Donald Trump in July 2023. Gage Skidmore/CC BY 2.0
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Donald Trump owes much of his presidential win in 2016 to evangelical Christian voters, who overwhelmingly supported him, despite the fact that he’s not an evangelical and often fails to uphold their purported values.
He did it in a few ways, but Doug Pagitt says it had a lot to do with who he said he would appoint to his cabinet — from Betsy DeVos, to Ben Carson, to Mike Pence.
Pagitt is an evangelical pastor who has spent the years since Trump was elected traveling the country, trying to convince evangelicals that they don’t have to vote for him. He’s the executive director of the group Vote Common Good, and they’ll be in Arizona on the border hosting events next month.
The Show spoke with Pagitt about his work, his motivation and the issues at hand — including abortion. The conversation was recorded before Trump changed his position on abortion laws and said he supports letting the states decide the issue. Pagitt also talked about how Trump gained the trust of evangelicals who were initially very skeptical of him.