Evangelicals Ditch Trump For Other GOP Bets

Several prominent pastors say their congregations are looking to others like Mike Pence and Ron DeSantis to steer the Republican Party back on track. “Donald Trump has to go,” as one evangelical columnist put it, Caleb Ecarma reported for Vanity Fair.

Photo Insert: Televangelist James Robison, who served as a spiritual adviser to Trump, likened the former president to a “little elementary schoolchild” while addressing the National Association of Christian Lawmakers.

In the lead-up to the 2020 election, Donald Trump leaned heavily on his own version of the “silent majority,” hoping that a mythical demographic, which handed Richard Nixon two presidential victories, would carry him across the finish line. That prediction did not pan out in 2020—or in this year’s midterms.

And after suffering three disappointing election cycles, Trump now appears to be faced with a silent majority of conservatives who are turning increasingly against him: Evangelical voters.

“There’s a lot of people who share a lot of our similar thoughts but don’t want to go on record," Bob Vander Plaats, one of America’s top evangelical thought leaders, who hesitantly backed Trump in 2016, tells Vanity Fair.

“You can see that it’s almost a silent majority right now,” he says. Everett Piper, a Washington Times columnist and the former president of an evangelical university, published a post-midterm polemic last month arguing that Trump is “hurting…not helping” American evangelicals.

“The take-home of this past week is simple: Donald Trump has to go,” Piper added. “If he’s our nominee in 2024, we will get destroyed.”

Earlier this month, televangelist James Robison, who served as a spiritual adviser to Trump, likened the former president to a “little elementary schoolchild” while addressing the National Association of Christian Lawmakers.

Another major evangelical leader, who requested anonymity, tells me there’s “no doubt” that if Trump wins the primary, Republicans will “get crushed in the general.” But even as some evangelical leaders seek a divorce, Trump’s influence on the Republican Party has held strong.

He’s centered many of the culture wars that evangelical voters have been harping on for decades. And, increasingly, the party’s agenda has become nearly interchangeable with the attitudes of evangelical voters.

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