Fundie Leaders: We’re ‘Pinching Ourselves’ At Influence We’ll Have In Trump White House (AUDIO)

In the back of my mind, I suspected that Donald Trump was going to owe the religious right big in the wake of his upset election win. After all, he only survived the release of the “Access Hollywood” tapes because the religious right managed to convince its followers that respect for women wasn’t as important as ending abortion and marriage equality. To be precise, 81 percent of its followers. Well, it looks like this is one debt Trump has repaid several times over. Apparently the religious right is going to have so much influence over the Trump administration that even veteran culture warriors can’t believe it.

Back in December, Politico reported that Trump has given his evangelical advisory board–a grouping that is chock full of religious right luminaries–unprecedented influence during the transition. Just how unprecedented that was became clear when People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch learned that veteran culture warrior Richard Land, a member of that board, was flabbergasted at how much clout he and his colleagues were slated to have in the Trump administration.

Land is best known as the longtime president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and was on the front lines at the height of the culture wars in the 1990s. He hasn’t let up since stepping down from the ERLC in 2013 to take up the presidency of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte; he declared that he was supporting Donald Trump because he would have to “apologize to Jesus” if he didn’t do so.

On Monday’s edition of “Point of View,” a popular conservative Christian talk show, Land told host Kerby Anderson that he and a number of his compatriots are stunned at how much access Trump has given them. Right Wing Watch got a clip.

Land said that he and a number of his colleagues “have been pinching ourselves” at how much influence they will have when Trump takes office. So much, in fact, that they’ve asked themselves, “Are we hallucinating or is this really happening?”

Land revealed that Trump and his team have asked him for personnel recommendations five times. He’s been active in politics since the Reagan days, and can’t recall ever being solicited for personnel recommendations under either Reagan, George H. W. Bush, or George W. Bush. While he’s actually suggested potential picks to the last three Republican presidents, Land recalled that “they would take them, but they didn’t solicited them.” Anderson revealed that two other prominent religious right leaders, Tony Perkins and Gary Bauer, have said that they have been solicited for hiring recommendations as well–something neither of them recalled happening under previous Republican presidents.

If that isn’t enough to unnerve you, Land revealed that the Trump administration is going to have “more conservative Christians, Catholic and evangelical, in it than any administration that I’ve been associated with or had contact with.” Earlier, he recalled that Trump’s picks look a lot like what Mike Pence–who is himself a fundie–would have made. Many of his colleagues on the transition team are so right-wing that “half of them…think I’m liberal.”

It’s no secret that the religious right sold its soul to Trump because he made the right clucking noises on abortion, marriage equality, and other hot-button social issues. But this is staggering. It is very telling that so many fundies are willing to serve under a guy who finds it acceptable to plaster a private cell phone number on social media, mock the disabled, condone violence at his rallies, and degrade women, among other things. Not only are they willing to build a culture of life on the backs of domestic violence victims, but they’re willing to actually help Trump do it.

A number of my radical-lefty Jesus-loving friends suspect that God is using Trump to show the religious right that he won’t honor just anyone with an “R” next to his name. If they’re willing to work with Trump in the face of all of his outrages, they may be about to learn that lesson sooner than anyone may have thought.

Land’s influence on the administration is telling for another reason as well. For those who don’t recall, Land was pushed out of the ERLC after it emerged that he had a bad habit of taking material from other sources and passing them off as his own words on his radio show, “Richard Land Live.” His plagiarism was unmasked after it emerged that when he suggested President Obama was using the Trayvon Martin case to run up black turnout, he’d actually lifted it word-for-word from a column in The Washington Times. In a classic case of failing upward, SES still hired him.

That may explain why Trump still has another serial plagiarist on his payroll. You may recall that Monica Crowley, who is slated to take a senior communications role at the National Security Council, is in hot water for heavily plagiarizing her 2012 book, “What The (Bleep) Just Happened. Since then, it has emerged that Crowley’s doctoral dissertation at Columbia and at least seven of her columns in The Washington Times are also shot through with plagiarism.

The more I think about it, this isn’t all that surprising. After all, if Land’s ethical standards are low enough that he even thought plagiarism was acceptable, it’s only natural that he has no problem working with and for a guy as debauched as Trump. But even if Land wasn’t a plagiarist, he would still deserve to pay dearly for tying his star to Trump. After all, when–not if–Trump is either forced to resign or is removed via impeachment, we WILL make sure that Land and the rest of the religious right will go down with him.

(featured image from Southern Evangelical Seminary’s Facebook)

Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.