After receiving massive blowback from the Evangelical community, the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today defended the publication’s decision to release an op-ed demanding President Trump’s removal from office after House Democrats approved articles of impeachment.
Speaking on “Face The Nation,” Mark Galli said that the president is “morally unfit” for office, arguing that his actions in favor of evangelical voters do not excuse his supposed sins while serving in the White House.
“I am making a moral judgment that he is morally unfit or, even more precisely, it’s his public morality that makes him unfit,” Galli said, as reported by Fox News.
Ultimately, Galli made no argument in favor of Trump’s impeachment based on anything that is impeachable — “high crimes and misdemeanors,” as dictated by the Constitution — and instead took the absurd position that the president “has certain responsibilities as a public figure to display a certain level of public character and public morality.”
“He gives us what we need on ‘pro-life’ but you’ve got this bad character,” Galli said. “And the fundamental argument I’m making is we crossed a line somewhere in the impeachment hearings, at least in my mind, that that balance no longer works.”
In his piece published on Thursday, Galli said that the Democrats finally have what they need to impeach Trump based on the Ukraine whistleblower’s shoddy testimony. The president, he wrote, abused his political office to coerce a foreign power into investigating his political enemies.
“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,” Galli wrote. “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,” continued Galli. “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 to the Galli’s outlandish charge, President Trump touted his efforts to help the evangelical community.
“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!”
Despite Christianity Today’s call to remove Trump from office, the president still enjoys high favorability among evangelicals, with a recent Fox News poll putting him at 67% among likely evangelical voters.