The Daily Signal - Faith and Politics: An Insider’s View From Former Trump Aide Cliff Sims

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

Cliff Sims had a front-row seat in the White House to some of President Donald Trump’s biggest decisions and helped craft the administration’s message to the American people. As a special assistant to the president, Sims served as a key staffer in the White House communications office before later moving to a different role as deputy director of national intelligence for strategy and communications. Along the way, Sims wrote a bestselling book, "Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House." And this month, he is now out with a new book, "The Darkness Has Not Overcome: Lessons on Faith and Politics from Inside the Halls of Power." Sims writes from the perspective of a Baptist minister’s son whose own Christian faith guided him during his time in the Trump administration. He spoke to The Daily Signal about the lessons he learned and his advice for Americans as they prepare to make a choice for our country’s future. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, May 16th. On your host, Rob Bluey. Cliff Sims had a front row seat in the White House to some of President Donald Trump's biggest decisions and helped craft the administration's message to the American people. As a special assistant to the president and a key staffer in its communication shop, he worked closely with press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders before moving to a new role as Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Strategy and Communications. Along the way, Sims wrote a best-selling book about his 500,

days in the White House and is now out with a new book called The Darkness Has Not Overcome, Lessons on Faith and Politics from Inside the Halls of Power. Sims writes from the perspective of a Baptist minister's son whose own Christian faith guided him during his time in the Trump administration. He spoke to the Daily Signal about the lessons he learned and his advice for Americans as they prepare to make a choice for our country's future. Stay tuned for our interview right after this. Conservative women are all.

are problematic women. Why? Because we don't adhere to the agenda of the radical left. Every Thursday morning on the Problematic Women podcast, Kristen I, Cammer, Lauren Evans, and me, Virginia Allen, are joined by other conservative women to break down the big issues and news you care about. Whether you're interested in hot takes and conversations on pop culture or what Congress is up to, Problematic Women has you covered. We sort through the news to keep you up to on the issues that are of particular interest to conservative leaning, that is problematic women. Find problematic women wherever you like to listen to podcasts and follow the show on Instagram. We are joined on the Daily Signal podcast today by Cliff Sims, a former special assistant to President Trump,

a New York Times bestselling author, and an evangelical Christian who has a new book called The Darkness has not overcome. Cliff, welcome to the show. Rob, thanks for having me. Glad to be here. You bet. I'm looking forward to this conversation. And thank you for all the contributions you've made to the conservative movement and for taking the time to write this book. I'm always interested when I talk to authors to hear what inspired them to spend the time and all the energy to put together a book. What was the case for you? Well, for me, you know, when I left the government, a lot of it was me wrestling with what that time period of my life meant for me, like what were some of the the things I could have learned from that experience and I journaled a lot about it and was thinking a lot

about it. And I realized, I was through that process that a lot of the things that I was learning, the takeaways that I had could apply to anybody's life, you know, no matter what they're doing, and it had to serve in government to have some takeaways from it. And so I realized that there was an opportunity to write a book that told a bunch of cool stories from behind the scenes in the White House and CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Air Force One. And all these different things, but use those to jump into biblical takeaways, faith takeaways that could apply to anybody's life. And so that was really what inspired me to write the book. Can you speak to your upbringing as the son of a Baptist minister and how that shaped your

approach to faith and particularly politics during your time serving a government? Yeah, definitely. I think the subtitle for the book is lessons on faith and politics from inside the halls of power. But the first thing that people would, you know, need to know about me is that I come from about as far away from those halls of powers you could possibly imagine, lived in, and I grew up in a working class family, working class neighborhood. My dad was a Baptist minister, and faith was an integral part of our lives. We're in the church every time the doors were open. But really, my personal faith journey, I had a head knowledge of the Bible that was, you know, really more than a lot of my friends growing up. There's no doubt about that.

But it really had not had a heart change in me until later in life. And so a lot of that kind of grit and determination from growing up in a working class family, I think I've applied to a lot of things I've done professionally. And really the moment in my life when, well, I guess there wasn't a moment in my life that I could point to that's like that's when God like changed my heart. even though I certainly remember the moment that I, you know, accepted Christ as my savior and things like that. I learned a lot about the way that God changes people. And it's not the way that we think about it.

We focus a lot on our actions. Any self-help podcast that you listen to, you focus on actions. If you could just work out a little bit more, if you could just get up a little bit earlier, if you could just spend more time with your family, if you were a better networker, all these things in actions.

And what I've learned in my own life is the way that God actually changes people. It's like, I would call it like, concentric circles. And at the center of that concentric circle is worship. So I found in my life, I've worshipped my career. I've worshipped myself. I've worshipped power. I've worship fame. I've worshipped. I've worshipped. I mean, go down the list of these things. What you worship becomes what you think about. And what you think about becomes your desires and your desires become your actions. And so what God did was he changed what I, you know, what I worshipped or who I worshipped. And once he was at the center of that Venn diagram, it changed the things that I think about

and changed my desires. And ultimately, that changed my actions. And the way that that manifested itself in, you know, serving in government is, you know, I think in retrospect, I struggled with a lot of things that I didn't know that I would, such as like the attraction of power. Well, you don't have power. How do you know that you're going to be susceptible to the attraction of power? But being able to lean back on my faith and look to scripture for new challenges, things that I was struggling with that I'd never had to think about before. That biblical foundation helped me not lose myself in the process. I wanted to go back to something you said earlier, and that was that you found yourself growing up far from the halls of power. So did you ever imagine as a younger man that you would be serving

the most powerful man in the world? No, no, definitely not. I mean, that's the thing about, life in general is like all of us only know the universe that we've been exposed to. I mean, I had never met anybody who had money. So how could I know what someone with money would do with money? I'd never met someone who'd served in the government. How would I know what people who, you know, walk the halls of power, so to speak, what they do, how they live their lives. And so no, never in a million years would I've imagined that. But I do remember the moment when I realize, in retrospect that God was ordering my steps, that kind of the way the trajectory of my life has gone on, that he was organizing all of that. I was playing college basketball at a university

in Mississippi. A buddy of mine was playing at a junior college in South Alabama, and I was thinking about wanting to transfer. My family was living in Florida at the time. Now, go and visit this tiny town called Enterprise Alabama, which is most famous for having a monument to a bug in its downtown, to a bowievel. It's the only city in the country with a monument to a bug. It's all I knew about it. So I go and visit and I really liked it. The team was good.

I thought, you know what? I'm going to transfer here. And the last thing I needed to do was call my dad and say, hey, I'm going to transfer. And again, they were living in Florida at the time. And I called my dad and said, I'm going to transfer this tiny school in Enterprise, Alabama. And it was an awkward silence on the phone. And I said, well, is that okay?

And my dad said, I was going to call you today. and tell you that our family is moving to Enterprise Alabama, completely separate from each other. My dad was a Baptist minister, his friend had become a pastor of a church in Enterprise and called him to be the executive pastor there. And so my family was kind of reunited coming from two separate tracks. And it's like a moment in time where even the most fervent atheist would have a difficult time chalking that up to mere coincidence. But I remember it because at a time in my life where I didn't care what God's plan was

for my life, he was already ordering his steps. And my Sunday school teacher, the day that I walked into Sunday school, the first day in our new town was a guy named Barry Moore, who was a small business owner, but now he's congressman, Barry Moore. So the first thing I did in politics in the 2010 election cycle was helped to run Barry's campaign. And six years later, I had an office in the West Wing. So a lot of stuff happened in between there, but that's kind of my journey in politics. Well, God's plan for each of us is truly amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that story. Wow. Speaking of the West Wing, can you share a specific example from your time working there, where you felt challenged in maintaining your Christian principles in this political environment in which we live?

Well, I think there aren't a lot of examples from the West Wing where there's like a dramatic moment where it's like, oh my gosh, I'm being asked to do something that is against my sincerely held beliefs. I worked in the Trump White House. And fortunately, from a policy perspective, I was a fervent believer in a lot of things that were doing, what President Trump did from a policy perspective for the faith community, things like, you know, ending the Mexico City policy funding with taxpayer resources, abortions in foreign countries, or putting pro-life justices on the Supreme Court, or instructing the Department of Justice to no longer pursue, go after the nonprofit status

of faith-based nonprofits that speak into divisive political. issues. I can go down the list of these things. I think the wrestling with what serving in government meant for my faith or how my faith applied to that experience or where it was tested really has come more in retrospect. And I think that the most direct example that I could give is the day that Joe Biden was inaugurated president, January 20th of 2021, I was deputy director of national intelligence at the time and I was standing alone in the nearly empty hallways of the CIA. And I was wandering those empty halls by myself because it was not just a transition moment for the country. I knew it was a transition moment for me that this was going to be the last opportunity that I had to walk those halls,

at least in the short term. And I was wrestling with this nagging feeling that nothing that I will ever do in life will be this important. It'll never be this big of a deal again. How could I ever find value in the work that I'm doing when it's never going to be like this again. And of course, that's ego talking, but it's also just wrong because what I learned through that process about work is that who we are working for is more important than what we are doing. And the Bible says, whatever you do, do it as unto the Lord. And when you put work in its proper context that whether I'm in the White House or in a coffee house, I'm performing with excellence. And there is meaning to it, because I'm serving God in my work, your work becomes an overflow of worship. And that's a

totally different way of looking at work. And so I think the way to answer your question that my faith was tested was I was in what C.S. Lewis would call the inner ring. I had access to power and influence and, you know, things that test your character. And it really, only in retrospect, was I able to come to terms with that is not what defines me. I'm not defined. I'm not defined by the title that I have. The fact that my phone quit ringing when I left, because people didn't like me, they were calling me because of the title that I had. I had to come to terms with that. But in going through that, in wrestling with that, I've been able to put my work, my career in a much better, more biblical context. Well, having said that, let me ask you this.

What is your recommendation to other Christians who want to engage in political discourse or maybe go serve and government, will still exemplifying the values that are part of their faith. Yeah, well, I'd say a few things. Number one, we're at a moment in American life where politics has kind of consumed everything. And so I think it's important to put politics in the appropriate hierarchy of priorities. And I am as guilty of anyone as anyone of letting it get way too important in my life's hierarchy of priorities. the flip side of that is it is important and we need people of faith, strong believers to serve in government with character because the Bible is very clear when it gives us kind of principles for

how we should be viewing government in this world. The first principle is that God is sovereign over everything. You know, the government is not our God, right? Like God is our God. And so he is sovereign over everything, but the Bible says that he has given us as humans dominion over the earth, that he has put us in these positions to govern on his behalf. And so what our role is is to be a reflection of God's vision for justice and righteousness in this world. The third principle is the Bible is clear that we will be held accountable for the decisions that we make when we're governing. And think about King David, a man that God said is a man after my own heart. He was also a murderer and an adulterer, and he lost a kid as a result of his sin. So there is accountability for the

decisions that we make. And so if somebody's listening to this and they're saying, well, I'm not a king and I don't serve in the government or whatever, actually all of these principles are particularly important for Americans because in our system, ultimate power lies with the people. So we are both the governor and the governed. And so thinking about every decision we make from, you know, voting in the ballot box to aspiring to work in government and to serve and to be an extension of God's vision for righteousness and justice in this world, these are all very good things. But those are some foundational principles for how we should be thinking about that. Well, thank you for bringing it back to self-government.

don't think we have that conversation enough with the American people and reminding them that ultimately that was the founder's vision for this great country in which we live. Let me ask you this because increasingly it seems that individuals may be a part of an institution, even a church, where their personal beliefs clash with either the prevailing culture or political ideology. How do you go about navigating that? And what advice do you recommend in the book to those who maybe find themselves in a situation like that. Oh, man, there's a lot to unpack there because you're right, especially at this point in American history. Those are issues that we're wrestling with that maybe we haven't had to as believers, at least as acutely as we are now.

A couple of things that come to mind for me are, number one, the Jefferson Memorial in D.C. is my favorite. I think it's the most beautiful. Jefferson, I think, is the most fascinating founding father to study. But inside the Jefferson Memorial, underneath the dome, there is a quote by Jefferson. And it says, I have sworn eternal hostility against any tyranny over the minds of man. I have sworn eternal hostility against any tyranny over the minds of man. One of the things that we are seeing right now is a tyranny of the mind that is happening, where we are being expected in ways we've never seen before to violate our sincerely held beliefs, religious beliefs, in order to adhere to certain mandates or social expectations.

For instance, at the State Department right now, you do not have a choice of whether or not you're going to put your so-called pronouns in your emails. They put it in your email header whether you like it or not. Now, this is an issue, kind of the pronoun issue, we can have a debate on where we should land on whether we should use pronouns and all these different things. But if you land in a place where you think that your pronouns or that biological gender is attached to biological sex and the two things are inextricably linked, and that's a sincerely held belief that's firmly rooted in your religious beliefs, it is, I believe we should stand up, put a little steel in our backbone and say, I'm not going to be willing to be willing to. to acquiesce to these mandates that violate my sincerely held beliefs. So that's number one. It's persecution that we haven't seen before as believers in this country that we're

facing in a different way now. And so being willing to stand up and confront that, I think it is important. The second piece of that I think is equally important, which is we're at a point where even inside of our churches, disagreements over political issues or political candidates are becoming first-tier issues, meaning when I think about like in the church, first-tier issues are like the divinity of Jesus, the virgin birth, the belief in Jesus' death and resurrection, these things that are core tenets. Then there are secondary issues like baptism. Should we be wait till our conversion to be baptized or should we be sprinkled at birth? These are things

that divide different denominations, but there are secondary issues. And then there are tertiary issues that are like politics, right? That's like, we're going to have disagreements in churches over all these different things. But politics has creeped its way up that order of hierarchy where we're actually seeing divisions inside the church based on disagreements over politics. And so that's where we need to have an infusion of grace that we haven't been having in recent discourse, that some of us are going to look at the same set of facts and fall in a different, come to a different conclusion about what candidates we're going to support, what policies that we're going to be for, et cetera, and we should not allow those things to divide the church. It doesn't mean they're not important. It doesn't mean we

shouldn't debate them vigorously and stand by our beliefs, but we should have grace with fellow believers that those are not the top tier most important issues in our lives. Cliff, that's a very helpful perspective. I appreciate you sharing that. Let me ask you this. There's so much in our culture that happens outside of government and politics, but obviously, 2024 is a big year. There's a lot of focus on elections, not only at the national level, but local level. How much is at stake when it comes to the future of our country and the direction we go when it comes to electing leaders? Yeah, well, every single election cycle feels like we say, well, this is the most important

election of our lifetimes. And it's like, well, in retrospect, some of these elections were not as important as others. Let's just be honest about them. But this is another moment where I think we are at a real crossroads as a country and deciding kind of what direction we're going to go. Are we going to go the path of limited government, more human freedom and flourishing? Are we going to go the path of bigger government, more intervention in our daily lives where the government actually, you know, does play a meaningful role in our daily lives here,

which I don't want to happen? And on every single issue from foreign affairs, I mean, right now, You're seeing just mayhem in every corner of the world from the Middle East to Eastern Europe to, you know, China's breathing down Taiwan's neck in Southeast Asia, you know, foreign affairs to economics where you're going to have a decision. I mean, people aren't thinking about early next year. We're going to have to re-up the tax cuts that came from the Trump presidency. Are we going to do that? Or are we going to be more taxed and more regulated? All these different issues are coming back to, I think, core principles that are,

at stake in this election cycle. So I do believe this is one of those elections that we'll look back on and say, that was a really, really important election. Cliff, one final question for you. And this pertains specifically to the book, The Darkness Has Not Overcome. What is one of the things that you hope readers take away from the book, especially those who may be feeling discouraged or disillusioned by the current state of politics and society today? Yeah, thank you for asking that. I mean, I'll go back to the title of the book, the darkness has not overcome. It comes from the gospel of John 1-5. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

This is a promise from Scripture that we can lean on even in the darkest of times, that Scripture makes it clear, the good guys win. We can skip to the end of the book, the good guys win. It's hard not to discourage at the moment, and we got work to do, and we need to do everything that we can to spread the gospel and fight for policies that we believe in government, all these different things are very important. But even in the darkest times, we can lean on that promise that the darkness will not overcome this, that we have a hope that is bigger than our politics and it's found in our relationship with God. Cliff, I'm so glad

the book is doing well. I encourage our daily signal listeners to pick up a copy wherever books are sold or online. Thank you so much for writing it and sharing your experiences and advice with us today. Rob, thanks for having me. I love the Heritage Foundation. and love the Daily Signal, love everything that you guys do. So it's an honor to be on with you. You bet. Thanks, Cliff.

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