Not that he needed to deny the accusations from those #fakenews documents published by Buzzfeed and reported on by CNN, but when President-elect Donald Trump did deny them, it’s interesting that he did not deny them on moral grounds.
Not to be too graphic but the documents, which appear to be faked, allege that Trump, while in Russia, had prostitutes pee on him. I guess that’s a thing. Who knows? But I guess the documents attempted to suggest that Russia had pics or vids of him and therefore we had a president who was compromised and blackmail-able.
But Trump’s denial was interesting in that it wasn’t about morality. One, he said he’s too smart for that. He said he warns his colleagues all the time about how small cameras are nowadays that you have to assume what you do might up on the news so be careful.
The other reason was that he’s “too much of a germaphobe” for the salacious report to be true.
So it’s not that he finds such accusations morally offensive, it’s just that he’s too germaphobic for that and he’s too smart to do it as well.
I find it interesting on two levels because firstly, I wonder if the political calculation was made that he shouldn’t go with morally outraged because he’s admitted to not being faithful to his wives in the past. I think it’s a little sad that our president can’t be morally disgusted by such things.
On the other hand, the media just doesn’t know what to do with Trump. Trump doesn’t make moral arguments like other Republicans. Almost never anyway. He typically talks about what works. And I’m not sure the media or the Democrats will know exactly how to deal with him. I mean, let’s be honest, short of getting tinkled on by Russian prostitutes, there’s probably no sex scandal that could possibly harm him. Think about it, the people who invented this fake document knew that they couldn’t just allege a sexual dalliance.
Let’s face it, a sexual encounter with a Russian prostitute would absolutely take down a President Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio precisely because their candidacy’s in large part are moral stances. But with Trump they had to up the ante in order to make an impact because they know no regular ol’ sexual misconduct would take him down.
It’s going to be interesting to see the lengths Trump’s enemies go to in order to take him down.
Christians in large part have agreed to go along with a Trump presidency because he’s promised to nominate pro-life judges and respect religious liberty. But we must know that, given time, President Trump will be faced with a decision with high moral stakes. And what works and what’s right aren’t always the same. In the end, decisions have to be based on something. And I would suspect that Trump’s thinking would, in the end, be more utilitarian than Christian. And those two ways of thinking will inevitably clash.
So please pray for Trump, his advisors, and for our country that the right decisions are made at the time.
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