Erick Erickson: I spoke to a Trump friend who said Trump was bragging about using that word.

[moriah]

11. This may sound insane, but I did appreciate...

... RedState's efforts to try to be something better than the true shithole of conservative commentary we all know and loathe.

And Erick was a part of that. He fought the Paul-bot invasion hard. And if I recall correctly, he was, at least originally, a NeverTrumper.

I looked up this piece written by him near the election, and if you get past the fact he bashes Hillary and liberalism badly (he's a capital-C Conservative, what do you expect?), his strongest criticisms are of Trump and Christians who support and excuse him.

https://www.themaven.net/theresurgent/erick-erickson/reconsidering-my-opposition-to-trump-jX_tP5wgbUOoufswmJytIA?full=1

Link is only to show the context of this very powerful excerpt, not to promote the RW propaganda elsewhere in it:

The American spirit eschews the idea of a strong man in Washington fixing all our problems. We are supposed to be against the imposition of values set by Washington and instead should embrace our heterogeneity as a people. Not only does Donald Trump not do that, but his views pervert the liberal order of things as much as Clintonian illiberalism. Clinton offers a tyranny of the minority and Trump offers a tyranny of the majority. Clinton offers neither safety nor freedom and Trump offers safety at the expense of freedom. While I see Clinton as having no virtue, I see Donald Trump corrupting the virtuous and fostering hatred, racism, and dangerous strains of nationalism.

More importantly, while I think Hillary Clinton will do long term damage to the country, I believe Donald Trump will do far more damage to the church, which must be my chief priority. A Clinton Administration may see the church besieged from the outside, but a Trump Administration will see the church poisoned from within.

I see it happening even now. This past Friday I debated the merits of Trump and sat next to a Christian who argued that because God chose sinners, we should choose Trump. She argued that a bunch of other Presidents were terrible, immoral people so we should be okay with Trump. She argued that God chose Abraham, Samson, and David, so we should choose Trump.

I do not recall John F. Kennedy writing books bragging about his affairs. I do not recall Bill Clinton telling a television audience he wanted to have sex with his daughter. How far a Christian must fall to justify the low morals of one man by tearing down the reputations of others in sometimes exaggerated manners. And I do recall God choosing Abraham, Samson, and David and all of them repenting of their sins. That repentance stands in studied contrast to Donald Trump who has three times said he never had to ask for forgiveness and only recently said his advance of the church, if he is elected, might be the only thing that gets him into Heaven.

Erick Erickson is not our "friend". I disagree with him vehemently about fiscal conservatism, about many of his beliefs. Nearly all of them, in fact.

But I have to admire the strength of conviction to make him say all of that, even after admitting his own temptation to support Trump just to not have Hillary. Very few people who have wrapped themselves in Christianity have condemned the amorality of Trump, or called out the idiocy of suggesting Trump is King David.