Why I Will Vote for Trump in 2020

In the days leading up to the 2016 presidential election, I shared with anyone who would listen why I wasn’t going to vote for Donald Trump.

The primary reason for my decision was that I wasn’t sure the country would be better off with Trump as president than it would be with Hillary. I admitted it was possible it might be, but it was unclear to me that candidate Trump actually was committed to the things he was saying after spending much of his life supporting Democrats and their causes.

Another reason was that I was tired of the Republican party nominating big government-loving moderates and then having moderate Republicans and Evangelicals telling me I had to vote for them because they were better than the Democrats. As I noted:

Unfortunately, the difference [between Republican and Democratic governence] has often been marginal at best; one must look closely at times to discern that there have been any Republicans in Washington during the last 28 years.

After all,

we murder over 1 million of our children every year, trailing only China, Russia, and Vietnam—countries that have made every effort to eradicate God from the culture. Not to be outpaced by the communists, America is rapidly moving toward replacing God with government as the supreme authority in the land. Along with this has come the inevitable anathematizing of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the public square and denial of the existence of inalienable, i.e., God-given, rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

We’ve been moving this way since after Reagan’s last term with little resistance overall from Republicans, who don’t seem to recognize a fight when they see one–especially when they are in the middle of it.

The church isn’t doing much better in this fight. In a world of racial confusion, the white church declares itself guilty not just of racism but of privilege. In a world of gender confusion, the church holds conferences to help LGBT Christians flourish without repentance. In a world of increasingly oppressive government and impoverishment, the church embraces the liberty- and prosperity-killing social gospel.

In other words, in the midst of the battle to win the culture, much of the church is unilaterally surrendering to the culture. It is doing this rather than speaking prophetically into the culture with the truth of Scripture–a replay of Adam and Eve’s capitulation to Satan in the garden. The fight seems to have gone out of much of the church.

And then, into the midst of this retreat by many in the Republican Party and the church steps the most unlikely warrior I could have ever imagined–President Donald J. Trump.

When conservatives think of warriors, we think of Ronald Reagan. We think of William F. Buckley Jr. Or perhaps Rush Limbaugh. Warriors that stand in high regard in Christendom would include Augustine, Martin Luther, and (for most of his life) Billy Graham. President Trump doesn’t seem to belong in these ranks; his conservative and Christian pedigrees are sorely lacking.

Yet we have to go back to Ronald Reagan, maybe even his first term, to find a presidency that has done more to advance conservative–and Christian–principles of governance. Trump’s EPA has moved rapidly to start unwinding decades of public policy based on nature worship, including pulling us out of the Accord de Paris on climate change. Trump has made changes in immigration policy designed to protect American security and identity. He worked with Congress to provide some relief from oppressive levels of taxation pushed by those who would make government our god. And he followed through on his promise to appoint principled conservatives to the U.S. Supreme Court who we can pray will assist us in the fight against abortion.

Not that every policy of the Trump Administration has been so good. He has imposed tariffs and may be getting us into a trade war–certainly some goods are more expensive now for businesses and consumers. He’s pushed an expensive infrastructure stimulus package; although the possibility of it passing seems to have faded a bit at the moment. Part of his administration has pushed for billions of dollars of subsidies to multi-billion dollar coal generators to increase their profits; although other parts of the administration seem to have pushed back against them. And going back to last year he joined with the Swamp creatures in the Republican party to undermine the repeal of ObamaCare.

But even many of the challenges with Trump’s policies come with this caveat: they are all things that he said he would do. In other words, he is pushing for them because he said he would.

So it seems quite possible–even likely–that the Trump administration will prove more conservative than those of either Bush I or Bush II. Or more conservative than an administration headed by all but one (Ted Cruz) of the challengers he faced in the 2016 Republican primary–or would face in the 2020 Republican primary.

Yet as surprising and relatively good as his administration has been so far, a bigger factor in understanding the importance of what Trump is accomplishing is that he appears to know that he is in a fight and is intent on winning it.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the American experiment with democracy is that we have figured out–with the notable exception of the Civil War–how to deal with our political differences without large-scale violence. But that doesn’t mean that there haven’t been plenty of times when one party or political alliance hasn’t resorted to deceit, oppression, and even violence to stay in or gain power or impose its political agenda on others.

In recent times, Watergate is the perfect example–though I’m not talking about Richard Nixon. Yes, what Nixon and his people did was wrong. But don’t believe for a moment that Democrats and the liberal press would have cared one wit about it if it had been carried out by a Democrat. The tragedy of Watergate was that the liberals took advantage of the chance it offered them to seek total control of the government–and they succeeded.

Some of these attempts by the left have been laughable. Such was the case with the “October surprise” conspiracy theory, where liberals alleged that George H.W. Bush flew on an SR-71 Blackbird spy plane to Iran to convince the Iranians not to release its American hostages until after the 1980 presidential election in order to help Ronald Reagan get elected.

But the efforts of moderates and liberals of both parties today to overturn the outcome of the presidential election with the myth of Russian collusion are nothing to laugh at. Establishment Republicans and Democrats from Congress have joined with the media and with officials in the Justice Department, the FBI, the national intelligence community, and even foreigners (none of which, notably, seem to have close ties to the Russian government) to ensure the Administrative State is not subject to the Constitution or the democratic process.

Let’s be clear about this; this isn’t the deep state at work–this is our everyday government working (mostly) on the record to undermine the will of the American electorate. As their efforts are being exposed, the inhabitants of the Administrative State are not willingly parting with the records–but they are available to those who are willing to work diligently and courageously to obtain them.

The corruption being exposed is astounding. The Obama Administration’s national security apparatus actively spied on the American presidential campaign of its opponent–even paying informants to do so. For a while, they did this without any legal authorization but with the knowledge of unknown (to the public) senior Obama administration officials. Finally, when they turned to the courts for approval, they did so using information they had planted themselves with Trump campaign staff and other information paid for by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. And they lied to the courts about that information to get authorization to conduct a counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign using laws and procedures designed only for investigating non-Americans. They did this because there was not (and is not) a shred of evidence that would have allowed them to open a criminal investigation.

Then, once their illegal activity was discovered, one of them talked about deposing the president then appointed a special prosecutor to try to obstruct investigation into what they had done. And this special prosecutor seemingly tried to indict President Trump and his staff for obstructing justice. Not, it is important to note, for anything remotely having to do with colluding with Russia, but because they had the gall to expose the illegal activities of the Obama Administration, fire some of the chief perpetrators of these crimes, and call the special prosecutor’s probe exactly what it is–a witch hunt. However, at this point, even he seems to have given up that hope due to the complete absence of any evidence

One of the things that stood out about Trump from the very beginning was his willingness to speak plainly (and quite often truthfully) about the people who opposed him. Thus was born the infamous and highly accurate term “fake news.” Dan Rather stands out among the liberal establishment’s use of fake news to attack conservatism for his use of forged documents to try to discredit President George W. Bush. Amazingly, even once Rather was forced to acknowledge the documents were fake, he still claimed they were true. Yet liberals decry a few Facebook pages in 2016 as the biggest attack on democracy this country has ever seen.

The deceit by supporters of the Administrative State in politics, media, and academia has gone on for decades with little pushback from Republican politicians who tend to care more about staying in office than governing as conservatives, or Christians. Donald Trump, however–with an assist from Ted Cruz, was willing to out the press and other members of the ruling elite for who they are–folks who will do just about anything to keep the conservative/populist/Christian majority coalition of Americans from undermining the rule of the elites.

Of course, this behavior was labeled as unpresidential and Trump was counseled to stop it once he was elected. Fortunately, he has continued as president to speak out against the establishment–with a few exceptions, most notably his support for Luther Strange. I don’t know if Trump understands the bigger fight that he is a part of, but he does realize that the Establishment is making every effort to neutralize his administration or even remove him from office through indictment, impeachment, or defeat in the 2020 Republican primary or general election. And he doesn’t want pack it in just yet.

Where Trump’s instincts are saving him, the Church’s instincts are functioning a lot more like those of Inspector Clouseau. Darwin wants to deny that God created the heavens and earth? No problem–just change 1800 years of interpretation of Scripture to allow for a world that is billions of years old so the evolutionary process can replace God. Feminism wants to deny that God is our Father and Christ is the Head of the Church? No big deal–just ordain some female elders and all will be fine.

It really is true that the world is at war:

Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,
“Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.” (Psalm 2: 1-3, ESV)

Acts 4:23ff tells us that Psalm 2 is a prophecy of the crucifixion of Christ. But the world didn’t stop with the cross–it continues to wage its war against God in the present. Every orthodox Christian recognizes that this war takes place each day in our hearts, minds, and flesh, but too many fail to see it playing out in our political, cultural, educational, scientific, and religious institutions. And the reality–a reality that most folks want us to ignore–is that some people in this war are on God’s side (by His grace) and others are not. Yet too many in the church (and in government) fail to discern who is on which side–or even that there are sides.

A brief note about discernment. Some may think that the previous paragraph displays arrogance and hatred. But discernment is really about submission to the authority of Scripture and love. The mission of the church is this:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19–20 ESV)

How can one go make disciples unless one discerns who needs to be discipled? The job of the church is to eliminate God’s enemies by … making them His loyal subjects through the teaching of His Word and the power of the Holy Spirit. And if we refuse to share the Gospel with God’s enemies, i.e., tell them that they can be reconciled with God through Jesus Christ, because we won’t tell them that they are God’s enemies in need of reconciliation, we can’t do our job. And when we don’t do our job we aren’t loving those of our neighbors who are God’s enemies.

Whether or not he understands the Psalm 2 nature of the conflict he is in, Trump–who says he is a Christian–has clearly joined the battle on the side that has more Biblical support for its positions than has the other side. The biggest of those is that Trump is pro-life–he opposes the murder of babies in their mother’s wombs. Deregulation is another one–the Bible is about liberty, not about subjecting people to an oppressive government seeking to replace God.

Lest I be misunderstood on this, let me make it clear–I am not saying that Republicans are on God’s side or that Democrats are His enemies. But I am saying that free market, conservative policies generally comport much more closely with the Bible’s teaching on government and Christian liberty than do most liberal policies. And Donald Trump is often willing to fight for these policies–at times even when he has to fight against moderate Republicans.

God seems to have brought us a man in Donald Trump to help lead the fight against the relativistic, idol worshiping culture we live in. And in the words of the Pharisee Gamaliel, I don’t want to be “found opposing God” (Acts 5:39). So unless some radical change occurs in the direction of the Trump administration and his fight against the Administrative State, I will vote–Lord willing–for Donald J. Trump for president of the United States in 2020.