Christian magazine calls for his removal

Trump lashes out after Christian magazine calls for his removal

The president asserted the publication would rather a "Radical Left nonbeliever" take his place.

By QUINT FORGEY

President Donald Trump on Friday lashed out after the country’s top evangelical Christian magazine called for his removal from office, appearing to suggest his eventual Democratic opponent in next year’s general election will be a “nonbeliever” who threatens Americans’ freedom of religion and gun rights.

“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,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

“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 again!” he added, apparently employing the wrong initials for the publication’s title.

The president’s posts came a day after Mark Galli, the editor in chief of Christianity Today, wrote that Trump should either be convicted in a Senate impeachment trial or ousted in the 2020 election, citing his role in the Ukraine scandal and “grossly immoral character.”

The editorial represented a high-profile fissure in the president’s otherwise consistent backing from evangelical leaders who, as Galli noted Thursday, “have pointed to his Supreme Court nominees, his defense of religious liberty, and his stewardship of the economy.”

Although that support has remained strong despite the near-constant stream of controversies and frequent incendiary rhetoric that have featured in Trump’s administration, Galli concluded that the necessity for the president’s removal “is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.”

Responding to Trump’s tweets Friday, Galli told CNN that the president’s characterization of Christianity Today as a far-left publication was “far from accurate,” and said the magazine is considered “pretty centrist” among members of the evangelical community.

“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,” Galli said, noting that the magazine published editorials about Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon when impeachment threatened their presidencies.

Galli also argued that his branding of Trump as immoral was not a “particularly unusual or surprising insight,” acknowledging that “people have been saying that for some time.”

“The question is, when does his behavior — which is described as immoral, accurately — rise to the level where he’s no longer fit to serve office. And to me, we cross that line with the impeachment hearings,” he said.

While Galli assessed that congressional Democrats “have been partisan in their efforts to remove the president” and accused them of being “unfair” at points during the contentious proceedings, he insisted that “the facts that arose” during the hours of public impeachment testimony “rise above that partisan level.”

“One of the things I’m trying to say in the editorial is: This is reality,” he said. “No matter how it came about or the motives that helped it come about, this is the world we live in. This is the president we have. And we need to deal with that honestly.”

Galli went on to predict that his editorial would have no significant effect on evangelicals’ opinions of the president and was unlikely to "shift their views on this matter” of Trump’s suitability for office.

“Christianity Today is not read by Christians on the far right, by evangelicals on the far right,” he said. “So they’re going to be as dismissive of the magazine as President Trump has shown to be.”

Sure enough, Franklin Graham, the son of the late iconic evangelist Billy Graham — who founded Christianity Today in 1956 — defended Trump earlier Friday morning, tweeting that his father would be “disappointed” with Galli’s editorial.

“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,” Graham wrote. “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.”

Jerry Falwell Jr., a conservative religious leader and ardent Trump ally, also criticized Christianity Today, charging online that the magazine had at last “unmasked” itself.

“Less than 20% of evangelicals supported @HillaryClinton in 2016,” he tweeted Thursday, “but now @CTmagazine has removed any doubt that they are part of the same 17% or so of liberal evangelicals who have preached social gospel for decades!”