source: Twitter

It’s 12:00 on a Friday, I have nowhere to be, and I’m laid up with a migraine.  So naturally I’m passing the hours by thinking about…. Donald Trump.

In all fairness, I try not to talk or write about the president too often.  It’s as frustrating as all hell, it’s not considered polite dinner conversation, and John Pavlovitz is doing an amazing job saying all the things I want to say in a more eloquent way than I could ever say them.

But this just needs to be asked, because I’m genuinely and deeply baffled.

How do you keep defending him?

It feels like that question should have been preceded with a nicety like, “With all due respect,”  but I just couldn’t make myself do it.  Because the thing is, I don’t respect a decision to support the president.  I don’t.  I know it’s not very PC to say that, and God knows I often talk about the importance of respect myself.  But the fact is, while I respect a LOT of people and ideas and opinions that are different than my own, I just can’t respect unkindness.

Or misogyny.

Or bigotry.

Or arrogance.

Or name-calling.

I can’t respect a man who brags about sexual assault.  I can’t respect a man who spends his days disgustingly disparaging everyone who disagrees with him on Twitter.  I just can’t do it.  And the thing I can’t stop thinking about, the thing I keep wondering, is: Do you, Trump supporter, respect those things?  Are they okay with you?  Do you find those traits to be admirable? Do you find this man to be someone to emulate?

Those (mostly) rhetorical questions are for all of you, but most especially for my fellow Christ-followers.  Because I can not, not for the life of me, understand how someone who purportedly wants to live like Jesus lived, could defend and support a man who does everything but.  Donald Trump is like the universe and God and the spaghetti monster all got their collective little heads together, and asked, “Okay, who can we think of that’s the LEAST Christ-like candidate out there?”  And in walks Donald Trump.  And they saw that they’d done their job, and they delivered him on a platter… and the people just ate him up.  Lock, stock, and barrel.

And the rest of us stand with our mouths open, and say, “Wait.  WHAT?  What just happened?”

Because it makes absolutely no sense.  It makes no sense how otherwise kind, compassionate, and reasonable people could buy what he was selling.  It makes no sense how they could overlook what kind of person he is.  What kind of person he continues to be.  What kind of person he’s proud to be.  Because make no mistake.  Donald Trump isn’t just a regular flawed human being who’s made some errors in judgment but is doing his best to right his wrongs.

He’s a man who takes great pride in doing, and saying, horrible things.  He’s not your savior.  He’s the antithesis of a savior… a person who would not only let you drown, but laugh at you while he watches.

So again I have to ask, how can you keep defending him?   Defending his actions?  His words?  His demeanor?

There’s a saying that goes, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”  My friends, Donald Trump has shown you who he is.  Not just once, but over and over again.

And I’m confused and I’m tired and I’m angry and I’m sad.  I want to believe – I have to believe – that there is an explanation.  I want to understand, but I’m afraid that there IS no understanding.  There is simply no understanding the defense of a man like Donald Trump.

So I think my question is really this:

Do you truly not see the kind of person he is?  Or do you simply not care?  Because as far as I can tell, at this point in time, those are the only two possible explanations.