On October 3rd, Pastor Lawrence S. Dorsey, Sr., used President Donald Trump as an example for how we should pray for our enemies.
Pastor Dorsey is the senior pastor of the University SDA Church on Martin Luther King, Jr., Blvd., near the USC campus, but on this occasion he was preaching in the stead of his son, Lawrence S. Dorsey, II, the senior pastor of the Altadena SDA Church, who was recovering from a dental procedure.
At the outset, we stress that we are not attacking Pastor Dorsey personally nor impeaching his ministry. He has a long and distinguished history as a Seventh-day Adventist minister in the Los Angeles area. His ministry has born much fruit, and he has rightly been honored for it. We believe his heart is in the right place and his motives are pure.
But just as Pastor Dorsey repeatedly said, in talking about President Trump, that he was “saying this for a point,” we also have a point in discussing what pastor Dorsey said about President Trump.
Appearing via internet from his study, Pastor Dorsey preached on Christian forgiveness and grace:
“We need to have a spirit of forgiveness against those who have fought against us and have done things to us—you know people have done things to us and we have done things to people—but we need to have the spirit of Christ—he is compassionate, he is longsuffering, he is forgiving. We need that spirit in us. That’s part of the gospel, not just preaching the gospel but living the gospel.
“If anybody knows me personally, and if you’ve been on my Face Book, you’ll see that I am not a fan of the current president. . . . To me as a Christian, I don’t see—and this is my personal opinion—I don’t see how any Christian—Christian—could support that man. I mean, he’s immoral, he’s a narcissist, he lies, I mean the Bible tells us if you love a lie, if you even love a lie, that’s sin. This man, over 30,000 lies that are documented . . . responsible for over 200,000 people’s lives because he didn’t act the way he should’ve acted, and be responsible as a leader.
“But again, again, I’m saying this for a point, I’m saying this for a point.
“Despite all of that, when I saw that this man got COVID, the thing that he said was a hoax, he said it was a hoax, but now he has it and his wife has it. And at first, let me tell you folks, I was skeptical. I said “you know what, he’s losing in the polls, he blew it at the debate the way he acted”—I mean, that’s not Christian behavior: bullying people, and carrying on—but, again, I’m not dealing with the person, I’m bringing this for a point that I want us to see as Christians.
“And then I said to myself, “You know what, he’s probably lying, he’s using this as a ploy.” But then the Lord said, “wait a minute, what if he really has it? What if he’s about to die? You’re a preacher, what do you say to him, what to you feel, what do you say?”
“And in my heart, I’m tellin’ you in my heart, I said, “Lawrence, you’ve gotta pray for him. You’ve gotta pray for him, that if he is in these last hours of his life, that he could call out to Jesus.” If he is in the last hours of his life, if he’s seized with sickness, and he’s probably afraid because he’s had everything in a golden spoon all his life, and now he’s facing death and it could be very horrific, not knowing, I said, that he could find conversion, that he could find Jesus.
“And guess what: I didn’t just keep that in my head, I put it on my Face Book, and I said, you know, I’m praying for this man that he’s going to find the Lord, because guess what, as long as we’re alive there’s hope. And I don’t want to see anybody, I don’t want to see anybody lost and be with Satan and miss heaven, even DT, and there’s worse people than him.
Pastor Dorsey’s purpose in sharing his thoughts about President Trump was to conclude that we ought to pray for Trump’s conversion, as well as his recovery from the China Virus. That is an admirable and a scriptural thought. The Bible tells us to pray for those in authority. See, 1 Tim. 2:2-4; Ezra 6:10; Jer. 29:7. But, unfortunately, in getting to his point, Pastor Dorsey said many false and wrong things, and did a lot of damage.
It is appropriate to respond to what Pastor Dorsey said about the president, and we will do that. But it is also time to explore such recurring questions as how American blacks came to be attached to one political party, and whether it is appropriate, given Ellen White’s prophetic counsel not only to avoid partisan politics but also to use our franchise to vote for social reform on moral issues, for black SDA pastors to continue to exclusively support one party.
A. Has Trump “fought against blacks”?
Dorsey led into his rant about President Trump by saying we need to have a sprit of forgiveness “for those who have fought against us and have done things to us.” Yes, Christians do need to have a spirit of forgiveness, but why does Pastor Dorsey say that prefatory to his remarks about President Trump? The juxtaposition seems to imply that the president has “fought against us and done things to us”—and by “us” I assume he means “us black folks.” How has the president fought against blacks?
1. Trump’s Presidency Has Been Objectively Pro-African-American
Much of President Trump’s domestic program—restricting illegal immigration, raising tariffs to repatriate manufacturing jobs, cutting the corporate tax rate to make America an attractive business location, and incentivizing the return of offshore capital—has been designed to raise the wages of the working class, including the wages of black Americans.
It has worked: as of last year (before the Wuhan Flu shutdowns), the black unemployment rate was 5.5%, the lowest level ever recorded since that statistic began to be kept in the 1970s. Additionally, the African-American poverty rate reached 18.8% in 2019, the lowest level recorded since they started tracking that number in the 1960s.
Trump has also promoted “opportunity zones” that confer tax advantages on developers who build in poorer, heavily black neighborhoods. Capital gains taxes can be deferred on money invested in opportunity zones, or avoided completely if the asset is held for at least five years.
Trump was also able to achieve bipartisan agreement on, and passage of, the “First Step Act,” a federal prison and sentencing reform law that, among other things, reduces federal mandatory minimum sentences that tend to disproportionately affect blacks.
Even before the First Step act passed, Trump, to draw attention to harsh mandatory sentences and the need for reform, commuted the sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, a Memphis cocaine trafficker who had been sentenced to life without parole, and had served 21 years in prison (he later fully pardoned her).
Trump has also insisted that black heroes be recognized. He upgraded Sgt. Maj. John L. Canley’s Navy Cross for heroism during the battle of Hue, Vietnam, to a Congressional Medal of Honor. He honored 100-year old Tuskegee Airman Charles McGee at his February, 2020, State of the Union address. The U.S. Navy recently announced that a Gerald Ford-class aircraft carrier to be launched in 2028 will be named after Dorie Miller, the black mess attendant who, during the attack on Pearl Harbor, manned an anti-aircraft gun, fired it until he ran out of ammunition, and rescued several other sailors as his ship, the West Virginia, sank.
He has supported historically black colleges and universities, signing a bipartisan bill that will permanently provide more than $250 million a year to the nation’s HBCUs, along with dozens of other institutions that serve large shares of minority students.
“When I took office, I promised to fight for HBCUs, and my administration continues to deliver. A few months ago, funding for HBCUs was in jeopardy. But the White House and Congress came together and reached an historic agreement.”
Trump posthumously pardoned black boxing champion Jack Johnson who, in 1912, had been convicted in a racially motivated prosecution under the Mann Act. He also pardoned Jon Ponder who, after multiple convictions and a “miraculously short” 2005 sentence for bank robbery, founded a nonprofit organization called “Hope for Prisoners,” which is devoted to helping other former inmates re-enter daily life. "Jon's life is a beautiful testament to the power of redemption," Trump said.
In 2017, President Trump intervened on behalf of three black UCLA basketball players who had been detained for shoplifting in China, speaking directly to Xi Jinping. Trump also intervened on behalf of the black rapper A$AP Rocky (Rakim Mayers), who was arrested and tried in Sweden after his bodyguard beat up two Muslim men who had been harassing Rocky and his entourage, and would not desist after being repeatedly warned to back off. Trump tweeted:
"Sweden has let our African American Community down in the United States. I watched the tapes of A$AP Rocky, and he was being followed and harassed by troublemakers. Treat Americans fairly! #FreeRocky."
The U.S. special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, Ambassador Robert O’Brien, wrote to Swedish prosecutors urging them to release Rocky. "The government of the United States of America wants to resolve this case as soon as possible to avoid potentially negative consequences to the U.S.-Swedish bilateral relationship," wrote O'Brien.
Given Trump’s admirable record vis-à-vis the black race, it is odd that Pastor Dorsey seems to think of him as an oppositional figure, or an oppressor, who “has fought against us and done things to us” and thus needs special forgiveness from blacks.
I think the issue is not Trump’s deeds, but his party affiliation, which is not that of most African-Americans.
2. Is Trump’s Republican Party Affiliation the Problem?
The Republican Party was formed in 1854 to oppose the Kansas–Nebraska Act and stop the expansion of slavery into the U.S. territories. The first successful presidential candidate of the “Grand Old Party,” Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, was the Great Emancipator who lost his own life after leading a very costly, sanguinary crusade against the slaveholding South.
While the Republican Party was established to oppose the expansion of slavery, the Democratic Party was its polar opposite: Democrats were the party of slave-holding secessionists as well as the enforcers of Dixie’s post-Reconstruction regime of segregation.
In 1864, President Lincoln ran on a “national unity” ticket, with a southern Democrat from Tennessee, Andrew Johnson, as his vice-president. It was an ill-advised political stunt that blew up the next year, when Lincoln was assassinated and the nation was stuck with a president of the party and the ideology that the northern states had been fighting for four long, bloody years.
When a Republican-dominated Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, granting the most basic rights of citizenship to the freed slaves—the right to make and enforce contracts, to sue and be parties to civil cases, to testify in court, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey realty and personal property, to all criminal procedural safeguards afforded to whites, and to be subject only to the criminal codes that governed whites (not the “black codes”)—President Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill, and the Republican Congress had to override his veto to enact the law.
That is history. Every other political party in the world that ever had an explicitly racist platform is long gone. The South African National Party, which introduced and promoted apartheid, disbanded in 1997. How has the Democratic Party survived?
A Democrat Justice of the Supreme Court, Hugo Black, who served from 1937 to 1971 and was appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, was a Klansman. As recently as 2010, a sitting Democratic United States senator had been a Ku Klux Klansman; Robert C. Byrd, a Democratic senator for 51 years, achieved the rank of “Exalted Cyclops” and “Grand Kleagle” in the Ku Klux Klan. Byrd managed to use the “n-word” in an interview with Tony Snow on March 2, 2001. That was in the 21st Century.
Again, how has the Democratic Party survived?
3. Why did Blacks Switch from Republican to Democrat?
For many election cycles, blacks have voted overwhelming for the Democratic Party, sometimes by over 90%. Why? When did blacks switch from the Republican Party, the party of abolition and emancipation, to the party of the slaveholders and the enforcers of Jim Crow?
a. Blacks Switched from Democrat to Republican in the 1930s
A widely circulated myth is that the switch happened because of the Civil Rights platform of the 1960s, which was largely passed under a Democratic president, Lyndon Baines Johnson.
In fact, the switch had already happened three decades before. Blacks began to vote Democrat during the 1930s. In 1932, Republican Herbert Hoover got 75% of the black vote; four years later, in 1936, Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt got 75% of the black vote. Blacks started voting Democratic because of FDR’s “New Deal,” a vastly expanded social welfare state, appealed to them.
Because of the strategies of another clever Democrat, LBJ, they never went back to voting Republican.
b. Which Party Supported Civil Rights More Strongly?
A related myth is that Democrats supported the civil rights measures of the 1960s and Republicans opposed them. Not true. The 1960s civil rights laws were supported overwhelmingly in both parties, because by the mid-1960s, the national argument about race was over, and we had decided we should no longer tolerate segregation and unequal rights for the black race. But the civil rights laws were supported in larger percentages by Republicans.
Civil Rights Act of 1964 (outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin; prohibited unequal application of voter registration requirements; prohibited racial segregation in schools and public accommodations, and prohibited employment discrimination), voting by party affiliation:
The original House version:
Democratic Party: 152–96 (61%–39%)
Republican Party: 138–34 (80%–20%)
The Senate version:
Democratic Party: 46–21 (69%–31%)
Republican Party: 27–6 (82%–18%)
The Senate version, voted on by the House:
Democratic Party: 153–91 (63%–37%)
Republican Party: 136–35 (80%–20%)
Civil Rights Act of 1968 (prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin)
House of Representatives:
Democratic Party: 166—67 (71%—29%)
Republican Party: 161—25 (87%—13%)
Senate:
Democratic Party: 42—17 (71%—29%)
Republican Party: 29—3 (90%—10%)
c. Was Barry Goldwater the Reason?
The Republicans’ unsuccessful presidential candidate in 1964, Barry Goldwater, a five-term senator from Arizona, opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but not out of racial animus. Goldwater, whose father was Jewish, was no southern Democrat, and his non-racist bona fides were never seriously in question. He was a founding member of the Arizona NAACP and an active supporter of integration of the Arizona National Guard, as well as school desegregation in Phoenix. He voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (intended to vindicate the right of blacks to vote) and the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (abolishing the poll tax, which had been used in the south to prevent blacks from voting).
Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because he believed it to be an unconstitutional over-reach for the federal government. This highly principled stand caused him considerable personal anguish given his strong support for integration and equality for blacks.
d. Was LBJ a Friend of Blacks?
Another myth is that President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who signed the civil rights legislation, was not a racist. In fact, Johnson’s support of civil rights was based upon political calculation, not any great love of the black race. How Johnson went about supporting the 1957 Civil Rights Act is revealing. To one Senate colleague, John Stennis, he said,
“Let’s face it, our [donkey] is in a crack. We’re gonna have to let this n**ger bill pass.”[i]
To another senate colleague, Richard Russell, he wrote about the 1957 bill:
“These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’re got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.”[ii]
In 1967, Johnson was considering Thurgood Marshall to replace retiring Justice Tom Clark—which would make Marshall the first black justice to be appointed to the Supreme Court. Marshall had argued several important civil rights cases to the high court (including Smith v. Allwright (1944); Shelley v. Kraemer (1948); Sweatt v. Painter (1950); McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950); and Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, (1954)), and was very famous. When one of Johnson’s aids suggested another well qualified black jurist, Yale Law graduate A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., Johnson reportedly said:
“The only two people who ever heard of Judge Higginbotham are you and his momma. When I appoint a n**ger to the court, I want everyone to know he’s a n**ger.”[iii]
Johnson was overheard by Robert McMillan, a steward on Air Force One, telling two governors who were flying with the president, in reference to the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
“I'll have those n**gers voting Democratic for 200 years."[iv]
We are more than a fourth of the way through the 200 years, and Johnson’s boast is still prophetic.
Johnson was a clever, canny politician; his own “southern strategy” has been extremely effective. As Dinesh D’Souza writes:
If the Democrats intended to retain their majority, LBJ saw they needed to get more black votes. This was quite a change for a Democratic Party whose history was largely based on exploiting black labor and suppressing the black vote. But LBJ saw the opportunity to create a new type of plantation in which blacks could be exploited in a different way. On this plantation they had a different role, not as exploited workers who did not vote but rather as exploited voters who did not work.[v]
e. Did the “Dixiecrats” Join the Republican Party?
Another myth is that those southern Democratic congressmen who opposed civil rights, the “Dixiecrats,” all switched over and joined the Republican Party. Not true. There were about 200 “Dixiecrats”; only a couple of prominent Dixiecrats switch from Democrat to Republican, most notably Strom Thurmond, the 8-term senator from South Carolina.
Joe Biden, who was first elected to the Senate in 1972, inadvertently attested that the southern segregationists were still Democrats during the 1970s; in a fundraiser last year, Biden bragged about having worked with segregationist Democrats James Eastland and Herman Talmadge, who were members of his caucus at that time.
f. The Myth of Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”
Democrats have spilled much ink promoting a theory that in 1968 Richard Nixon developed a “southern strategy” that involved appealing to racist sentiments of white southerners. Lacking an actual appeal to racist sentiments, they have characterized Nixon’s touting of “law and order” and his condemnation of violent Leftist radicals such as the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers as racist “dog whistles.”
This is foolishness. People who want law and order, peace on the streets, are not thereby racists. In fact, Nixon left racist southerners to vote for George Wallace, and they did. Talk of “dog whistles” is just an underhanded attempt to smear someone who never made a racist appeal to voters in his long career.
President Nixon, a Quaker, had an excellent record on civil rights. He supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act the following year. Richard Nixon integrated the public schools. When he was elected in 1968, nearly 70 percent of African American children attended all-black schools. When he left office in 1974, that figure was down to 8 percent.
g. White Southerners Went GOP Because of Reagan Conservatism
Eventually a majority of white southerners did leave the Democratic Party and join the Republican Party, but the en masse switching of parties did not occur until the late 1980s. By that time the civil rights movement had been triumphant for over 20 years; southerners switched to the Republican Party not because of anything having to do with race, but because the conservative values of Ronald Reagan—family, faith, patriotism, strong defense, free markets, and low taxes—reflected their values more closely than those of the Democratic Party, which had moved Left during the Vietnam War years. This realignment occurred within the living memory of most reading this article, and we know it had nothing to do with race.
When all the myths and misconceptions are swept away, there is no racial or raced-based reason for blacks to favor Democrats over Republicans. Blacks switched from Republican to Democrat in the 1930s, three decades before civil rights; southern whites switched parties 20 years after civil rights; in neither case did it have anything to do with race or civil rights. It is beyond irrational to assume that anyone with an “R” before his name on the ballot is therefore an enemy of the black race who has “fought against us and done things to us.”
A more likely reason why blacks have been faithful to the Democratic Party for over 80 years is hinted at in the D’Sousa paragraph quoted above: welfare. American blacks have been bought off by the social welfare programs promoted more enthusiastically by Democrats than by Republicans (who tend to believe in self-reliance and the dignity of work). But that is a story for another day.
B. The 30,000 “Lies”
Pastor Dorsey stated that President Trump has told “over 30,000 lies that are documented.” This comes from the Washington Post, which claims that, as of this past July, Trump has told over 20,000 whoppers (so the claimed number is 20,000, not 30,000).
I scanned through the Post’s database to see what they consider a lie. Remarkably, many of the entries were instances in which Trump tweeted about the domestic spying scandal known as the Russia Hoax. The Post thinks this is a baseless conspiracy theory, and every time Trump says or tweets anything about any aspect of the Russia Hoax, the Post adds another “lie” to its database.
Here is a typical Trump tweet complaining about the Russia Hoax, and the fact that no one has yet been jailed over it:
“We have a totally corrupt previous Administration, including a President and Vice President who spied on my campaign, AND GOT CAUGHT...and nothing happens to them. This crime was taking place even before my election, everyone knows it, and yet all are frozen stiff with fear. No Republican Senate Judiciary response, NO “JUSTICE”, NO FBI, NO NOTHING. Major horror show REPORTS on Comey & McCabe, guilty as hell, nothing happens. Catch Obama & Biden cold, nothing.”
Much of this is opinion and expression of frustration, but the factual assertions are essentially true. Trump was spied on by the government, which predicated its surveillance of him using unverified and false “opposition research” paid for by Hilary Clinton. President Obama and Vice President Biden knew about this while it was happening, and so far there has been no reckoning.
It is easy to get lost in the weeds of the Russia Hoax; indeed, the complexity of the operation—the many names, facts, dates, and documents involved—has been the conspirators’ best friend. I will do my best to summarize this confusing welter of facts in a few paragraphs. The bottom line is that the FBI and DOJ used unverified and false “opposition research” (dirt) paid for by Hillary Clinton to obtain a warrant to spy on President Trump.
Long before 2016—probably as far back as 2012—the FBI was allowing private “contractors” to ransack the National Security Agency’s (NSA) signals intelligence database, which records all phone calls, emails, texts and other electronic communications all around the globe. These contractors were searching the NSA database using “about” queries, which sought everything “about” or relating to a named individual or entity. Admiral Mike Rogers, who was then in charge of the NSA, became aware of the abuse, eventually terminated private contractor access and, on October 21, 2016, disabled the “about” query feature in an attempt to end the illegal activity.
By then, however, the conspirators had arranged a work-around. On that same day, October 21, 2016, the Department of Justice and the FBI sought and received a FISA court order authorizing electronic surveillance on Carter Page. How did they manage that?
In early 2016, the Hillary Clinton Campaign, through a law firm, paid Fusion GPS, a company headed by former Wall Street Journal writer Glenn Simpson, for opposition research on Donald Trump. One of Fusion’s employees, Nellie Ohr, began compiling a dossier on Trump and Russia; it included raw NSA data as well as “open source” Internet material. To make it look like an intelligence product, Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele, a retired British agent who had once handled the Russia portfolio at MI-6. Steele’s primary sub-source was a Russian-American named Igor Danchenko who lives in Washington DC and works for the Brookings Institute, the premier Democratic Party thinktank.
This crew put together what has become known as the “Steele Dossier.” It alleged that Trump had sinister ties to Putin and Russia. (Remarkably, it bore a striking resemblance in its broad themes to an article Glenn Simpson had written for the Wall Street Journal on April 17, 2007, 9 years before.) A clue that Fusion GPS had access to the NSA database is revealed in the claim that one of Trump’s lawyers, Michael Cohen, had visited Prague and met with Russian agents in 2016. This was not true, but a Manhattan art dealer also named Michael Cohen and born the same year as the lawyer did travel to the Czech Republic at that time. It seems that Nellie Ohr queried the name “Michael Cohen,” turned up the trip to Prague, and worked that into the dossier, not realizing it was a different Michael Cohen.
The dossier was vigorously shopped to the government—the DOJ, the FBI, and even the State Department, where many Clinton loyalists were ensconced—by many different people, including Republicans John McCain and Lindsay Graham.
The FBI used the dossier to seek a warrant on Carter Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Page, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who had worked in naval intelligence and had business ties to Russia, had volunteered to be a foreign policy advisor to candidate Trump. When seeking a FISA warrant against an American citizen, the government must show, with verified evidence, that the target is likely acting as the agent of a foreign power and is likely engaged in specific criminal conduct. But Carter Page had been a CIA informant (“source”) and a cooperating witness for the feds for many years; they knew perfectly well he was not a Russian spy. (In the final application renewal, an FBI lawyer named Kevin Clinesmith altered a CIA email confirming that Carter Page was a CIA source to make it say that Page was not a source, and presented the forged document to the FISA Court.)
In its application to the FISA Court, the FBI presented the Steele Dossier as a “verified document,” but it was never verified and contained multiple levels of hearsay. The FBI also failed to disclose that the dossier was opposition research paid for by the Clinton Campaign.
A FISA warrant has a “two hop” rule, meaning the FBI could monitor and collect not only all of Page’s electronic communications, but also those of everyone Page was in contact with (hop one) and everyone those people were in contact with (hop two). Since Page was a low-level Trump campaign volunteer, the “two hop” rule meant that the FBI could, very likely, spy on everyone involved with the Trump Campaign, including Donald Trump—and, of course, spying on Trump was the whole point of the exercise.
The FISA warrant was renewed three times, in January, April and June, 2017, so the DOJ and FBI continued to spy on President Trump for eight months after he became president. It was renewed once after the Clinesmith forgery and twice after Igor Danchenko had admitted to FBI agents that most of the dossier was just gossip and bar talk among Danchenko and his drinking buddies, mostly his childhood friends from Russia. It has since been disclosed that the FBI suspected Danchenko of being a Russian agent, another fact that was never disclosed to the FISA Court.
There’s also an international sub-plot of the conspiracy that involved running shadowy spooks named Stephan Halper and Joseph Mifsud at another low-level Trump volunteer, George Papadopoulos, in London. Not content with the corrupt involvement of the U.S. government, the international conspiracy involved the “five eyes” nations (including Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) and an Australian diplomat named Alexander Downer.
Although the information came out slowly over the course of three and a half years as the result of a congressional investigation led by Devin Nunes and an Inspector General investigation by Michael Horowitz, it has now been thoroughly documented. The guilty government agencies are being forced to cough up more documentation with each passing month.
Many consider the Russia Hoax to be the worst political-governmental scandal in American history, and except for the lowliest, least powerful figure involved in it—Kevin Clinesmith—no charges have been brought against anyone. President Trump has every right to be enraged. But every time he complains about it, the Washington Post notches another Trump “lie.”
As one reads through what the Post claims are “lies,” it becomes clear that many of them are, at worst, exaggerations in which the substance is correct. Most of them, however, are just differences of opinion. Every time President Trump tweets something with which the Post disagrees, it adds another Trump “lie” to its database.
Where it counts most, campaign promises kept, President Trump has been one of the most truthful, faithful, conscientious presidents in American history. Insofar as he has been allowed to by the Congress and the courts, President Trump has kept almost every promise he made on the campaign trail.
C. Is Trump Responsible for 200,000 deaths?
One of the weakest points in Pastor Dorsey’s critique of President Trump was the idea that Trump is responsible for the deaths of over 200,000 people. This is simply bizarre. The Trump Administration did all that could reasonably be expected of a presidential administration.
First, Trump took early action to cut off travel from China, the source of the plague. In January, while the Democrats were focused on impeaching him (for things he did not do, but Joe Biden publicly bragged about having done) President Trump took decisive action to stop travel from China; he also enhanced airport screenings to help stop cases from coming into the United States. (The day after Trump announced his travel ban, Joe Biden tweeted, “We need to lead the way with science — not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia [fear of foreigners], and fear-mongering.”)
Second, President Trump built up the nation’s testing system from almost nothing; he rapidly expanded testing through regulatory reform and payment incentives. The U.S. has performed over 125 million tests—far more than any other country on earth—and is now administering more than 1 million tests per day. The aim is to ramp testing up to 3 million per day. The administration is distributing 150 million rapid diagnostic tests to nursing homes and extended living facilities so that vulnerable populations can be protected.
Third, as soon as cases began to rise in mid-March, President Trump released guidance recommending mitigation measures critical to slowing the spread of the virus. Even Drs. Fauci and Birx, who seem not to be fans of the president, have confirmed the fact that President Trump took action as soon as the data was presented to him. When, in the early spring, it appeared that local hospital capacity might be overwhelmed by Wuhan Flu cases, Trump activated U.S. Navy hospital ships, sending the USNS Comfort to New York and the USNS Mercy to Los Angeles.
Fourth, to secure needed supplies, President Trump led the largest mobilization of public and private sector resources since the Second World War. He invoked the Defense Production Act more than 30 times to ensure production of medicine, personal protective equipment, ventilators, hand sanitizer, testing supplies, and more. At the president’s urging, Ford and General Motors shifted production to ventilators, producing and delivering more than 80,000, ensuring that every patient who needed one would have it; thousands of ventilators have been shared with foreign countries.
Fifth, President Trump moved swiftly to protect vulnerable communities, establishing guidelines for nursing homes and expanded telehealth opportunities to protect our vulnerable seniors. He made certain that uninsured Americans are able to get the COVID-19 care and testing they need, by making the testing free of charge. He directed HUD Secretary Ben Carson to focus the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council on underserved communities impacted by COVID-19. He is investing almost $2 billion in community health centers in medically underserved areas receive the care and testing they need.
Sixth, the president launched a massive effort to deliver therapeutic treatments, and a vaccine, in record time. Operation Warp Speed—the “Moonshot” quest for a vaccine—is a public-private partnership moving multiple vaccine candidates toward implementation in record time, with five companies in late-stage trials and three leading candidates likely to report results soon. Operation Warp Speed is compressing the usual new-vaccine implementation time from over a decade to a matter of months. The U.S. has made investments in technology, manufacturing capacity, and clinical studies; carefully selected candidate vaccines and platforms; increased regulatory flexibility; and encouraged concurrent performance of steps that have historically been taken in sequence. It is unprecedented.
Seventh, Trump worked with Congress to provide financial support to workers and businesses affected by the mitigation efforts (shut downs), saving 51 million American jobs.
Importantly, President Trump has also recognized that there must be a balance between efforts to slow the spread of a virus that kills mostly older people (the median age of fatalities is 78—which is also the average life expectancy in the U.S.) and keeping the economy going. (It is called “making a living” because you have to do it in order to live.)
By contrast, many of Trump’s detractors have eschewed balancing, and Democratic state governors have opted to keep their economies shut down regardless of the disruption of normal life and disproportionate economic and personal devastation. Many of Trump’s critics have denied the relevant science by keeping schools closed when science has firmly established that the Wuhan Flu is less dangerous to school-age children (20 years old and younger) than typical seasonal flu.
The president’s challenger, Joe Biden, has been critical of Trump’s performance but, given a similar task, he did not do as well himself. President Obama put Vice-President Biden in charge of the task force to combat the 2009 H1N1 (Swine Flu) outbreak and, in short order, 60 million were infected; it was pure luck that the H1N1 turned out to be far less lethal than the Wuhan Flu. Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, stated:
“What I will say about it is, a bunch of really talented, really great people working on it and we did every possible thing wrong. And its, you know 60 million Americans got H1N1 in that period of time, and it’s just purely a fortuity that this isn’t one of the great mass casualty events in American history. It had nothing to do with us doing anything right, just had to do with luck. . . . Imagine a virus with a different lethality and you can just do the math on that.”
The China flu is a worldwide pandemic; almost every nation on earth has had infections and deaths, although not every country has reported their Wuhan Flu deaths accurately. By some metrics, the U.S. compares favorably to several other developed-world countries. The idea that, with better policies, Trump could have prevented all Covid-19 deaths or even a very substantial percentage of them, is ludicrous.
From a Christian perspective, it is evidence of state-worship, statolatry. Only someone who believes that the state is all-powerful—putting government in the place of God—would think that the government could have prevented all the deaths from the Wuhan Flu had it only been run by a different chief executive.
Leftist utopianism is essentially a form of state-worship; utopians believe that the millennium could be ushered in if only the state were empowered to do whatever the state worshiper thinks it should (whether that is to replace private property with common ownership of the means of production, or place all industry in government hands through the “Green New Deal,” etc.). Unfortunately, today’s Democratic Party now embraces state-worship (which, as always, brooks no competition: observe how the state-worshiping Left has closed Christian churches in jurisdictions where they are in power). Seventh-day Adventist pastors should steer well clear of state-worship.
D. Did President Trump Say that Coronavirus was a Hoax?
Pastor Dorsey also claimed that Trump said that the Wuhan Flu was “a hoax,” but Trump did not say that. That canard does not even make sense, given that it arises out of a speech Trump made four weeks after he had banned travel from China to the U.S. because of Coronavirus. Obviously, he was treating it not as a hoax but as a serious threat. At that time, many of his critics were still arguing that he was overreacting.
What Trump actually said was that the Democrats’ attempt to blame him for the virus was a hoax, their latest in a long string of hoaxes designed to destroy him.
First there was the Russia Hoax, then the long, pointless, and groundless special counsel investigation based upon the Russia Hoax. When that fizzled, the Democrats tried to impeach Trump for asking the new president of the Ukraine to look into Joe Biden’s corruption. The attack on him over his handling of the China Flu, Trump argued, was just the latest hoax in a long line:
“Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ They go, ‘Oh, not good, not good.’ They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. . . . “
“One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia. That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they’ve been doing it since you got in. . . . And this is their new hoax.”
Considering the facts we’ve just recounted above, it was fair for Trump to call the politicization of the Coronavirus a hoax.
The Wuhan virus is China’s fault. It is very likely the product of genetic engineering, either as part of a bio-weapons program or as part of highly dangerous “gain-of-function” research that has been banned in the U.S. The virus escaped from the lab in Wuhan, but instead of warning the world of what was coming, the Chinese Communist Party hid the truth, nailed people inside their apartments to die, cornered the world market on PPE, and closed down internal travel to and from Wuhan--but kept international travel out of Wuhan open, thereby inflicting a deadly pandemic on the entire world.
To blame Trump for the WuFlu is an even more transparent hoax than the Russia Hoax, or than trying to impeach Trump for Biden’s corruption.
E. Can a Christian Vote for Donald Trump?
Pastor Dorsey’s sermon included the aside that:
“I don’t see how any Christian—Christian—could support that man. I mean, he’s immoral, he’s a narcissist, he lies.”
This deserves a rebuttal on behalf of Christians who continue to support Trump, as most do.
First, it is true that Trump is no moral paragon; he is twice divorced, and in the past he lived the life of a billionaire playboy. But since becoming president he has put away that lifestyle, which is in sharp contrast to presidents Kennedy and Clinton, whose rampant sexual misconduct while in office has been documented from many sources.
We’ve already addressed the lying issue; most of Trump’s supposed lies are just differences of opinion with the Leftist media, or else exaggerations. Trump is a promoter and an entrepreneur; he brags, he boasts, he speaks in broad brushstrokes. He does not speak in measured, calculated, lawyerly phrases. His supporters understand that; it has often been said that they take him seriously but not literally, whereas his detractors take him literally but not seriously, and re-cast his every overenthusiastic exaggeration as a malevolent attempt to deceive. As noted before, however, where it counts most—in trying to keep, as president, the promises he made as a candidate—no president in living memory has had more integrity than Donald J. Trump.
Second, we have a two-party system. One of two people becomes president as the result of each presidential election. In 2016, did Christians have a duty to put the Clintons back into the White House, after Bill Clinton’s record of sexual misconduct, and perjury and obstruction of justice (for which he was disbarred) to cover it up? And recall that Hillary Clinton, in her role of the wronged wife standing by her man, often slandered and defamed Bill’s cast-off conquests.
In a few days, do Christians have a duty to put Joe Biden in the White House, notwithstanding his increasingly well documented corruption?
To give just one example among many, in February, 2014, President Obama gave Joe Biden the responsibility to oversee the U.S.-Ukraine relationship. A few months later, in May 2014, Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder and primary owner of a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma, offered Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, an $83,000.00 per month ($1 million per year) for a no-show gig as a board member. Hunter Biden had no expertise in corporate governance, energy production, or oil & gas law, and never set foot in the Ukraine during the five years he was on Burisma’s board.
In hiring Hunter Biden, Burisma was “buying access”; Hunter and Joe Biden were “influence peddling.” Suppose you are a politically powerful person and I have important business interests. I hire your son for a very lucrative, low-effort gig in the belief that when you make a decision that affects my business interests, you will take my views into account. As Michael Anton explains:
When a company or bank or hedge fund or real estate developer or foreign government slides big payments over to someone close to someone who might soon be president, they know what they’re doing, and they know—from experience—that the investment is sound. . . . There are no written contracts or enforcement mechanisms, but the system “works” because people know it’s in their interest to honor it. In modern international politics, to pay someone a few million to do “nothing” is to expect to be paid back somehow. The payees know this, and endeavor to make good, lest they risk future payments.
And Joe Biden made good. About a year later, while Burisma was under investigation by Ukrainian state prosecutor Victor Shokin, Biden demanded that Shokin be fired, threatening to withhold one billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Shokin was not fired immediately. As Biden later bragged at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations:
And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kiev. And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor [Victor Shokin]. And they didn’t.
So they said they had—they were walking out to a press conference. I said, “nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars.” They said, “you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said”—I said, “call him.” (Laughter.)
I said, “I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars.” I said, “you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours.” I looked at them and said: “I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.” Well, son of a b**ch. (Laughter) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.
Thanks to Hunter Biden abandoning an expensive MacBook Pro laptop computer, we know that Hunter introduced his father to a Burisma executive less than a year before the elder Biden pressured Ukraine into firing the prosecutor:
“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving [me] an opportunity to meet your father and spend some time together. It’s really an honor and pleasure.”
Emails found on Hunter’s laptop, as well as emails separately produced by Biden associate Tony Bobulinski, indicate that Joe Biden personally participates in these schemes and makes his son kick some of the money upstairs to pop. In mob terminology, Hunter Biden is his dad’s bag man.
So, again, how could a Christian support a candidate who has repeatedly sold his public office for money?
Clearly, both sides can play the game of “how can you vote for this guy?” But perhaps we should call a halt to that game. In the United States, we have separation of church and state. The government is not a religious institution, nor is the presidency a religious office. We do not elect a pope or a pastor to be president. We elect a secular official to administer the executive branch of the federal government pursuant to the constitution of 1787. Christians are fully at liberty to vote for the candidate they believe will promote their interests and values, regardless of the candidate’s personal defects. Most Americans understand this.
Donald Trump, as president, has been a defender of conservative Christians. He listens to them, takes them seriously, and appoints judges who are likely to protect their religious liberty concerns. By contrast, Democrats in the House last year passed the “Equality Act,” which explicitly strips away protections currently afforded Christians under Hobby Lobby and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.
Christians have no moral duty to align with the party that openly despises them. As Tucker Carlson says:
“If you’re wondering why so many Christians have been willing to support this president despite his personal life, this is why: it is because whatever his flaws, he’s made it clear that he is not the enemy of Christians. In fact, under certain circumstances he will protect Christians. For people whose values are under assault every day by powerful forces in America—and that’s not overstating it, and if you are one of them, you know—that means everything.”
Conclusion
It is easy to understand why Ellen White often warned Adventist preachers and teachers away from promoting political candidates or parties. For example:
"Those who teach the Bible in our churches and our schools are not at liberty to unite in making apparent their prejudices for or against political men or measures, because by so doing they stir up the minds of others, leading each to advocate his favorite theory. There are among those professing to believe present truth, some who will thus be stirred up to express their sentiments and political preferences, so that division will be brought into the church.
The Lord would have His people bury political questions. On these themes silence is eloquence. Christ calls upon His followers to come into unity on the pure gospel principles which are plainly revealed in the word of God. We cannot with safety vote for political parties; for we do not know whom we are voting for. We cannot with safety take part in any political scheme." —Counsels for the Church, p. 316.
"We are not as a people to become mixed up with political questions. . . . Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers in political strife, nor bind with them in their attachments. . . . Keep your voting to yourself. Do not feel it your duty to urge everyone to do as you do." Selected Messages, book 2, pp. 336, 337.
The problems that can arise when preachers talk politics from the pulpit include:
1. Regurgitating political talking points that are false, or even ridiculous, and thereby undermining the preacher’s credibility on core gospel and biblical issues. (I would argue that this one applies to Pastor Dorsey’s anti-Trump comment.)
2. Alienating congregants who do not think as the preacher thinks on political questions, candidates, or parties.
3. Distracting from the message of salvation, which it is the preachers’ main duty to promote.
4. Causing those who do not agree with the preacher to want their own political views to receive equal time and consideration, regardless of merit or the lack thereof.
5. Promoting a candidates or party becomes an endorsement of the evil that those men or parties may subsequently commit, and might even be viewed as helping to bring it about.
Historically and currently, there is greater diversity of political views in the white churches, such that pastors in those churches have developed the habit of staying clear of partisan politics.
But there is a marked cultural difference between the white churches and the African-American churches. Historically, the black churches of all denominations have functioned not only as houses of worship but also as community meeting halls. Candidates for local office often go to the black churches to make their stump speeches. The black churches were at the center of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Hence the black churches have taken on a civic role that operates in parallel to their spiritual role.
Also, black congregations have not been as ideologically divided as the white churches have been since, for some 84 years, blacks have voted overwhelming Democrat. Black pastors stood much less chance of causing strife in their churches by putting their thumbs on the scale in favor of the Democratic Party, because almost everyone was on the same page.
But this will change, and it is beginning to change in this presidential cycle. Black men, who relate to and identify with Donald Trump’s entrepreneurship, energy, strength, and masculinity, are breaking about 30% in favor of the president. And why not? Where is it written that the Democratic Party is entitled to inherit the black vote, just as, 160 years ago, Democrats inherited black slaves?
It is interesting that, although Ellen White counseled against party politics in the pulpit, she counseled just as strongly that Adventists should use their franchise to vote on moral issues, most notably abolition of slavery and then, later, prohibition of alcohol:
"While we are in no wise to become involved in political questions, yet it is our privilege to take our stand decidedly on all questions relating to temperance reform. . . . There is a cause for the moral paralysis upon society. Our laws sustain an evil which is sapping their very foundations. Many deplore the wrongs which they know exist, but consider themselves free from all responsibility in the matter. This cannot be. Every individual exerts an influence in society. In our favored land, every voter has some voice in determining what laws shall control the nation. Should not that influence and that vote be cast on the side of temperance and virtue?" Review and Herald, Oct. 15, 1914.
Today, as in Ellen White’s day, there are moral issues on which we should seek to make a difference with our vote, and which strongly counsel against the black race maintaining undeviating loyalty to one political party.
First, abortion is an evil with a strong racial component. In the United States, the abortion rate of black women is almost five times that of white women. Black women are 14% of the childbearing population, but account for 36% of all abortions. Some 474 black babies are aborted for every 1,000 live births. This is no accident, but is consistent with the racist views of the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, as well as those of Adventist abortion magnate Edward Allred, both of whom wanted to abort as many blacks as possible.
Second, the biblical worldview on marriage and family can and should be upheld in the larger society. It is a well-known fact that blacks are far more traditional/biblical than whites on the question of homosexuality and same-sex marriage, and it is puzzling that they continue to vote in lockstep for the party that has most vigorously promoted the normalization of homosexuality.
Given the increasing diversity of the black vote, and the need for Adventists to vote on moral issues, it is time for black SDA pastors to be much more careful not to broadcast their political prejudices.
[i] Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate, (Vintage, 2003), p. 954.
[ii] Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, (HarperCollins, 1976) p. 155.
[iii] Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon B. Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973, (Oxford Univ. Press, 1998), p. 441
[iv] Ronald Kessler, Inside the White House, (Pocket Books, 1995), p. 33.
[v] Dinesh D'Souza, Death of a Nation, (St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2018)