The American Churchman: How’d Trump Do It?

Election Night Reactions and the Trump Victory

Hey, welcome everyone. We are live now on the American Churchman podcast. I don't have the intro video because I'm traveling. I'm actually with my brother right now and I was about to say New York. We're not in New York.

We're not in New York. We're in Tennessee. So here here he is so you can he's gonna have his own camera and We have with us today Matt Pearson as well my co-host for the American Churchman podcast and A first-time guest we have with us Colby Thielen who is kind of a numbers guy.

He's paid attention to the election pretty closely. He actually goes to seminary with Matt so we're gonna talk a little bit about the numbers and why. What happened last night happened as best as we can understand and why that was different than 2016.

I still have so many questions. Maybe some of them aren't possible to be answered at this point, but We're gonna get into an article the truth script has. And actually David's gonna talk about that and and then last but not least we'll talk about the implications for Christians.

So that's the format if you have any questions, you can ask them on Let's see. We were streaming on X. We're on YouTube. We're also on Facebook. So look forward to seeing questions or comments on there.

And of course the occasion for this podcast is what what happened? So something happens. Donald J. Trump, he's a president he's gonna be Donald J. Trump happened. I actually do have a question before so.

So Colby, I think we should probably get into the numbers first and answer some of those questions. But I'll just put this out there to get the whole discussion started. Someone asked me this who's a big supporter of my podcast and She it's actually funny the way she phrased that she said.

What if something happens to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris gets in before Trump is inaugurated how much damage could Kamala Harris do which I thought was funny because I think Joe Biden is also capable of doing damage, but.

But yeah, that's a I'll just throw that out there if anyone wants to take a crack at that I mean, I think there's a lot of damage someone could do but I don't know that they would. Any any predictions?

No predictions, but if you want the absolute worst possibilities. They are numerous. The president can try to instruct the Capitol Guard to go in there and like keep everybody in the Capitol so that I mean, I don't know what they would do.

I.

Refuse to certify the election is kind of the big one that some activists are pushing right now. But that's more of a function of Kamala at this point being vice president as she would oversee the joint session.

But the reality is. The most damage that Biden could do right now is probably pardoning. Whomever might be associated with wrongdoings, but that's about it. I.

Don't think internationally. The biggest thing I can think of is involving. Involving us in an international incident on on the heels of the inauguration or a really any time between now and. And January 21st would be you know.

Oh, I guess I guess it's war with Russia or it's I don't know boots on the ground in Israel or Iran, whatever.

I don't know. That's worst-case scenario that I can think of. I haven't heard what you're saying about left-wingers wanting to Contest the election results. I I saw a few accounts trying to say that we're better.

We're bigger because we're like we're not contesting and Donald Trump did four years. So you're actually saying though there are some people who want to challenge this. There's a people on Twitter. Yeah, how I don't even know on what basis.

The 14th Amendment, right?

Yes, and I think. To give some context these people live, you know all across America between 5th Street and 71st. Or whichever streets they are in New York City, you know, it's just kind of a Kind of a bubble, you know, nobody could possibly vote for Donald Trump that kind of thing and that's why.

They kind of have that opinion. There's a little bit of that in Los Angeles too, but nothing too crazy.

Yeah, they just can't believe that literally Hitler is gonna be the next president again. So popular vote, yeah, so maybe let's get into that. So I saw a chart that showed that his votes were actually diminished from last time.

He didn't actually have as many votes as he did in 2020 and yet somehow he won pretty like. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I would we call this I guess you'd call this a landslide some people we don't even know yet.

He's won every single swing state so far, right. Because they called. That was the that's when they called it, but I think they've since called Michigan for him. They've called Michigan. Yeah, it looks like Arizona's going that direction.

So.

Yeah, so how did that happen?

Well, well.

So I think it's important to start with the fact that not every vote is counted and this is going to be a common theme With how leftists are freaking out. I think about the vote counts that Kamala has gotten.

And that can be part of the explanation for why her vote count is so low. But I do anticipate Donald Trump to cross the 2020 and 2016 amounts that he achieved. He's currently at something like 72 and a half million votes and in 2020 he got 74 million and Again there's plenty of outstanding vote remaining even on the left coast.

So You know to me that's not really Much of an issue on the Trump part on the Commonwealth part. We can talk about all the different possibilities of why but I.

Would say if there if there actually is a drop-off and Trump votes It could just be the case that a lot of people that are MAGA. They're gonna be on the older side. And so within four years, they just pass away, you know.

So that is another possibility. But yeah, like Colby saying that they're still they're still counting because they they're not as efficient as Florida sadly.

Florida is an incredible Incredible. Oh Yeah, we're both I mean you guys. I think I were a little bit younger. We're both old enough to remember the 20 the 2000 election and.

I don't think either of us were. No, neither of us were alive because I was born 2001 and I believe me Colby. I'm a year older than you, right?

Yeah, so Matthew was born in May of oh one and I was born in November of oh one.

Back in the 1990s that it was a nutty it was a nutty time. No, we Around right? That's right. That's right. But Florida was a Florida was the swing state, you know. That was sort of like it all. Every election came down to for like a decade every election pretty much came down to.

What do we do with Florida? How do we get Florida? And now Florida is so what was like over a million votes, right?

Yeah more for trouble. Yeah there when you look at a if you look at the New York Times Their presidential map and you go to the shifts in 2020 and you go to the state of Florida. There's not a single county in the state of Florida.

I don't believe that actually there may be a little bit in the panhandle. I believe there's maybe two or three but only two or three counties that actually shifted. Blue. Every single other one.

Yep.

And even um. Even Broward County, which did not go for Trump. It's still shifted, right? So there is still a majority for um, there's still a majority for Kamala, but even that one it it shifted. It's insane.

It's actually crazy.

Right, so so it's important to remember that in 2016 Donald Trump won Florida by some hundred thousand votes. Somewhere around there in 2020. It was three hundred fifty thousand and now it's one point four million.

And.

Is that just in my country? Other parts of the country because they like the Santas and that's yeah.

Yes, that's that's. The main explanation is that because of how many people have moved here and because of particularly trends among the Hispanic community. All of a sudden what you're seeing is a movement right word in Florida and that was crystallized in this election.

It's also important to note Florida went more red than New York went blue.

Wow, that's nuts.

That's a so in other words like the the margin was greater for Trump than it was for Paris.

Yes, currently. Currently Donald Trump is sitting at fifty six point one percent. Kamala Harris is 43 in Florida. Harris went fifty five point eight to forty four point two and one New York by a mere nine hundred thousand votes.

I.

Didn't actually know that even though I'm I live in New York. I Heard about in New York was whether amendment two was gonna pass which it did but. Unfortunately, but that's crazy.

Well speaking of amendments at least in the state of Florida. We did very well amendment three and four.

Was abortion. Three was legal pot. Oh, so the legal pot was defeated. Yes by a larger margin actually. Then abortion.

They're like they're like, well, we don't really want abortion, but we definitely don't want pie. Yeah.

I.

Actually made a mistake on the podcast earlier because I had said that Arizona defeat they defeated the abortion Law there. Well last night they everyone said they all reported that that was true. And then I guess.

More numbers came in. But were you on that like mega contramundum podcast last night or which one are you?

I wasn't. Okay, they asked me about it. I was traveling. So I said no. Okay fair enough. Yeah. So we do have someone weighing in on the Arizona. We actually have a bunch of comments coming in. Maricopa County won't be finished until February.

It's got to be the most corrupt County like and maybe other than Fulton County, Georgia or Maybe Philly.

As Gordon Sanchez cried tears for the migrant today as he had empathy for the other like David French.

No one has heard from him. He's on. He went into the wilderness for.

They did Jewish guys.

In Florida, I'm not sure that's a.

Florida but actually nationally Jewish voters in 2020 went 68 for Biden and then 79 for Harris.

Oh.

They which is a why is so strange like get it like you really weird.

That's really weird. Trump like the Republican Party tried very hard to signal their support for Israel. Yeah over and above.

So, huh, and and it just didn't materialize in the Jewish community.

So maybe that's a good lesson for next time. Don't don't try to bend over so far. Because they're not gonna reward you with a vote anyway.

If I'm running the RNC, that's what I'd be saying. Yeah. Yeah. Christians also run in the RNC.

I saw Christians were Support not suppressed but like there they didn't have as strong of a vote this time too. Can you talk about that?

Christian Voting Patterns, Abortion, and Coalition Politics

Yeah, so obviously what you'll have is a varying number of factors there. One of them is that the older population in our country skews more Christian than the younger population does and so of course you'll have natural kind of.

Death.

In the Christian population There with the church triumphant now but then you'll also have younger Christians that are very passionate about political issues, but They see Preferences as being principles and so because of that they don't want to vote for particular candidates.

Now whenever you actually zoom in on the microscope on how white evangelicals voted It was actually about the same For Trump as it was in 2016 and 2020, which I know is very relevant For the purposes of this pod and whatnot, so that's all work you may say.

Sorry, I said alone will work. You may yes.

Yeah, yeah, so I'm Stephen Wolfe definitely had a good night. Ben's ice loft did not have a good night, unfortunately.

A.

Hardcore abolitionists are in there and some of them I noticed today I was I didn't want to like, you know say names because I want to protect the guilty here. I want to get along but I noticed one guy was like issuing Almost ultimatums today about like how you're you're you still need to work with us kind of thing.

And I'm like what like, you know, we we got there without your help. So what are you doing eating? I'm going in the crystals.

Yeah.

Yeah, but you know. Let's take the most charitable Interpretation here and say that you know, maybe. Maybe the Republican coalition embracing Arabs and embracing Jews which didn't pan out. The Arab thing did pan out by the way.

Did it but but but embracing other groups instead of white evangelicals is like Not the greatest thing. Well still look at the actual result in front of your face, you know. The fact of the matter is they were an excellent campaign.

Go ahead. Sorry. I was just saying it's coalition.

I think that what I've noticed over the entire election cycle is and this is with a multiplicity of groups, but you sort of have your pet issue and. There's you know, there's very good reasons. I mean abortion would be very high on this obviously.

I My conviction is that this election was about whether there is a nation. Whether there is a country. It's sort of like we either have a country or we don't but. If unless you can create some kind of a coalition this late in the game, you're talking about like, you know.

The other side holds almost every single facet of power, which is why it's so surreal and weird. I mean, I just pulled up all a conceding.

Just prior to this podcast, yeah.

Something crazy to think about on this part is that I think the Abolitionist white evangelicals and the abolitionist evangelicals in general actually in their vote and in their public. You know, you can call it grandstanding about their vote or whatever you want to call it.

They actually embraced the left's Framing of the issue because for the left this election was about abortion, right?

But.

Yeah on the right on the right. It's not about abortion. It's more about whether America is a nation. If you if you look at JD Vance's speech at the RNC The main point of this message was America is a nation.

It's a people in a place. Yes right, so. So that's kind of something interesting that I saw as a discrepancy.

The Meaning of the Election for Christians and the Nation

So here's the.

Kamala we call it Kamala.

She's. Come on.

Come on.

That's not what I expected. She seems pretty. She's a she angry. Is that. No she actually so the when she came out.

She came like to try to look super overjoyed. She was doing her laugh and she's like good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, and she said good afternoon. I think like seven or eight times when she came up.

But there was a lot of people giving her a lot of applause. I listened to it before where I got on this cast. I was writing a reading brief for one of my classes and I'm just like heck, you know Kamala is about to speak so I had to listen to her terrible.

Awful, I can't describe it that way. Music before I started playing and so my roommates like why are you listening that. I'm like Kamala's about to speak, bro. I gotta hear her concede and so yeah. Yeah, that's stupid.

That makes you wanna. But uh, yeah, so I mean she tried to have like be very enthusiastic and looked like she was you know. But we all know deep down behind closed doors. The joy is gone. I mean you saw Obama speaking.

I've never seen that man look so angry. They're oppressed. They're trying to keep up this appearance of joy and that's why they have like Tim Walz, you know. Like out there like that, you know, that's why they have him but the joy is gone.

They're coming. They're done.

Crystals and. To be honest, they were expecting the exact opposite. Oh, yeah. If you talk to insiders in the Harris campaign What they were wanting was for white women to show out for them. The reality is that Donald Trump won that demographic outright.

We love our white women. Thank you. And.

And I actually have an explanation for this which is that what they weren't accounting for. Was that. Yes, they had perhaps in the polls a raw lead among white women on the issue of abortion. The problem is that there are a lot of white women who vote who are married and Married white women are a Republican demographic and they are not as concerned about abortion, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, I wonder if the you know, DNC is only allowed to rig elections for like white men or something.

It's Hillary and now Kamala. We call her Kamala. Yeah.

They I don't know like something. Rob is very good at beating women.

Better than Doug.

Yeah, right.

I.

I'm still not over 2020 something. Sure. Well, that's that's. I don't know why they didn't do it again. Like why weren't there as many like 3 a .m.

Well, no, no, no, it's like it'd be more difficult to do it this time without being a.

Mailing voting literally they tried guys like like. There were multiple fraud Operations that were stopped by the Republicans. Which which this is something else to the reason why the Democrats didn't try that again.

Is that they were scared of the Laura Trump led RNC? That we're going to call them out on and every time they did it.

Which was phenomenally superior to.

Deborah I.

Don't even remember the name of the lady who was running it. Alaska. I'm a Daniel. I'm a Daniel. Yeah.

That's so interesting that they would be yeah, I maybe gave them a little too much credit because I thought well. They're gonna just repeat the same operate and I know kovat obviously gave them opportunities.

They didn't have this time, but still their early voting and I was like, we're not gonna find out for a while.

Well, you know assuming that Democratic operatives and assuming that Democratic Officials are intelligent. It's a little bit of a stretch, especially whenever you consider Who's at the top of the ticket Kamala Harris who's a basic sorority person and Tim Walz who's.

You know, mr. Magoo.

Yeah, yeah, maybe not difficult to the word during a debate.

I mean like yeah there their performance was disastrous like every step of the way. They just did the dumbest thing like I could. I was in disbelief when I saw Tim Walz in that debate With JD Vance and when he was just kind of like, yeah, like I I just lied basically.

Florida, Arizona, and the Electoral Map

Funny oh.

Guys some interesting news. They. I don't know when this happened, but I just pulled it up looking at the map. They finally called Alaska. Oh There we go. Now Trump is sitting at 295.

We thought to was it. 283 was like the best possible number that people thought he'd get and.

Man but that quickly opened up.

Yeah, how do you not win Virginia? I don't get how he wins Michigan and like move all the Midwest except Illinois and he can't win, Virginia. That's weird to me. So you didn't win Minnesota. Oh, you didn't mean women.

Okay, you know. Okay, I heard that was kind of in play.

One thing to keep in mind is that Virginia does have a very heavy population of government workers.

It's a Fairfax County and Loudoun County.

Yeah, which which was basically what swung the state in the first place if y 'all remember in 2014. We were staying up all night to watch. Think it was Mark Warner and Ed Gillespie. Yeah, get out in the Senate race and.

Eventually it got called at like midnight but they were shocked at how fast it was moving and that's because of government employees and. Now what you're seeing is a candidate that represents, you know political upheaval and government employees are not a huge fan.

So so that can be a factor. Another factor would be the heavy minority presence in Virginia. Trump despite his improvements among minorities still. Minorities just don't vote for Republicans at the end of the day.

Although this time some of them Did and I don't think. Impressive numbers.

Right, right.

There are a couple of notable exceptions to the rule John. We're going to say something.

I'm looking. I was looking at exit polls earlier and it didn't look to me like it was that big of a break like Florida. Significant. But In the rest of the country though, like I think the Latino voters make up what?

Latino men like 5 Latino women another 5 it was like 9 of the Total voter average is Latinos, which I thought was very small. Actually. I was a little surprised I thought I thought they'd have a better ground game also getting some of these illegal migrants to Who and I know this from living in California who actually do have Social security numbers and the rest to the polls in states where they didn't require voter ID.

So they probably did it just wasn't enough I guess. Sure.

Also, also remember that the Latino come sorry. The Latino population is concentrated in several states like New York, Florida.

Texas it's very urban. It's a very urban population as well.

It doesn't mean you don't tend to. They were changing that by the end because as I was traveling around like Biden was dumping them. People were saying in rural communities now it is.

Yeah, I mean I work in a rural county in Tennessee and for a school district and we got plenty but.

How much did Harambee and peanut factor into the selection.

Harambee had zero effect on this election. That was more 2016 election where he really swung it for Donald. You'll notice that in 2020. Well, no, you'll notice that in 2020. There was no real animal death that occurred that pulled at the hearts of white voters, but due to peanuts.

Sad demise. I believe that this actually very much invigorated a white American a white American to actually be like, okay. We need to elect Donald Trump. So peanut was definitely a large factor arguably the number one issue right above the immigration.

Probably eating the dogs and cats. I mean it wasn't just of course. Yeah, that's also how you that's also how you invigorate white women. What do white women love more than cutesy little animals? They don't really you know, some some women in this country are fine with abortion.

They don't really care about babies, but you give them you tell them they're eating the cats or eating the dogs and what you know. Their Disney Channel brain kicks into gear and that's how we invigorate Americans you say they're they're not they're doing bad things to animals you see what they did to Peanut and yeah, so they broke hard for Donald Trump.

Of course, I say all that in jest but um I do think there is a degree in which some people probably do see that, you know, because of the government overreach thing and.

Definitely not a deciding factor, but it's very easy. We have people in our fan base here who wrote in Harambee. Yeah. That's.

Okay.

All right.

Wow, you already have a.

Bionic crab in. I cannot be president. I will. My group chats will curse me. I can't do that. Yeah.

Abolitionism, the Law, and the Limits of Political Purism

So here's a serious question, what do we do is someone like Ben Zeiss loft? I am NOT a Donatist and this isn't internal to the church, but I think there should be some kind of correction. Am I wrong? Wow, I don't really want to answer that.

I think um, you got a set man. I think I mean With Ben and just with abolitionism in general. I wasn't really that aware of abolitionism before because I lived in a blue state until two years ago. So I I didn't you know.

There's no hope of doing anything about abortion in New York. The most you can do is you can try to save lives at a crisis pregnancy center. My wife worked at a crisis pregnancy center. Then when I came south I was like, oh there's like all these different shades of pro-life and I don't even really I'd never paid attention because it was just completely irrelevant to So to where I was.

So now I kind of get that there's there's all these different. Sort of takes on on these different strategies and everything and they're sort of an idealistic Ideological. This is the only thing there is with abolitionism is a lot the German name though.

She's gonna have to go back.

Well, he you know Zysloft he is a old stock Pennsylvanian which I do believe is a lot of Germans, but yeah. No, I mean like look I I like Ben Zysloft just as like as a guy, you know. He he actually interviewed me a few weeks back for a little article that he put up.

So, I don't know. Maybe we can plug that so he's he's a good guy is yeah, it's just just an issue I disagree with him on and I think that is Fundamentally incredibly important to get set straight to realize what the nature of politics is what the nature of law is.

Whether it an unjust law can be a law at all, you know all these different questions and you know I may put Colby on the spot here, but I don't really care. He's my friend so I can do that to him. Colby here actually used to be a very strong abolitionist.

And so watching his journey was very interesting because I personally was never that way but Colby I think that you can speak more to your journey since I just outed you the closet as a as an ex-abo Abolitionist not original.

Yeah, so.

Whenever.

Whenever you go to the actual abortion mills Most of the people that you're going to encounter not all of them. But most of them are going to be people that have abolitionist type beliefs. Because they travel around and like go to all these different abortion mills.

So.

So, you know ministering in that kind of context is going to also radicalize you a little bit and And especially whenever you see some of the filth that the other side really does promote. However, I Think the change of heart came whenever I was thinking through The pre-law training that I had in college and Seeing that the law is a teacher in a lot of ways.

Just like we would say what is it. The third use of the laws the law is pedagogy. You know the law of God is pedagogy and it's also a rule of gratitude. But it is a pedagogy and so civil law can also be a pedagogy.

Thomas Aquinas talks about this a lot, too. And so basically what I ended up seeing is that Abolitionism Really tries to move all the pieces off the chessboard Instead of maneuvering and and there's nothing wrong with the heart behind that.

I want to make that very clear. There's nothing wrong with the heart behind abolitionism. But at the end of the day Right now Florida has a six-week abortion ban and It's a sanctuary state for abortions, but there are not many abortions that are going to be performed in, Florida.

So, you know, you just kind of got a Take the lens and keep going. Nobody's asking you to be content with what we're regulating.

So which yeah that actually transitions well into like the fact that yeah, it's great we won this election. It's good, but that that doesn't mean we stop now. Yeah, what do we do now? You know, there's this is just the beginning, you know, so I think that's important to discuss and think about.

For the abolitionist that they have a lot of latitude on the state level in places like Idaho deep red states like Oklahoma and. And I appreciate Ben's actually been on the pod my podcast my other podcast I think once or twice and.

Yeah, I mean I very strongly disagree with. What I see is not really even a politically significant move to to not vote for there really not even be part of.

The.

You know have a seat at the table. With the Republican Party for a national election. Like I think we have to try to steer this because it's the only option we actually have of using any power. And exercising it so like, you know to not vote or to encourage others not to vote is just an abdication of any kind of influence.

Or power we've been given and have already so it's a step back. But but on the state level. In these deep red states where you do have pro-lifers who say they will do one thing and then they don't do it and the voter demographic is very much in favor of punishing those pro-lifers and you have guys who are more hardcore anti-abortion like absolutely and we have four years with latitude to work on that because Donald Trump has a policy of not actually interfering with that on the federal level.

People say his rhetoric, you know has been not good on this and but that's rhetoric. And I don't know if that will even continue. I have my doubts. I think he said that to try to get elected I think policy-wise though.

He's been pretty consistent on this. He's not going to interfere with states where they want to have more abortion restrictions and so forth. So there's a place for even abolitionists who did not vote for Donald Trump on the national level.

Of course keep working on those state levels.

Yeah, and to be clear a true script does not have an official position on Abolitionism or What is the what's the opposite of it? Mentalism. We published we have abolition orientated people on our board.

Yeah abolitionists go get them, you know get working work work in your states and make abortion. You know a thing of the past and we are with you a hundred hundred ten percent. But sort of transitioning like Matt like you said into where do we go from here?

We're just gonna plug really quick for a few minutes. Show it or can you show it. I can show it. Let me just pull it up here. We we published this piece a few hours before the election, but it's by a guy named Jonah Hewer.

He's uh, he's a crafts or a.

I.

Think he's an electrical worker up in Minneapolis. He's written written several pieces for us. They're they're all really good. I'd commend commend Everything he's written to you, but he Kind of addresses this question a little bit.

He's politics in the parable I'll just sort of skim over the beginning here. He says. The case that he's making is that parable the talents includes more than one Possible application so it is talking about the gospel, but there's also principles there real quick.

You may want to start start.

Did you see that their chat was saying that they couldn't hear you?

And I thought I was muting myself.

You know I didn't say anything because I had the stream pulled up on YouTube on another tab. I thought there was audio wrong on my end. I heard y 'all speaking again. So I thought he was still going.

You're muted for about three quarters of that. Because of me you muted your mic and mine wasn't muted. Well, no we were using the same mic so you muted.

So the parable of the talents has more than one meaning potentially. Just to summarize so in this piece Jonah Hewer talks about the parable of the talents. Referring to the gospel talking about the gospel, but also there are principles there's a principle of responsibility for the the things that God has has given you and You know take a look at the piece read it if you have time, but one little section.

I do want to read. He said. Maybe you feel called to some other political activity be at local journalism volunteering with the campaign or lobbying many Christian Christians. Political activity are simultaneously Doing it for that person.

Idolatrous and true mission of the church. Nonsense in a variety of students children. Mechanical skill. And to some he has given political sense if that's you don't bury what you've been given praise.

Seek wise counsel. But now we're in this position where In many ways power is sort of more in our favor. You know, I don't for me speaking for myself I felt just a massive wave of relief. Just incredible relief mostly because my life has been Severely impacted by the last few years.

I mean, I I had no gray hair. I'm 33 years old. I had no gray hair in 2020 and I got it popping out everywhere now. It it's it's been it has been a rough few years. You know and really it all goes back to the last election because without the last election you don't have vaccine mandates.