Throughout the last two years, members of the religious right have continued to rationalize their support for Trump despite his violation of Christian principles. Most recently, Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson defended the president’s passive response to the likely murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi Arabian government. Robertson, expressing concern for the hundred billion dollars worth of arm sales at stake, said, “I know it’s bad but we’ve had all kinds of stuff, but you don’t blow up an international alliance over one person.” On Thursday night, Stephen Colbert pointed out that the Christian right wouldn’t have to do these kind of exculpatory acrobatics if only Moses had added an asterisk to the Ten Commandments. Dressed as the prophet, Colbert imagines Moses declaring, “Thou shalt not kill … “Unless there’s a lotta coinage on the table … I mean think of the golden carriage you could buy with that kind of scratch.”
Despite this newly emerging justification that the probable torture and dismemberment of a U.S. resident and journalist is a small price to pay for some war profiteering, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is still advancing Trump’s usual tactic: When you don’t like reality, use rambling, grammatically incorrect sentences to cast doubt on the truth. On Thursday morning, Pompeo claimed that the Saudis need more time to get their story straight, declaring, “We ought to give them a few more days to complete that, so that we too have an understanding of the thoughts surrounding that at which point we can make decisions about how or if the United States should respond to the incident surrounding Mr. Khashoggi.” “Saudi Arabia is really making headway with their investigation,” said Colbert, in a sarcastic reference to the suspicious death of one of Khashoggi’s accused killers.
If Thursday evening’s headlines are any indication, It doesn’t seem hopeful that Trump’s disregard for violence against the press will change any time soon. At a campaign rally in Montana Trump praised Rep. Greg Gianforte, who pleaded guilty to physically assaulting a reporter, drawling to a laughing crowd, “Any guy that can do a body slam, he’s my kind of guy.”
