Franklin Graham Attacks Pete Buttigieg, Calls Melania Trump "Classiest First Lady"

Blogger friend Joe Jervis calls out Franklin Graham's hypocrisy for attacking Pete Buttigieg while calling Melania Trump "the classiest First Lady our country has ever had."  Even hysterically anti-gay (and closeted) Rick Santorum condemned Graham's hypocrisy for supporting Trump notwithstanding Trump's embodiment of everything a true Christian should eschew.  First, this from Joe's blog:

Earlier this week evangelist Franklin Graham declared that Pete Buttigieg will face eternal damnation if he doesn’t repent from his “flaunting homosexuality.”

Last year Graham shrugged off Donald Trump’s multiple adulterous affairs, telling the Associated Press, “This thing with Stormy Daniels and so forth is nobody’s business.”

And now today Graham is wishing happy birthday to Melania Trump, “the classiest first lady our country has ever had.”

You can be very sure that if Michelle Obama had ever appeared nude in lesbian porn shoots, Graham would have been standing outside the White House day and night with a flaming pitchfork.

As for Santorum's surprising condemnation of Graham, LGBTQ Nation reports as follows:

Out presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has found an unlikely defender after evangelical leader Franklin Graham called on the candidate to “repent” of his homosexuality.

Rick Santorum, one of the most conservative religious politicians and a former Republican presidential candidate, found himself actually pointing out the hypocrisy of the religious right during an interview with CNN’s New Day.

After host John Berman asked Santorum about the dustup, Santorum first defended Graham’s right to say what he did.

After Berman pointed out the hypocrisy of Graham “calling on Pete Buttigieg to repent for being gay, yet [being] one of the most ardent supporters of the thrice-married President Trump,” Santorum shocked the host by agreeing. Graham has been on the biggest supporters of the decidedly un-Christian president.

“I would say that you have every right to call him out on that. Because if he’s gonna say that about Pete Buttigieg, then he needs to when Donald Trump’s accusations come up about marital infidelity and other things that is equally as sinful,” Santorum said. “He should be equal and vociferous in calling out a similar sin.” 

The British version of GQ has some of Melania's "classy" photos here.  Personally, give me Jackie Kennedy - a truly class act with no borderline porn in her past.

Stephen Miller's Uncle Unleashes on Miller's Racist and Anti-Immigrant Hypocrisy

Stephen Miller - who reminds me of Josef Goebbels - and Der Trumpenführer.  

One of the goals of this blog is to expose hypocrisy.  Nowadays, thanks to the Republican Party and its "conservative Christian base," the Trump/Pence regime, and, of course, the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, there is almost an unlimited supply of material.  Interestingly, Stephen Miller, seen by many as the guiding force behind Der Trumpenführer's anti-immigrant jihad - Mike Pence likely applauds it while pretending to "know nothing" - today finds himself being lambasted for his hypocrisy by his own uncle in a piece in Politico.  Miller's uncle recounts the immigrant history of Miller's own family in America, which is hundreds of years shorter than that of many blacks and Hispanics, and calls Miller out as a foul hypocrite. Yet, Miller's hypocrisy is no less than that of many Trump supporters whose families came to America as immigrants far more recently than the ancestors of many of those whom they hate and deride.  Here are highlights from the Politico piece (as you read the entire piece, think of similar hypocrites in your own social circles): 

Let me tell you a story about Stephen Miller and chain migration.  It begins at the turn of the 20th century, in a dirt-floor shack in the village of Antopol, a shtetl of subsistence farmers in what is now Belarus. Beset by violent anti-Jewish pogroms and forced childhood conscription in the Czar’s army, the patriarch of the shack, Wolf-Leib Glosser, fled a village where his forebears had lived for centuries and took his chances in America.

He set foot on Ellis Island on January 7, 1903, with $8 to his name. Though fluent in Polish, Russian and Yiddish, he understood no English. An elder son, Nathan, soon followed. By street corner peddling and sweatshop toil, Wolf-Leib and Nathan sent enough money home to pay off debts and buy the immediate family’s passage to America in 1906. That group included young Sam Glosser, who with his family settled in the western Pennsylvania city of Johnstown, a booming coal and steel town that was a magnet for other hardworking immigrants. The Glosser family quickly progressed from selling goods from a horse and wagon to owning a haberdashery in Johnstown run by Nathan and Wolf-Leib to a chain of supermarkets and discount department stores run by my grandfather, Sam, and the next generation of Glossers, including my dad, Izzy.

In the span of some 80 years and five decades, this family emerged from poverty in a hostile country to become a prosperous, educated clan of merchants, scholars, professionals, and, most important, American citizens.

What does this classically American tale have to do with Stephen Miller? Well, Izzy Glosser is his maternal grandfather, and Stephen’s mother, Miriam, is my sister.

I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, an educated man who is well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family’s life in this country.

I shudder at the thought of what would have become of the Glossers had the same policies Stephen so coolly espouses— the travel ban, the radical decrease in refugees, the separation of children from their parents, and even talk of limiting citizenship for legal immigrants — been in effect when Wolf-Leib made his desperate bid for freedom.

The Glossers came to the U.S. just a few years before the fear and prejudice of the “America first” nativists of the day closed U.S. borders to Jewish refugees. Had Wolf-Leib waited, his family likely would have been murdered by the Nazis along with all but seven of the 2,000 Jews who remained in Antopol. I would encourage Stephen to ask himself if the chanting, torch-bearing Nazis of Charlottesville, whose support his boss seems to court so cavalierly, do not envision a similar fate for him.
 True, Jews were excluded from many occupations, couldn’t buy homes in some towns, couldn’t join certain organizations or attend certain schools or universities, but life was good. As in past generations, there were hate mongers who regarded the most recent groups of poor immigrants as scum, rapists, gangsters, drunks and terrorists, but largely the Glosser family was left alone to live our lives and build the American dream. Children were born, synagogues founded, and we thrived. This was the miracle of America.
 Acting for so long in the theater of right-wing politics, Stephen and Trump may have become numb to the resultant human tragedy and blind to the hypocrisy of their policy decisions. After all, Stephen’s is not the only family with a chain immigration story in the Trump administration. Trump's grandfather is reported to have been a German migrant on the run from military conscription to a new life in the United States, and his mother fled the poverty of rural Scotland for the economic possibilities of New York City. (Trump’s in-laws just became citizens on the strength of his wife’s own citizenship.)
 These facts are important not only for their grim historical irony but because vulnerable people are being hurt. They are real people, not the ghoulish caricatures portrayed by Trump. . . . I meet these statistics one at a time through my volunteer service as a neuropsychologist for the Philadelphia affiliate of HIAS (formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), the global nonprofit that protects refugees and helped my family more than 100 years ago. I will share the story of one such man I have met in the hopes that my nephew might recognize elements of our shared heritage.
 In the early 2000s, Joseph (not his real name) was conscripted at the age of 14 to be a soldier in Eritrea and sent to a remote desert military camp. Officers there discovered a Bible under his pillow which aroused their suspicion that he might belong to a foreign evangelical sect that would claim his loyalty and sap his will to fight. . . . “They smashed my face into the ground, tied my hands and feet together behind my back, stomped on me, and hung me from a tree by my bonds while they beat me with batons for the others to see.”

Joseph was tortured for 20 consecutive days before being taken to a military prison and crammed into a dark unventilated cell with 36 other men, little food and no proper hygiene. . . . When he was too weak to stand, he was taken to a civilian clinic where he was fed by the medical staff. Upon regaining his strength, he escaped to a nearby road where a sympathetic driver took him north through the night to a camp in Sudan where he joined other refugees. Joseph was on the first leg of a journey that would cover thousands of miles and almost 10 years.

Before Donald Trump had started his political ascent promulgating the false story that Barack Obama was a foreign-born Muslim, while my nephew, Stephen, was famously recovering from the hardships of his high school cafeteria in Santa Monica, Joseph was a child on his own in Sudan in fear of being deported back to Eritrea to face execution for desertion. He worked any job he could get, saved his money and made his way through Sudan.

He endured arrest and extortion in Libya. He returned to Sudan, then kept moving to Dubai, Brazil and eventually to a southern border crossing into Texas, where he sought asylum. In all of the countries he traveled through during his ordeal, he was vulnerable, exploited and his status was “illegal.” But in the United States, he had a chance to acquire the protection of a documented immigrant.

Today, at 30, Joseph lives in Pennsylvania and has a wife and child. He is a smart, warm, humble man of great character who is grateful for every day of his freedom and safety. . . . He hopes to become a citizen, return to work and make his contribution to America. His story, though unique in its particulars, is by no means unusual. I have met Central Americans fleeing corrupt governments, violence and criminal extortion; a Yemeni woman unable to return to her war-ravaged home country and fearing sexual mutilation if she goes back to her Saudi husband; and an escaped kidnap-bride from central Asia.
 Trump wants to make us believe that these desperate migrants are an existential threat to the United States; the most powerful nation in world history and a nation made strong by immigrants. Trump and my nephew both know their immigrant and refugee roots. Yet, they repeat the insults and false accusations of earlier generations against these refugees to make them seem less than human.
 Most damning is the administration's evident intent to make policy that specifically disadvantages people based on their ethnicity, country of origin and religion. No matter what opinion is held about immigration, any government that specifically enacts law or policy on that basis must be recognized as a threat to all of us. Laws bereft of justice are the gateway to tyranny. Today others may be the target, but tomorrow it might just as easily be you or me.
 As free Americans, and descendants of immigrants and refugees, we have the obligation to exercise our conscience by voting for candidates who will stand up for our highest national values and not succumb to our lowest fears.

From time to time, all of us find ourselves in situations where we must choose between supporting good or supporting evil.  Sadly, the Trump/Pence regime and its Republican enablers and sycophants now are the face of evil.  If one is decent and moral, there is no option but to oppose their agenda and vote to defeat Republicans in order that a Democrat controlled Congress can blunt the worst of the Trump/Pence/Miller evil.  If one choose to nonetheless vote Republican, than you deserve to be viewed by others with contempt and deemed a hypocrite. 

Quotes of the Day: Maureen Dowd Shreds Trump

I have always aspired to be a writer who can slice and dice politicians I dislike with just the right amount of bitchiness and razor sharp tongue.  My blogger friend Pam Spaulding has always exceeded at turning the English language into a polished weapon.  Another such writer is New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd who when in stride can simply amaze with her wit and sarcasm.  In a column yesterday, Dowd took aim at Donald Trump and out did herself.  Here are some wonderful excerpts:

Melania has learned a few things from the master.  The first lady will never be as brilliant at trolling as her husband. He is an idiot-savant who plays in the roiling ocean of Twitter as naturally as a blubbery-necked sea lion.

But the Slovenian Sphinx has her moments.  It started when she seemed to sartorially upbraid Trump for his Billy Bush vulgarities by wearing a pussy-bow blouse to the St. Louis debate. Then, in a master stroke, she chose a first-lady project that could only be interpreted as a wicked rip on her husband: fighting vicious cyberbullies. Last spring, Melania’s personal Twitter account favorited a GIF of her own downcast face at the Inaugural Address with an accompanying crack: “Seems the only #Wall @realDonaldTrump’s built is the one between him and @FLOTUS.”

Last weekend, on the anniversary of the inauguration, Melania Instagrammed a throwback picture of herself in her powder-blue Jackie suit, not with her husband but with a hunky Marine escort. She wore a delighted ear-to-ear smile, the kind she never seems to flash around the Donald. (It would have been even funnier, of course, if she had posted a photo of herself in front of some empty stands and a sparse crowd, but we’re talking more grounds for divorce there.)

After the Stormy Daniels story broke — about Trump cavorting and watching Shark Week with the porn star and telling her not to worry about Melania, at home with a new baby, and then having his lawyer allegedly pay Stormy $130,000 during the campaign to hush her up — a wintry Melania canceled her plan to accompany her husband to Davos.

Instead, . . . . Remembrance Day. This looked like a subtle reproach to Trump for his unspeakable defense of the “very fine people” among the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Va., and an allusion to the president’s statement last year on remembrance day, which somehow neglected to remember Jews or anti-Semitism. What a Stephen Miller special that was.

[A]s Stormy Daniels began her media tour on “Inside Edition” and booked an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel,” Melania was making a stealthy landing in Florida on an Air Force plane.

Trump could humiliate his wife by being a big, horny pig, but he is the one who comes off as the embarrassment. He’s an embarrassing husband and an embarrassing president and an embarrassing leader of the free world. Barack Obama was always calling to our better angels. Donald Trump is paying off porn stars and denigrating struggling countries that send minorities to the U.S. as “shitholes.” How did we drop so far and so fast from class to crass?

Everyone wondered if Melania’s rebellious vanishing act — combined with the simultaneous Times scoop that Trump had already tried to fire Robert Mueller but was blocked by the White House lawyer, Don McGahn — was the beginning of the “unraveling,” as one top Democrat put it. (Surely, the Trump unraveling began with his birth, like Damien in “The Omen.”)

“It’s like ancient Rome where they’re all turning on each other. McGahn is taking out the long knives to stick Trump in the back. At some point, General Kelly may do the same. Bannon is exiled to the outer walls of the city, where he is collecting wayward Roman soldiers to go back and attack Trump. There are orgies and payoffs and mud wrestling, so beyond anything we’ve experienced anywhere.”

It’s a shattering moment for the country, when many of the institutions that gave America its identity as a smart, brave, generous, fair country — the presidency, Congress, sports, faith, Hollywood, big business — seem corroded and immoral.  When we look in the mirror and try to figure out who we are now, elevating a corporate tax cut over our fundamental values is not going to cut it.

Melania Trump Sues Daily Mail for Libel Over ‘Escort’ Claim

Melania Trump's past modeling choices

It is difficult to ever figure out what motivates Donald Trump and to a lesser extent his wife Melania (who personally, I can only assume, thinks about The Donald's bank accounts as she has sex with him - something that I admit is stomach wrenching to even contemplate trying to envision even momentarily).   Perhaps the goal is to intimidate media outlets and bloggers.  Perhaps they hope for a quick settlement with the Daily Mail and some quick cash to bolster lagging finances.  But, their thought process - or lack thereof - is even more unfathomable now that Melania has sued a Maryland based blogger and the UK newspaper, The Daily Mail, for libel based on gossip that she may have once worked as an "escort" prior to snaring The Donald.   But as an attorney, I can think of nothing more potentially damaging, if indeed she has something to hide, than to begin a court proceeding where the opponents can subpoena all kinds of information arguably relevant to the issue of Melania's past employment, immigration status, etc.  In addition, as a public figure now that she has spoken at the GOP convention and other campaign related events, Melania has a heightened burden of proof to prevail.  Variety looks at what I believe is an insane lawsuit.  Here are highlights:

Melania Trump, the wife of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, filed a libel lawsuit on Thursday against a Maryland blogger and the parent company of the Daily Mail over reports that she was once an “escort.”

Trump’s attorney, Charles Harder, said in a statement that the defendants “made several statements about Mrs. Trump that are 100% false and tremendously damaging to her personal and professional reputation.”

The lawsuit was filed in circuit court in Montgomery County, Md., against Mail Media and Webster Tarpley, who published the blog Tarpley.net in Montgomery County.

“These defendants made several statements about Mrs. Trump that are 100% false and tremendously damaging to her personal and professional reputation,” Harder said in a statement. “Defendants broadcast their lies to millions of people throughout the U.S. and the world — without any justification. Their many lies include, among others, that Mrs. Trump supposedly was an ‘escort’ in the 1990s before she met her husband. Defendants’ actions are so egregious, malicious, and harmful to Mrs. Trump that her damages are estimated at $150 million dollars.”

The lawsuit cites an Aug. 2 blog post on Tarpley.net that cited rumors that Trump was having an “apoplectic fit” after the “plagiarism incident” at the GOP convention and was refusing to return to the campaign trail. The post also claimed that she feared revelations of her time as a “high end escort.”

The suit claims that Tarpley published the post while “consciously doubting the truth of the claims and this acted with actual malice.” Public figures generally have to prove actual malice, not just negligence, to prevail in a libel lawsuit.

The Daily Mail cited a book co-authored by a Slovenian journalist, Bojan Pozar, claiming that a modelling agency she worked for in Milan was more like a “gentleman’s club.” It also cited a Slovenian magazine claiming that Trump’s New York modelling agency “also operated as an escort agency for wealthy clients.”

Trump “did legitimate and legal modeling work for legitimate business entities and did not work for any ‘gentleman’s club’ or ‘escort’ agencies,” the lawsuit says.

The suit says that the Daily Mail “acted with actual malice.” The lawsuit says that Daily Mail received a written statement from Trump’s representative saying that the claims in the article were false, and that the book it relied upon “was apparently self-published and inherently unreliable.”

The Daily Mail posted a statement and retraction on their site on Thursday afternoon. “To the extent that anything in the Daily Mail’s article was interpreted as stating or suggesting that Mrs. Trump worked as an ‘escort’ or in the ‘sex business,’ that she had a ‘composite or presentation card for the sex business,’ or that either of the modeling agencies referenced in the article were engaged in these businesses, it is hereby retracted, and the Daily Mail newspaper regrets any such misinterpretation.”

Tarpley also issued a response: “Melania Trump’s lawsuit against me is without merit. Mrs. Trump is a public figure actively engaged in the Trump for president campaign. We are confident that Mrs. Trump will not be able to meet her high burden of proving the statements published about her on my website were defamatory in any way. Her lawsuit is a blatant attempt to intimidate not only me but journalists of all stripes into remaining silent with regard to public figures. This lawsuit is a direct affront to First Amendment principles and free speech in our democratic society.” 

Other than trying to intimidate the media, the lawsuit makes no sense.  I'd also note that many of Melania's past photo shoot jobs will not exactly help to make her look like an aggrieved, almost virginal political wife.   I hope the Daily Mail (or more to the point, its insurance carrier) plays hardball and hits Melania with all kinds of subpoenas immediately. 

Melania Trump's False Claims of a University Degree

Part of me feels sorry for a political candidate spouse, but there are limits.  Especially when the spouse joins the actual candidate and engages in a pattern of lies and untruths.   First we had Melania Trump's plagiarism problem where she lifted paragraphs from Michelle Obama's 2008 speech at the Democrat Convention.  Now, it turns out that her claims of having a degree “in design and architecture at University in Slovenia” is false.  This from the woman who some pundits on the right thought would be Donald Trump's "secret weapon."   The Huffington Post looks at this exposed untruth.  Here are highlights:

It’s a good story, but it doesn’t appear to be true.

Melania Trump never earned a university degree in architecture ― she dropped out of college after her freshman year, according to her biographers.  Still, she claims to have a degree from “university in Slovenia.” 

Questions about her education grew more significant Tuesday morning, following the revelation that Melania Trump plagiarized parts of her speech to the Republican National Convention from one that First Lady Michelle Obama gave in 2008.

That revelation on Monday raised the question of whether there was anything else Melania Trump hadn’t been entirely truthful about.

Slovenian journalists Bojan Pozar and Igor Omerza wrote in their biography on the former fashion model that she “became ― and remained ― a college dropout” after leaving the University of Ljubljana’s architecture school following her freshman year.

A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign declined to comment early Tuesday on Melania Trump’s claim that she has a university degree. 

This must be Melania's idea of "architecture"

Melania Trump's Plagiarized Parts of Michelle Obama's 2008 Speech

For those who had hoped that Melania Trump might be different than her dishonest and disingenuous husband, last night did not auger for a good start.  In her speech deliver to the assembled Republican Party convention, Melania Trump plagiarized a portion of Michelle Obama's 2008 address to the Democrat Party convention almost word for word.   Sadly, both Trump's seem to believe that they can do whatever they want and think there should be never be any accountability.  One has to wonder who assisted Ms. Trump in preparing her remarks.  So much for the efforts of some pundits and commentators for trying to depict Melania as a woman of intelligence and substance.  CNN has details.  Here are highlights:

At least one passage in Melania Trump's speech Monday night at the Republican National Convention plagiarized from Michelle Obama's address to the Democratic National Convention in 2008.

Side-by-side comparisons of the transcripts show the text in Trump's address following, nearly to the word, the first lady's own from the first night of the Democratic convention in Denver nearly eight years ago.

The controversy quickly overshadowed the speech, which was to have been her introduction to voters. It focused on her immigration to the US and her love for her husband.

A Republican operative familiar with how the campaign was handling the speeches said a number of senior aides had a role, edited Melania's speech, suggested changes and provided guidance.

The Trump campaign released a statement on the speech after the similarities were uncovered, but the statement did not mention the plagiarism charge. 

Here is [Melania] Trump, on Monday:

"From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise, that you treat people with respect. They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily lives. That is a lesson that I continue to pass along to our son," Trump said.

And we need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow. Because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them."

And here is Obama, on August 25, 2008:

"And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you're going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don't know them, and even if you don't agree with them.

And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and to pass them on to the next generation. Because we want our children -- and all children in this nation -- to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them."

The sad part is that I'm not even really surprised.  With Trump, it is par for the course.

Does One of Trump's Potential SCOTUS Nominees Have a Gay Porn Past?

I suspect that Donald Trump did very little vetting of those on his list of would be Supreme Court Justice nominees other wise he would have been aware of the continued rumors about William Holcombe “Bill” Pryor Jr., currently an eleventh-circuit judge and former rumor plagued Attorney General of Alabama.  I wrote about Pryor's purported gay porn past here and here.   And like every self-loathing closeted gay, Pryor is hysterically anti-gay (it makes good cover, or so the thinking goes in GOP circles - ask Ed Schrock and Larry Craig) and at the time I noted in part:

He holds the ignominious honor of being the only attorney general to file a brief attacking the Violence Against Women Act. Ever the defender of prudish virtue, Pryor threw himself into a defense of Alabama’s Dildo Law, which forbade the sale of vibrators. Dredging deep into the recesses of Federalist Society legal theory, Pryor argued that there is no right to privacy in Alabama and that the state had the authority to outlaw any kind of pleasure devices it wanted, even when accompanied by a doctor’s prescription. Naturally, Pryor is unwilling to apply the same legal mumbo jumbo to assault weapons.

His homophobic sentiments rival those of Senator Rick Santorum, the famously anti-gay Republican from Pennsylvania. In an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court in the Texas same-sex sodomy case, Pryor urged the court to uphold the ban. "A constitutional right that protects ‘the choice of one’s partner’ and ‘whether and how to connect sexually’ must logically extend to activities like prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography and even incest and pedophilia." Santorum and Pryor must have attended the same Christian Coalition prayer breakfast.

 The Bilerico Project also had fun coverage in the past and noted that  the Alabama Bureau of Investigations (ABI) is looking into images that appeared on then-popular gay porn site  Badpuppy.com in the '90s. Reportedly working on a few tips, the ABI is concerned that the full-frontal images feature federal circuit Judge Bill Pryor. 

Now, thanks to Trump's inclusion of Pryor on his list of possible nominees, the story is back in the news.  Queerty reports:

Various unnamed officials have identified the photo as authentic; but then again, it’s easy to claim all kinds of things anonymously.

For his part, Pryor says it’s not him, just like every other Republican asshole caught doing something sexual.

For now, Trump hasn’t said anything about Pryor’s potentially-naked past. But lots of other legitimate legal observers have heard the rumors, and are only too happy to spread them. Maybe that’s the silver lining to Trump’s impending presidency: it’ll force some truly shocking secrets out into the open.

You can see the NSFW shot of possibly-Pryor here, along with some very wild theories on the topic. 

Combined with  Melania Trump's nude photos from her past, Pryor may yet add some entertainment value as Christofascists reveal their hypocrisy and flock to such "family values" Trump retainers.   The coverage of Pryor at The Sword is most fun!

Donald Trump and the Hypocrisy of Evangelical Christians

Trump and possible First Lady Melania Trump - Trump's "family values"

As regular readers know, I hold a very low view of Evangelical Christians who, in my opinion, are best defined by their lies, hypocrisy, bigotry and selfishness.   The reality of what these people are in fact versus they image they try to project.  Now, with evangelicals flocking to the banner of Donald Trump, we are seeing just how phony their claims of supporting "family values" are in fact.  Just as they have the highest divorce rate in America (funny how they ignore Jesus' admonition on divorce but cling to anti-gay passages in Leviticus).  Trump is twice divorced, doesn't attend church regularly and is crass and vulgar in his speech, all of which underscores the real attraction for evangelicals: his strident bigotry, racism, and xenophobia.  The New York Times looks at Trump and his evangelical supporters.  Here are excerpts:

In speeches, including one in Oklahoma City on Friday, Mr. Trump almost never talks about issues that politicians seeking evangelical support thunder about: abortion, religious liberty and, recently, the appointment of a conservative Supreme Court justice.

Practically the only part of a Trump stump speech aimed at faith-driven voters is a promise that shopkeepers will again be able to say Merry Christmas. It is one of his most reliable applause lines.

Mr. Trump is winning with evangelicals, as he does with other Republican primary voters, by promising uncompromising immigration and trade policies and a hard-driving leadership style. “Evangelicals see all that’s going down, and they just like somebody to be strong and stern and consistent on issues,” said J. Hogan Gidley, who was a senior adviser to Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas and onetime Baptist pastor, before Mr. Huckabee quit the race.

A CBS News poll of Republican primary voters nationally this month showed Mr. Trump leading Mr. Cruz among evangelicals 33 percent to 22 percent.

In South Carolina, where Mr. Trump won a commanding victory, earning all 50 delegates, he carried evangelicals by six percentage points over Mr. Cruz and 11 percentage points over Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, according to exit polls. 

After Mr. Cruz’s brutal South Carolina loss, his campaign manager, Jeff Roe, re-emphasized a Southern strategy, the cornerstone of Mr. Cruz’s campaign since he announced he was running. “We’re going to have a big night on March 1 in an electoral map that favors us,” Mr. Roe said.

But even though Mr. Cruz won a plurality of evangelicals in the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1, he faces uncertain prospects in Oklahoma and other Bible Belt states that will vote on Tuesday. Polls show him trailing Mr. Trump in Oklahoma, Georgia and Alabama.

“Not everybody is going to follow just because we say this is what we suggest you do,” said Bob Vander Plaats, a leader of the Christian right in Iowa who is a national co-chairman of the Cruz campaign.

He expressed frustration that so-called values voters were giving Mr. Trump a pass on issues about his character, such as his mocking of women, as well as his conservative credentials. Mr. Vander Plaats suggested that they were “either hypocritical or uninformed or maybe not interested.”

“It’s not just three marriages,” he said, listing what he called Mr. Trump’s breaks from conservatism. They included donating to Democrats in the past and once suggesting that his sister, a federal judge who struck down a ban on partial-birth abortions in New Jersey, could make a good Supreme Court justice.

Again, how do you explain his appeal to the supposed "godly folk"?  He is peddling open racism, nativism, and a gospel of greed.  Plus, he provides the authoritarianism that the sheeple of the Christian Right love: someone who will tell them what to do and think whle disingenuously playing them for fools..   .