The President Watching Robert Jeffress’ Easter Sermon Should Be a Bigger Scandal

Donald Trump said yesterday he would be live-streaming the Easter service conducted by Pastor Robert Jeffress.

If that seems like a relatively inoffensive, non-controversial statement from Trump’s account — and I certainly thought that when I first saw it — it’s only because we’ve become immune to just how messed up that statement is. Not just that the president is essentially urging people to watch a Christian sermon, which is a problem on its own, but that he’s praising the work of Jeffress.

If you watch FOX News or FOX Business Channel, where Jeffress is a constant presence, that’s not surprising. But it should be because he’s just an awful human being.

Jeffress is a guy who has said:

• “You can’t be saved being a Jew” and Mormonism is “a heresy from the pit of Hell.”
• Democrats worship the child-sacrificing Pagan god Moloch.
• Church/state separation is a hoax.
• Climate change is an “imaginary crisis.”
• Democrats don’t care about the sexual abuse of women because they’re pro-choice.
• It’s impossible to be good without God.
• School shootings occur because we teach kids “they’re nothing but an evolutionary accident.”
• “Never Trump” Christians are just like Nazi enablers.
• If you’re a Christian who voted for President Obama in 2012, you’re also like Nazi enablers.
• God gave Trump “authority to take out Kim Jong-un.”
• The Catholic Church is the result of the Babylonian cult system.

That’s just a sampling. But that guy — that horrible guy — is the one whose Easter sermon Trump thinks is worth listening to. (Or at least pretending to listen to.)

In another era, a president praising someone like Jeffress would’ve been a scandal on its own. It still should be. It’s only because we’re inundated with Republican cruelty and ignorance that Jeffress’ past comments aren’t a bigger story right now.