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President Donald Trump attacked the US's pre-eminent evangelical magazine Christianity Today as "far-left" after its editor in chief Mark Galli penned an editorial calling for the president to be removed from office, either through impeachment or at the ballot box next November.
Christianity Today, which also supported the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton in 1998, was founded by the hugely influential Rev. Billy Graham in 1956.
Trump tweeted on Friday:
"A far-left magazine, or very progressive, as some would call it, which has been doing poorly and hasn't been involved with the Billy Graham family for many years, Christianity Today, knows nothing about reading a perfect transcript of a routine phone call and would rather.........have a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns, than Donald Trump as your President. No President has done more for the Evangelical community, and it's not even close. You'll not get anything from those Dems on stage. I won't be reading ET [sic] again!"
Galli responded to Trump's tweet in real-time during an appearance on CNN's "New Day" Friday morning: "It's factually inaccurate we're far left. We rarely comment on politics unless we feel it rises to the level of some national or concern that is really important. And this would be a case."
Evangelical Christians have been the most reliable voting bloc for Republicans since Ronald Reagan won roughly two-thirds of their votes in 1980. Eighty percent of evangelicals voted for Trump in 2016, and they also represent about one-third of all Republican-leaning voters, and about one-fifth of all registered voters in the US.
Billy Graham died in 2018 and never went public with who he voted for in 2016, but his son Franklin tweeted Friday that his father indeed supported Trump:
"I hadn't shared who my father @BillyGraham voted for in 2016, but because of @CTMagazine's article, I felt it necessary to share now. My father knew @realDonaldTrump, believed in him & voted for him. He believed Donald J. Trump was the man for this hour in history for our nation."
In Trumpworld, anyone who criticizes the president is "far-left" or "radical left"
It's hardly a surprise that Trump doesn't take kindly to criticism, and a call for his impeachment from the standard-bearer publication of his most robust coalition of supporters has to sting.
But in calling Christianity Today (which he mistakenly abbreviated as "ET" in one his tweets) both "far-left" and "radical left," Trump truly laid bare a key tactic deployed by him and his inner circle. That is, any person or entity that dares to criticize the president must be part of what they appear to believe is an extraordinarily broad "far left."
Donald Trump Jr. in September called center-left Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey as "far-left." Ditto for House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn and the engineers working for Instagram.
The president himself has referred to "an entire Democrat Party of Far Left Radicals," and has been on a tear of late blaming his impeachment on "Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats."
The Trump 2020 campaign-managed Twitter account @TrumpWarRoom is similarly beating the "radical left" and "far-left" drums.
No Republican senators have yet shown any inclination that they'd vote to convict Trump at his expected impeachment trial. But should that change, it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for a staunch conservative Republican to be slammed as "radical left" by the president and his base.
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