Reuters World News - Trump 2024: Messianic messaging, a GOP transformed and RFK Jr’s impact

Episode Date: March 23, 2024

On this weekend episode our political journalists speak with host Jonah Green about how an analysis of polling shows a GOP transformed. As the former president's legal troubles mount, Christian media personalities amplify messianic language. Plus, how a third party will impact the race. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To begin today's episode, let's hop in the podcast time machine, shall we? Josh, can I get some like beep-boop sounds? Great. We're traveling back a decade to 2014. Farrell Williams, Happy is the best-selling song. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappears into thin air. ISIS declares an Islamic caliphate. And the Republican Party clenches a majority in the House and the Senate in the midterms for the first time in a decade.

Back then, the classic country club. Republican, who was well-off and well-educated, made up a larger slice of the pie, and their candidates were typically Russia hawks and proponents of free trade. And then along comes a New York celebrity who shakes it all up. They're taking our jobs. They're taking our manufacturing. They're taking our money. Today. As Trump's legal troubles mount, we take a look at some of the other storylines forming around the GOP presidential candidate. On this special episode, our political journalists examine what 10 years of polling data says about his party. And the messianic terms his supporters in Christian media increasingly refer to him in.

Plus a third-party threat beginning to compete for some airtime. I'm your host, Jonah Green. Reuters has worked with Ipsos polling for many years on presidential elections. We'll publish weekly polls on presidential candidate approval ratings in the lead up to the November election. But this week, our data and politics team published a different kind of analysis. They looked at 10 years of data to better understand the overarching changes in the Republican Party. Scott Malone is our politics editor in Washington, D.C. Now, Scott, remind us what the party looked like in 2015 before Donald Trump ascended.

I mean, really since Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party was seen as, you know, generally very focused on defense, very concerned about Russia, in general, very supportive of free trade, which is something that was a big priority for corporate America. And they tended to nominate for the White House, kind of long-standing leaders along the lines of Mitt Romney and John McCain. How has the party shifted, according to the data that you guys went through? There's been some really, really profound shifts in the party. Certainly, you see a less hawkish policy today. One in five Republicans, according to our words, the post-polling, say that the U.S. should often use its military muscle to achieve foreign

policy goals. That's down from one in three a decade ago. And we've seen about a five, six percentage point decline in support for the idea that free trade helps the average American. And the party has shifted its view of Russia. I mean, the House Republicans won't even take up a foreign aid bill that would help Ukraine defend itself against Russia. I mean, that's a big change. It is. And this shows the way that kind of the changes in the beliefs of the Republican electorate, what we call the base, is changing the leadership. Your article says that the parties become more populist, right, in the last 10 years. What does that mean? There's a few things that we see as kind of feeding into this populist sense.

One of them is an anger about elites, and that's something that drives the skepticism about international trade, a feeling that, you know, it's worked out well for corporate America and for investors and top executives and big companies, and, you know, maybe not so well for people who are employed or were employed by those companies. We see it in a rising concern about immigration. That's something that definitely Trump has driven. The other thing that we see is in the skepticism about elections. Trump, of course, has since before his election defeat in 2020, been falsely claiming that the only way that he could lose would be the result of fraud, and that's proven very persuasive with Republican voters. This is perhaps a chicken and

egg question. Did Trump make the party more populist, or was this shift underway when he hit the scene? It's a self-reinforcing cycle. Trump did not. create these ideas. He brought these voters in to the party. One of the things that he did was show that those people have the power to tip elections. And that's one of the reason that this worldview is as influential as it is in Washington right now with Trump out of power. And probably the clearest kind of pre-Trump example of this rising energy was the Tea Party. Early in Barack Obama's first term as president, it was after the Great Recession. There was huge economic. dislocation, people were seeing Washington bail out big companies, and it was a real sense that

the little people were being lost. And that sort of rising energy gave way for Trump and for MAGA and for the transformation that we've seen in the Republican Party. After Romney lost in 2012, there was talk of the GOP needing to reinvent itself. You know, they were reassessing what went wrong. And one idea was try to appeal to a new group of voters, you know, the phrase, A bigger tent was bandied about a lot. Is this what they had in mind back then? So it's interesting. At the time, after Romney's lost, there was a real sense that the party had been seen as exclusionary and that they did need to broaden their base. And what we've seen is they have broadened the base in a couple of ways. One of the ways that they brought in the base is by bringing in more white non-college-educated voters. But it should also be noted that they've brought in more non-college-educated Hispanic voters.

And that's a very important and growing piece of the U.S. electorate. One group of voters that's still with Trump are evangelicals. They stuck with him in the past two elections despite claims of adultery and charges of sexual abuse, which is denied. And they're still with him for the 2024 election, despite the fact that he's now facing dozens of criminal charges and tried to overthrow an election. In fact, several voices in Christian media are taking the support even further. I think if they could kill a guy like Donald Trump, they would have.

I don't think God is allowing them to do it. That's media personality and self-proclaimed prophet Lance Walnau on the Jim Baker show. They're trying to take everything he's got. They're trying to put him in prison. But he's still moving on, because until his assignment has done, the hand of God is on him and he cannot be stopped. Yes, amen. That's right. He and other Christian media personalities are increasingly portraying Trump as being chosen by God and depicting this election as a biblical war.

Here's Tony Perkins on a show called Washington Watch with Tony Perkins. This is a battle between good and evil. It's much bigger than just the United States of America, quite frankly. This is what we read about in the New York. Testament. Helen Koster covers politics and media. Helen, is this Messiah talk new? So for a long time, Christian media has been a place where people could go and listen to content that was related to things like anti-abortion, anti-communism, other issues that are important to the conservative Christian community. But what's new about this election cycle is that there's

now content that's explicitly pro-Trump, instead of just being about issues that are important conservative Christians. Now there's this unabashedly pro-Trump content, specifically along the lines of this messianic language that I've been talking about in the piece. And that's according to experts I've spoken to who study religion, politics, and media. I've listened to the clips that you sent along. I mean, the way they talk about Trump, it sort of goes beyond hero worship. Right. And that's been bubbling around certain corners of the evangelical community for a few years. it's really getting steam and it's become more prominent as Trump is facing all these legal woes. And what's new is that they're now using that language to frame his legal woes as more of this battle for him and featuring him as being persecuted.

They're also talking about him as being anointed by God in a way that would preserve him as he goes through these legal battles. One refrain you'll often hear from these TV sermons is that they acknowledge. Trump is not a holy man. Here's Jim Baker. How can God give Trump the anointing? I believe he is called of God to be the president of the United States. Well, let's look at King David. King David was not as godly all the time.

That's right. And so how do they justify this staunch support? So this is something that's true, not just on Christian media, but in the evangelical community broadly, a lot of conservative evangelicals believe that Trump as a person is flawed. They don't disagree with that idea. But they support him because of his policies, and they think that he has done things that help the community

and that support the views of the community, specifically adding judges to the Supreme Court so that in 2022, the court overturned the constitutional right to abortion. And additionally, moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, which was also considered a policy win for folks in the conservative evangelical community. How big is that community during this cycle, the evangelical vote? According to Pew Research, there are 80 million Americans, and that's about a quarter of the population, who describe themselves as born again or evangelical Protestant. So it's enormous number. they have been key to Trump's rise, and they are likely to play a big role in turnout and any chance

that he has to win in a tight race against Joe Biden in November. Some of these personalities come off as a bit fringe. You know, they're selling meal plans for the apocalypse. How prominent are these media personalities? So the majority of media personalities I'm describing this story are quite fringe, but they've amassed significant online followings. appear on a lot of different shows. They have podcasts. So their messaging reverberates around the web and around the Christian media ecosystem. And it's particularly important because they're

reaching voters on all different platforms as they drive to work, as they drop their kids off at school. And this is true across the U.S. and also specifically in swing states. So this messaging is reaching voters who are really vital to the way that this election is going to go and who are key to voting in this race between Trump and Biden. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment. But do we have any idea how he feels about all this? I mean, is he going along with this messaging? So Trump has really leaned into this messaging and this battle.

Because I'm being indicted for you and never forget our enemies want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take away your freedom. And I'm never going to let it happen. For example, he gave a speech to the Association of Religious Broadcasters last month where he depicted his race in religious terms and compared it to some of the great battles of World War II. We have to bring back our religion. We have to bring back Christianity in this country. He's been starting some of his rallies with a video made by social media influencers that includes some of that messianic language. And what it does is,

it helps to energize his base and hopefully gets them to turn out in big numbers in November. So we've talked quite a bit about Trump and his opponent, Joe Biden, but there is a third person in this race. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is running for president as an independent. And a recent Reuters poll finds that he has the support of 15% of registered voters. Now, that's not the kind of number that gets you into the White House, but it is the kind of support that could alter the outcome of the selection. U.S.S. elections reporter Stephanie Kelly recently sat down with the candidate at his Los Angeles home.

Here he is. 2024, the Democrat Party, has radically changed. I don't think my father, my uncle would have recognized it's become the party of war. It's become the party of Wall Street. It's become the party of censorship. It's become the party of Big Pharma. Stephanie, third-party candidates are often referred to as spoilers. And so at this point, do we know whose campaign candidates,

and Kennedy is more likely to, quote-unquote, spoil? I've spoken along with my colleague Jared Renshaw to a dozen strategists on this, and many are saying that third-party candidates are likely to pull more voters from Biden than from Trump. That's because Biden has less of a loyal fan base than Trump, so voters could be more easily swayed from him. Of course, third-party candidates can also pull from Trump,

but his supporters are just more loyal. RFK has said some controversial things about vaccines in the past. Did you ask him about his anti-vaccine stance? When I was speaking with him, he kept trying to push us away from labeling him as an anti-vaccine advocate. Of course, it's been well documented that he has been part of misinformation around vaccines, but he does seem to want to distance himself a little bit from that anti-vaccine tag. and just kind of relabel himself as pro-science. Who is he appealing to?

Well, his platform focuses on reining in corporate power, pulling back military spending and cheaper housing. But he's positioning himself as an outsider alternative to Trump and Biden. And as it's been reported again and again, both of those candidates are facing a lack of enthusiasm from voters about their candidacies in general. And I offer a clear alternative.

to the American people. And no doubt his views on vaccines are resonating with voters in both parties who share his skepticism. But Kennedy is also an environmentalist. Is he at all concerned that he might help elect somebody who doesn't believe in climate change? No, he's, he did not seem concerned about being a potential quote unquote spoiler of the election. Again, I think that he wants voters to have another option and another option and another

person to vote for. I mean, that's the same argument that Ralph Nader had in 2000, and we know that his candidacy played a role in George W. Bush becoming president. And RFK is pulling in more support than Nader did. Yes. And the swing states in this election, they were all decided by less than 3% of the vote in the 2020 election. So if you have a candidate like RFK Jr., that's pulling X amount of votes in any of these states, it could potentially have a big impact on who ends up winning that state. You wrote about something fascinating that I had not considered. What happens if a third-party candidate does well enough that no candidate reaches the 270 electoral votes needed to become president? Yeah, it's an interesting potential outcome. So there are scenarios. They're unlikely, but they are

possible, where if a candidate, a third-party candidate like Kennedy does well, he could stop Biden or Trump from reaching the necessary 270 electoral votes to become president. And then nobody wins the election. And at that point, the decision would go to the newly elected House of Representatives. Right now, the House is run by Republicans, but we don't know who is going to run it after the election. It's more than likely that Trump would still end up being elected president by a new house based on how state delegations are made up right now. Even more fascinating in this scenario is that the vice president would be elected through the Senate. It's also unclear who would control the Senate after the election, but there is a potential scenario where we would wind up having a president and a vice president from two different

political parties. That would be quite a ticket. Yeah, I think that we would be in for a very confusing four years if that were the case. Special thanks to Scott Malone, Helen Koster, Stephanie Kelly, and the rest of the U.S. elections team. Reuters World News is produced by Gail Issa, David Spencer, Kim Vinell, Christopher Wall, Jasper, and me, Jonah Green. Our senior producer is Carmel Crimmons, executive producer, Lila de Kretzer. Sound design and music composition by Josh Summer. To stay on top of the latest news, listen in for 10 minutes every day, and if you haven't already,

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