Donald J. Trump said the following today to a group of evangelical Christian leaders. Pay attention. It’s a doozy.
“She’s been in the public eye for years and years, and yet there’s no, nothing out there. There’s like nothing out there. It’s going to be an extension of Obama, but it’s going to be worse, because with Obama you had to have your guard up. With Hillary you don’t and it’s going to be worse.”
“Hillary” is Hillary Rodham Clinton, Trump’s foe in this year’s presidential campaign.
I want to focus briefly on two critical points here.
One is that Hillary Clinton’s political history is well-known. Her entire life has been exposed to the public. It’s an open book. She has spoken repeatedly about her Methodist upbringing. Her husband, the 42nd president, Bill Clinton, has told us about his Baptist background.
“Nothing out there”? There most certainly is.
The second point is a constitutional one.
Article VI of the U.S. Constitution spells it out: “… but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office o public Trust under the United States.”
That tells me that a candidate’s religious faith is irrelevant; it has no bearing on the candidate’s qualifications to serve in a public office.
That’s not the reality, quite clearly. Voters care about these things.
Trump, though, has become the latest incarnation of how the late U.S. Sen. Paul Tsongas once described Bill Clinton as they fought for the 1992 Democratic Party presidential nomination.
He’s become a “pander bear.”
