The NAR & Charlie Kirk
Part II: The prophet, the Donald & the cabana boy
Back in early 2016 there were very few religious leaders who wanted anything to do with Donald Trump. Ted Cruz was their boy and they regularly declared Trump supporters to be “not real Christians.”
However there was one group of holy rollers who threw in early with the Donald and that was the televangelists.
A largely ignored segment of the Christian Right, prosperity preachers and charismatics pastors were actually a perfect fit for Trump.
There were even some who claimed Trump’s presidency had been prophesized a decade earlier.
While most people roll their eyes at stuff like this, Donald Trump shrugged his shoulders and said “meh, why not? Welcome to the team!”
Still, going into the Iowa Caucuses, the Trump camp was worried about how a smack down by Iowa’s notoriously fickle evangelical caucus goers would look on the national stage… they wanted an endorsement from a mainstream figure.
Well as luck would have it, there just so happened to be a mainstream evangelical figure who needed a little help of his own.
Enter: President of Liberty University, Jerry Falwell Jr.
Unlike his daddy, Jerry Falwell Jr. was not a preacher, or even a particularly religious man. He was a lawyer by trade who also dabbled in real estate development.
He was also a drinker and a man who enjoyed having unconventional “fun” w his wife when they vacationed in Miami.
Turns out the Falwell’s had a thing for kinky sex with cabana boys and as often happens in these kinds of situations, Ms. Falwell had found herself in a pickle when one of those cabana boys threatened to release naked pictures of her in the late Fall of 2015.
Fortunately for the Falwell’s they just so happened to know one of their most infamous fixers in the world, who specialized in these kinds of problems: the one and only, Michael Cohen.
Long story short: according to Cohen, he paid the cabana for the pictures with $12,000 in cash, delivered in a blue Walmart bag and the whole thing went away.
Then… a few weeks later, and just 5 days before the Iowa caucuses, Jerry Falwell Jr, shocked the evangelical world by giving his endorsement to Donald Trump, and not Ted Cruz.
Both sides have denied any quid-pro-quo…
but this was quite the change of heart for Falwell considering that just 9 months prior Jerry had not only given Ted Cruz free use of Liberty’s basketball stadium to launch his campaign, he’d also required all students to attend.
reuters.com/article/world/…
Regardless, that was the boost Trump needed to finish solid in Iowa and sail on to NH. And the rest is history.
In June 2016 Trump formed his Evangelical Executive Advisory Board, forging a working relationship between many fringe church leaders and the soon to be POTUS
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