Many people find it very difficult to understand why Donald Trump has always been popular with White Evangelicals since he descended his escalator at his Tower in June 2015 with Trophy Wife Number Three.

He’s been divorced twice; bragged about flagrantly assaulting women; bankrupted several companies; and he was well known for being a Machiavellian Manipulator in New York real estate as well as being a racist landlord. Plus, nobody really likes him except for his white evangelical basis.

In today’s Times, there is a superb article by Elizabeth Dias about why, even now, Trump’s white evangelical base is unwavering in supporting him: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/09/us/evangelicals-trump-christianity.html?referringSource=articleShare

His highly improbable march to the White House took off in January 2016 when he went to a small, very conservative town in Iowa and made big big splashy headlines by telling his crowd at a small evangelical college that if he were to stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody "I wouldn’t lose any voters." 

But in the same one hour speech, he said “I will tell you, Christianity is under tremendous siege, and yet we don’t exert the power that we should have. Christianity will have power. If I’m there [in the Whtie House] you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else. You’re going to have somebody representing you very, very well.” 

And in November 2016 he got no less than 81 percent of white evangelical voters nationwide, with help from Mike Pence and Jerry Falwell Jr. — by the way, did you see how Falwell was forced to take a leave of absence from Liberty University for having his picture taken with a scantilly clad young woman, with his hand on her shoulder, and his fly unzipped? Does Putin have a similar picture of Trump, only much more compromising, at one of Putin’s Moscow harems?

Dias explains his appeal: Trump is the protector of the marginalized evangelicals, “...the bully who is on their side, the one who offered safety amid their fears that their country as they know it, and their place in it, is changing….An entire way of life [from the perspective of the white evangelicals] could be headed for extinction.”

So we consulted, as always, with our Chief Theological Correspondent, associate solitary reporter Jim Bob Hobarto, who was born and raised in the Bible Belt.

“SR,” Hobarto began in his typically portentous style, “Don’t you know anything? Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism are the greatest heresies of the Twentieth Century.”

Hobarto then droned mercilessly on for three hours on how Fundamentalism arose a hundred years ago as The Way for bewildered white folks to make sense of the Industrial Revolution, which caused them to move to large, impersonal cities when they could no longer make a living on their rustic farms. “They never got it about the Enlightenment, when Reason replaced Faith."

Next, remember how Trump went to Mount Rushmore at the invitation of South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem, and how she arranged for fireworks to be set off right next to a national forest?

Not only that, it was Noem’s idea to add Trump to Mount Rushmore, right next to FDR.

How could that be?

Seems Ms. Noem, who is young and better looking thatn Sarah Palin, has had her name prominently mentioned as one who could help Trump’s flagging campaign by replacing Mike Pence.

So, being a vaguely astute pol, she hopped on Air Force One after Trump’s July 3 stunt at Mount Rushmore and had a one on one meeting with Pence in his office (with Karen Pence in the room, of course) to assure him that the only thing she wants in life is to be Governor of a small red state that has only one Member of the House — which she was for three terms before she became her state’s first female gov.

But let’s not forget that there is a whole throng of Republican politicians who know that Trump’s going to be toast in November, and they all want to run against President Biden in 2024.

We feel sure that Kristi Noem is one of them, along with former South Carolina gov and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley — and Mike Pompeo — and Mike Pence.

And maybe Kanye West?

On Sunday, we reported on what we were expecting to happen in Kansas’ highly contested Tuesday GOP U S Senate primary (https://www.apocryphalpress.com/2020/08/02/trump-ally-kris-kobach-leaves-gop-after-trump-fails-to-endorse-him/).

There, we said that longtime Trumpite Kris Kobach, an ultra-hard right anti-immigration hawk (and also, incidentally, in his previous capacity as Kansas Secretary of State, totally dedicated to the GOP Project-in-Chief of Voter Suppression) was disappointed that Donald Trump refused to endorse him in his primary against Congressman Roger Marshall, who was, and is, Moscow Mitch’s preferred candidate to succeeded retiring Kansas GOP senator Pat Roberts.

We also said that Kobach was about to leave the Republican Party because of Trump’s having thrown him under the bus.

As it turned out, Marshall won by a big margin (https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/04/politics/kansas-senate-election-primary-results/index.html).

Our topflight Washington-based associate solitary reporter, Keith Coleman, a flawless Democratic political strategist, is more than certain that on November 3, sensible Kansas voters will elect, not Congressman Marshall, but, rather, the Democratic candidate, State Senator Barbara Bollier, a physician; and she will be the first Democrat to represent the Sunflower State in Washington since 1932.

Coleman also knows that Moscow Mitch (a moniker conferred on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell by Nancy Pelosi and newly minted associate solitary reporter Karen M. Green) will lose his seat in the Senate in November to former ace Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath, the Bluegrass State’s Democratic nominee against Mitch.

Thus, Kentucky’s Junior Senator will be Democrat McGrath, who is ever so much younger than Mitch, and its senior senator will be Rand Paul (TP-Kentucky), and Bollier and McGrath will instantly become friends, because Kansas is one of the reddest states, and Kentucky is a red state as well. 

As to the 78 year old Mitch, he’s clearly between a rock and a hard place. 

Pelosi, one of the savviest politicans of the 21st Century, and her Democratic colleagues in the House, months ago in May, passed an extension of the desperately needed unemployment insurance for coronavirus relief; but Mitch did nothing with that, waiting ’til the very last moment (July 31) before lifting a finger — and his Republican Conference in the Senate is deeply divided about how to handle The Virus that Mitch’s close political friend, Donald Trump, said would go away as soon as he, Trump, willed that to happen.

But.

With associate solitary reporter Melissa Smith at her side, Bollier called McGrath so they could develop their agenda for January, because, as ASR Coleman knows just as well as we do, that come January, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) will be Senate Majority Leader.

With Bollier was ASR Karen Green, who has just been tapped as Joe Biden’s Chief Speechwriter.

A longtime Denver wordsmith, Green, a fervent Democrat who numbers among her hundreds of clients the Democratic Party of Denver, just texted us to tell us that, while she has loved representing Denver Democrats pro bono, she cannot pass up Biden’s offer for her to be his Chief Wordsmith and Chief Speechwriter.

She’s already written Biden’s Acceptance Speech, and she’s also told him that she hopes that he will ask Sen. Kamala Harris to be his Vice President.

The Acceptance Speech has been embargoed. DNC Chair Tom Perez hasn’t seen it. 

In fact, even Biden hasn’t seen it.

It is a very substantial understatement to say that Donald Trump is determined to control everything in sight.

This is no more evident than when he put one of his megadonors in charge of the venerable United States Postal Service.

That’s Louis deJoy, a major fundraiser for Trump. His explicit instruction from Trump — which he is working on very effectively to fulfill — is to cut the Postal Service down so far that it will be nearly completely unable to carry out its job of making it possible, even convenient, for voters to vote by mail. He has massive conflicts of interest, including investments valued at $75 million in competitors to the USPS. 

The upshot of all this is that, as reported yesterday by Politico’s Christopher Cadelago and Zach Montellaro, the Trump campaign is shooting itself in the foot, because voters clearly do not want to go to polling places because of COVID-19; yet Trump’s constant promotion of pure lies about the asserted unreliability of voting by mail, has no substance at all (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/03/trumps-assault-on-mail-voting-threatens-his-reelection-bid-390949)

So we made special arrangements for our Chief Postal Authority, associate solitary reporter Tim Gonzales, to replace DeJoy, effective tomorrow.

This news was immediately hailed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who assured Gonzales that the entire USPS operation will, once again, become a place where it is pleasant to work, and where the mail will henceforth be delivered on time.

At 88, Joe Arpaio is at it again.

He was Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest county by population, for 24 years.

Joe always described himself as “America’s Toughest Sheriff.” You can read all about him at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Arpaio.

Because of Arpaio’s high-profile and always obvious contempt for immigrants (both legal and illegal), and because he’s a Birther just like Donald Trump, Trump pardoned him after he was convicted of criminal contempt of court.

He was easily defeated for re-election by Democrat Paul Penzone in 2016, but a year ago, he announced that he’s running for his job again.

At 88.

So we immediately reached out to associate solitary reporter Jim Millard, a longtime political observer in Tucson, to give us the full scoop.

“Arpaio’s just another Donald Trump, only a little older, but if Joe can’t be near a microphone, he collapses into a deep depression.”

“Expect Trump to campaign all-out for Arpaio in September,” Millard continued, “and for Martha McSally to keep her seat in the U S Senate, but McSally’s gonna lose big time to Democrat Mark Kelly, the astronaut who’s married to Gabby Giffords."

Here at AP, we wonder why Donald Trump has effectively thrown one of his most vociferous supporters, Kansas’ Kris Kobach, under the bus.

On Tuesday, Republicans in the Sunflower State will choose among three candidates to run against Democratic nominee Dr Barbara Bollier, a physician and a State Senator, who, until recently, was herself a Republican.

Kansans have not elected a Democrat to the U S Senate since 1932.

The other Republicans vying in the primary against Kobach are Congressman Roger Marshall, who is supported by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and wild card candidate Bob Hamilton.

Kobach is well known for being an obnoxiously strong supporter of Trump, with his harsh anti-immigration platform, as well as being ferociously anti-reproductive rights. He was Secretary of State and ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018, losing to Democrat Laura Kelly, who is doing a terrific job of undoing the immense harm to Kansas’ tax structure caused by former governor Sam Brownback, a Republican.

National Democrats actually favor the nomination of Kobach, as they consider him a weak candidate against Bollier in November.

But Trump has made it clear that he will make no endorsement in the primary (https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/30/politics/kansas-republican-senate-race-trump-involved/index.html).

So we asked intrepid associate solitary reporter Susanna Sherman to visit Kobach to gauge his reaction to Trump’s failure to have his back.

“Susanna,” Kobach said, "I feel like I’ve been stabbed in the back by Trump, so I’ve decided to leave the Republican Party for the Constitution Party, which considers itself to be the philosophical foundation of the Tea Party."

When Sherman told Kobach that his self-proclaimed escape from the GOP means he’ll get only two votes — namely, his and his wife’s, Heather Mannschreck, he said he’d rather be Right than wrong.

Then Sherman went to Bollier’s victory party, where she told Bollier that when she becomes a U S Senator in January, she’ll be the first woman physician to be a Senator.