At the 2016 Republican National Convention, when I told Donald Trump’s “God whisperer” Paula White that he referred to her as his pastor, she said she was his spiritual adviser — as if that were some sort of “get out of jail free” card for her. And yet White worked hard in our conversation to convince me that the foul-mouthed person on the campaign trail was godly.
Then came her turn to speak at the convention. Most of the seats were empty when White took the stage, which says a lot about the interest attendees had in the words of Trump’s spiritual adviser.
It was as if their minds were already made up.
This was after Trump referred to a book of the Bible as “Two Corinthians” in a speech at Liberty University, the private Christian college where Jerry Falwell Jr. was president before a sex scandal forced him to resign later that year. This was after Trump mocked a journalist’s disability. Trump had shown what kind of person he was, and somehow still had evangelical Christians’ support.
But he must have feared there would be some limit to their capacity for cognitive dissonance, because he did not want evangelical voters to find out about his 2006 affair with Stormy Daniels. He paid her money to stay quiet days before the election. I don’t know if that’s what White spiritually advised him to do, but she went on to serve Trump at the White House, so she must have made peace with the deceit.