The last time Peter Wehner, who I’ve always imagined as America’s conscience, appeared on the show to talk about the “ethical darkness” that has fallen upon America, I suggested that this was an “important” interview. Today’s conversation is much more important than being simply important. Based on Wehner’s recent Atlantic piece about why MAGA evangelicals have turned their back on PEPFAR, the American relief agency saving the lives of millions of Africa’s AIDS victims, this is a conversation about America’s heart of moral darkness. It’s not just Trump who has African blood on his hands, Wehner argues, but most of his evangelical supporters who are unmoved by the destruction of PEPFAR. For the first time in my many conversations with Wehner, he was visibly moved by both the cruelty of Trump and the indifference of his supposedly Christian supporters.
1. Trump's Destruction of PEPFAR is "Wanton Cruelty" "This to me was an act of wanton cruelty. You really had to go out of your way to think how can I kill millions of people quickly inefficient. And they found one way to do it, which is to shatter USAID, which is the main implementing agency for PEPFAR."
2. The Scale of Death is Staggering and Real-Time "There is an adult being lost every three minutes, a child every 31 minutes. And ending PEPFAR could result in as many as 11 million additional new HIV infections and nearly 3 million additional AIDS-related deaths by the end of the decade."
3. Trump's Hold on Evangelicals is Unlike Anything in American Politics "I think it is closer to a cult of personality than it is to a normal political party... I think in some senses, the truest thing Donald Trump said in the 2016 campaign was when he said that he could go on Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and he wouldn't lose support. And I think that turned out to be not hyperbole but prophetic."
4. Evangelical Silence Reveals Their True Moral Priorities "In 2014, World Vision announced that they would hire at some levels of the organization, people who were in same sex marriages. And it was like a bomb going off in the evangelical world... Between 3,000 and 3,500 sponsors of kids primarily in Africa... Were ended... And now you have a situation... about what destruction of PEPFAR has done and will do and you can get barely get a peep out of them."
5. This is About Mass Death, Not Policy Disagreement "Yeah, no, that is what I'm saying. I'm saying there will be a lot, lot more before this is done. There will be millions... We're talking really, really significant numbers. And that's an enormous amount of death, an enormous of suffering, and it's completely unnecessary."
I hate the term “moral urgency”. But this is a morally urgent conversation about America’s descent into a heart of darkness. Wehner exposes the cruelty and stupidity of destruction of the PEPFAR program. Even in the time you’ve spent reading this, a couple of African children will have died because of the callousness of MAGA disregard for human life.
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