Why and how millions of Americans defend their current president
President Trump greets Ken Paxton, the scandal-plagued Republican candidate for US Senate in Texas, at a recent rally.
(Barring an emergency, this will be my last political post before the November 3 election. Look for my post-election comments on November 6, God willing.)
To many of my global readers, it may seem obvious by now that during the last two years the Trump administration has undermined the foundations of US democracy, threatened traditional US allies, cozied up to dictators, corruptly misused US resources for personal gain, replaced competent government servants with incompetent sycophants, brutalized not only legal immigrants but many US citizens, weakened the US military position, engaged foolishly in a war with Iran from which it cannot extricate itself, put millions of lives at risk due to sudden cutoffs of humanitarian aid, ignored the pleas of refugees and victims of persecution around the world, and basically made a major mess.
To many of my US friends, this does not seem obvious at all. Polls indicate that Trump’s approval rating among US voters is around 32 to 37 percent—rather low, but that means one of every three Americans still like what he’s doing. The percentage is somewhat higher in my conservative city and much higher among those who identify as evangelical.
When I was in Canada in July and apologized for what my country was doing to theirs, the usual response was “We know it’s not the American people.” I would immediately retort, “No, actually it is 37 percent of the American people.”
Through my personal friendships and my campaign work, I’ve had numerous recent interactions with neighbors, many of them solid Christians, who still support Trump and the Republican party. Here’s some of what they tell me, with brief commentary.
“He closed the Mexican border to illegals.” Indeed, as many Democrats including my own candidate acknowledge, the previous administration was weak on border control. I joke that Trump has successfully stopped illegal immigrants from entering the United States by making the US a country no one in their right mind would want to enter. But regardless, illegal border crossings have been largely eliminated.
“He got tough on Iran.” From my perspective, the situation in Iran and the Middle East, not to mention the world economy, is worse today than when Trump initiated the Iran war on February 28. But Trump supporters believe that Iran is a terrorist state that was on a path to developing a nuclear weapon and needed to be stopped.
“Under Biden, other nations were contemptuous of us.” The pitiful pullout from Afghanistan is probably the main memory in these people’s minds. I responded to one such person, “Okay, let’s review what other countries think of us now, starting with Canada.” In fact, an April 2026 Gallup poll found that communist China has a significantly more favorable global approval rating than the US.
“Thanks to Trump, NATO and Canada are paying more for their own defense rather than relying on the United States.” That is a true statement. NATO and Canada have increased their defense spending, largely because they no longer trust the United States. Whether the rupture in relations with allies was worthwhile to achieve this goal seems dubious to me.
Most of the Trump supporters I’ve talked with admit that his social media posts are distasteful. They would prefer greater civility. But they still believe that living under the other party would be worse. When I talk about the Trump administration’s sudden cutoff of global humanitarian aid—much of which went to Christian organizations—Christian friends with a strong culture-wars focus often cite the Biden administration’s exporting of pro-LGBTQ ideology and its activism on transgender issues.
Many Christians appreciate Trump’s strong support for Israel; in fact, some believe that Israel under Netanyahu is now more fervently supported by conservative evangelicals than by American Jews. When I asked one Christian Trump backer how he felt about the bombing of innocent Palestinian Christians in Gaza, he replied, “The Palestinians are descendants of the Philistines, and there is collateral damage in every war.”
Another Christian friend wrote to me, “My big-picture view is that the federal government intrudes too much into the lives of American citizens and that it controls too much of the American economy. I’m convinced the Democrats will not change this for the better.” I’m not sure this friend has noticed that Trump imposed tariffs capriciously on virtually the whole world, has had the U.S. government take an unprecedented ownership stake in 30 companies, and has increased the national debt more than any other president.
I will conclude charitably by reminding all of us that Christians (including me) are fallible in politics, just as in every other part of life. Many German Christians supported Hitler in the 1930s; others have found justification for supporting Viktor Orban in Hungary or Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. Perhaps 10 years from now, we will have greater retrospective clarity as to whether supporting Trump was prudent.