Kevin Williamson:
Donald Trump is no kind of Christian—he is a toxic blend of atheist and idolator—but he knows that those in the pews are his most unshakeable supporters and that he is going to need all of the support he can get as his failure to deliver on his absurd economic promises becomes a more painful and undeniable fact of everyday life for millions of Americans watching the national debt skyrocket even faster than their grocery bills. Trump wants to pose as a crusader, coming to the aid of persecuted Christians—but only when doing so is a very low-cost proposition. It is not clear that the abuse of Christians in Nigeria is anything more than incidental to the general banditry and oppression of Lakurawa et al.—it takes too credulous a view of the fig leaf of “zakat” covering ordinary robbery—but there are places in the world where the active, brutal, ruthless repression of Christians is a real thing: In the so-called People’s Republic of China, for example—but Trump is far too low a coward to try to do anything about that, in much that same way the Russian shadow fleet is permitted to flout U.S. sanctions while Venezuelan boats are blown out of the war on unsupported drug-war pretexts that would not render the attacks any less illegal or immoral even if they were true. It is not the case that all bullies are cowards, but many bullies are cowards, and Trump is one of those, as are many of the men and women who serve him.
… Every time Putin murders a hospital ward full of expectant mothers, you can count on Donald Trump to out-Mahatma even Mohandas K. Gandhi himself in speaking of peace. But a carelessly executed and bloodthirsty crusade on the probably pretextual and certainly exaggerated assertion that the victims of ordinary banditry, terrible as their situation is, are Christian martyrs threatened by scary-looking, fez-wearing, black Muslims? Sign the Trumpkins up for that.