The Popularity of Donald Trump

So, in light of the Iowa caucuses where Donald Trump really crushed it, why does he remain so popular? What do you think? It's time for The Line of Fire with your host, biblical scholar and cultural commentator, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity. Call 866-34-TRUTH to get on The Line of Fire. And now, here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown.

Welcome, welcome to The Line of Fire. Michael Brown delighted to be with you. We were pre-recorded yesterday as the studios were closed on Martin Luther King's holiday and got this tiny, tiny little cold getting better from it already.

Thank God for a healthy living, healthy eating, healthy lifestyle helps you fight these things off and not get them at all. My voice sounds slightly different. Same person as always.

866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. Let me say up front, I do not plan to be talking about politics a lot in the coming months. I'll weigh in strategically.

But it's not the burden focus of my heart and mind, obviously. We've got a major election coming up at the end of this year and it's going to be day and night talk and what's happening is going to be Trump and Biden recapitulated and who would have imagined that four years ago would be the same thing four years later. In any case, we shall see.

We shall see. But here and there, at some strategic times, I do want to devote shows to these subjects because this is the world we live in. My primary calling is not political. I wrote some political books during the Trump presidency, but that's not my primary calling.

My intersection with politics comes because of culture, which comes because of morality and the kingdom of God. In other words, there are those who are really called to be Christian activists in politics and there are those who are really called to help Christians understand who to vote for in terms of what principles we should stand for and help get Christians to vote. And there are others who are involved in lobbying, elected officials saying, hey, we elected you for this. We're asking you to do this. You're failing your supporters, etc. There are others who they're calling us to finance things and so on and politics plays a major role. That's not my primary calling.

However, politics intersects in many ways with culture, with morality, and therefore these are issues to us as followers of Jesus. So I want to ask this question today. 866-34-truth. Why is Donald Trump so popular?

866-348-7884. Now, you may be a Trump supporter, you may be a Trump basher, but I'm curious to know your thinking. Now, I posted this on Twitter and on Facebook yesterday or X, used to be Twitter, posted on X and on Facebook yesterday as early on it was reported that Donald Trump had quite crushingly won the Iowa caucus. So the Iowa caucus plays a disproportionately important role in terms of before the other primaries as these different representatives come together, delegates, and talk back and forth and then cast their votes for different candidates.

It plays a disproportionately important role in terms of setting a trend. Others say it's going to be different in New Hampshire. Nikki Haley is more favored in New Hampshire as it is. Trump got slightly over half the vote and then second place down a little 20% was Governor Ron DeSantis and then a little bit behind him was former Governor Nikki Haley and then Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out after his performance and supported Donald Trump. So you may be a Trump lover or a Trump hater.

That's not the issue. You may have voted for him twice. You may plan to vote for him again. You may say, I would never vote for that man.

That's not even talking about that today. Why is it that he's so popular? It's important to understand these things, friends. For those who are Trump voters, you say you better believe it's important because we need him in America, etc.

Or without Trump, America is going to crash and look at where it's going now under Biden. Or you may really be against Trump and you can't imagine why anyone except some religious crazy or some white supremacist insurrection would ever vote for somebody like him. It's still important to understand the whys. What is it that is so appealing about him? What is it appealing that may be good?

What is it appealing that may be bad? Now, I'm having this discussion today in as neutral a position as I know how. Honestly, I genuinely am not having it to lift him up or to bash him. I'm not having this discussion as a political piece to support Donald Trump or as a hit piece to attack Donald Trump. That's not the purpose.

The purpose is to see what you understand, what you feel. Now I'm going to give you some of the results from what was the responses, the few hundred responses we got on X and on Facebook. It's interesting that Brett Stevens wrote an article for the New York Times and Brett Stevens would be known as a very strong never Trumper, absolutely would not vote for Trump and seize Trump in very dangerous negative terms. Now, I get emails every day from the New York Times with highlighting this or that, et cetera, and I read lots of stuff, conservative, liberal, et cetera, on different sides of issues. I didn't see his editorial, but I spotted it when Breitbart, which is very, very conservative, right-leaning, right-wing publication, website, Breitbart mentioned it and said New York Times columnist admits Trump got three big things right. So this was before, this was written before the Iowa caucuses. So it was January 11th.

I only found out about it a day or two ago. And it's under the headline, the case for Trump by someone who wants him to lose. And what Brett Stevens was saying was, we need to understand this. Trump got certain things right. Here's why people are voting for him. And by not understanding that, we're missing something. So it's here, let me, let me give you an analogy. And then we'll start taking some calls.

866-3-4-TRUTH is the number to call. When some of my friends in 2015, then into 2016, started saying they supported Donald Trump, I thought they were quite wrong. I thought they were overlooking his carnality. I thought they were trusting someone who was untrustworthy.

I thought that they were compromising their Christian ethic in doing so, especially those who were ministers. And my candidate of choice was Ted Cruz. But I would have gone really with almost any of the Republican candidates rather than Donald Trump. I ended up voting for him in 2016 and 2020. But as more and more people begin to support him, and political leaders that I respected, and Christian friends that I respected, I had to ask myself a question.

What is his appeal? So have you ever been in a room of people and there's a comedian, maybe you're sitting somewhere watching TV, or you're actually seeing a comedian perform, and everybody is laughing at the jokes except you? Have you ever had that happen? So what do you think? This guy's not funny at all. This lady's not funny at all. What are they finding so funny? Then at a certain point, you say to yourself, well, I guess I'm the only one not laughing in the room. I guess I'm not seeing the humor. I guess I'm not getting the jokes. So rather than saying the person's not funny when everybody else is laughing, you say why aren't I getting the jokes? So I began to ask myself that question. What is it that I'm missing? What notes is Trump hitting that are appealing to people?

Why are so many rallying behind him? Now, your perspective may be very cynical. It's for the worst of reasons. That's fine. Call in and tell us why.

Or your perspective may be what's absolutely on the highest lofty ethical level. So I was at the chiropractor today, just getting an adjustment, and he was very excited. He's a Jewish believer, and he was saying, hey, did you see the Iowa Caucasus and how wonderful it is that Trump won? And I said, why do you think he's so popular? He said, because he cares about America for every person in the nation. He wants to see what's best for this country. He wants to see us go back to our better days. He doesn't want to see things the way they are under Biden.

Just take the borders being secure. Just threw that out. And he said, I'm a very strong supporter of Trump. Now, others, again, you may be very cynical and think it's for all the worst reasons.

That's fine. I'm welcoming your input so we can better understand one another. A colleague of mine urged me, oh, a couple years back, as I was basically saying, look, Trump has too much baggage.

We should move on to another candidate. He said to me, Mike, remember, he has tens of millions of supporters in this country, and you want to reach them rather than turn them away. In other words, if you have something to say to them, find a way to try to reach them, try to understand where they're coming from, and then seek to reach them. The show I'm doing today, I'm honestly doing it from a neutral perspective, simply fielding calls, interacting with you. So without further ado, let us go to the phones.

We'll start with Christopher in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Welcome to the line of fire. Hey, how are you doing, Dr. Brown? Very well, sir.

Thank you. Well, you know, as coming from a former Trump supporter to where I'm at now, you know, it seemed like that he became too big of a cult of personality for me. You know, the way he draws people into him and the way people rally behind him, it just didn't sit right with me. And I took it to prayer, and I asked the Lord, I said, Lord, what's going on? What's going on with our country? And the only thing, he wouldn't answer me directly, but it's just the way that people elevate him right now is why I have no desire to see him as president. But it's not a matter whether I want to see him as president, it's whether everybody else wants to see him as president. So here's the question. Why were you drawn to him in the first place? What drew me to him? Well, it was the idea of, you know, seeing our...