Donald J. Trump's presidential campaign hit a snag on Monday, after several prominent endorsers made statements suggesting his fitness to hold the highest office in our country would be undercut by his own personal behaviors and failings.*
It began with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, who previously stated he had no qualms with Donald Trump "appointing people to the Supreme Court," lamenting that "the true tragedy in this case is the collapse of the [future-]president's moral authority."
Referring to the presumptive Republican nominee's penchant for wildly gesticulating his hands while telling falsehoods, the Judiciary Committee chairman stated that "he undermined himself when he wagged his finger and lied to the nation on national TV."
Prominent conservative Christian activists quickly echoed these sentiments. Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry, who released videos arguing that conservative Christians should support Donald Trump's presidential campaign as early as March, now states he is "a tyrant; he's a monster." This is in part based on the fact that the presumptive GOP nominee has at least twice violated his marriage vows.
Members of Trump's newly formed Evangelical Executive Advisory Board also began to revolt against their chosen candidate.
Focus on the Family founder James Dobson proclaimed "character DOES matter. You can't run a family, let alone a country, without it."
He went on to state:
I just don't understand it. Why aren't parents more concerned about what their children are hearing about the president[ial candidate's] behavior? Are moms and dads not embarrassed by what is occurring? At any given time, 40 percent of the nation's children list the president of the United States as the person they most admire. What are they learning from [Mr. Trump]? What have we taught our boys about respecting women? What have our little girls learned about men? How can we estimate the impact of this scandal on future generations?
Dobson was not alone. Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, expressed regret over his endorsement of twice-divorced Donald Trump, bemoaning the ease with which marriages can dissolve in the United States. "Do we really want to make it easier for a man to discard the wife of his youth than it is for him to fire his secretary?" he asked.
He went on to state, "Republicans, unlike Democrats, have very systematically adopted a standard of family values and moral uplift."
Jerry Falwell Jr., another member of Donald Trump's evangelical advisory group, simply referred reporters to Liberty University's code of conduct. Despite several occasions when Trump spoke at the school, its code prohibits "sexual relations outside of a biblically ordained marriage between a natural-born man and a natural-born woman."
Trump has previously bragged about his sexual conquests on the Howard Stern Show.
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment on his rejection by evangelical leaders, primarily because I never asked.
*Obviously this is parody. All of the quotes are real but represent statements made about other political leaders or codes of conduct relating to individuals not named Donald Trump.