The list of Republican senators, governors, and congressmen and women who have announced they’ll no longer vote for Donald Trump has grown to 46 as of Sunday morning. Yet the religious right hangs on. Conservative evangelicals, who form the core of the movement’s contemporary iteration, told various outlets this weekend that they still back the GOP nominee, despite Friday’s publication of a video in which Trump justifies sexual assault.
Tony Perkins, who heads the Family Research Council, told The Washington Post that he still backs Trump because he can’t “allow the country and culture to deteriorate” any further. Another prominent evangelical, Gary Bauer, told Reuters that the alternative is worse: Hillary Clinton, he argued, will “erode religious liberty” and “promote abortion,” among other sins. Rev. Robert Jeffress, an early Trump supporter, also said in a statement that Trump is still “the best candidate to reverse the downward spiral this nation is in.”
James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, even subtweeted Trump’s critics last night: