“Mr. President, the days of using our faith for your benefit are over,” the ad from Not Our Faith warns. “We know you need the support of Christians like us to win this election. But you can’t have it.”

In continuing, it also accuses Trump of “using Christianity for his own purposes,” and shows footage of his Bible-toting photo op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, across from the White House, after having peaceful protesters teargassed to clear the area for him.

Not Our Faith’s advisory council includes Michael Wear, a faith adviser to former President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, and Autumn Vandehei, an aide to former Rep. Tom Delay (R-Texas), the Associated Press reported. The group is launching a six-figure TV and digital ad campaign targeting Christians, especially evangelical and Catholic voters.

“Trump eked out 2016 with unprecedented support from white evangelicals and, important to note, a really strong showing among Catholics. We’re going after all of it,” Wear told AP. “We think Christian support is on the table in this election.”

Indeed, last week more than 1,600 Christian leaders signed a letter endorsing former Vice President Joe Biden. And this week, a Pew poll found that Trump is bleeding support among Christian voters, including the evangelicals who were essential to his 2016 victory. “Christians don’t need Trump to save them,” the new ad states. “The truth is that Trump needs Christians to save his flailing campaign.”

In a USA Today op-ed, Wear took issue with Trump’s bold claims about faith ― and in particular spoke out against Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons, for proclaiming that Trump had “literally saved” Christianity.

Sadly, I cannot pass along here all I read and/or save, but there’s space to quote a bit from Todd Gitlin, professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University. In an editorial contribution recently to the Los Angeles Times, he pointed out how “for decades, the right has thrived on resentment and a mood of dispossession, flailing away at enemies who threaten their ideal of a white, Christian nation.” (Reminding me immediately of Ilhan Omar, a young Black Muslim woman running for re-election to Congress — whom Donald Trump just can’t get out of his mind, and to whom I accordingly sent a token contribution).

Gitlin wrote about two eminent world-class political scientists who were struck by the common use of the word “hate” on Fox News. Their study for the first four months of the year, of the evening transcripts of Fox News and MSNBC, showed that “hate” appeared 647 times on Fox and only 118 on MSNBC. Pursuing further, the researchers undertook a search for “they hate” going back to 2009 and including CNN for comparison. By 2020, Fox News was using “they hate“ more than two and one-half times as often as MSNBC and CNN combined,

“So who is doing all this hating, according to Fox News? Mainly Democrats, liberals, political elites, professionals, and the media — all self-seeking, unpatriotic, ungodly and otherwise wicked. Why else would these monsters despise ordinary people and their hero, Donald Trump?”
Check here to read more: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-10-14/op-ed-trump-conservatives-think-they-are-loathed-by-elites-are-they

Think about it when you read these local blogs. I — and others sharing some of my views — likely as not will be described as “Trump-haters,” the favorite label of a leading local troll. However, I don’t recall any of us using that particular four-letter word except in items such as this where it is specifically dealt with.

Gitlin’s article concludes: “Fox News, its radio equivaalents and the Trump White House are paranoia machines, and we have not seen the last of their furies — or of the linguistic projection that suits the all-or-nothing apocalypse they invite.”

Meanwhile, I do despise Donald Trump.

The insanity? His lying claim at a Florida rally that Minnesota Congressmember Ithan Omar had entered the county illegally “married her brother or something” and “hates America” (There’s that word again). Samolia-born Omar, a Muslim, entered the country at age 8, fleeing civil war at age 8, She was naturalized in 2000 at age 17. So Donald is in Florida, seeking a few good racists in Minnesota via free TV.

Or Saturday’s charge that Senator Ben Sasse (R-Neb) is “rude and obnoxious” after the latter lambasted the president for his coronavirus response and accused him with being friendly with dictators and white supremacists. Think hard on the Supreme Court nomination, Senator.

Or, in Miami, supporting a conspiracy theory alleging that Joe Biden helped orchestrate the killing of Seal Team 6 members to cover up that the Osama bin Laden assassination was fake.