Trump Triumphs in the 2024 Election
Evangelicals Should Capitalize on Trump’s Victory
Donald Trump will be moving back into the White House in January. Early Wednesday morning, the 2024 presidential race was called, and the American people elected Donald J. Trump as the 47th President of the United States. His victory in this election was perhaps the greatest political comeback at the presidential level in American history, outdoing Grover Cleveland’s nonconsecutive terms in office in the late nineteenth century and Richard Nixon’s storming back in 1968 after losing (with the help of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley) to JKF in 1960.
Trump ran through a deadly gauntlet to get back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He successfully evaded multiple assassination attempts, the Democrats’ myriad efforts to jail him and confiscate his personal wealth through lawfare, the Intelligence Community’s machinations to frame him even before his first term began, and two impeachments.
Trump’s win is a rejection of the personalities and policies offered by the Democrats. More importantly, it’s a searing rebuke of the bipartisan ruling class’s arrogance, incompetence, and clear disdain for large swaths of the country—and a repudiation of their supposed divine right to rule.
Fortunately, increasing numbers of voters are seeing through the successive waves of propaganda pushed out by our state media. They understand the depth of the supposed smart set’s gross malfeasance, which sits atop a foundation of malevolence for their way of life. What else should these Americans think after constantly being told to repent for everything they believe in—and even the color of their skin—or else be replaced with “real Americans” from the third world?
As Julie Ponzi wrote in a symposium at The American Mind, contrary to our so-called benevolent rulers, “a legitimately obtained majority of the people [should be] responsible for the direction of the United States of America.” A Trump victory opens the possibility for a recovery of politics itself—not in the sense that the people will rule directly (the American founders, after all, despised democracy in the Aristotelian sense), but that voters will choose those who have the wisdom to do what’s best for America—not leech its vitality for their own benefit.
Given the state of our current electoral map, the significance of Trump’s victory should not be overlooked. A country this divided gave him wins both in the Electoral College (what matters according the Constitution) and the popular vote (the mandate for governing)—which is perhaps the closest we can come to a landslide in 2024. Rather than accept an even more radical administration—and an even more bungling one—than Joe Biden’s, American voters sided with Trump’s America First agenda. That, of course, is focused on policing our porous borders and deporting millions of illegal aliens, curbing inflation, and using tariffs as a method of statecraft rather than accede to the desires of the coastal upper crust and supposed foreign policy mavens at Foggy Bottom.
Trump unexpectedly won a majority of white women, while also making historic gains among both black men (20%) and Hispanic men (54%). (As Jeremy Carl points out, many minority voters stayed home, thinking that Trump was decent enough that they didn’t need to vote against him.) And young men shifted to him in big numbers, according to the Wall Street Journal. Additionally, Trump gained support in every demographic, with the exception of voters 65 and older and white, college-educated women.
A chart going around social media from the Financial Times shows that Trump made improvements in every state save two. When CNN’s John King went to his digital elections map on Tuesday night to see the places where Harris outperformed Joe Biden by 3% or more, he came up with nothing, to the shock of Jake Tapper. Shockingly, New York is closer to going red (Harris +10) than Texas is going blue (Trump +14).
What, exactly, will the media industrial complex learn from all of this? Based on past experience: Nothing. Instead, they will triple—no, quadruple down—blaming tens of millions of Americans for their various -isms and continue insulting them on a regular basis. An example of their hubris going forward occurred during PBS’s coverage of the election, when Jonathan Capehart said in NPR-ish tones, “I can’t help but wonder if the American people have given up on democracy.” “Democracy” for the ruling class simply means perpetuating their unopposed rule at home and abroad. There’s zero consideration that what the American people evidently want actually might be good for them and the country, rather than a platform dreamed up by Heinrich Himmler.
There will be no soul-searching or figuring out what happened by doing on the ground reporting or undertaking any fundamental rethinking of what they believe. Like the 1619 Project’s Nikole Hannah-Jones, leftist identity politics logically forces them to lay the blame ultimately on the United States: for this group, our country’s horrific history and traditions are why Harris lost. They see themselves as living in a country born in the cradle of slavery—which still infests every major institution today. But the “America” they love never has been and never will be. (It’s a godsend that the Trump administration rather than a Harris administration will be overseeing the nationwide celebrations of America’s 250th anniversary in 2026.)
Despite the election data on demographics, most evangelical elites will use this as yet another cudgel to wield against white evangelicals in the pews. And they will have plenty of fodder: Samuel Perry reports that 81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump this time around. But no matter—the fundamentalist moralism of the evangelical elites will not cease until morale improves.
Of course, this tired tactic will predictably backfire in big ways. Josh Abbotoy rightly argues that it will “ensure that [evangelicalism will] have no voice in Trump’s administration.” Somehow, the Ethics and Religious and Liberty Commission will be even more ignored than they already are (it’s well known around D.C. that taking a meeting with the ERLC is the most useless thing congressional staff can do with their time). Trump and his advisors will prefer to court growing constituencies and enact their preferences instead.
Additionally, evangelicals who feel alienated from Big Eva’s poor political thinking could end up leaving the evangelical church altogether. Keller-esque rhetoric that “America is Babylon” and Christians are “exiles in a strange land” no longer has purchase power for them. More and more, they understand that the effect of bad biblical exegesis from evangelical elites (and those outside of evangelicalism) sows confusion and second-guessing, dampens political involvement, makes ambiguity a central value, and shifts the indefensible to being an acceptable position. And they see how often the elites use thinly-veiled platitudes as a method to get their own way.
More organizations like the Center for Baptist Leadership that hold to orthodoxy and are politically savvy are needed to hold Big Eva accountable and ultimately replace them. The Russell Moores and David Frenches of evangelicalism, along with their After Party cronies and movements like Evangelicals for Harris, need to be marginalized. Fortunately, that already seems to be happening—the 2024 election is another example of their waning influence over the evangelicals they purport to be leading.
We should thank God for his mercy that Donald John Trump and James David Vance won in 2024 and that evil is being held at bay (for now) at the presidential level. We should pray a collect from the Book of Common Prayer that Trump and Vance, along with elected leaders at every level of government, would “promote thy glory and the welfare of this people” and give them the “spirit of wisdom, courage, and true godliness.” This is a major electoral win that Christians can use to influence the nation for good. As Solomon wrote in Proverbs 3:27, “Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it.” Christians should get to it.
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