Trump uttered what many supporters consider blasphemy. Here’s why most will probably forgive him."President Trump has had trouble with a number of the Ten Commandments.
There’s the adultery. There’s the prohibition against giving false witness, for a man who has made more than 12,000 false or misleading claims during his presidency.
And then there’s this commandment: Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain.
That’s the one the president violated again on Thursday night, when he joked about “goddamn windmills” while talking with House Republicans in Baltimore about energy policy.
For some of the president’s evangelical supporters, Trump’s occasional use of the word “goddamn” is a bridge too far, even for a president whose behavior they’ve grown accustomed to excusing as they fervently support his policies.
“I certainly do not condone taking the Lord’s name in vain.
There is a whole commandment dedicated to prohibiting that,” said the Rev. Robert Jeffress, a Texas megachurch leader who is one of Trump’s most outspoken evangelical advisers and supporters. “I think it’s very offensive to use the Lord’s name in vain.
I can take just about everything else, except that,” when it comes to off-color language.
Trump has been urged in the past to cease using this particular word. A state senator from West Virginia, Paul Hardesty, told Politico in August that he got calls from three constituents after one Trump rally alone. He wrote a letter to the White House: “Never utter those words again.”
At that rally, the president had told a North Carolina crowd about the Islamic State, “They’ll be hit so goddamn hard,” and had recalled warning a businessman, “If you don’t support me, you’re going to be so goddamn poor.”
This was the same Greenville rally at which Trump’s supporters chanted “send her back” about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a chant Democrats decried as racist. But it was the blasphemy that spurred some West Virginians to call their Trump-supporting state senator to ask him to do something about the president’s language."(they forgot to mention the coveting and the stealing - and that he sees himself as god)
