The common lesson from the MSNBC uproar and Trump’s Bible business
The ruckus at NBC over Ronna Mcdaniel’s very brief career as a political commentator might seem unrelated to Donald Trump’s venture into selling Maga-branded Bibles. But they both tell the same story: how Trump is warping our nation’s core institutions.
In the case of NBC, the problem with hiring Mcdaniel was not that she served as head of the Republican National Committee or that she is a conservative. In fact, MSNBC, the network’s now staunchly anti-trump cable arm (where, I should say, I was happy to work as a paid contributor for some years) loaded up on right-leaning commentators, especially back in 2016 when the network bragged in an ad: “People might start accusing us of leaning too far to the right.”
Nor was the issue Mcdaniel’s past role as a political operative. You can make a case that news outlets over the years signed up too many veterans of government and political campaigns and thus blurred public perceptions of who is a “journalist.”
But that horse left the barn long ago. Many gifted people have crossed over from one side to the other — from George F. Will, Mark Shields and William Safire back in the 1970s to Tim Russert, George Stephanopoulos, Jeff Greenfield and, more recently, Nicolle Wallace, David Axelrod and Joy Reid.
No, the problem with Mcdaniel and what led to a staff uprising was her complicity in Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election and her joining in his lies over the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s victory. In her interview with NBC’S Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press,” Mcdaniel paid the price of admission by saying, “The reality is Joe Biden won, he’s the president, he’s the legitimate president.” Then she added: “I have always said, and I continue to say, there were issues in 2020. I believe that both can be true.”
“There were issues.” Really? This is giving with one hand and taking with the other, a soft way of rationalizing the GOP’S war on elections.
It’s astonishing that NBC’S top brass failed to see why Mcdaniel was not just some random conservative contributor or to anticipate the revolt her hiring would inspire.
Yes, viewers and readers should be offered a variety of views, and I have long been an avid fan of conservative commentary, even if I’ve typically disagreed. But no news outlet should seek to “balance” truth with falsehood or to hire, in the name of ideological diversity, anyone complicit in undermining the democratic project itself. NBC News’s leaders should not have had to learn the hard way that Trump’s corruption of the political conversation has drawn a sharp line between right and wrong approaches to balance.
And now to Trump peddling Bibles at $59.99 a pop. My colleagues Alexandra Petri, Eugene Robinson and Dana Milbank have helpfully commented on the hilarity of this. What’s not hilarious is Trump’s reason for thinking he has an opening in the Bible market. The stunt reflects the extent to which he has persuaded significant parts of the Christian community to see supporting him as godly because doing so is the best way to smite the secular leftist enemy.
Yet embracing Trump has required many conservative Christians to adjust some of their beliefs quite radically. Consider the astonishing results of a Prri-brookings Institution poll that asked whether “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.” In 2011, only 30% of White evangelicals agreed with the statement. But a couple of weeks before the 2016 election, 72% agreed, a much bigger swing than was recorded among other religious groups.
I’ll concede it not an easy question to answer, but the wild oscillation in the views of White evangelical Christians over a relatively short period suggests a kind of conversion that has little to do with faith.
What should trouble all Christians is that the association of their faith with Trump has aggravated the long-term trend toward younger and more liberal Americans abandoning religion altogether.
If pairing Trump’s effect on the media and religion seems odd, keep in mind that both institutions have historically served as checks on power. They are also sources of social cohesion and venues for public learning. As the Bible tells us, “The truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).
They have something else in common, too: They are inevitably linked to politics. Media outlets provide the forums in which democracy’s debates are carried out, and religious teaching inevitably influences political choices and philosophical dispositions.
What matters is the kind of politics involved and how it is carried out. Trumpism is corrosive to both.
Some years ago, Anglican theologian N.T. Wright gave an Easter sermon arguing Jesus “died to exhaust the power of this world’s rulers.” It would be a shame if a would-be worldly ruler named Trump made it increasingly hard for many to hear the Easter message at all.