortion to the States" Really Means

Donald Trump has bragged that he was responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade through his appointment of three ideologues to the U.S. Supreme Court - all of whom perjured themselves during their confirmation hearings. In the aftermath of Roe's demise and the obvious opposition to efforts by Republicans to ban abortion, Trump is talking out of both sides of his mouth - nothing new for the pathological liar - when he says that he favors "leaving abortion to the states." The meaning of this?  It means allowing Republican controlled state legislatures empowered in part by severely gerrymandered districts to override the popular will of state residents.   The phenomenon is a stark example of the tyranny of the minority that today's Republican Party relies on to remain in power. And nowhere is it more on display than in Arkansas - a state that has one of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates - where a ideologue Secretary of State and a complicit state Supreme Court blocked an abortion referendum and deprived the state's voters a chance to decide for themselves whether or not they wanted draconian abortion laws.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the reality of leaving such decisions to the states.  Here are highlights:

Leave the issue of abortion up to the states, Donald Trump tells us. Let voters there decide.

So many things are wrong with this position. Chief among them: Why should voters in any jurisdiction get to dictate to women this most personal of choices? Also: Why should anyone believe Trump on this question? After all, he just chose a vice-presidential nominee who said in 2022 that he “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.”

Now comes Arkansas with more evidence that the “leave it to the states” argument is a crock: Red states don’t actually trust their own voters when it comes to abortion rights. And with good reason, considering the fate of abortion measures that have made it onto state ballots since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling eliminating constitutional protection for abortion rights.

Arkansas has one of the most draconian abortion laws in the nation. The state provides no exception to preserve maternal health, no exception for fetuses with fatal anomalies, no exception for pregnancies that result from rape or incest. The sole exception is to save the life of the woman in a medical emergency.

Arkansas is also one of the reddest states in the country, and polls show it’s one of a handful of states where only a minority of voters believe abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances. So maybe the state’s near-total ban is what its voters want.

Thanks to an especially tortured decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court, there’s no way of knowing — at least not in 2024. Last week, the state’s highest court, splitting 4-3, contorted statutory language and abandoned simple common sense to keep off the November ballot an initiative that would have amended the state constitution to allow abortion up to 20 weeks and create exceptions after that.

This matters, and not just to the citizens of Arkansas, because it demonstrates how the absence of federal constitutional or statutory protection for abortion has left women vulnerable to partisan state officials determined to restrict abortion rights and ideologically driven jurists enabling them.

What happened here — the lengths to which state officials went to keep the initiative off the ballot, and the complicity of the state’s highest court — is shocking. To qualify for the ballot under Arkansas law, backers had to collect 90,704 signatures, 10 percent of the votes cast in the 2022 governor’s race. Organizers submitted more than 101,000 signatures.

But in a letter last month to the group, Arkansans for Limited Government, Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston said he wouldn’t certify the initiative to appear on the ballot because organizers had failed to submit one piece of paperwork required for signatures gathered by paid canvassers.

That meant, Thurston insisted, “it is my duty to reject your submission” — disqualifying not just the canvasser-gathered signatures but all of them. And, he said, even if he were to credit the signatures collected by volunteers, the group would have fallen 3,322 short of the requisite number.

So, did Arkansans for Limited Government mess up? Was this, as Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) claimed on X, a situation in which “the far left pro-abortion crowd in Arkansas showed they are both immoral and incompetent”? Abortion rights supporters “have no one to blame but themselves,” said state Attorney General Tim Griffin.

Hardly. Arkansas law requires that groups using paid canvassers submit a signed statement indicating that the sponsor explained the legal requirements to each paid canvasser before the signatures were solicited.

But guess what? On June 27, Arkansans for Limited Government submitted the majority of its paid signatures — accompanied by an explanation statement. It filed additional signatures on June 29 and July 4, and on July 5 a formal petition to be on the ballot. Those came without an explanation statement, relying instead on the representation of Thurston’s assistant director of elections that it wasn’t necessary to include another explanation statement.

Nonetheless, Thurston refused to count even the signatures filed on June 27 — the ones with the explanation statement — and the state Supreme Court agreed. Why? I’m not making this up: The majority parsed what the meaning of “a” is. State law requires that the person filing the petition “shall also submit a statement” certifying that the paid canvassers were instructed on the legal requirements.

“The plain meaning of ‘a’ is settled,” Justice Rhonda K. Wood wrote for the majority. “It is one single statement at one specific point in time.”

[I]f Arkansans for Limited Government had simply stapled a photocopy of its earlier explanation statement to the final petition, there would have been no problem.

Except … even that wasn’t necessary. The dissenting justices noted, correctly, that nothing in the Arkansas ballot initiative law requires the explanation statement to be filed at the time the petition is submitted. “On the contrary, this requirement was made up out of whole cloth by the [secretary of state] and inexplicably ratified by the majority of this court,” wrote Justice Karen R. Baker.

Nothing was going to stop Thurston from seeking to keep the initiative off the November ballot. And nothing was going to stop the conservative majority — cemented when Sanders named a new justice last year — from abetting him.

“Why are [Thurston] and the majority determined to keep this particular vote from the people?” Baker asked. “The majority has succeeded in its efforts to change the law to deprive the voters of the opportunity to vote on this issue, which is not the proper role of this court.”

This is the rule of ideologues. So much for letting the voters decide.

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238 Bush, McCain, and Romney Alumni Endorse Harris/Walz

As a former Republican one of the most disheartening things about the Trump era and MAGA base is the number of individuals who I once viewed as decent, moral people who have blindly continued to support Trump and his toxic and dangerous agenda.  Some argue that friends and acquaintances should not be rejected and/or unfriended due to differences of "politics," but the truth is that such differences are not about political views but instead involve issues of morality.  In my view, to support Trump is to embrace moral bankruptcy and in the process to demonstrate that one - despite protestations to the contrary - is driven by racism, homophobia and/or greed.  Trump is the embodiment of moral bankruptcy and one simply cannot to be decent and moral and yet loyally support Trump.  The two are mutually exclusive.  Thankfully, some Republicans are reaching this conclusion and have announced their support for the Harris/Walz ticket and place country and democracy over party and fealty to a convicted felon.   A piece at USA Today looks at 238 Republicans who have endorsed Harris and Walz.  Here are highlights (their endorsement letter is here):

More than 200 Republicans who previously worked for either former President George W. Bush, the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., or Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president in an open letter Monday obtained exclusively by USA TODAY.

The letter from alums of the three Republican presidential nominees prior to former President Donald Trump comes on the heels of a Democratic National Convention last week in Chicago that showcased Republican detractors of the GOP nominee. At least five former aides to former President George H.W. Bush also signed the letter, which has 238 signatures in all.

"We reunite today, joined by new George H.W. Bush alumni, to reinforce our 2020 statements and, for the first time, jointly declare that we’re voting for Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz this November," the letter reads. "Of course, we have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz. That’s to be expected. The alternative, however, is simply untenable."

Among those who signed the letter in support of Harris and her running-mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, include: former McCain chiefs of staff Mark Salter and Chris Koch; Joe Donoghue, former legislative director for McCain; Jennifer Lux, press secretary for McCain's 2008 campaign, and Jean Becker, longtime chief of staff for George H.W. Bush.

Also backing Harris are David Nierenberg, Romney's 2012 campaign finance chair; David Garman, under secretary of Energy for George W. Bush; and Olivia Troye, a former advisor to both George W. Bush and Vice President Mike Pence. Troye spoke from the stage of the DNC convention last week.

"At home, another four years of Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership, this time focused on advancing the dangerous goals of Project 2025, will hurt real, everyday people and weaken our sacred institutions," the letter says, referring to the Heritage Foundation's policy blueprint that the Trump campaign has sought to distance itself from.

"Abroad, democratic movements will be irreparably jeopardized as Trump and his acolyte JD Vance kowtow to dictators like Vladimir Putin while turning their backs on our allies. We can’t let that happen."

Romney, who voted to impeach Trump as a senator, said he won't support Trump in the 2024 election, but he hasn't endorsed Harris either. Bush, whose family has long been at odds with Trump, did not attend last month's Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, though has refrained form criticizing Trump publicly. As a candidate in 2015, Trump said McCain was "not a war hero." Four years ago, McCain's widow, Cindy McCain, endorsed Biden over Trump.

The Harris campaign has worked to highlight its backing from Republicans who oppose Trump, launching a "Republicans for Harris" group this month and featuring Republican speakers at last week's convention.

Over the weekend, a dozen prominent Republican attorneys who worked for former President Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush endorsed Harris for president. The group included conservative former federal appellate Judge Michael Luttig, who plans to vote for a Democratic president for the first time.

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The Myth of Christian Persecution

One hears constant claims on the far right that Christians are being persecuted in America and Donald Trump has played up these claims and promised evangelicals and Christofascists power their perceived secular adversaries and the ability to openly discriminate against gays, racial minorities and non-Christians.  The reality, not surprisingly is that there is no real persecution of Christians, but rather their power to denigrate and persecute others has been eroded by growing secularism, much fueled by the hypocrisy, nastiness, and cruelty towards others that define much of the "Religious Right."  Younger generations in particular want nothing to do with this toxic religiosity and mistreatment of others. Yet in this upside down world of the political and religious right, objective facts and reality do not matter and limits on evangelicals' ability to persecute others has insanely become supposedly persecution of the self-congratulatory "godly folk."  A column in the New York Times by an evangelical who has been expelled by right wing evangelicals and Christofascists looks at the false narrative of Christian persecution and the cruelty these false Christians inflict on others.  Here are excerpts:

This June, I was invited on a friend’s podcast to answer a question I’ve been asked over and over again in the Trump era. Are Christians really persecuted in the United States of America? Millions of my fellow evangelicals believe we are, or they believe we’re one election away from a crackdown. This sense of dread and despair helps tie conservative Christians, people who center their lives on the church and the institutions of the church, to Donald Trump — the man they believe will fight to keep faith alive.

As I told my friend, the short answer is no, not by any meaningful historical definition of persecution. American Christians enjoy an immense amount of liberty and power.

When you’re inside evangelicalism, Christian media is full of stories of Christians under threat — of universities discriminating against Christian student groups, of a Catholic foster care agency denied city contracts because of its stance on marriage or of churches that faced discriminatory treatment during Covid, when secular gatherings were often privileged over religious worship.

Combine those stories with the personal tales of Christians who faced death threats, intimidation and online harassment for their views, and it’s easy to tell a story of American backsliding — a nation that once respected or even revered Christianity now persecutes Christians.

But when you’re pushed outside evangelicalism, the world starts to look very different. You see conservative Christians attacking the fundamental freedoms of their opponents. Red-state legislatures pass laws restricting the free speech of progressives and L.G.B.T.Q. Americans. Christian school board members attempt to restrict access to books in the name of their own moral norms. Other conservatives want to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, to bring legal recognition of same-sex marriages to an end.

Combine those stories with personal tales of progressives and other dissenters experiencing threats from and intimidation by conservative Christians, and you begin to see why the Christian persecution narrative rings hollow. And if conservative Christians are angry at progressive Americans for believing they are hateful hypocrites, then they have only themselves to blame.

[T]he Christian persecution narrative is fundamentally false. America isn’t persecuting Christians; it’s living with the fallout of two consequential constitutional mistakes that distort our politics and damage our culture.

[F]or most of American history, courts underenforced the establishment clause of the First Amendment. It wasn’t even held clearly applicable to the states until 1947. Americans lived under what my colleague Ross Douthat calls the “soft hegemony of American Protestantism.”

This soft hegemony wasn’t constitutionally or culturally sustainable. Mandating Protestant Scripture readings is ultimately incompatible with a First Amendment that doesn’t permit the state to privilege any particular sect or denomination. Culturally, the process of diversification and secularization makes any specific religious hegemony impossible. There simply aren’t a sufficient number of Americans of any single faith tradition to dominate American life.

In the 1960s the Warren court began dismantling the soft Protestant establishment by blocking school prayer and Scripture reading. A series of cases limited the power of the state to express a religious point of view.

The desire to disentangle church and state led to a search-and-destroy approach to religious expression in public institutions. Public schools and public colleges denied religious organizations equal access to public facilities. States and public colleges denied religious institutions equal access to public funds.

The Supreme Court has spent much of the past two decades correcting the overcorrection that began in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, religious liberty proponents haven’t lost a significant Supreme Court case in 14 years.

Conservative and liberal justices have created a different, sustainable equilibrium, but the religious liberty culture war rages on anyway — in part because millions of Americans don’t want to strike a balance. They actually prefer domination to accommodation. Many conservative evangelicals miss the old Protestant establishment, and they want it back.

Combine these efforts at religious establishment with red-state legislation aimed at progressive and L.G.B.T.Q. Americans, and one could fairly assert that Christians are persecuting their opponents.

Then conservative evangelicalism ejected me from its ranks, and I experienced a level of anger and malice that eclipsed anything I experienced from the most vitriolic secular progressives. I started to hear from others who’d experienced the same thing, and my eyes opened. Christians are wrecking lives in the name of righteousness.

Christians who bemoan cultural hostility to their faith should be humbled by a sad reality. When it comes to inflicting pain on their political adversaries, conservative Christians often give worse than they get.

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