David Brody didn't join Chris Hayes to expose Christianist evangelical extremists as hypocrites, but that's what he did.
As a Christian (but not an evangelical in the strict sense of the term), I am infuriated daily by the hypocrisy of those who claim to follow Christ but instead deify a pussygrabbing thug and call him savior.
Christian pollster George Barna hails Trump's election as a miracle in his new book, saying that it was literally an act of God to save the country from socialism. And he claims to believe in empirical science. Go figure.
Which is why I'm interested when the Christianists send a spokesman to MSNBC to explain why evangelicals think Trump walks on water. Were it not for the evangelical hypocrites, after all, Trump would not have won the election.
When asked about why evangelicals are willing to deal a "mulligan" to Trump every single time a woman tells her story, Brody shrugged it off.
"They believed all those other stories too from the '80s and '90s," Brody explained. "He's not a Boy Scout."
Well, yes, but why did they back him? Culture wars. He's their very own culture warrior. No, really. "They see this culture and say enough. They feel they're being played by the Republican party and say we're going to give this guy a shot."
Chris Hayes called that straight out, asking why there's some sort of retroactive exception for Republicans but there is no expectation they won't make a big deal about Democratic politicians who refuse to fight this stupid culture war.
"Do they regret everything they said about Clinton when they were basically marching to Washington to get him run out of town because of his deeds?," Hayes asked.
Can you guess the answer to that question? That's right, it's grace. Sloppy, unearned, cynical grace.
Hayes would not have that, calling him out. "Grace doesn't come cheap and you got to the ask for forgiveness and you have to be pious and pray to your god and savior and you have to have a change of heart. you have to reach out spiritually."
Pointedly, he asked Brody, "Is there a single person on God's great earth who believes that Donald Trump is doing that?"
More hypocrisy from Brody, this time around the fact that he asked Trump about his faith in 2015 and he "said" he asked for forgiveness.
Oh, please. Chris Hayes mocked that, too, pointing out that Trump also bragged about his golf course without a mortgage on it as evidence of God's grace.
Finally, Brody was forced to admit that evangelicals lean into Trump because they're grievance-driven. "They're both bold in their views and... they've been criticized for those views,," he explained. "You put it all together and they feel a kinship between themselves."
Yes, brothers in grievance and misogyny, basically. We get that. So did Chris Hayes.
Hayes wrapped up the interview by asking Brody what, if anything, Trump could do to alienate evangelicals.
Brody, having no real answer to that question, Bill Clinton-ed it. "Right now we don't see a Monica Lewinsky in the Donald Trump White House," he said. "If that happened, Chris, game, set match. It's over for Donald Trump with evangelicals."
Chris Hayes laughed at that, and so do I. If Trump had one of his women in the White House, evangelicals would just dismiss the whole thing as a Jezebel out to get their guy. Evangelicals are powered by patriarchy. Women are expendable little whores who are constantly causing men to sin.
It would be no different, even if Trump got daily blowjobs in the Oval Office. Here's the bottom line: As long as Trump fights their culture wars, persecutes the LGBTQ community, forces women to give birth, and continues to march forward with his white supremacist views, evangelicals will forgive him everything, because they are hypocrites.
There is no point where they will stop overlooking his hypocrisy as long as he gives them what they want. It's as transactional and cynical as it gets.
