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BET MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hello there. I'm Kristen Welker. I just wrapped up another episode of Meet the Press where I interviewed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a GOP presidential candidate John Kirby, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic communications, and Allison Felix, an Olympian and black maternal health advocate.
The first nominating contest of the presidential cycle is now just over a month away, if you can believe it, which of course means GOP candidates are converging to Iowa, a state which has a lot of evangelicals. Yet the evangelical movement movement seems to have undergone a significant change over the past few cycles. Tim Alberto is on the panel today. He's a staff writer for the Atlantic and now author of the Kingdom, the Power and the American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.
Tim Alberta is sitting with me here now for more on both his reporting and politics today. Welcome to Post Game, Tim. Thanks for being here, Kristen. This is awesome.
Thanks for having me. It's awesome to have you here. I do want to talk about politics, but I first want to ask you about your book again, the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory. I'm holding it here with me.
American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. Why did you want to write the book and talk about the ways in which this is very personal for you? You know, it's funny, I have worked in the mainstream media for, you know, going on two decades now, and for a long, long time, when I would hear and read and observe some of the coverage of evangelicals, I would sort of wince and say, oh, that doesn't seem quite right. That seems a little off.
And at the same time, having grown up in the evangelical church, the son of an evangelical pastor, I would be seeing things inside the evangelical church and their perceptions of the outside world, of the secular world and the media world and say, oh, that's not quite right. There was always something that was sort of incongru, and I always kind of kept quiet about it. And really, especially as a practicing Christian, still, I felt uncomfortable at times with the way that Christians would be portrayed in the media. But I also felt deeply uncomfortable with the way that Christians were engaging with the political world, and that was all predating Trump.
And then really, things started to go off the rails over the last five or six years, and I became somewhat estranged from my own faith community. I started to have some very difficult conversations with friends and family members. And ultimately, it sort of took a bit of a family tragedy for me to sort of confront this for what it was, to really address what had happened inside the church and to try to, I guess, offer something of a call to come back and to restore what is best about the church and try to purge some of the ugliness and some of the vitriol inside of the church and the family tragedy. You're referencing the loss of your father.
That's right, yeah. So my dad had died in the summer of 2019, and in fact, the timing of it was just sort of weird. But he died right after my first book had come out. And my book was about the collapse of George W.
Bush's Republican Party, about Trump's takeover of the Republican Party. And the book contained a lot of very unflattering revelations about Trump and people around him. And so I found myself at that time sort of in the crosshairs of right wing media, including Rush Limbaugh. And so my dad dies right in the middle of all of that.
And so when I went home to Michigan, to our home church, where he'd been the pastor for more than 25 years, and at the visitation the day before the funeral, I had people coming up to me, kind of confronting me, wanting to argue about politics, wanting to argue about Trump, you were there to grieve your father? Yeah, my dad's in a box. I'm there to grieve my dad. And.
And they wanted to litigate Rush Limbaugh's latest seg. And, you know, it was, it was painful, but it was also, I think, really clarifying because again, I think we all have these experiences in life where something that may be sort of an abstract problem, something that, you know is not right, something that, you know, you're not really comfortable with, but you kind of just ignore it, you know, look the other way a little bit. Suddenly it becomes very real, it becomes very concrete, it becomes very urgent. And that was a moment for me where I just recognized, oh, boy, like, we have really lost the plot here.
And in a lot of ways, that's what set me off on this journey to write the book. Well, it's just incredible and revealing. And as you and I were talking about as journalists, we don't typically write things that include our personal experiences. But that was so important.
And it's such an important part of this book. And part of what you explore, as you're saying, is the shift within the evangelical community. And, and we all remember when then candidate Trump came down the escalator and one of the big ideas was that how will he ever win over evangelicals, the faith community? And yet what you are reporting on is that shift and how evangelicals are now firmly solidified behind him.
How did that shift take place and why? Well, I mean, it's hard to remember now. It seems like a lifetime ago, but yeah, I mean, evangelical Christians were the people who were most suspicious of Donald Trump in 2015 and 2016. These were the holdouts.
You know, Ted Cruz won the Iowa caucuses. A lot of the prominent evangelical activists who are now allied with Trump today were some of his harshest critics back then. And what began, as I think you could describe it fairly, as a transactional relationship. In other words, once it was become clear that Trump was going to be the nominee for the Republicans in 2016 and he enlisted Mike Pence to be his vice president, he or his running mate, I should say, he released the list of Supreme Court justices.
He promised that he would pass all these pro life policies. And he basically said to these evangelicals, look, I know that you don't trust me. I know that I'm not one of you, but if you give me your votes, I will give you these policies. And that was the transaction.
And it was sort of an uneasy alliance. Well, you fast forward eight years and it has morphed into something very different. And Trump is in many ways, to use the C word, it is a cult like following that Trump has developed among a lot of these very conservative white evangelicals and the best explanation for that I can possibly offer up, Kristen, is that a lot of these folks believe that the end is near, that the culture has collapsed, that the country is on its last legs, that it is not a battle anymore between Republican and Democrat. It is a battle between good and evil, and that they have therefore sort of made peace with the fact that Trump.
Trump is someone who does not reflect their values. If anything, they think that's a bonus because he is unshackled. He's freed from the constraints of biblical virtue and Christian etiquette, and that is sort of his superpower. When you put it into that context, Tim, it becomes so much clearer why we're seeing, for example, what we're seeing play out in a state like Iowa, where former President Trump has faced several indictments now, and yet his support in Iowa has only gotten stronger.
He's nearly 30 points ahead of Governor Ron DeSantis, who I interview today on the show. And part of that dedication that you're talking about, that unshakable dedication, is because there is a higher, from the perspective of evangelical Christians, a much higher calling, a much higher purpose to this election. Absolutely. And listen, when Trump says that I am your retribution, when Trump says to voters that they're only coming after me to get to you, Kristen, it's hard for people outside of the evangelical movement to appreciate how deeply that resonates, because there is a very real persecution complex at work here.
When you talk to some of Trump's most prominent evangelical allies, they will constantly use phrases like under siege or under attack. They point back to COVID 19 and the closing of churches, and they say, you see, the government is coming for us. Secular leftists are coming for us. And so when Donald Trump campaigns using this language, talking about Christianity under attack and how he will be their protector, I mean, it connects at such a deep gut level, one could even say a spiritual level.
And I think we can recognize that for what it is. And as a Christian, I look at it and say, this is profoundly dangerous because this is not the gospel of Jesus Christ, and this is not the way in which Christians are called to engage with the culture around them. And to that point, when you think about that in the context of my interview with Governor DeSantis, he says he's going to Iowa. I asked him if Iowa was do or die for him.
He rejected that entire characterization. But, Tim, put Iowa into context. How significant is it that one of these candidates, if they want to have a shot, has to stop Trump? Because, boy, if he wins, Iowa, it is hard to see how anyone could catch up with him because he has a big lead in New Hampshire.
And then you head on to South Carolina, and away we go. And look, Kristen, you're exactly right. I mean, at the end of the day, if you're running in a primary for president, you got to win somewhere. So if you're Ron DeSantis, and if you don't win Iowa, well, then you're definitely not going to win in New Hampshire, and you're not going to win South Carolina either.
So then what? You look around. I mean, Florida is many weeks after that. We saw the same thing play out in 2016.
I mean, look, Ted Cruz won Iowa, and then he got steamrolled in New Hampshire. He finished third in South Carolina, and he was never able to recover. The race was never really close again after that. Now, the field is a little bit smaller this time around, but I think if you're Ron DeSantis, you're gonna be having some very hard conversations with yourself over the next two or three weeks here to say, listen, I'm a young man.
I've got a long political career ahead of me. I could be president one day. But if I get beaten badly in Iowa, maybe even I finished third and Iowa, I don't think that's going to happen, but it could. And then I get demolished in New Hampshire, and then I get embarrassed in South Carolina because Nikki Haley will be far more competitive there than DeSantis.
If you're on DeSantis and you get smoked in the first three states, you're probably never gonna be president. And so I think there's a real question here of does the plug get pulled before he even gets to the starting line of the caucuses? Wow. Which is just so fascinating to think about.
He's been endorsed by Governor Kim Reynolds. I asked him, Tim, I said, are you committed to staying at least through the caucuses? He said, it's absurd to suggest anything otherwise, but the point that you're making is a significant one. And what we saw play out this week underscores the fact that he has his eye on 2028 as well.
He agreed to debate California's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom. A little bit of a preview of what we could see in 2028. If. And it's a big if, for all the reasons you're laying out, he does not derail his political career right now.
Look, and then the Newsom DeSantis debate was, as you say, sort of a glimpse into the future. Right. And it was really Interesting to see the kind of symmetrical partisan engagement surrounding that debate on social media and on cable news. Whereas in the Trump era, we become accustomed to some of this asymmetrical commentary with a lot of conservatives who have been unhappy with Trump over certain things and some progressives who've been unhappy with Biden.
Suddenly, the Des vs Newsom debate crystallized some of these more recognizable political fault lines. And so you're right. On the one hand, here's DeSantis very clearly looking toward his future prospects and positioning himself beyond 2024. But if in 2024, he winds up getting embarrassed, and let's be clear, Kristen, Ron DeSantis, his political operation, both the campaign side and the super PAC side, they are in a bit of a free fall, almost implosion state right now.
It is not a healthy apparatus. There are a lot of people who are close to DeSantis who are very worried about not just what happens in 24 as it pertains to 24, but as it pertains to what happens next. So he has to be thinking about that in the back of his mind. And it's not just Trump we're talking about.
We are talking about Nikki Haley, who's had this momentum. And by the way, she's done something that we haven't heard DeSantis do. She has laid out her strategy, which is have a strong showing in New Hampshire and strong showing in Iowa, and then she'll take it to her hometown, South Carolina. Now, we have to point out Trump has a double digit.
But. But what's so notable is she lays out this very clear plan that she has for winning. Is it a realistic plan? I don't know.
But we haven't heard that same level of specificity from governor of Senate. No, we haven't. And you're exactly right. I mean, if you're Haley, there's at least a theory of the case here, right?
The theory of the case is that you run somewhat competitively in Iowa, you run a little bit more competitively perhaps in New Hampshire, and you're building your trajectory is, is aiming up, right? You're trending in the right direction by the time you get to South Carolina. Presidential campaigns are often about two things, narrative and momentum. Narrative comes mostly from the outside of, okay, how is the media treating these people right now?
The narrative around Nikki Haley is that she is ascendant. Right. And that ties into the feeling on the ground with voters of momentum. You know, who do I give a second look to that maybe I wouldn't have considered a few months ago.
So if you're ha. That is the theory of the case. If that momentum is aiming up, up, up, and by the time she gets to South Carolina where she still is very popular and has a pretty good political base there, then maybe, just maybe, she beats Trump. And if she does, then she's got a one on one, mano e mano match for the rest of the primary season.
And that, you know, you would still view Trump as a heavy favorite in that scenario, but at least it is a plausible pathway to the nomination if you're Ron DeSantis right now. I just don't know what that theory looks like. And frankly, Kristen, I don't think he knows what it looks like either. I want to ask you another about another political headline that we've been tracking this week.
We saw Congressman George Santos ousted, expelled from Congress, only the sixth member of Congress ever to be expelled. He is facing a number of charges, but he hasn't been convicted yet. And the people who opposed his expulsion said we are setting a dangerous precedent. Now here is George Santos calling for other members of Congress to be expelled.
You have John Fetterman saying that Bob Menendez, expelled. Does it lay the groundwork for more expulsions? And what are you watching for as we wait for the state of the special election? You know, it's really interesting talking about asymmetrical.
I am no defender of George Santos at all. But I will say, having spent a lot of time on Capitol Hill, as you have, if we start ousting members of Congress who are liars and crooks and scam artists and scoundrels, then we're gonna have to start holding a lot of special elections, right? I mean, really, without being cute about this, it is interesting that absent any criminal conviction, the House decided to move forward. And we have to understand, I think, the political motivation for a lot of Republicans who ultimately did take this vote, which was we're sick of this guy.
We're sick of the baggage. We're sick of being asked about him. We're sick of just feeling as though we've got this constant storm cloud hovering above us. So let's just get rid of him.
But I think the issue is one of precedent because, look, on the Senate side, Bob Menendez, we're talking about somebody who is facing charges that are extraordinary in the sweep of modern political history. Like the sort of stuff out of a movie, right, that we've never seen before. And yet he is still in the Senate and shows no signs of going anywhere. So what is the standard and how do we apply it?
It's a really interesting question for Congress to tackle in the years to come. It really is going to be interesting and I think you're right. Where will Congress draw the line in the wake of this ouster? How critical is his seat if Republicans lose it?
They obviously already have a very narrow margin. It becomes even more diminished. And this is a blue leaning district, you know, and we would be remiss not to mention that this happens in the context of a new speaker who already has a pretty shaky grasp on how he's going to run the institution. So yes, you're taking a very, very small majority in the House and you're making it smaller and they have some serious work to do in the months ahead.
We're talking about funding the government. We're talking about some of the just sort of the blocking and tackling that comes with Congress, the very basic functions of the legislative branch. They have some big heavy lifts in front of them. And it was already going to be harder for the new speaker, Mike Johnson, to get some of these bills across the finish line and it just got that much harder now.
And that's why, by the way, he and his leadership team were whipping votes saying no, no, no, let's not get rid of this guy just yet because we're going to need his vote. And there's a chance, Kristen, that we could see more vacancies on the Republican side in the coming months. So that's something to keep an eye on. This already threadbare majority could basically be nonexistent.
It could be effectively a majority in name only if you only got one or two seat majority in Congress. That's not even a majority. Yeah, good. Great points, Tim.
Thank you so much. I'm going to be talking to you even more about your books and this is just a small taste, but thank you so much for staying for post game. I really appreciate it. You're going to be tired talking by the end of all.
Never. Never. Thanks Tim. Great to see you.