President donald trump has spent the past 24 hours trying to send a message: He is the law-and-order president, and he has the support of American Christians. First came his waltz last night through the White House gates and across Lafayette Square, where protesters had just been dispersed with tear gas and rubber bullets. Trump posed, stone-faced while clutching a Bible, in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, which was set on fire during protests on Sunday night. This morning he visited the Saint John Paul II National Shrine, solemnly holding hands with the first lady before a larger-than-life statue of the wildly popular pope.
Some of Trump's supporters applauded these gestures. “By holding up the Bible, he was showing us that it teaches that, yes, God hates racism, it’s despicable—but God also hates lawlessness,” Robert Jeffress, the pastor of First Baptist Dallas and a vocal supporter of the president, told my colleague McKay Coppins on Monday night.
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