Here is the latest from the court evangelical and family values champion:
I have read a new editorial published by Christianity Today that promotes impeachment of President Donald Trump. The editors didn’t tell us who should take his place in the aftermath. Maybe the magazine would prefer a president who is passionately pro-abortion, anti-family, hostile to the military, dispassionate toward Israel, supports a socialist form of government, promotes confiscatory taxation, opposes school choice, favors men in women’s sports and boys in girl’s locker rooms, promotes the entire LGBTQ agenda, opposes parental rights, and distrusts evangelicals and anyone who is not politically correct. By the way, after Christianity Today has helped vacate the Oval Office, I hope they will tell us if their candidate to replace Mr. Trump will fight for religious liberty and the Bill of Rights? Give your readers a little more clarity on why President Trump should be turned out of office after being duly elected by 63 million voters? Is it really because he made a phone call that displeased you? There must be more to your argument than that. While Christianity Today is making its case for impeachment, I hope the editors will now tell us who they support for president among the Democrat field. That should tell us the rest of the story.”
Statement made in my individual capacity.
Commentary:
- I answered most of Dobson’s critiques of Mark Galli’s editorial in Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump.
- When a president is removed from office, the vice-president assumes the presidency. That would be Mike Pence.
- The framers of the United States Constitution instituted impeachment to discipline a president who committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” between elections. Impeachment, in other words, does not overturn a presidential election. I have seen too many court evangelicals and other pro-Trump pundits make the “overturning the election” argument. It is wrong.
- Trump did not make a phone call that “displeased” Mark Galli. He made a phone call that asked a foreign nation to investigate a political rival. In other words, Donald Trump asked Ukraine to interfere in an American election. The facts are clear. Over 500 law professors and over 1500 historians agree. This was an abuse of power.
ADDENDUM
Historian Patrick Connelly offers a quote from Dobson made in September 2016 at Christianity Today: “If Trump turns out to be an incorrigible demagogue, we can hope he will be reined in by the political process. There are checks and balances in our system of government.”
