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Trump Hits Back at Accusers by Promising to Refute Their ‘Lies’

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Following a story in The New York Times on Wednesday that featured four women going on the record to accuse Donald Trump of inappropriately touching them, the Republican presidential nominee fired back hard during a rally in West Palm Beach, Fla., Thursday.

“These vicious claims about me of inappropriate conduct with women are totally and absolutely false,” Trump exclaimed.

He continued, “And the Clintons know it, and they know it very well. These claims are all fabricated. They’re pure fiction, and they’re outright lies. These events never, ever happened, and the people that said them meekly fully understand.”

In addition to denying the accusations made by his accusers, Trump said he had evidence that would prove his innocence.

“We already have substantial evidence to dispute these lies, and it will be made public in an appropriate way and at an appropriate time, very soon,” he said.

This all comes on the heels of Trump’s apologizing for comments he made in 2005 while with Access Hollywood host Billy Bush, where the real estate mogul bragged about trying to sleep with a married woman and boasted that because he was rich and famous, women would let him do anything to them, including grabbing their genitals.

Trump described these comments as “locker room talk” when questioned by moderator Anderson Cooper about them during Sunday’s presidential debate.

He also said it was simply “talk,” contrasting it with the alleged sexual misconduct of former President Bill Clinton, the husband of his opponent, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Trump also said Thursday he believed the accusations from the four women were part of a coordinated effort to take him down.

“Now we address the slander and libels that was just last night thrown at me by the Clinton machine and The New York Times and other media outlets as part of a concerted, coordinated and vicious attack,” he said.

Trump said the timing of the allegations — matching up directly with recent document dumps by WikiLeaks that were unfavorable to Hillary Clinton — was not something that happened by chance.

“It’s not [a] coincidence that these attacks come at the exact same moment and all together at the same time as WikiLeaks releases documents exposing the massive international corruption of the Clinton machine, including 2,000 more emails just this morning.”

Trump’s attacks on The New York Times followed a letter his lawyers wrote to the newspaper Wednesday threatening a lawsuit over its “libelous” and “defamatory” article if it did not retract what was written about the four accusers. (For more from the author of “Trump Hits Back at Accusers by Promising to Refute Their ‘Lies'” please click HERE)

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Seven Things the Donald Trump Wrecking Ball Has Exposed in Our Culture

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It was former governor Jeb Bush who first referred to Donald Trump as the “chaos candidate.” Now, Lance Wallnau, an out-of-the-box Christian thinker and businessman, has dubbed Trump “God’s chaos candidate,” writing a book by this title (with the subtitle, “Donald J. Trump and the American Unraveling”).

Wallnau believes that God is using Trump as a “wrecking ball to the spirit of political correctness,” claiming, “His emergence is such a destabilizing threat to the vast deal making machinery embedded in both parties that he has the unique distinction of being rejected by both liberal Democrats and establishment Republicans at the same time.”

Whether Wallnau is right in all of his beliefs remains to be seen (I’m scheduled to interview him next Wednesday, October 19, live, from 2-3 PM, EST, and I’ll be sure to ask him lots of probing questions, since he strongly supports Trump for president), but what is clear to me is that God is using Trump as a wrecking ball of sorts, and the results are not pretty.

What has this human wrecking ball helped expose?

1) Trump has helped to expose the carnality of the culture.

It was Donald Trump who initially delighted his crowds by dropping F- bombs, and it is Donald Trump whose borderline profane tweets ignite his followers today. The crasser, the better!

But Trump is not alone in his carnality. His words and actions have encouraged his supporters to engage in the most profane rhetoric, as they not only defend him but also feel empowered by his example.

2) Trump has helped to expose the superficiality of the culture.

Candidate Trump remains a reality TV star, and much of his political appeal is tied to his rock star status.

To be sure, candidate Obama took on rock star status during his first presidential campaign, but as undeserved as Obama’s stardom was, it had a very different feel than the stardom of Trump. That’s why I wrote back in May that he was “a National Enquirer candidate for a Jerry Springer generation.”

Now, in saying this, I do not mean that Trump has not struck a chord with many Americans, for whom he has provided a voice, and I don’t mean that people are not voting for him because of his policies. I simply mean that his candidacy has helped bring our superficiality to the surface.

3) Trump has helped to expose the vulgarity of our culture.

Forget about the release of the 2005 videotape with Trump’s horrific comments about women. That’s news from 11 years ago.

We’re talking about the candidate who boasted about the size of his manhood during a debate in the primaries.

And now, with his opponent’s husband being an even easier target, the most recent presidential debate (I use the term “presidential” with hesitation) degenerated into rhetoric like, “Yeah, what I said was bad, but what he did was even worse.”

The other day, I spent a few seconds browsing the Drudge Report and then the Huffington Post, in both cases just looking at the most prominent headlines, after which I felt like I needed to take a shower to get the dirt and grime off of me. These websites were absolutely in the gutter.

Does anyone think that if the battle for the White House was between, say, Jeb Bush and Bernie Sanders, that the headlines would be as vulgar and debased? (And yes, on Drudge, there are now accusations of impropriety directed against President Obama as well.)

4) Trump has helped to expose an unhealthy nationalism.

I certainly recognize that many Americans are deeply upset with the direction of our nation (for good reason), and Trump has appealed to their frustration and anger, promising to turn the ship around.

But Trump has also helped stir up an almost rabid, America-first nationalism (whether intentionally or not), one that can easily lead to xenophobia, racism, and more, one that feeds on these very attitudes and mindsets. In keeping with this, a White Supremacist website claimed that it was “the Jews” who were behind the release of the damning 2005 video tape.

I am not connecting Trump with this website (obviously) and I am not stating that he himself is a racist or a xenophobe. I’m simply saying that his campaign has caused these sentiments to surface with a vengeance.

5) Trump has helped to expose the corruption of the political system.

There are many Christians who feel that the Hillary vs. Trump presidential race is a sure sign of divine judgment on America, as if God is giving us over to our foolishness.

At the same time, Trump’s refusal to play the standard political game has helped reveal the power of the political establishment, both Republican and Democrat, and with that, the corruption of the political establishment. Will we ever look at these parties in the same way again?

6) Trump has helped to expose the massive divisions among evangelicals.

This is not just a matter of a difference of opinion. It is a matter of one evangelical leader claiming that any Christian who votes for Trump is guilty of idolatry and another evangelical leader claiming that any Christian who does not vote for Trump will be held accountable by God and will have the blood of the unborn on his or her hands.

One group asks, “As a Christian, how can you possibly vote for such a narcissitic, proud, vulgar, potty-mouthed, short-tempered, inexperienced man who is absolutely unfit for the presidency?”

The other group responds, “As a Christian, how can you not vote against Hillary Clinton and how can you not recognize that we’re not electing a Pastor in Chief but a Commander in Chief? God is raising up Trump!”

Again, I’m not blaming Donald Trump for these divisions (and I’ve barely scratched the surface in detailing them). To the contrary, these divisions were already there (even down to the meaning of “evangelical”); Trump’s presidential run has just helped to reveal them.

7) Trump has helped to expose the collusion of the liberal media with the Democrat Party.

I don’t doubt for a moment that if Ted Cruz was the Republican candidate, the liberal media would be doing everything in its power to bring him down, and this would have been true 10 years ago (and longer) as well as today.

But it appears that the media that gave Trump endless, free time on its networks during the primaries is the same media now seeking to bring him down, lending credence to the allegation that the liberal networks (at least some of them) helped prop Trump up during the primaries because he would be the easiest target to bring down in the general election.

Whether or not this is true, the media’s radical liberal bias and pro-Hillary sentiments cannot be denied, to the point of almost being shouted out by the moderators during the presidential debates. Or should we think nothing of a moderator arguing a policy position with Trump, as if he was debating her (Martha Raddatz) rather than Hillary?

The bottom line for me is simple, regardless of who you plan to vote for (and I don’t write this to discourage a vote for Trump): God has used Trump to expose a lot of what is wrong with America, and it is not a pretty sight. (For more from the author of “Seven Things the Donald Trump Wrecking Ball Has Exposed in Our Culture” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Battleground State Freefall for Trump Continues

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With less than four weeks remaining in the 2016 race it couldn’t look much worse the campaign of Donald Trump. His free fall in key battleground state polling has continued unabated. What makes it even more concerning for Trump is that most of the battleground state polling has not even taken into account the Access Hollywood audio tape.

As usual, I took a look at the RealClearPolitics polling average in 14 battleground states on Wednesday afternoon, October 12, 2016. It was compared to the data from the previous week. In 11 of those 14 states Trump lost ground to Clinton, one state showed no change, and in two states Trump showed a slight up tic.

Clinton now leads in 10 of the 14 states shown in the week-by-week graphics below. Trump leads in four. Clinton leads by over six points or more in six of those states, Trump leads by greater than six in one of them. Of particular concern to Trump is Arizona, where he now holds a slim one point margin.

If the election were held today, Trump would lose in an Electoral College rout.

As an indicator of how bad Trump’s situation is, look at this tweet from the Marquette University Law School polling department. It illustrates how Trump’s numbers deteriorated after the release of the Billy Bush conversation last Friday.

That is shocking. Trump went from a one point lead pre-tape to a 19 point deficit two days later.

Trump’s problems are compounded by the fact that instead of going on offense on Hillary Clinton, like he did at the debate this week, he has spent the majority of his time attacking his fellow Republicans for not loving him enough.

It’s going to be a long three weeks for the Trump campaign. (For more from the author of “Battleground State Freefall for Trump Continues” please click HERE)

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Miller: Apparently Murkowski Would Rather Have A Hillary Clinton Presidency

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Anchorage, Alaska. October 11, 2016 — Joe Miller reacted on Tuesday to Lisa Murkowski’s decision not to back Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and her forced resignation from the Alaska Republican Party State Central Committee.

On Friday, Murkowski stated, “I cannot and will not support Donald Trump for president. He has forfeited the right to be our party’s nominee.”

“Presumably Murkowski’s proclamation that she will not support Trump means she would prefer to see Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office,” said Miller.

“Though it’s now official, the truth is Lisa Murkowski left the Republican Party a long time ago,” he added.

She has now lost her right to vote in the Alaska Republican Party, and is officially a Republican-In-Name-Only.

In 2010, Murkowski reneged on her word and enlisted the help of Democrats to run against the Republican Party nominee for U.S. Senate.

She was the most liberal “Republican” up for re-election then, and she is once again now.

She voted 72 percent of the time with Obama during the last Congress, while touting in campaign ads that she’s “The Conservative Voice for Alaska” in Washington, D.C.

Her votes have earned her an “F” rating from the Conservative Review, FreedomWorks, and Heritage Action.

Even disgraced New York Democrat Congressman Charlie Rangel earned a higher score with Conservative Review.

“A Hillary Clinton presidency would be a disaster for the country, keeping us on Barack Obama’s road to ruin. If she wins, the Supreme Court will be lost for a generation,” said Miller.

Joe Miller is a limited government Constitutionalist who believes government exists to protect our liberties, not to take them away. He supports free people, free markets, federalism, the Constitutional right to life, the 2nd Amendment, religious liberty, American sovereignty, and a strong national defense.

Donald Trump Claims ‘the Shackles’ Have Now Been Taken off His Campaign

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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is now celebrating his freedom from the GOP establishment, tweeting out a message on Tuesday declaring it’s “so nice” to be unchained.

Over the past few days, several Republicans have withdrawn their endorsement of the presidential nominee after a 2005 hot mic tape surfaced which showed him bragging about touching and kissing women without their consent. Trump later apologized in a video, calling it “locker room” banter.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said he would no longer defend Trump, which has sparked a battle the two. Trump accused the nation’s top elected Republican of being a “very weak and ineffective leader.”

Ryan has not formally rescinded his endorsement of Trump, but his recent comments indicate he believes Republican members of the House are better off going their own way as they run for re-election.

“The speaker is going to spend the next month focused entirely on protecting our congressional majorities,” Ryan’s spokeswoman, AshLee Strong, said in a statement Monday.

“Paul Ryan is focusing the next month on defeating Democrats, and all Republicans running for office should probably do the same,” another Ryan spokesperson added Tuesday.

Throughout Tuesday morning, Trump continued to tweet out attacks aimed at the political establishment.

Some Republican leaders have indicated they wanted Trump to step aside so that his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, can lead the ticket. But Pence said in a CNN interview Monday that he plans on staying loyal to Trump.

“As Trump’s numbers crater, many House and Senate Republicans will find themselves on the wrong side of polling trends,” said Joshua Huder, a senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University in Washington. “They can only distance themselves so much.” (For more from the author of “Donald Trump Claims ‘the Shackles’ Have Now Been Taken off His Campaign” please click HERE)

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Why I Serve on the Catholic Advisory Committee of the Trump/Pence Campaign

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In the first presidential debate, Hilary Clinton paraphrased words attributed to the great French writer Alexis de Tocqueville: “America is great because America is good. If America ever stops being good, it will stop being great.” Those words were probably not written by him. Nor were these words,

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers — and it was not there. … in her fertile fields and bound less forests — and it was not there … in her rich mines and her vast world commerce — and it was not there. … In her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution — and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.

I accepted the invitation to the Catholic Advisory group to Trump/Pence 2016 campaign because I believe these words are true, no matter who wrote them.

The American Founding

Our age is reeling under what Pope Benedict XVI called a “dictatorship of relativism.” Relativism says there are no objective truths. The American founders were not relativists. They declared independence with the bold words “We Hold These Truths.”

They affirmed that fundamental human rights were endowed by the Creator. The Catholic Church affirms these truths. But it just doesn’t affirm them in theory. It demands that we work to promote and defend them. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (numbers 2239, 2240) says very clearly that we citizens have the duty to work for “the good of society in a spirit of truth, justice, solidarity, and freedom” as an act of gratitude for what we have been given. Then it says:

Submission to legitimate authorities and service of the common good require citizens to fulfill their roles in the life of the political community. Submission to authority and co-responsibility for the common good make it morally obligatory to pay taxes, to exercise the right to vote, and to defend one’s country.

As a Catholic clergyman, I take this duty seriously. I am grateful to my country and love the United States, and very concerned for her future. This election matters. It also matters to the Republican Party that it hear the Catholic voice strongly.

The Right to Life and Religious Freedom

First among the truths our nation’s founders declared is the Right to Life. This is not a right our nation now fully recognizes. Abortion is legal in the United States. Innocent children in the womb are being killed by surgical instruments, chemical weapons or suction, at any time and for any reason. Every procured abortion is a violation of the Natural Law Right to Life.

We have no excuse. We know these children are our brothers and sisters. We offer surgery to them. We prosecute someone who takes their lives in the commission of another crime. We take 4D and 3D images of these children and send them to friends. We know what we are doing and are culpable as a Nation.

The next president could name four Justices to the United States Supreme Court. Those appointments will determine if this horrible practice continues. Even just two could shift the balance and change the law for generations. Donald Trump affirms the Right to Life and Hilary Clinton denies it.

The Constitution protects religious freedom. It requires the government to accommodate religious faith, but now we find it increasingly treated with hostility. I don’t need to go over the examples.

Just think of the baker who can’t bake a cake celebrating a same-sex “marriage” because of her deeply held religious conviction about marriage being persecuted and fined. Or the Little Sisters of the Poor. Or the growing effort to compel Christian institutions to deny sexual difference and conform to the radical gender identity agenda. There are many more examples, and the number is growing.

Our founding fathers understood that the nation they’d created couldn’t survive without a strong religious people. In 1798 John Adams proclaimed, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. … Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Our founders understood that the free exercise of religion goes beyond the freedom to worship within church buildings. They knew it included bakers baking cakes and nuns caring for the poor. Donald Trump affirms religious freedom. He will correct the abuses unleashed by the Johnson Amendment which gags the speech of the Church and support the First Amendment Defense Act. Hilary Clinton opposes both and is hostile toward the Church and religious freedom.

Marriage and Family and School Choice

The rights of children and the common good are best secured by recognizing the uniqueness of faithful monogamous marriage above all other relationships. The family is the first society, first economy, first school, first civilizing and mediating institution and first government, and the first place for the formation of virtue and character in children. This is both common sense and my Church’s teaching.

In rejecting marriage, the United States Supreme Court in its Obergefell opinion erred. In the dissent of Chief Justice Roberts, he noted “the majority’s decision is an act of will, not legal judgment. The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution or this Court’s precedent.” He was correct.

Donald Trump will protect the rights of the Church to advocate for marriage and the family free from governmental coercion and persecution. Hilary Clinton will not.

The founders also understood the parents right and duty to direct their children’s education. So does the Catholic Church. The Catechism calls the right of parents to choose a school for their children “fundamental” and says that the government has “the duty of guaranteeing this parental right and of ensuring the concrete conditions for its exercise” (number #2229).

Donald Trump supports school choice. Hilary Clinton is opposed to it.

Good Government and Economic Freedom

Finally, two other areas guided my choice to join the Catholic Advisory Group. They are matters of prudential judgement, meaning that people who hold the same principles may have different ideas about how to act upon those principles. In many cases of prudential judgment, I find myself in agreement with the Trump/Pence campaign and opposed to the Clinton/Kaine campaign.

First, I affirm the principle of subsidiarity. Governing should first occur at the lowest level and any other governing entity should defer and assist the smallest governing unit, not usurp their role.

Donald Trump will devolve government back to the state and local levels. He will recognize the necessity of supporting mediating associations, those groups like the family and churches that stand between the individual and the state, that make up what we call “civil society.” Hillary Clinton advocates increased centralization of power at the federal level and letting government over-ride mediating institutions.

Second, I believe in a truly free economy. By that I mean one that should not be controlled by either a federal bureaucracy or a corporatist class. The free economy will expand participation while promoting enterprise and awarding initiative. After reviewing the economic policies of Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton, I determined Trump promotes economic freedom.

Conclusion

I accepted the invitation to the Catholic Advisory Group to the campaign of Donald J. Trump to offer the kind of policy analysis I have expressed in this essay to the campaign. (For more from the author of “Why I Serve on the Catholic Advisory Committee of the Trump/Pence Campaign” please click HERE)

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GOP Women Stand by Donald Trump, Blast Those Jumping Ship Over ‘Antique Locker-Room Talk’

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Elected female members of the Republican Party’s national governing body, joined by state lawmakers and county-level party officials, are rallying to Donald Trump’s side.

“I am still solidly behind Mr. Trump,” said Minnesota state Sen. Carrie L. Rudd, a Republican. “Why are we even talking about locker-room comments from 11 years ago when there are so many important issues at hand? The people who supported Trump still do.”

The Republican women began to circle the wagons around their party’s presidential nominee after a string of big names loudly parted company with Mr. Trump in the wake of a press-led attack involving leaked live-microphone sexual comments by him about women.

“Those that are jumping ship are establishment GOP that never supported him in the first place,” Mrs. Rudd said.

Some female lawmakers and party officials said Mr. Trump’s lewd comments managed to alienate more women, but those who remained on his side spelled out what he needed to do to recover in the town hall debate Sunday night in St. Louis with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. (Read more from “GOP Women Stand by Donald Trump, Blast Those Jumping Ship Over ‘Antique Locker-Room Talk'” HERE)

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Leaked Memo Shows Democrats Targeting Trump Before He Was a Candidate, Manipulating Election

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Donald Trump was a political target of the Democratic National Committee two months before he officially joined the 2016 presidential race, according to an email released by WikiLeaks on Monday.

The April 7, 2015, email from Hillary Clinton’s campaign to the DNC is designed to help make anyone nominated by the Republican Party “unpalatable” to the voters. It states that the goals of the Clinton campaign and the DNC are “one and the same.”

The email labels as “Pied Piper” candidates three men who, the campaign believes, would move the GOP in a direction that would make it hard for Clinton to lose the presidential race. The memo lists the eventual GOP nominee as well as Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson as “Pied Pipers.” At that point, only Cruz had publicly said he was running for the White House.

“[W]e don’t want to marginalize the candidates, but make them more ‘Pied Piper’ candidates who actually represent the mainstream Republican Party,” the memo says.

It says Democrats should work with the media to boost such candidates.

“We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to [take] them seriously,” the memo reads.

The memo also suggests three overall approaches to protect Clinton. They are:

1) Force all Republican candidates to lock themselves into extreme conservative positions that will hurt them in a general election;
2) Undermine any credibility/trust Republican presidential candidates have to make inroads to our coalition or independents;
3) Muddy the waters on any potential attack lodged against HRC.

The memo suggests that Democrats should “use the [Republican primary] field as a whole to inflict damage on itself similar to what happened to Mitt Romney in 2012. The variety of candidates is a positive here, and many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right.”

After suggesting starting points to “undermine” the more establishment candidates the DNC expected to be running, the memo called for the start of a wide-ranging development of material to use against the GOP’s candidates.

“As we all know, the right wing attack machine has been building its opposition research on Hillary Clinton for decades,” the memo reads.

“The RNC et al has been telegraphing they are ready to attack and do so with reckless abandon. One way we can respond to these attacks is to show how they boomerang onto the Republican presidential field. The goal, then, is to have a dossier on the GOP candidates on the likely attacks HRC will face.”

Those areas were “transparency & disclosure; donors & associations; and management & business dealings.”

The DNC memo says, in essence, that all dirt was good dirt.

“In this regard, any information on scandals or ethical lapses on the GOP candidates would serve well. We won’t be picky. Again, we think our goals mirror those of the DNC,” the memo adds. (For more from the author of “Leaked Memo Shows Democrats Targeting Trump Before He Was a Candidate, Manipulating Election” please click HERE)

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Ryan Tells Republicans He Will Focus on House Races, Won’t Help Trump

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House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., told fellow Republicans on Monday that he has washed his hands of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump and will focus on maintaining the Republican majority in the House.

“The speaker is going to spend the next month focused entirely on protecting our congressional majorities,” said AshLee Strong, Ryan’s spokeswoman.

According to those involved with the call, Ryan said he will not defend Trump or in any way support the billionaire’s campaign. He also said that he will not publicly withdraw his endorsement of Trump.

Ryan said he will devote “his entire energy making sure that Hillary Clinton does not get a blank check with a Democrat-controlled Congress,” the Associated Press reported, taking Ryan’s means to words he does not believe Trump can defeat Clinton in November.

As for other members of the House, Ryan told them “to do what’s best for you in your district,” the Associated Press reported.

Republicans currently hold the majority in both houses of Congress. Throughout the campaign, Republican leaders have worried whether a lackluster showing on Election Day for Trump could put those majorities at risk.

The Republican National Committee is also having a conference call with its members on Monday.

Ryan issued a statement Friday condemning Trump’s conduct in a leaked 2005 video in which Trump spoke graphically about his pursuits of women.

“Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified,” Ryan said Friday. “I hope Mr. Trump treats this situation with the seriousness it deserves and works to demonstrate to the country that he has greater respect for women than this clip suggests.”

Since that video was leaked, many Republicans have withdrawn their support for Trump.

CNN reported that during the call, Ryan’s decision to back away from Trump was met with disapproval by some congressmen. Ryan then made it clear that although he would keep his distance from the presidential campaign, he would not publicly break with his party’s nominee.

Earlier Monday, Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager, told CBS This Morning that she hoped Ryan would stand by Trump. She also said that Republicans abandoning Trump may have a political price to pay, noting that Ryan was booed by Trump supporters over the weekend after disinviting Trump from an event in the wake of the controversial video’s release. (For more from the author of “Ryan Tells Republicans He Will Focus on House Races, Won’t Help Trump” please click HERE)

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Why All the Fuss Over the Trump Sex-Comments Tape?

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I’m not writing this to defend Donald Trump or to minimize the despicable nature of his comments captured on video in 2005. Not a chance.

Nor am I writing this to convince NeverTrumpers to vote for him.

My own wife, Nancy, has told me repeatedly that she could not vote for him, despite the possibility of Hillary getting elected. (Of course, she will not vote for Hillary either.)

Instead, I’m writing this to ask those who once supported Trump, like my highly esteemed, Christian brother Wayne Grudem, a fellow-professor and theologian, why the video tape changed things.

Prof. Grudem wrote, “There is no morally good presidential candidate in this election. I previously called Donald Trump a ‘good candidate with flaws’ and a ‘flawed candidate’ but I now regret that I did not more strongly condemn his moral character. I cannot commend Trump’s moral character, and I strongly urge him to withdraw from the election.”

Certainly, I commend Prof. Grudem for his integrity and for acknowledging what he now feels was an erroneous endorsement of Trump. In fact, just a few days ago, I wrote a piece questioning whether I will endorse another candidate in the future, having previously endorsed Sen. Cruz.

But my issue is simply this: Why the surprise now? Did anyone really think the tape misrepresented who he was in 2005 and who he likely continued to be.? Did any of us think that he didn’t sexualize women, that he didn’t lean into his star power, that he didn’t boast about his many (alleged) sexual trysts? Why the outrage and shock now?

Even if Trump changed in certain ways since 2005 — perhaps he has been more faithful to Melania and more involved with their kids — the character he displayed throughout the election process indicated some very deep, moral flaws, making him the least likely poster boy for the evangelical right.

During the primaries, I issued numerous words of warning and concern about Donald Trump, in writing, on radio, and on video, also making clear that these warnings were in the context of the primaries, when we had other, more viable candidates for president. (Obviously, this was simply my opinion.)

Once it came to Trump vs. Hillary, my posture has been that I cannot vote for Hillary but that Trump could earn my vote, and that remains my position until today.

I would like to be able to vote for him, and I do hope that he will heed the godly advice that is being given to him and learn to humble himself before God and people. But his failings and flaws are such that I still have concerns about helping to elect him as president, despite the dire possibility of a Hillary presidency.

But these are just my personal opinions, and I do not write this to persuade or to influence. My purpose in writing is to ask those who once backed Trump but do so no longer: Why the surprise at his past conduct? Weren’t his weaknesses and flaws shouting aloud to the nation over the last year via tweet and spoken word?

I never for a moment bought into the “Saint Donald” rhetoric, questioning other Christian leaders who embraced him as such. (I don’t mean to deny that he has helped people privately and has a compassionate, caring side. I simply mean that to present him as a wonderfully Christian man is to be self-deceived.)

And I understand the convictions of the NeverTrumpers, although I have never identified with this group. (I once used the hashtag in a tweet but decided not to do so again.)

My issue is with the political leaders and Christian leaders who endorsed Donald Trump and who worked to help elect him but are now distancing themselves from him in shock and dismay. Who did you think you were dealing with?

I know he can be gracious and humble in person, and there are surely many positive qualities about him.

But if you’re going to endorse him, do so with your eyes wide open, or don’t endorse him at all.

The man who once boasted about his adulterous encounters with famous women and who opened a casino with a massive strip club inside but felt he didn’t need to ask God for forgiveness is the man you endorsed for president.

Had he renounced with shame his past life, that would be one thing.

Had he not insulted and degraded his political opponents (and other perceived opponents) in the most vile and cruel ways, crushing them at any cost so that he could advance politically, that would be one thing as well.

But he did not renounce his past or change his public ways, because of which, the only issue with the 2005 tape should not have been the tape itself but rather how he responded to it today.

I have colleagues who believe that God is raising up Trump the way He raised up Cyrus, pointing out that Cyrus was used by the Lord although he was a pagan king who did not know the God of Israel (see Isaiah 45:1-6, and note carefully the phrase “although you do not know Me” in v. 5-6).

I have no problem with this concept at all. As the old saying goes, let God be God (in other words, let Him do what He chooses to do in His way and for His purposes). So be it. As I’ve written before, I personally hope it’s true.

But for those who are having cold feet about Trump now, I ask again: Wasn’t it clear from day one that this was the man you were endorsing?

For all of us, then, from here on in, the lesson is simple and clear: Whatever we do, let’s do it with our eyes wide open and with our trust in God alone. (For more from the author of “Why All the Fuss Over the Trump Sex-Comments Tape?” please click HERE)

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