**Rachel in Amerika: hebben christenen spijt van Trump? | Dit is de Kwestie | EO — Transcript & Summary | SozAI**
Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/christians-regret-trump-rachel-america/

A Dutch EO 'De Kwestie' interview with David and Nancy French on why Christians backed Trump, moral character, evangelical masculinity, and the Christian right's politics.

## Key Takeaways

- Evangelical support for Trump is framed as tied to power and cultural grievance more than personal virtue.
- Media diets and religious narratives reinforce loyalty and deflect criticism of Trump.
- Both left-wing intolerance and right-wing authoritarianism are discussed as threats to democratic discourse.
- Christian masculinity ideals, exemplified by John Wayne, shape political attraction to strongman leaders.

## What the video covers

- Nancy and David French, former Republicans, explain their disillusionment with Donald Trump and the Republican Party's abandonment of character concerns.
- They argue many Christians supported Trump despite his behavior, prioritizing power and winning the presidency over moral standards.
- The hosts discuss how conservative media and religious framing (Trump as divinely appointed) shield him from criticism, casting opponents as Satanic.
- David French describes the 2014-2015 rise of intolerant left-wing activism that aimed to silence dissent, which he says contributed to Trump's 2024 win.
- The conversation covers the Dutch-language segment on Kristin Kobes' book 'Jesus and John Wayne' and the appeal of authoritarian masculinity among evangelicals.
- A sense of Christian embattlement and persecution is presented as a driver for seeking a strong protector leader.
- Excerpts include Trump campaign rhetoric promising retribution and a proposed $5,000 dividend, and discussion of Old Testament versus New Testament emphasis.
- The discussion addresses whether criticism of Trump affects David French and his response to being labeled a traitor by some on the right.
- Historical perspective is offered on America's past deep divisions, including the Civil War.
- The episode is hosted by EO's De Kwestie and includes Dutch-language commentary.

## Chapters

1. 00:00 Opening and Christian voting debate
2. 02:00 Frenches on the Republican Party and character
3. 09:00 Trump support and media diets
4. 13:00 Critique of the hard left and intolerance
5. 16:40 Dutch segment on Jesus and John Wayne
6. 20:00 Evangelical masculinity and embattlement
7. 28:20 Criticism, reception, and American division

Answers

## Questions about this video

Why do the guests say many Christians supported Donald Trump?

They argue that many evangelicals prioritized winning the presidency and protecting cultural power over character. Support was sustained by religious framing of Trump as divinely appointed and by partisan media consumption.

What is the 'Jesus and John Wayne' discussion about?

The Dutch segment discusses Kristin Kobes' book, which argues evangelicals were drawn to Trump's image of heroic, authoritarian masculinity, similar to the John Wayne archetype.

What does David French say about the political left?

He argues that a grassroots left-wing movement from around 2014-2015 aimed to silence and intimidate dissenters, which he says fueled backlash and contributed to Trump's 2024 victory.

## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:01

Speaker A

[cheering] [cheering] [music] [music] How long do you think people will blame the Christians for voting like they did?

00:53

Speaker A

Forever. Really? Yes. They liked that he wasn't particularly virtuous because they wanted a fighter.

01:03

Speaker A

Then they're being told that God has appointed Trump. Nothing will shake you from that. Then then all of the Trump opposition becomes [music] Satan.

01:27

Speaker A

[music] If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United [music] States Senate, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United [music] States of America for $5,000.

01:49

Speaker A

Nancy French and David French Trump Coming up. I'm going to hang it on my hook.

02:18

Speaker A

So, this view is amazing. Yeah, right. You can see forever. You can see all the way to the lake, which I think is fine. And then we do fireworks over here.

02:27

Speaker A

So, where do you write your columns for the New York Times? Um often just write on that couch uh and then we have uh offices on the 21st floor and sometimes I'll go there when the grand babies are here and I can't

02:39

Speaker A

hear myself think cuz they're running around yelling and screaming and being happy. You've been a Republican for a lot of time.

02:46

Speaker A

Forever. Yeah, yeah. So, you are a conservative Christian. So, you you would vote for uh you know, your pro-lives um So, my understanding is that all these pro-life conservative values are you know, the Repub- are protected by the Republicans and then the

03:03

Speaker A

Democrats are well, I I guess opposed to those values. So, it makes sense that you would vote Republican right?

03:09

Speaker A

Well, it also depends on what what what issues do you put as the most important.

03:14

Speaker A

I grew up with really being committed to the Republican Party cuz I thought it was the party of character and I thought it was the party of really a confidence in the American dream and also protection of the most

03:27

Speaker A

vulnerable. So, what happened? So, all three of those things went away. So, if you look at Donald Trump, he has a horrific character. And so, I knew from day one when he came down the escalator that if he was going to be a

03:40

Speaker A

president, he was going to warp and distort our culture that we would start to become more like him.

03:46

Speaker A

And then I imagined that you would think that your fellow Republicans would just look at him with the same with the same uh you know, like with the same look as as you did and that didn't happen.

03:57

Speaker A

It turns out that the commitment to character only existed so long as they were confident that they could win the presidency. And the instant that the commitment to character could cost them the presidency, it was pushed to the

04:09

Speaker A

side. The very people who told me in 2016, "Well, I really don't like Trump.

04:15

Speaker A

I really don't like how he lies. I don't like how he's cruel to his opponents. I don't like all of the adultery. I don't like all of the allegations of sexual harassment. I don't like all the racist statements.

04:25

Speaker A

But I really don't like Hillary Clinton." By 2020, Donald Trump was worse than he was in 2016.

04:32

Speaker A

And many of those same people were enthused to vote for him. And you see this everywhere.

04:39

Speaker A

Everywhere. Where people Christians are embracing cruelty in the name of Jesus, are embracing lying in the name of Jesus, embracing liars in the name of Jesus, embracing abusers in the name of Jesus. It is fundamentally corrupting the church.

04:54

Speaker A

Look. But what are what are they not seeing that you are seeing? Why is it because it makes If I listen to you, I go, "Yes.

05:00

Speaker A

It makes total sense whatever you're saying, especially as a Christian." Mhm. A whole bunch of people who support Donald Trump, if I had their media diet, I would probably wear the red hat, too.

05:12

Speaker A

Yeah. Because they they consume two kinds of media content. One is, "Look at the great thing Donald Trump did." And the other one is, "Look at the unfair way he's being attacked by the left." And so for I will talk to them

05:26

Speaker A

and I'll talk about Trump's scandals, and many of them don't know what I'm talking about.

05:31

Speaker A

Okay, yeah. And so then they're being told that God has appointed Trump. Nothing will shake you from that. Then Then all of the Trump opposition becomes Satan.

05:41

Speaker A

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because God has destined this man to save the country. And I think a lot of people who are not familiar with American Christianity don't understand how powerful that has been.

05:51

Speaker A

Yeah. I could literally talk to you all day about the ways in which he has betrayed the ideology that I grew up with.

05:58

Speaker A

Mhm. And when I tell this to other Republicans, they will often just pivot to talk about how bad the the left is.

06:04

Speaker A

And what do they say about the left? Because also in the Netherlands we hear a lot about um you know the the fringes on the right side which are super dangerous, but then not so much on the left side. Sorry, on

06:14

Speaker A

the left side. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I just Do you understand any of the worries that Christians might have?

06:19

Speaker A

Totally. Sort of every terrible thing you see from MAGA, you'll see a mirror image of it on the hard left. Now, the difference is right now the hard left isn't in the White House.

06:28

Speaker A

Do you think that it's harder to to recognize the the danger of the far left because it has a certain moral quality to it?

06:36

Speaker A

Six years ago I would have agreed with you. Not in 2026. Why? What happened?

06:41

Speaker A

Around 2014 and 2015 you began to see a grassroots movement on the left that was designed not to persuade so much as it was designed to silence, to intimidate.

06:51

Speaker A

In other words, we figured out all of the right answers when it comes to race, to gender, to sexual orientation, to Israel-Palestine, you name it. And if you're going to disagree with us, you're a dangerous person. And dangerous people

07:04

Speaker A

shouldn't be permitted to speak. Dangerous people need to lose their jobs. And so you began to see this incredible wave of intolerance. And then in 2024 uh one of the reasons why Trump won was because people were sick of all of that

07:18

Speaker A

hyper woke intolerance. There are only two genders, male and female. [cheering] [applause] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] Christian Republican set the focus David French in Bible principles on site on Donald Trump to stand up.

08:24

Speaker A

I I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed [music] I am your retribution. I am your retribution. I'm going to let those [cheering] happen.

08:39

Speaker A

Ik heb heel vaak gehoord van American Evangelicals, dat ze op Trump stemmen niet omdat ze alles goedkeuren wat hij doet, maar omdat hij de lesser of two evils is. Er is geen betere optie. Nou, Kristin Kobes ben ik nu naar haar onderweg, want ik ga

08:52

Speaker A

met haar praten over haar boek Jesus and John Wayne. En zij heeft geargumenteerd eigenlijk dat het niet ondanks al die eigenschappen is dat veel Evangelicals op hem gestemd hebben, maar juist omdat ze iets bewonderen in zijn ja, mannelijkheid. En dat heeft te maken

09:06

Speaker A

met een idee over mannelijkheid wat al tientallen jaren speelt in de evangelische wereld. So, your book Jesus [clears throat] and John Wayne. I have no idea who John Wayne is, but well, he is a cowboy. I know that

09:17

Speaker A

[laughter] because I read the book. Yeah, John Wayne is a very famous American actor, was one who played a lot of soldiers and cowboys and really heroic masculinity. He was the good guy with the gun, right? The guy who was

09:31

Speaker A

going to bring order through violence, but it was going to be righteous violence. That's John Wayne. Why do Evangelicals, why are they drawn to men made in the image of John Wayne or this kind of authoritarian masculinity?

09:46

Speaker A

Um there is a long-standing sense of embattlement, of embattlement that we have been persecuted, that we that the we are the Christians that we the Christians have been persecuted, that the culture is against us, secular America is against us, that they disdain

10:01

Speaker A

us, and we need a leader who will lead us from this political, cultural marginalization back to the centers of American power where we belong.

10:14

Speaker A

And then Donald Trump appears on the scene. And he says, "I will fight for you. I will fight to protect you." A part of this is, you know, this view about what a masculine man what he should look like, right? What is the

10:27

Speaker A

masculine example that would be preached there? The ideal being preached particularly in right-wing churches is one of a kind of warrior masculinity. They may end up looking like somebody like Pete Hegseth who is, you know, the embodiment of this

10:46

Speaker A

kind of right-wing Christian warrior masculinity. Square jaw, right? You know, muscles and you know, this very militaristic conception of manhood.

10:58

Speaker A

But this happens in secular culture as well, right? Because we see we see influencers like this there's this whole culture of eating protein and Yes, exactly.

11:07

Speaker A

and these, you know, soccer plays and even, you know, in the progressive world as well, people want to be healthy and there's this obsession with being healthy. So, what's the problem with that?

11:17

Speaker A

That, you know, the power belongs to men, the authority belongs to men, and it is on them to lead proper Christian women.

11:28

Speaker A

Right. And then the question is in terms of what harm does this do? At what point do these kind of cultural trappings start to transform Christianity itself?

11:39

Speaker A

And inside Christian spaces, for example, when you read popular books on evangelical manhood, right, you'll get a lot of this kind of warrior rhetoric.

11:52

Speaker A

He's a caged lion that wants to, you know, Oh, yeah. I don't know, tear up, I guess.

11:58

Speaker A

Yeah. You'll get a lot of passages from the Old Testament. What you don't get a lot of is Jesus, actually. Right, you don't have a lot of the Jesus of the New Testament. You don't hear a lot of love

12:09

Speaker A

your neighbor as yourself. Love your enemies. Turn the other cheek. So, in terms of what is the harm here, uh it ends up twisting Christianity itself and presenting a very militant version of the Christian faith as true Christianity. And anyone who deviates

12:27

Speaker A

from that is seen as not just un-Christian, but anti-Christian as an enemy to God.

12:33

Speaker A

Yeah, and then it becomes existential and then it's um morally right and you're morally wrong.

12:39

Speaker A

Right. Yeah. So, there is no compromise. Why would you want to empower people who are anti-God, anti-Christ with the decisions uh to make the decisions that affect this country. So, within this framework, ultimately they see their agenda, and

12:57

Speaker A

their agenda fighting against fellow Americans in trying to take away the political power from Americans on the other side of this divide is ultimately good for everybody. Because once the country aligns with God's laws, the country will be blessed.

13:11

Speaker A

And then you will be uh much more acceptance acceptance of using weapons that normally you wouldn't Exactly. The ends justify the means.

13:21

Speaker A

Do you think uh that Jesus and Trump um have similarities? [laughter] Uh no, I I have a hard time finding uh any similarities between the two. And I think that's that's part of the problem.

13:34

Speaker A

When you try to conflate the two, uh you end up with a lot of Trump and very little Jesus.

13:42

Speaker A

[music] [music] I have a dream that my four little children one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

14:21

Speaker A

I don't want them in our country. Their country's [music] no good for a reason.

14:25

Speaker A

Their country stinks. We're going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country. [music] If a Trump voter would come to you and say, "I am not racist." Would you believe them? Probably not.

15:45

Speaker A

Why not? And and I'll tell you why I don't believe them. First of all, I would say, "If you're not racist, then why do you believe that it's okay to take people out of their homes and pick them up off

15:55

Speaker A

the street because of the color of their skin?" Well, they will say, "Well, we just disagree on those things." That's not enough. They are not about feeding the hungry. They are not about clothing the naked. They are not about

16:06

Speaker A

welcoming the stranger. You You don't think they're real Christians? I am not the one to judge whether or not they're Christians or not. What I am saying is that their beliefs are not lining up with their practices. So, one

16:16

Speaker A

of the reasons why I wrote the book the way I did was because I wanted to say, "Yes, evangelicals have this great history. They were for abolition. They were for all of these things." But there's also another part of

16:27

Speaker A

evangelicalism that wanted slavery, that wanted women to stay in the home, that didn't want people of certain races marrying each other, right? And so I thought that this was a different way to think about this history and would call

16:41

Speaker A

evangelicals to account. Many evangelicals would look back at that history and feel ashamed. They would feel ashamed. But they also would feel as though we went through all of this and why we fighting about this anymore. But the problem is is that now

16:54

Speaker A

is still a problem. And and How is it now still a problem? It's still a problem because people of color have been vilified in the United States right now. Lots of evangelicals right now are against immigration. Do you love the stranger as scripture says,

17:08

Speaker A

or do you hate the stranger and say the stranger needs to get on a plane and get out of the country? What they say they believe and what they do are two different things.

17:16

Speaker A

How long do you think people will blame the Christians for voting like they did?

17:22

Speaker A

Forever. Really? Yes. And what will they how how will they adjudge this time period?

17:28

Speaker A

I think that there will be very clear to historians like myself who write 100 to 500 years from now that this was a a moment where America was destroyed because these people decided to vote the way that they did.

17:40

Speaker A

They did not vote for democracy. So I remember cuz you know David French Mhm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

17:45

Speaker A

And you wrote, I think it was for the New York Times, pretty critical article about how he is part of the problem as well.

17:54

Speaker A

But I mean David French, I know him as someone who is very very critical of Trump back in 2015.

17:59

Speaker A

Mhm. How is he part of the problem? Cuz it seems like you would have a lot in common with him and he would be you know right beside you fighting this problem as well.

18:08

Speaker A

would. I would say very very distinctly and if he were in front of me I would say this to him right now. It's like, "I don't have a problem with you from 2015 forward. I have a problem with you from

18:18

Speaker A

the beginning." Because you supported people like Reagan and and Bush and all of these people and you supported those evangelicals back then that led to the kind of evangelical that we got now.

18:43

Speaker A

Like Mohammed El Sayed, I call him Mohammed. Somebody said his name isn't Mohammed. It's Abdul. I said to me it's Mohammed. I'm the president. I can call him whatever the hell I want. He's a jihadist. I don't want a jihadist as a

18:57

Speaker A

senator from Michigan. Anthea Butler, do you know her? Huh? Yeah, yeah. She said no, David French was part of the problem.

19:20

Speaker A

Right. That is a common statement I get from the left. Yeah, what what hope is there?

19:25

Speaker A

Which is it's Let me just deal with it on the merits and then I'll get to the what hope is you.

19:29

Speaker A

He came up in opposition to the values that made me a Republican in the first place, which is why I opposed him.

19:38

Speaker A

And so for them to say, well, you're part of the problem. No, if you talk to people on the right, they will say I was part of the problem because I wasn't like Trump.

19:47

Speaker A

Mhm. That I was [clears throat] contradicting everything that Trump stood for. Exactly. So, how do you I mean, what do you do? What what Well, you know, it's interesting. This is why I say that in many ways center

19:56

Speaker A

left and center right have more in common with far left and far right. Right.

20:01

Speaker A

Our biggest issue in the United States is not necessarily the angry anger of the extremes, it's the silence of the majority.

20:09

Speaker A

We have two-thirds of Americans who are part of what's called the exhausted majority. But they've been essentially intimidated out of the public square. And so that's one of the reasons why I get so much vitriol and anger is because I'm a

20:23

Speaker A

threat to the dominance of the extremes. Some of it is so over the top that hearing like what Anthea Butler says is so mild in comparison. So, I I will say though that if I would be totally lying if I if

20:38

Speaker A

I did if I said it didn't bother me. I mean, of course it bothers me. I have a lot thicker skin than I used to have, but I'll also say this, I think if you get such a thick skin that no criticism

20:50

Speaker A

penetrates it, forgive my language, you become an [music] Faith in God has always been the ultimate source of the strength that [music] beats in the hearts of our nation.

21:12

Speaker A

So, let's bring religion back. Let's bring God back into our lives. [cheering] There is no love of God without love of neighbor.

21:52

Speaker A

2,000 years ago, when the powers that be hurt his neighbors, that barefoot rabbi didn't stay in his room and pray.

22:01

Speaker A

He walked into the seat of power, and he flipped over the tables of injustice.

22:07

Speaker A

That that brave act of civil disobedience led to his execution. Do right and risk the consequences.

22:19

Speaker A

[cheering] Maar zo ook het christen The entire Republican Party metamorphosed into embracing these really terrible vices.

22:49

Speaker A

Vast majority of Americans agree that we need better gun control laws. The majority of Americans believe that abortion is regrettable but should not be illegal. The majority of Americans believe that we need a secure southern border but that undocumented immigrants

23:03

Speaker A

who are here should be treated humanely and have a pathway to citizenship. We agree on these things.

23:09

Speaker A

But our politics and the algorithms in the media benefit both in power and money by emphasizing where we disagree and driving us into this polarization.

23:20

Speaker A

When you take the long view over American history, America has gone through other periods when it has been a deeply divided country. Obviously, there was the Civil War but even post-Civil War America had other times when Americans were very, very divided.

23:37

Speaker A

We are the underdogs. It's David versus Goliath. It's the powers that be versus the powers that ought to be.

23:45

Speaker A

And it's time for us to start flipping over some tables. Yes. [cheering]

Topics: David French Nancy French Donald Trump evangelicals Christian right American politics John Wayne masculinity Republican Party De Kwestie

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