When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton played a key role in promoting his campaign to evangelicals, declaring that Christians had a biblical obligation to vote for Trump because he was “God’s guy.” Barton continued to praise Trump throughout his term in office, even predicting that Trump could go down as one of the greatest presidents in U.S. history.
Since losing the election in 2020, Trump has been indicted in multiple cases, including two related to his efforts to overturn the results of that election.
On Monday, Barton appeared on the Truth & Liberty Coalition’s live call-in show, where he had a gall to declare that Democrats have no moral qualms about cheating and breaking the rules in order to win elections because they are not “God-fearing.”
“Generally, the Democrat Party is a very secular party,” Barton said. “They tend to be very secular, and the more secular you are, the less God-fearing you are, which means the less restraints you have on your behavior. So, if there is no God, then everything is right now and the end does justify the means—the Machiavellian thing that the end justifies the means.”
Republicans believe in God, Barton claimed, which is why they are “not going to break the rules just to win”
“Democrats don’t have that moral restraint of [being] God-fearing; one day, I’m going to account to God and he’s gonna say, ‘Why did you cheat in that election?'” Barton continued. “If you don’t believe that, then why not cheat in an election? So, you have less moral restraints which means the end does justify the means, which means you’re willing to do more things to make sure your side wins. You win at all costs.”
This is laughable, considering that Trump and the 18 others who have been charged with trying to overturn the election in Georgia are nearly all professing Christians, many of them vocally so, including one who is literally a pastor.
It is staggering that even as a former Republican president and more than a dozen Republican activists are being charged with trying to steal an election, Barton has the nerve to insist that it is Democrats who have no “moral restraint” and will therefore eagerly “cheat in an election.”
Barton, of course, has a history of projecting his own side’s illegality onto Democrats, such as when he proclaimed in 2019 that Christian candidates would never illegally harvest ballots shortly after North Carolina had to schedule a new election because the Republican candidate—who Barton had endorsed—had engaged in illegal ballot harvesting.
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