Why Trump’s Many Detractors Only Reveal His Leadership Strengths

It’s ironic and hypocritical that many on the Left have been so desperate to criticize President Donald Trump in his quest of making America great again.

For example, in his handling of the COVID-19 crisis, the criticisms were wide and varied: Trump didn’t close the borders soon enough; he closed them too soon. He didn’t speak up enough; he spoke up too much. He took the advice of the wrong people; he didn’t listen to enough people.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, liberals criticized President Trump for everything from his lifestyle—although before he ran for president as a Republican, they saw nothing wrong with his past and he seemed to be the darling of the liberal media—to his beliefs. Has he done and said things that don’t reflect the teachings of the Bible? Yes. He’s imperfect, but according to some, that makes him a great leader.

In the same way, some Christians overlook the good Trump has done and focus on all the mistakes he’s made and the perceived weaknesses he still struggles with. The question we must ask ourselves, though, is, “What is the fruit?” Donald Trump has probably been one of the staunchest defenders of religious liberties and freedoms we have seen. He also makes it no secret that he has an evangelical council that meets with him periodically, ministers to him, advises him, and at times even lays hands on and prays over him.

Author Lance Wallnau says Christians must be willing to support Trump and not allow the Left to continue undermining his conservative agenda. “Figures like Churchill, Lincoln and George S. Patton don’t step out of cathedrals onto the stage of history, yet we canonize them later as instruments God raised up to meet a singular crisis,” he said. None of these men were conventional Christians, and they had many detractors in the clergy, yet each played a pivotal role in history. They stood strong against the enemies of freedom and helped safeguard our way of life and Christian heritage.

History has shown that Winston Churchill was the right man at the right time to be used by God, yet he was also unpopular. In fact, Churchill was described with terms often used in association with Donald Trump. Critics called him an “‘aristocratic adventurer’ who lacked good judgment and political skills.” He was considered “rootless … unstable … unsound … an undeniable cad,” according to the biography God and Churchill: How the Great Leader’s Sense of Divine Destiny Changed His Troubled World and Offers Hope for Ours by Churchill’s great-grandson the late Jonathan Sandys and Wallace Henley. Churchill was “an embarrassment” to important people in the Conservative Party. And he was viewed as impetuous—”‘a real danger’ who …. tended not to count the cost of his endeavors.”

The British didn’t like him until they needed someone strong enough to defeat the Nazis. Churchill didn’t have many fans within the Christian community, either. The conservative Christians of the day in Britain didn’t like the fact that he smoked cigars and loved drinking brandy. Churchill was a deeply flawed man, but God still raised him up to save Western civilization.

Churchill seemed to know this. Sandys asserts that his famous great-grandfather felt a call from God his entire life that he was to save Western civilization. A case can be made, of course, that Churchill did just that when he stopped Hitler from taking over Great Britain. In the face of Hitler’s military might, Churchill had to resolve to move ahead anyhow and to never quit. Churchill was a strong leader, and his example shows that God uses whomever He chooses.

That’s what I see in Donald Trump and why people support him despite all the criticisms thrown at him. In that respect Trump resembles the indefatigable British prime minister, who often went against convention, decorum and his own party to badger the people of Great Britain into defending their country against Hitler’s Third Reich. Churchill was viciously attacked by the media in his day. Today, Donald Trump invites the same kinds of bitterness and resentment by raising alarms about the unraveling of American society at a time when our political elites, buttressed by the media, are denying that anything is wrong. Like Churchill, Trump is the target of opposition forces seeking to silence him for his bluntness and to stop him from speaking from the heart about problems the political establishment has been sweeping under the carpet for generations.

This is why I wrote the book God, Trump and the 2020 Election along with its up-to-the-minute companion, God, Trump and COVID-19. Both books (as well as my other two books emphasizing the spiritual aspects of Trump’s 2016 win and the months following) are available at stevestrangbooks.com. You can also click here to subscribe to our flagship magazine, Charisma, and receive a free copy of God, Trump and COVID-19 with free shipping.

True leaders such as Churchill show strength of character in the face of adversity. Granted, Britain was in a life-and-death struggle with Nazi Germany, which threatened to destroy all of civilization. Forgive me if this seems hyperbolic, but the situation today in America is almost as serious, considering the world we might have entered had Hillary Clinton won the election instead of Trump. It’s a world where we could have lost our constitutional protections of our religious freedoms. In this case our struggle wasn’t with guns, tanks, and planes; it was a political battle over the presidency and the direction of our nation now and for generations.

This article has been adapted from Chapter 2 of God, Trump and COVID-19, published by FrontLine, an imprint of Charisma House. Click here for a free sample.

As always, if you like what you read and hear, please share this article and this episode of my podcast with your friends and family members. If you appreciate Trump’s strong leadership the way I do, you’ll want to ignore his liberal critics and vote for a president committed to stand for America and for the values on which our Founding Fathers built this great country. {eoa}

Stephen Strang is founder of Charisma. He believes God, Trump and the 2020 Election (Charisma House), available wherever Christian books are sold, is his most important book. Listen to his podcast by the same name on the Charisma Podcast Network.