Trump Evangelicals and the Polling Delusion

0:28Insurance isn't one size fits all. Thus Solomon finished the house of the Lord and the king's house and all that came into Solomon's heart to make in the house of the Lord. And in his own house, he prosperously affected it. Yeah, Trump reads the Bible. Get it while it's hot. Your kids are going to love it. And the Lord appeared to Solomon by night and said to him, I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place to myself for a house of sacrifice. What in God's holy name are you blathering about? I get the feeling that he's reading this in the first person as the voice of God himself on purpose, if you listen closely, to the not-so-subtle subtext that Trump is obviously laying on thick here.

1:12If I shut up heaven, that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people, if my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Yeah, just like you did for J.D. Vance. Top trending story at Newsweek.com. Trump's approval rating among white evangelical Christians fell notably between January and April of 26. God, I wish they would leave race out of this. It has nothing to do with anything.

1:54A new NPR PBS News Morrist poll found that 64 % of evangelical Christians approve of the job that Trump is doing as president in late April down five points from late January. Five points? Five points. You polled under 3 ,000 people for both studies. And you came back with a five-point difference? The margin for error was close to three points on both. So what you're really telling me is that a two-point blip is what I'm supposed to get excited about? Boring. Yes, I'm oversimplifying the stats, but that's what I do. And normally I don't pay attention to polls like this because if Trump has proven anything, it's that these polls are useless to start with and incredibly inaccurate when it comes to taking the temperature of the entire country.

2:41Now my eyes shall be open and my ears attend to the prayer that is made in this place. For now I have chosen and sanctified this house, that my name may be there forever. And my eyes and my heart shall be there perpetually. Yeah, this is what happens when people trust the math from the academic communities a little too much. We get people like Trump because the nerds never saw him coming as they hid behind the very science that they want us all to trust so badly. Just because it looks good on paper doesn't mean it's going to work in the real world. That's the real science. These polling methods are flawed at best.

3:19Mostly because nobody answers their phones to unknown numbers anymore. Hell, I won't even answer the phone for people I know because I'm usually too busy. And if I text you, please don't call me back. The only people who do answer the phone for pollsters are lonely old folks who don't even remotely represent the greater population. It's glorified guesswork. And online polls are flooded with hyper-engaged political junkies who do not represent normal people either. I could go on. I should go on. But you get the picture. And this house which is high shall be an astonishment to everyone that passes by it, so that he shall say, why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?

4:01Do not tell me that talking to 3 ,000 octogenarian evangelicals over the course of several months with a five-point spread and a 3 % margin for error is anything that should be remotely called a scientific measurement. And it's dangerous because people get a false impression and accept it as gospel and we wake up the next morning with a criminally compromised goon calling the shots from the White House again, wondering why we keep getting the same results after we keep trying to address the problem with the same tired methods of procedure in pageantry in Washington. And it shall be answered because they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, which brought them forth out of the land of Egypt and laid hold on other gods, and worship them and serve them.

4:46Therefore, has he brought all this evil upon them? How many elderly Christian types do you know who would openly admit that they might be wrong about the guy they thought was going to bring them to the promised land? Even if they know down deep that they made a mistake, what makes you think that they would admit something like that to a random pollster who calls the house? I mean, first off, they're automatically going to assume that the pollster is a deep state liberal. I can promise you that. Hi, this is Donald Trump, and I'm running for the presidency of the United States of America. Second, they're going to tell the pollster that they love Trump because he's the only one sticking it to the liberals.

5:25And of course, I'm speaking in generalities here. But we all know how older folks tend to approach these things. They've got an entire lifetime of experiences to back up their belief systems, and they're sure as hell not going to change things now. I mean, I can't even blame them. I'm starting to turn into the same thing as I get older. And I bet you are too. This whole topic leads to a much bigger question and another topic altogether. And that is, when is the last time you've fundamentally changed your mind about a major political issue? Have you ever changed your mind about a major political issue?

6:00I mean, I have several times over the years, but I'll share just one with you. I was on the conservative side of the whole trans people in the bathrooms debate years ago, decades even. And that all changed when I talked to another person who was born with a severe deformation that made it virtually impossible to detect whether this person was a boy or a girl when they were born, just visually speaking. Without getting too graphic, let's just say that you should count your blessings if you were not born with a deformity like this. The doctor told this person that genetically they were a boy. So they stamped it under the birth certificate, and that was that as far as the medical establishment or the state and the federal government, and as well as this person's entire close and extended family and friends over the years would believe.

6:50Only this person that I remain in close contact to to this day told me in no uncertain terms that she is a girl. And when she told me this and kind of called me out for some of the things I'd been saying, that was really all it took for me to realize that whatever people have going on in their lives to this degree is none of my business. It's not our family's business. It's not the public's business. It's certainly not the government's business. It's nobody's business because good people don't judge each other on the basis of gender, race, religion, politics, economic status, age, education level.

7:29what have you. Much easier said than done, of course. And look, this friend of mine isn't some sort of loud-mouthed, hyper-political, blue-armpit-haired Antifa nutjob wearing Doc Martens and a miniskirt, yelling into a megaphone on the street corner about the pride she takes in her own sexual behavior. Quite the opposite, actually. In fact, one could easily mistake this girl for a conservative if they weren't careful about judging books by their covers. Which is a problem that seems to have become much worse across the entire political spectrum with the advent of social media. Tell me that we're not more judgmental because of it, and I will respond to you with a hearty scoff.

8:11That's for you. Social media has amplified the racism. It has amplified the division. It has amplified the distrust and the hate and the feeling that, if we just bark loud enough on the street corner, that something is bound to change in some cosmic and meaningful way. Just as sad as the image of a 90-year-old evangelical waiting patiently by the phone to talk to a pollster about how they're feeling about voting for Trump. They feel great about it. Because Trump is the embodiment of their disdain for a system that forgot them years ago. They don't care if Trump helps them or not because just like him, they really don't have enough time left on this earth to worry about it.

8:52They just want to make sure that the liberals were knocked down for all the entitlement programs that they ultimately had to pay for over all of those years. Yeah, I'd be angry and bitter at the system too at that age if I had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars over my lifetime into a system that's only going to allow me a thousand dollars a month to live on? I mean, geez, at that point, maybe even I would consider voting for somebody who was guaranteed to cause maximum damage to a system overrun by aloof academic snobs who couldn't change attire if their mother's life depended on it. And as for you, if you will walk before me, then will I establish the throne of my kingdom according to you as a man to be ruler in Israel.

9:36Do you get the picture yet?