In an editorial published the day after the Democrats’ impeachment articles against President Trump passed without a single Republican vote, Christian magazine Christianity Today called for Trump’s removal. Early Friday morning, Trump responded with a pair of blistering social media posts.
“Trump Should Be Removed from Office,” declared Christianity Today Editor-in-Chief Mark Galli in an editorial published Thursday. “It’s time to say what we said 20 years ago when a president’s character was revealed for what it was,” Galli adds in the subhead.
While the magazine generally tries “to stay above the fray and allow Christians with different political convictions to make their arguments in the public square,” writes Galli, at times it’s necessary “to make our own opinions on political matters clear—always, as [CT founder Billy Graham] encouraged us, doing so with both conviction and love.”
After granting that Democrats have “had it out” for Trump since day one, and thus “nearly everything they do is under a cloud of partisan suspicion,” including “not only motives but facts” in the impeachment hearings, Galli ultimately sides with the Democrats, parroting their arguments:
But the facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.
The reason many are not shocked about this is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration. He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals. He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed alone—with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.
In response, Trump used that Twitter feed that Galli condemned to defend himself and slam the “progressive” magazine.
“A far left magazine, or very ‘progressive,’ as some would call it, which has been doing poorly and hasn’t been involved with the Billy Graham family for many years, Christianity Today, knows nothing about reading a perfect transcript of a routine phone call and would rather have a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns, than Donald Trump as your President,” Trump wrote.
“No President has done more for the Evangelical community, and it’s not even close. You’ll not get anything from those Dems on stage,” he concluded. “I won’t be reading ET [sic] again!”
….have a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns, than Donald Trump as your President. No President has done more for the Evangelical community, and it’s not even close. You’ll not get anything from those Dems on stage. I won’t be reading ET again!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2019
Related: Magazine Billy Graham Founded Calls For Trump’s Removal. Franklin Graham Denounces Them.
After House Democrats passed their two articles of impeachment against Trump on Wednesday — with only Democrats and the lone Independent voting in favor and all of the Republicans and multiple Democrats voting against them — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has signaled that she might withhold the articles from the Senate in an attempt to strong-arm Republicans into meeting the Democrats’ impeachment trial demands.
As explained by Noah Feldman, one of the Democrats’ top impeachment witnesses, Noah Feldman, in an op-ed on Thursday, the Democrats’ delay in sending their partisan articles means that Trump actually hasn’t been officially impeached yet. “If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the president,” Feldman writes. “If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he wasn’t truly impeached at all.”