Donald Trump

Donald Trump Slams Russell Moore: “Nasty Guy with No Heart!”

on May 9, 2016

A few months ago, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump visited Liberty University, the large predominantly Evangelical college in Lynchburg, Virginia. Trump declared: “I’m going to protect Christians.” Apparently that promise only applies to Christians who pay him lip service, based on his most recent attack against a top Evangelical critic.

On May 9, Trump tweeted at Dr. Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Trump said: “.@drmoore Russell Moore is truly a terrible representative of Evangelicals and all of the good they stand for. A nasty guy with no heart!”

This attack came early Monday morning, after Moore leveled his latest criticisms at Trump last Friday and Sunday. Moore published an op-ed on Friday, May 6, in The New York Times. Moore primarily encouraged Americans Christians to reject ultra-nationalistic and racially divisive sentiments in favor of reaching out to racial minorities and immigrants. He did not focus on Trump, although he did mention the candidate multiple times.

“Regardless of the outcome in November, his [Trump’s] campaign is forcing American Christians to grapple with some scary realities that will have implications for years to come,” Moore wrote. “This election has cast light on the darkness of pent-up nativism and bigotry all over the country.”

Moore also appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, May 8. He sharply criticized both Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

“I mean what we have in the Donald Trump phenomenon, as well as in the Hillary Clinton phenomenon, is an embrace of the very kind of moral and cultural decadence that conservatives have been saying for a long time is the problem,” Moore said. (A full transcript of the segment is available here.)

Moore is far from the only Evangelical leader who has criticized the polarizing Republican front-runner. Christian Post Political Analyst Napp Nazworth listed at least 16 prominent Evangelicals who came out against Trump, including Max Lucado, Matt Barber, and Matt Walsh. He also listed Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion & Democracy, who penned an op-ed entitled “Worse Than Hillary: Why I Will Never Vote for Donald Trump” for The Christian Post. Also on the list was Michael Cromartie, who called Trump a “sexist, racist, demagogic, misogynist, woman hater, anti-immigrant person” during an IRD-sponsored event. Nazworth noted that rank-and-file, church-going Evangelicals tended to agree with these sentiments.

But that hasn’t stopped Trump from lashing out against Evangelical critics before. He has even stooped to telling apparent lies. In a series of tweets last October, he called RedState founder Erick Erickson a “total low life” who was “fired” from RedState for running the publication “into the ground.” Both Erickson and RedState denied the allegations, according to POLITICO. Erickson went as far as to describe the comments as “defamatory.”

It seems Trump doesn’t take criticism well from anyone. If elected, CNN reported that he threatened to “open up libel laws,” allowing him to sue critical media outlets “and win lots of money.”

Should Trump wins the Republican nomination, some self-identified Evangelicals may consider casting their vote for him. Perhaps they think that he will defend their voice in the public square.

But the opposite might very well be true. “The Donald” could prove to be an even bigger bully if given more power. He may even attempt to silence Evangelicals across the board who dare criticize him through intimidation and legal conniving.

  1. Comment by MarcoPolo on May 9, 2016 at 6:01 pm

    In all my years of voting for the BEST possible candidate, this election cycle will be much more difficult for those with a conscience.
    But of course, there is always Bernie Sanders, who still cares.

  2. Comment by Oshtur on May 17, 2016 at 1:25 pm

    Of course. We know progressives care, because they say they do. That’s the attraction of liberalism – you just say it, that makes it so. It’s the ideal worldview for fakes and liars.

  3. Comment by MarcoPolo on May 17, 2016 at 8:25 pm

    If your assessment of Progressives is true, then Trump MUST be one, because that’s his answer to everything…He just says he’s going to do this, or that, and he’s given a pass as to how he would actually DO any of those things!

  4. Comment by Mark Brooks on May 9, 2016 at 6:47 pm

    Dr. Moore is a member of the George Soros-funded Evangelical Immigration Table, and has long been an open borders advocate. His real objection to Donald Trump has to do with Trump’s strong stance against illegal aliens. That open borders stance plays well to the business wing of the Republican Party, but it has nothing to do with evangelicalism. Many evangelicals, and in particularly, the rather large group of evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump, believe that Christianity doesn’t mean abandoning control of our own country to whomever might want to cross our borders unlawfully.

    Nor does it appear that Mr. Trump said anything to attack evangelicals in his tweet. He attacked Dr. Moore, and no surprise, Dr. Moore attacked him, and has been attacking him, for months. I feel obliged to point out that Dr. Moore does not speak for all evangelicals on the issue of enforcing our immigration laws, or even all Southern Baptists, and Napp Nazworth’s opinion is just that, an opinion. Those who claim evangelicals reject Mr. Trump’s strong stance on enforcing our immigration laws are also the ones who proclaimed that evangelicals wouldn’t vote for him in the primaries. As for evangelical leaders, there are also evangelicals like Mike Huckabee and Rick Perry who are prepared to support Mr. Trump. The lack of careful distinctions in this article is a terrible disappointment. It reads like something you would see on Huffington Post, full of innuendo and equivocation in support of a particular point of view. I wouldn’t expect to see such a thing on the Juicy Ecumenism website.

    Open borders are important to the “establishment wing” of the Republican Party, but not necessarily to evangelicals as a whole. I have my disagreements with Mr. Trump myself, but not over illegal aliens streaming into our country, or unscrupulous employers hiring them illegally. Mr. Moore and certain other people seem determined to smear Mr. Trump as a racist. Even worse, they seem determined to smear his supporters as racists. This is not acceptable from people who present themselves to be Christian leaders, even if they feel provoked by the defeat of their preferred candidates.

  5. Comment by Supertx on May 9, 2016 at 8:15 pm

    Finally, someone else out there who is aware of the EIT and the influence this is having. Many of the most vocal (Max Lucado being another) are also very active supporters of amnesty/EIT, no coincidence.CP has been relentless in their anti-Trump deluge of articles. Like him or not, it is only natural he would start to fight back.

  6. Comment by Mark Brooks on May 10, 2016 at 1:57 pm

    Unfortunately, the business wing of the Republican party, and those who are concerned about anti-racist “messaging”, appear to have hijacked certain evangelicals to their cause with the weird idea that this creates some kind of “mission opportunity”. An invasion of illegal aliens is not a mission opportunity. That is a deception, and there is nothing Christian about wedding ourselves to the immigration system Ted Kennedy and his cronies created in 1965. This is a long-time dysfunction, and it needs to end.

    Anytime you are on the same side of an issue where George Soros is prepared to lay down money, you should ask yourself if you are really on the right side, would be my advice to those who are willing to reconsider.

    Another thing. There are all kinds of political correctness, and there is a kind being practised in the Republican party. Political correctness is the enemy of truth, and “messaging” is the tool of deceivers. If the success of the Trump campaign kills political correctness in elections, that would be a good thing in itself.

    When I saw how people who are supposed to be on the side of life attacked Trump for speaking the simple truth that illegal abortions should have a criminal penalty, I was broken-hearted. We’ve been waiting how many decades now for Roe v. Wade to be overturned? How long has opposition to Roe v. Wade been part of the Republican platform? What has actually been done? Nothing of substance. In fact, the law that killed off Operation Rescue is still on the books, despite Republican domination of the Congress since it was first enacted. Even getting Planned Parenthood de-funded is treated by Republicans as politically impossible. Why? What is the point of controlling the purse if you spend money on evil anyway? FACE was enacted to prevent anti-abortion activists from using the same tactics that leftists used during the Vietnam War. Repealing FACE should have been a top priority, but it wasn’t.

    I see no evidence that the Republican politicians are prepared to act against the judiciary, by impeaching judges, or expanding the Supreme Court with conservative judges, or blocking leftist judges. Some of the worst activist judges were appointed by Republicans. It is a Reagan appointee, Anthony Kennedy, who provided the 5th vote in Lawrence v. Texas, United States v. Windsor, and now Obergefell v. Hodges. It wasn’t like Republicans didn’t have plenty of time to impeach him and his four progressive cronies and replace them. Republicans had the numbers to do it too, during the George W. Bush administration, since Republicans controlled the Congress for most of his administration. Bush could have remade the Federal judiciary, an act that would have had long-lasting consequences. But it has been noted that his state judicial appointments in Texas tended to be more moderate than conservative, and he displayed a peculiar lack of interest in doing anything to bring about an end the Roe regime.

    In 2010, voters gave Republicans control of the House, killing the progressive Democratic fantasy that Obama’s election represented a liberal surge; his victory was due rather to the fact that Republican voters despised the way the establishment had made McCain their standard-bearer. But the Republican leadership in Congress was more concerned about making government work than about making it work rightly. To them, a “shutdown” was more of a worry than the consequences of allowing their opponents to have their way.

    And those same leaders are very, very bitter about how angry their betrayed constituents are about it. Cantor lost his job. Boehner lost the speakership, and is still so bitter over it he has only moronically stupid things to say about Ted Cruz simply for Cruz’s verbal support (as a Senator, Cruz could do little else than voice support) of the House conservatives. This bitterness was so profound that they did everything possible to sabotage Cruz’s candidacy, only to see Donald Trump reap the benefit. These people betrayed those who supported their party, people to whom they made promises again and again, but when they got control in Washington, all they wanted to do was play the same game of stuffing their own pockets and shaking their heads that they’ve always done, paying lip service to ideas they don’t actually believe in and aren’t apparently willing to fight for.

    Dr. Moore would do better to follow Franklin Graham’s example, than to wed himself so obviously and openly to questionable things. Where is his outrage over the Republican party inaction on abortion? What is the Republican party, which after all, controls Congress, doing to protect Americans from the gay agenda, which apparently includes criminalizing anything the “gay community” and their SJW enablers find offensive, including perfectly common-sense laws pertaining to public lavatories? Where is the power of the purse in all this, or is making government work still more important than making it work rightly?

  7. Comment by MarcoPolo on May 17, 2016 at 8:32 pm

    Since women represent the majority of the electorate in our great country, it is not likely that Roe v Wade will ever be overturned.
    Thank GOD, wherever She is!

  8. Comment by Mark Brooks on May 18, 2016 at 1:44 am

    So all women are pro-abortion? You know MarcoPolo, for a liberal, you seem to engage in a lot of stereotyping.

  9. Comment by MarcoPolo on May 18, 2016 at 8:19 am

    No, and not all men are pro-abortion either!
    But statistics reveal that among those women who vote during Presidential elections, the majority are Pro-Choice.

    Especially in an election cycle that almost guarantees a Democrat win because of the irrational claims from the only Republican candidate.

    No self respecting, educated woman will vote against her own best interests.

  10. Comment by Mark Brooks on May 18, 2016 at 9:23 am

    “No self respecting, educated woman will vote against her own best interests.”

    That’s still stereotyping. And it sounds a little smug. You aren’t one of these “smug liberals” Vox was talking about? Because many self-respecting, educated women consider preserving the life of the unborn in their best interests. Are all Christian women who oppose abortion not educated and self-respecting?

    What is it with the liberal tendency to judge people by race and gender anyway? I thought liberals weren’t supposed to be about that.

    I think you are expressing what you want to believe is true. And I’ve seen statistics that present a different picture of what women support on that issue. Additionally, it appears to be a liberal trope to engage in headscratching over people “voting against their own best interests”, as though they knew what those were and the people actually voting didn’t.

    So no, I don’t think you are right on this.

  11. Comment by MarcoPolo on May 18, 2016 at 9:49 am

    And THAT is why we discuss things like this…..Right?

    On the issue of voting against one’s best interest, even I’m promoting a systemic change by voting for Bernie Sanders, as my Art business relies heavily on the 1% earners. So even as we speak, I’m seeing a sea change in all things Political, Socio-Economical and Cultural.

    I DO believe in the “Greater Good” theory.

    One thing is for certain, it is going to be an interesting election year to say the least.

  12. Comment by Mark Brooks on May 18, 2016 at 10:11 am

    I agree that this is an interesting election year.

  13. Comment by John on May 9, 2016 at 11:22 pm

    It appears Dr. Moore’s objection is to something much more insidious, something along the line of “A nasty guy with no heart!”

  14. Comment by Mark Brooks on May 10, 2016 at 1:43 pm

    I’m sure that Dr. Moore would like people to think so.

  15. Comment by John on May 10, 2016 at 2:13 pm

    And I’m sure many believe otherwise.

  16. Comment by Oshtur on May 17, 2016 at 1:26 pm

    Wow, that’s shocking, but it’s information we need to know.

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