When you go out to war against your enemies, and see horses and chariots and an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them, for the LORD your God is with you. – Deuteronomy 20:1

Christians’ ability to speak and live out the Word of God is under assault from the secular left. They seek to remove any trace of God or His people from the culture.

The ongoing assault against President Trump is part of this. In order to understand why this is the case, let us take a look at what the left has done to Trump in light of attacks on other Republican presidents before him.

The week before the raid on Trump’s home, George Parry published an article in The American Spectator, “The Democrats’ Looming Trial and Conviction of Donald Trump.” In it, he wrote:

We intend to hold everyone, anyone who was criminally responsible for the events surrounding January 6, for any attempt to interfere with the lawful transfer of power from one administration to another, accountable,” said Garland.

 

Who’s he kidding? Garland made it sound as if there is a chance that Trump might not be arrested and prosecuted. But, to anyone who has been paying attention, the intention of the Democrat-controlled federal government has always been and remains to be the legalized destruction of Donald Trump. It is, in fact, the whole purpose behind the illegally constituted Jan. 6 committee’s Soviet–style show trial, its contempt citations of Trump administration officials, and the follow-up supporting criminal cases by the FBI and Justice Department.

The attack on Trump comes from the same playbook Democrats have been using against Republicans for decades. It started at least as far back as Watergate, when Democrats took illegal activities by some Nixon aides—who acted without Nixon’s knowledge or support—and managed to parley that into overturning the results of a presidential election, in which Nixon won 97 percent of the electoral vote. They managed to twist and distort the evidence so badly that even Nixon thought that he had engaged in a coverup. But he had not. Nixon had his problems, but he broke no laws and committed no high crimes or misdemeanors. Yet Nixon was forced to leave.

The Democrats also took this route with presidents Reagan and Bush. First, it was the October Surprise conspiracy theory, where Democrats in Congress held hearings during the Reagan presidency to investigate whether George Bush traveled to Paris in October on an SR-71 spy plane to convince the Iranians not to release their American hostages until after the November 1980 presidential election. Congress finally rejected the theory—in 1992.

Next were the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings. These hearings were likely too late to throw Reagan out of office, but they hamstrung the last two years of his presidency and were perfectly timed to attempt to keep Vice President Bush from being elected president the following year.

After Bush did get elected, the October Surprise hoax was raised again. It received substantial coverage in the mainstream press, to the point that a January 1992 poll showed 55 percent of Americans believed the allegations. Bush had his own self-imposed problems, especially lying to the American people in 1988 when he said, “Read my lips. No new taxes,” but it is likely that propagation of the hoax played a role in his defeat in the 1992 election.

His son George W. was also the target of Democrats seeking to overturn presidential election results. One example is when U.S. Rep Dennis Kucinich, joined by 11 co-sponsors, filed articles of impeachment because of what they claimed were lies regarding weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for America’s invasion of Iraq. I do not think we should have invaded Iraq, but neither do I believe that Bush manufactured false evidence to push us into another war.

In these cases, the Democrats utilized a combination of pure fantasy (the October Surprise) and distortion and obfuscation (Watergate, etc.).

In the attacks on Trump, the Democrats have largely utilized fantasy and started doing so even before Trump won the Republican nomination. The efforts to prevent him from getting elected, overturn the election results, and prevent him from being re-elected were nonstop and are well documented. We need not repeat them here. It is worthwhile, though, to follow along with Parry’s explanation of the current attempt to stop him from being elected again and why the prosecution of Trump—and perhaps conviction—is seemingly inevitable.

Parry begins by drawing on his background as a federal and state prosecutor and defense lawyer: “A simple application of the basic criteria of criminological analysis points directly to the high likelihood of Trump’s prosecution. Those elements are motive, means, and opportunity. As explained below, the leftist ideologues in control of the federal government have the motive, the means, and the opportunity to arrest, prosecute, convict, and, quite possibly, imprison Trump.”

Parry goes on to examine the circumstances surrounding each of the elements he lists. As to motive, he writes:

The Biden regime and the Democrat party fear Trump and correctly perceive him as a major obstacle to their goal of — in the words of President Barack Obama — fundamentally transforming America. This was, of course, the reason for the congressional Democrats’ multiple impeachments of him.

 

Moreover, with every passing day, the Biden regime becomes increasingly desperate — and concomitantly more reckless – as its political support rapidly and inexorably plummets to historically low levels.

Not only, then, would prosecuting Trump distract the public from the Democrats’ failures, it would be a weapon against Trump, his supporters, and any politician who sought to follow him by attempting to halt the march of progressivism. At least, that is what the Democrats appear to believe.

When it comes to means, Parry notes the Democrats have at their disposal assets such as a “politicized FBI and Department of Justice” and “a district court that thus far has made clear its pro-Democrat and anti-Trump predisposition.” In short, Trump would be facing “a corrupt federal law enforcement establishment with a proven anti-Trump track record [that] stands ready to do the bidding of its political masters in the Biden White House.”

As far as opportunity, Parry explains the White House has the opportunity to convict Trump because “the FBI and DOJ don’t need strong or even plausible evidence of guilt. Why? Because the charges against him would be filed in the District of Columbia, which has a jury pool ready, willing, and able to convict Trump on the thinnest of pretexts. If the hated and demonized former president went to trial in Washington, does anyone believe that a D.C. jury would accord him the presumption of innocence or fairly and impartially decide his fate?”

Even on its own, the pursuit of Trump should be antithetical to biblical ethics and public policy. Despite the advice of those like David French, Christians need not take a wait and see approach before coming to the conclusion about the merits of the January 6 hearings, the New York attorney general’s actions, or the raid on Trump’s home. How many more fake dossiers, partisan investigations, star chambers, and cover-ups do we need to witness before coming to a decision?

When we put the pursuit of Trump in the context of progressives’ illegitimate and illegal efforts to prohibit or overturn the election of every Republican president since Eisenhower, Christians should understand that the focus of the efforts to remove Trump from the political scene is really an effort to undermine an American government and culture built on God’s Word.

The constitutional structures of federalism, checks and balances, enumerated powers, etc. were put into place because the founders strongly believed Augustine’s description of the moral depravity of men enslaved to their sin.

The founders were also influenced by the application of covenant theology to political philosophy by theologians such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Samuel Rutherford. As demonstrated in John Adams’ comment that “our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people,” most founders believed that the only path to civil liberty is through Christian liberty, where we are “set free from sin, [and] have become slaves of righteousness” (Romans 6:18). Only a people in a covenantal relationship with God and who have a government whose authority is subject to and limited by God’s Word can properly translate our Christian liberty into civil liberty.

The efforts by the secular left to restructure our government and render our elections meaningless are an attempt to remove the biblical limitations built into our government in order to create a centralized, tyrannical government. This should be of great concern to all Christians, regardless of one’s feelings about Trump. For those who cannot see the problem, we should pray for them.

For those of us who can see what is happening, we can take comfort that the LORD our God is with us. If He could defeat the armies of the Nephilim giants and other great kingdoms that sought to keep Israel out of the Promised Land, He can (if He chooses) certainly defeat the forces of the DOJ, FBI, and other forces of the Administrative State, no matter how big they seem to us. And whatever he decides to do with America, we can be confidant that He will keep His promises to Abraham and his offspring (Genesis 22:15-18). One day, God’s people will be as the stars of heaven filling and blessing and having dominion over all the earth.

This is a commentary published with the author’s permission. If you wish to submit a commentary to Texas Scorecard, please submit your article to submission@texasscorecard.com.

Bill Peacock

Bill Peacock is a research analyst and writer living in Austin, Texas. More of his writing can be found at ExcellentThought.net.

RELATED POSTS