Back in August, Seth Meyers did a fascinating segment on Donald Trump’s longtime “spiritual advisor” Paula White, a televangelist who believes that wealth “is a sign of God’s approval” and believes that Trump is “saved” despite never going to church and, well, all of his other actions in life. A great segment to counter that one – and proof that not all of the religious leaders around Trump blindly support him – is the above clip from last night’s Full Frontal, where Samantha Bee meets Pastor A.R. Bernard, who has the distinction of being the only member of Trump’s “evangelical advisory board” to resign. So when did Bernard realize he wouldn’t have an impact on the advisory board? “Meeting 2.” What was Trump like in those meetings? “It was like a person who was so fascinated with being where they are that that was the most important thing.”
Does anything good come out of all this awfulness? “This is not all bad, because America has been exposed. We are being forced to have a conversation that we’ve needed to have since the Civil War,” Bernard says. “I interpreted him as a Saul – someone who was put into power not at the desire of God, but as a concession to the people, and who ended up exposing the spiritual and moral condition of the nation.” Or, as Bee puts it, “So this is ripping off a very healthy and lovely Band-Aid to reveal the rot at the core of humanity?”
