In his syndicated column, Terry Mattingly marveled that the journalists belonging to the Religion News Association picked Donald Trump’s election as the number-one religion story of 2016, but the number one “religion newsmakers of the year" were instead “Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the Muslim parents of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq, who appeared before the Democratic National Convention as Mr. Khan denounced Donald Trump's proposed ban on Muslims entering the country as unconstitutional.”
If the Khans’ tour of the liberal media denouncing Trump had actually caused Trump’s defeat, that would make them newsworthy. But why would they be number-one newsmakers when Hillary Clinton lost?
This is how the RNA summed up Trump’s second-place finish: “President-elect Donald Trump, who drew strong white Christian support, stirred debate among church leaders over his character, rhetoric and lax religiosity, and alienated many Hispanic Catholics, black Protestants, Jews, Muslims and non-believers.”
Hillary Clinton’s name was nowhere in the RNA press release. There was no mention of how her party or her rhetoric or – dare we say it, “lax religiosity” from a conservative’s perspective – might have “alienated many” voters.
Among the top ten religion stories, there was a vague mention of how non-believing “nones” didn’t help the Democrats win, but was the closest they came. Here’s how they wrote up the top two stories, sounding like the usual liberal media operatives:
1) Donald Trump gets strong support from white Christians, especially evangelicals, in an upset presidential election. Many were alarmed by his vilifying Muslims and illegal immigrants and his backing from white supremacists. GOP keeps majorities in Congress.
2) Post-election assaults and vandalism target Muslims and other minorities. Some assailants cite Donald Trump's victory as validation. Critics denounce the appointment of Stephen Bannon as White House strategist over his ties to white supremacists.
Mattingly wrote:
While white evangelical votes were crucial, I would have stressed two other religion trends linked to Trump's stunning win.
The first was captured in a midsummer Christianity Today headline that, citing Pew Research Center polling, stated, "Most Evangelicals Will Vote Trump, But Not For Trump." Pew found that more than half of white evangelicals were upset about the 2016 White House options and said their aim was to defeat Hillary Clinton, not support Trump.
Election Night plot twists also showed that Clinton lost because she lacked support from Rust Belt working-class Democrats, many from Catholic, labor-union homes that twice backed President Barack Obama.
Our Geoffrey Dickens reported the Khans, as Democrat-selected and Democrat-promoted publicity agents, drew 55 minutes and 13 seconds of network air time during the conventions, while their Republican-promoted analogue, mourning Benghazi mother Patricia Smith, only drew 70 seconds.
