Sam Stein (5:20)

Well, it's a transactional relationship, right?

Andrew Edgar (5:22)

Yeah. And it's different than the one that was in the first.

Sam Stein (5:24)

It's a very transactional relationship where he goes, I did this for you, therefore you should support me. There's also, I would argue, way more openly presenting his presidency and he himself as almost providential. Right. Like, I think the other day he was talking about, well, I think God's probably thinking, I'm doing a good job. Which is blasphemous, frankly, to say, but that's stuff Trump gets away with. But my old. But, you know, that's one side of the equation. The other side of the equation, which I want you to just sort of give me your insights on, is, is why white evangelicals predominantly, but Protestants too, are attracted to this man. So he has not followed through on many of their policy preferences. He was very muddied about abortion and abortion bans in the states during the presidential campaign, and they seemed to give him a pass. There was plenty of more overtly religious candidates in the field at the time, not least of them being Mike Pence, his ex vice president, who got no traction with this community whatsoever. And then my ultimate favorite set, because I don't want to present, present this as sort of a recent phenomenon. This is a like 10 year, 8 year phenomenon. One of my favorite polling stats ever was there was a, a public opinion poll on white evangelical voters and whether or not they supported Donald Trump. And he's always had really great support in that community. But early in his first term, Stormy Daniels went on 60 Minutes and gave her first comments, really, about her relationship with Trump. And this was shortly after the check was produced from Michael Cohen to Stormy Daniels, basically confirming that there had been some sort of payoff. So you would think that like, you know, evidence showing that you had had an affair with a porn actress, porn star, and then paid for her silence might have rub some white evangelicals the wrong way. But his support in these polls actually went up among white evangelicals after those revelations. And that's always been a little bit confounding. For me, I mean, I can come up with theories explaining it, but what is your read of it? Why do they flock to him?

Andrew Edgar (7:32)

So there's. There's two things. There's the, there's the personal level and then there's the policy level. Right. I think, I think the, the personal accommodation that a lot of white evangelicals have made all along is the same as it's been since very early. Like, very early on. They were sort of presented with this, this devil's bargain, right? That, this, this idea, well, maybe this guy is not, you know, an upstanding man of character in the way that I have always valued in my leaders, but maybe, and this was sort of an argument they were presented with, that they hadn't really thought about it in these terms before, maybe all of these kind of like fine, moral, upstanding guys that we keep nominating are just getting their clocks clean because they're too nice, they're losers, they're not ready to get down and dirty and fight and do, you know, like, do the things that we might be uncomfortable doing in order to, like, achieve the policy aims that we want. And in that way, you know, the personal vice gets laundered through as a political virtue. That's the beginning of it. Back in the first term, the political virtues were pretty straightforward because Donald Trump, like I said, he did not really understand these people, but he knew that he needed them. And he came in saying, I'm just going to graft you onto my coalition. It's somewhat like the Maha thing now where, where he's like, I'm going to outsource basically my, like, religious social policy to what you guys already want. In a lot of ways, he was not super anti gay, so that was one big difference. But as far as abortion, as far as, you know, federal judges, as far as religious liberty, all of these sorts of things in his first term, he was very willing to, like, do that as the price of doing business for these people's loyalty. So that was how it first got laundered. The difference now, and I think this is very striking, he has gradually realized that as they have accommodated themselves to him, there has been less and less of like a, a moral obstacle to get over as far as these people's support for Donald Trump. And a big part of that is because their political identity is as strong to them or stronger than faith identity that they might have. And a lot of them might not be. They identify as white evangelicals, but they might not be part of an actual church community. They might not you know, belong to a denomination with, like, you know, obvious faith leaders. Like, the people that they see in public life, who they look up to for guidance and stuff, are increasingly Republican political figures, at least conservative political figures.

Sam Stein (9:42)

Well, I would argue. Go ahead, sorry, finish up, and then I'll go ahead.

Andrew Edgar (9:45)

Yeah. And so over time, it kind of became clear that, like, the moral objection to him personally had vanished more and more. So there was a frictionless affection for Donald Trump from all these people. And so in the second term, what we have seen is not only does he no longer, like, have to feel like he has to do the same kind of, like, policy sops to, you know, the Faith and Family Coalition or whatever, but in fact, he believes, and I think he rightly believes, that he now has basically a lot of leeway to dictate to these people what it means to be on the religious right now. So, like, you get him up there today, I mean, he just talks about religion a lot. He talks about, like, like I said, bombing people who persecute Christians in other countries. He talks about how every Democrat wants you to stop saying Christmas, wants you to stop saying religion, wants you to stop saying God, and he wouldn't ever do those sorts of things to you. And because the primary connection between him and these people is no longer we are faithful Christians, and we think you're gonna be good for the faithful Christians, but we are Trump people, and we are going along with the Trump people. And one of the things about being a Trump person is that we get to sort of feel good about these sort of obliques, pro religion stances. That's a very different thing now than it was, you know, in, in Trump 1.0, a very, a very real change in, in what it means to be a white evangelical Republican today.

Sam Stein (11:09)

All right, all right, all right. I would argue a couple things, and then we'll get to the clips. One is they also view Democrats as hedonistic. Right? They just think they're like the devil. And so that obviously pushes them to Trump. But two is just echoing what you say. These are political actors, and they. And they actually have political preferences that probably supersede religious beliefs in a lot of venues. The biggest friction point right now is not about abortion. It's about immigration, okay? And the church, the Catholic Church has been, and the Pope specifically, has been very forthright, saying, what's happening with ice, what's happening with the treatment of immigrants writ large is wrong, and it goes against scripture. Trump this morning made the proactive choice to have an opening speaker President Bukele of El Salvador. And that was a, that was a choice, right? Like, here is a man whose country runs seot, which is a torture facility for immigrant detention to which we have unlawfully sent migrants and immigrants. It's well documented. There's now an infamous 60 minute segment on it. You probably have heard of it. It might have been held up for a little bit, but Bukele was out there as the opening speaker, which was galling to me, absolutely galling. And it gets to your point that he feels like he can get away basically with more or less anything with these people. It's a long clip, so I want people to buckle. And it's about a minute and 15 seconds. But here is Trump talking about Bukele, who's in the audience at the National Prayer Breakfast this morning.

Donald Trump (12:47)

We're also delighted to welcome visiting leaders and dignitaries from more than 110 countries. They're here, including one of my favorite people, President Bukele of El Salvador. He has been so incredible. He has been such a great ally of this country. Thank you very much. Such a great ally. Some of you have seen he operates rather large prisons, like prisons that. So large you can't see from one side to the other unless you have perfect 2020 eyesight with binoculars. That's how long and big. And they do a job. They do a very humane job, but they're very strong prisons. And we send a lot of the people that we capture, the murderers, the drug dealers, the people that came into our country illegally and have already committed massive crimes. We had 11,888 murderers and many of them are in your prisons right now.

Sam Stein (13:48)

Right.

Donald Trump (13:49)

And he does a fantastic job. I mean, it sounds like a different kind of, you know, this is a religious breakfast. You're going to walk away and say, he's the meanest son of a gun I've ever seen. But I'm not. I just want to keep our country safe. It's very simple. We have to keep our country safe.

Sam Stein (14:05)

I just can't. I can't square this. I struggle to square it.

Andrew Edgar (14:09)

I think it's really important to understand this is not like, incidental to his appeal to the Christian base, like the white evangelical Christian base. Right. It is. It is very much that he is offering to do these things on their behalf and like, keep this weird sort of like moral barrier between them. I mean, like this. He's. Let me go to another thing that he said at one point where he was talking about bombing people who were, he says, prosecuting Christians In Nigeria, he said they were killing Christians. You can't do that. When Christians come under attack, they know they're going to be attacked violently and viciously by President Trump. I know it's not a nice thing to say, but that's the way it is. It's not just, we're gonna protect Christians abroad. If anyone attacks Christians abroad, we are gonna come after them violently and viciously. And, like, there's always this dance, right. It's always like, now, look, I know you people aren't really into that, but. But somebody's got to do it, right? And that. And that's kind of the. That is the secret sauce that binds them together is they're like, well, maybe we wouldn't do it, but we sure will support you doing it, Donald Trump. Because somebody's got to.

Sam Stein (15:12)

Yeah. It's like he's a crude instrument for them or a vice that they know they shouldn't have, but they indulge in this moment.

Andrew Edgar (15:21)

And you see that. That sort of thing in a lot of different. Not to cut you off. Sorry. But just on the vice thing, like, it's the same with sort of, like, the theatrical swearing when he gets up there and talk. I mean, doesn't. He doesn't stop cursing just because he's at a national prayer breakfast. Because he understands that's like, not. That's not a thing that puts more distance between them. That's him sort of carving out his brand as the guy who does the things that you wouldn't necessarily do, you know? You know?

Sam Stein (15:46)

Yeah. I think it's important for people to understand what this breakfast used to be like. This used to be a breakfast that was built around faith. And there was sort of. I don't know if this is the same exact breakfast, but there was a kind of an infamous breakfast. Might have been the congressional one, might have been slightly different, but where Ben Carson spoke during the Obama presidency. And. And it got a lot of, like, headlines because he was critical of Obama. And, like, that was like, just unheard of at the time that you would use this breakfast that was ostensibly above politics to do something that was overtly political. And it's been transformed into this. It's not quite a campaign rally because he's not going totally there, but it certainly is a overtly political rally. And we'll play this clip he had where he talks about Democrats. I have no expectations for Trump to rise above this, so I'm not surprised that he would do this. But it is still a bit jarring to see people People who are gathering under the auspices of faith to be told this. About one half of the country.

Donald Trump (16:59)

Democrats are against. I don't know how a person of faith can vote for a Democrat. I really don't. And I know we have some here today. And I don't know why they're here because they certainly don't give us their vote.

Sam Stein (17:14)

It's just shocking to me. He says the same thing often about Jews specifically. I don't know how a Jewish person can vote for Democrats. I don't know about you. I find it, like, kind of offensive, right? Like, who is he to dictate what a person of faith should or should not believe? Why is he the arbiter of what faith should or should not believe? But that's Trump. He just doesn't care about offending. I guess that's an appeal for some folks.

Andrew Edgar (17:41)

Yeah, yeah. And not only that, I mean, a couple different points in this same speech. He would make offhand comments like, ah, this will probably be the last time we have any Democrats at this prayer breakfast. Right. And if you conceive of yourself, if you're a person in this room who's like a professional evangelical and you conceive of yourself as like a Republican operative first and foremost, maybe you don't care. Maybe you think that that's like a fun little dig or whatever. But if you are, if you're not, that, if you are a faith leader first and foremost, a person who maybe participates in politics, maybe has some sort of affinity for the Republican side of things because, I don't know, they have been more vocal about religious liberty in recent years. Like, just to pick one example, there are, there are a lot of people out there like that. This sort of thing should horrify you. It should not. Right. Should. It should actually keep you up at night that, that there is a political project to launder faith writ large, religion writ large, into a subsidiary element of the Republican Party. Not just because the guy who's up there plainly has no idea what you believe or why you believe it, and has, is not respected, respect, responsive or receptive to your actual policy ideas at all. He thinks that you should just be grateful to him for, like, patting you on the head and saying the word religion out loud a lot, but also because why would you want him to, like, be actively working to negatively polarize Democrats who one day will retake power against the very concept of faith and religion in general? You want this to be a thing, a concept that is respected in a bipartisan way in, in D.C. so this. I don't know. It's. So the reason that they eat it up is because that's not their project. The people in this room, they are not religious figures, first and foremost. They are political operatives, first and foremost.

Sam Stein (19:27)

I'm trying to think of an institution. I'm trying to think of an institution where Trump is comfortable with the inclusion of people who don't believe in his politics. Is there a place where he's like, it's cool that there are Democrats that are part of this. I don't really care. And I mean, sporting venues, not even that. It's like he does that. He's upset with, obviously, movies, He's. He's not comfortable with that. He goes off on Hollywood all the time. And the whole Melania thing, there's really not a. There's really not an institution or a collective space where Trump is totally at ease with the fact that people who oppose him ideologically can coexist. Unless you're missing something.

Andrew Edgar (20:06)

No, no, you're. You're 100% right. And it's not even clear that he really thinks these people exist in significant numbers. Right. I mean, he has completely divorced himself from. From all sort of, like, quantitative ways of knowing the country, of understanding what's going on in the country. He thinks the polls are all cooked. He thinks he won Minnesota. You know, he thinks he won California. Like, he. He really does think that, like, the vast majority of people out there really, really like him, and the people who don't are, like, suspicious in some way. They're interlopers or they're paid for, you know, so, like this.

Sam Stein (20:39)

Who are you, who are you to say that the Venezuelan president didn't fuck up the elections? The Italian satellites weren't involved. You don't know. You don't know.

Andrew Edgar (20:48)

Yeah, yeah, but it just. It just is not obvious that there's a lot of space in his brain for, like, there are people out there who disagree with me in, like, a reasonable way, and they exist in significant numbers.

Sam Stein (20:58)

The act of disagree. The act of disagreeing with him is itself.

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Sam Stein (22:00)

Crime I'm going to switch now to the NBC interview he gave last night as long interview. There are a couple segments that really stood out to me. One was when they the topic turned to this lawsuit that he has brought against the irs. Now, for those who are not up on the story, Donald Trump has sued the IRS because an employee with the agency illegally leaked his tax filings became public during the campaign. He suing the IRS for $10 billion. Uh, it's an absurd figure and made more absurd by the fact that he runs the, he's the boss. He runs the irs. So he is suing himself and he's in charge of the settlement. And he let's play what he says. And then I kind of want to just spend a little bit of time thinking about the implications of this. But let's play the clip of him talking about this suit new lawsuit by.

Andrew Edgar (22:57)

You and your family that you're, you're.

Sam Stein (22:58)

Suing the IRS for $10.5 billion for.

Andrew Edgar (23:01)

Leaking your tax documents.

Sam Stein (23:03)

Is this a good use of taxpayer money?

Donald Trump (23:06)

You can't leak documents. And any money that I win, I'll give it to charity, 100% to charity, charities that will be approved by government or whatever. I have another lawsuit with the United States. I sued because they broke into Mar A Lago.

Sam Stein (23:20)

But that's taxpayer money it's going to.

Andrew Edgar (23:22)

Take out of the system. I know it's going to charity.

Sam Stein (23:23)

You're going to say if Scott Besant's.

Andrew Edgar (23:26)

The head of the irs, what I would head of the Justice Department. They're going to defend the IRS against you.

Donald Trump (23:31)

Well, there's never been anything like it in all fairness.

Andrew Edgar (23:33)

So are you going to, are you.

Donald Trump (23:34)

Going to tell the don't forget I sued as a private citizen because I sued between terms. I wondered I won three times. But I didn't assume, unfortunately for this country, I didn't assume office to second that. But here's the story. I sued because they broke into Mar A Lago. That was before I became president. Now it goes along and it turned out that the suit is a very strong suit.

Sam Stein (23:56)

You're going to tell them to pay you though.

Andrew Edgar (23:57)

You're the boss.

Donald Trump (23:58)

Well, what I would do, tell them to pay me. But I'll give 100% of the money to charity. I don't want any of that money.

Sam Stein (24:06)

It's so ridiculous on its face, obviously. And there's ample history showing he will not give this money to charity. And if he does, it's going to be like the Donald Trump Presidential Library. And I'll call it a charity. It's $10 billion. I mean, it's $10 billion. Here's the thing that I'm kind of struck by. How do we know if they pay? I mean, I, I'm, I suppose there's a suit and you have to sort of monitor whether or not there's a settlement and all that. But like, do you have faith? Like I, I, I'm, I'm not totally sure I would have faith that they didn't just do the payment and got it over with and we never really knew. And certainly I don't have faith that they're going to document down to the scent what charities he's giving to. I mean, this is just pilfering. It's straight up pilfering. It's crazy.

Andrew Edgar (24:54)

Yeah, I mean it is crazy. And it all just comes back to the basic fact of doing business in America right now, which is that every federal employee is assumed to be doing the personal bidding of the President at all times or else something is wrong. I don't know, the whole charity thing. First of all, you're absolutely right. He would never actually give that money away. He's not giving that money to charity, folks. The amount of personal enriching he has already done for himself, like totally shamelessly. It's not like he's giving that money to charity. It's not like he's giving his nft, you know, scam money to charity.

Sam Stein (25:27)

He says, he says he foregoes his salary.

Andrew Edgar (25:29)

Yeah, really, really cool. He's made $4 billion, $4 billion off the presidency he's made in, in the last, you know, 13 months now or whatever it is. So yeah, really cool that giving the salary to charity. I love the, I love the just complete absence of any through line of thought on this sort of stuff. I mean like last year, this time last year, the entire like might of the federal government was laser focused on we have to save the Taxpayer money by canceling all of the money that's flowing out of us to charities. Everything that's flowing out of the, out of The treasury to NGOs is automatically suspect. We have to lock it down. We have to stop doing that. Doge cancels, you know, $100 billion in contracts or whatever it was that it ended up doing. That's this sort of thing. And now he's like, no, no, no, nobody should have a problem with this because this money's coming out of the treasury and it's going to go to charities. Like it's beggars believe. Like there's no, there's no brain activity here beyond Donald Trump the appetite, thinking he can get away with this. And maybe he will. We'll see.

Sam Stein (26:27)

Well, as long as they don't use any of that $10 billion to purchase a Politico Pro subscription, I think it's all above board. Yeah, no, that's a great time.

Andrew Edgar (26:35)

Like nutrient dent peanut paste for. For kids.

Sam Stein (26:38)

Yeah, don't do that. Not that charity. Not that. Actually, this is such a good topic for morning shots. You gotta write this one. It's so true. Just call up a few Doge fans and say, what do you think of this? I'm eager to see what happens here. I can't fathom a world in which the voting public, if they even know about this, would be like that. That seems above board and I'm cool with it. Like, how the hell do you defend something that outwardly corrupt. I have no idea.

Rocket Money Advertiser (27:07)

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Sam Stein (27:07)

The only other.

Andrew Edgar (27:08)

But how the hell did you defend the Qatari jet? Or how the hell did you defend that. That crypto dinner that he did? Or how the hell do you defend the fact that it was just reported several days ago that a sheep just sent almost $200 million just straight into Trump accounts four days before the inauguration? You don't defend it. You don't defend it at all. You just wait for people to forget because they move on to the next thing. That was. That was last week that that was reported or this week maybe, and we're already like, there's so much shit all the time. So you don't defend it.

Sam Stein (27:40)

It is a never ending. It's a never ending tsunami of corruption. It's wild. Last clip I want to play is about Trump discussing, and this is related to the Epstein files, the potential contempt vote, although I think it's shelved for Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. They've been called up by the House Oversight Committee to testify about their presence in these files quite conspicuously, James Comer, the head of the committee, is calling up Democrats and none of the Republicans, none of the Trump officials who are in these files. And the Clintons are now, their bluff was called, let's be honest, and they're going to play ball. They now want to say they want to do a public hearing. We'll see if that comes to fruition. Donald Trump has been notably sympathetic to Bill Clinton in this, like outwardly sympathetic. And it's pretty obvious why. We'll get to it after we play the clip of him being asked about this on NBC.

Andrew Edgar (28:37)

NBC News broke the story today, I don't know if you saw it, that the Democrats are already saying, if you bring President Bill Clinton and he has to testify, we're bringing President Trump. What do you say?

Donald Trump (28:46)

I think they might say that, you know, but they've already brought me. See, I've been brought. They had me in.

Sam Stein (28:52)

No, you haven't.

Donald Trump (28:54)

Many, many times. Many, many times.

Sam Stein (28:57)

And the president had some surprising thoughts.

Andrew Edgar (28:59)

About former President Bill Clinton.

Donald Trump (29:01)

It bothers me that somebody's going after Bill Clinton. See, I like Bill Clinton. I still like Bill Clinton.

Andrew Edgar (29:07)

What do you like about him?

Donald Trump (29:09)

I like, well, I liked his behavior toward me. I thought he got me. He understood me.

Sam Stein (29:17)

Pretty funny. Of course he likes Bill Clinton because he was nice to Donald Trump. The easiest mark ever. I will fact check Trump here. He's not been hauled up to the Hill for any sort of deposition or testimony. That's something he's avoided studiously. But it's clear. I mean, he's pretty open about. He doesn't, he, he's worried about the precedent this will set and he should be right. I mean, like if Democrats were to win back the gavel, you have to imagine that they are going to ask Howard Lutnick, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, anyone else in these files to come up and talk about it. And they will say, hey, we have a precedent. We have no problem holding you in contempt because some of them actually voted for the contempt because you just did it to Bill Clinton and they would be absolutely in the right to do so.

Andrew Edgar (30:05)

Yeah. And I mean, I don't always go full JVL on the like, this is why he's going to try really hard never to leave office. But like, this is mate, he may very well try very hard never to leave office. Right. I mean, like Bill Clinton was president a long time ago and this has just sort of come up now. And if, you know, if he's in it, check it out, you know, like, let's, let's, let's, let's see where that goes. But like the amount of stuff Donald Trump is doing right now, I mean he will spend literally the rest of his life like putting out fires anytime. My phone's ringing here and we're live. I don't know where the phone is. I guess we'll just have to deal with it. He's going to have to spend the rest of his life.

Sam Stein (30:44)

Mute yourself because I have the good news for him as he has to put out these fires and as he will be hauled up on the Hill and that's all fight the subpoenas and fight all that stuff is that he'll have a 10 billion dollar slush fund to pay for the legal, be legal bills that he's going to have to incur post presidency, assuming he ever leaves the presidency. All right, buddy, I think the, the, the call is probably a sign from above straight from the National Prayer Breakfast that we should go. You have a new morning shots? Yeah, a warning shot for Morning Shots.

Andrew Edgar (31:14)

The people at the great National Prayer Breakfast. You first, you get the phone call and then it's the lightning bolt.

Sam Stein (31:20)

Well, now you have a great new topic for your morning shots. I'm excited to read it. I expect it filed in the next couple hours.

Andrew Edgar (31:26)

I'm gonna write on the breakfast. Actually, we'll push that other one.

Sam Stein (31:28)

Oh fine. Push that one. Lunch. All right. For those who are watching, thank you for watching. We appreciate it. We like doing these live shows every now and then going to try to do them more regularly because it's fun to be with you guys in the moment. But you know, frankly, this is shameless. We can do this with the support of our subscribers. So if you're not a bulwark subscriber, go find a way to do so. It's a great way to spend your money. We produce unbelievable content from live shows to great analysis, piercing reporting. We have a bunch of awesome newsletters. Check us out if you haven't already. And thank you for watching Andrew. Take care, buddy.

Andrew Edgar (32:03)

See ya.