White evangelicals still see Trump as ethical and honest, but atheists know better
A new survey shows that atheists are far more critical of Trump’s lies, corruption, and incompetence than white evangelicals
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100 days into his term, Donald Trump’s support is dropping even among many of his most fervent supporters. The reasons are obvious. He hasn’t done much of anything he campaigned on, and the stuff he has done is idiotic and destroying our country.
According to a new Pew Research Center survey, though, there’s one group of voters who continue standing by his side: White evangelicals.
Roughly 80% of them voted for Trump in 2024, representing 20% of the electorate, and that’s about the same number that supported him in the two previous presidential elections.
And today? 72% of white evangelicals approve of how Trump is doing, the highest percentage of any religious group in the country.
White evangelicals support Trump far more than white non-evangelical Christians (51%), white Catholics (51%), Black Protestants (10%), and people with no organized religious affiliation (26%). Furthermore, the drop in support for Trump since February has been smaller among white evangelicals compared to all other religious groups.
It just goes to show you that no amount of needless cruelty or massive lies will lead conservative Christians to waver in their support for Trump. Once you’ve convinced them to accept things on faith, they’re all in, no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary.
Just to reiterate that point, Pew researchers also asked survey participants how they felt about the ethical standards of top Trump officials—people like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who leaked classified secrets; Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is decimating our research capabilities while failing to contain an outbreak of measles; and Interior Secretary Doug Bergum, who is getting rid of the people who maintain our national parks.
On a scale of “poor” to “excellent,” 43% of all Americans say the ethics of this administration are poor.
But among white evangelicals? 34% say the ethics are “excellent” while another 35% say they’re “good.” That’s a total of nearly 7 in 10 white evangelicals who think the Trump administration’s ethics are above board. Both numbers are higher in their respective categories than every other religious demographic.
If nearly 70% of white evangelicals think this administration is ethical, no one should ever turn to a white evangelical pastor for guidance on how to live a moral life. They can’t spot immorality when it’s staring them in the face.
What about trusting Trump?
Once again, the sort of people who are more willing to believe the planet is roughly 6,000 years old, that Jesus came back from the dead, and that eating an apple caused all the sin in the world aren’t very good at picking up on obvious bullshit.
57% of white evangelicals say they trust Trump more than previous presidents. Compare that to 9% of Black Protestants, 18% of religiously unaffiliated Americans, and 37% of white Catholics.
When the majority of white evangelicals think Trump is trustworthy compared to his predecessors, there’s just no getting through to them. They’ll believe damn near anyone who’s white, male, and confident.
When I was looking at all this data, it didn’t surprise me that Trump was doing just fine with white evangelicals, who clearly don’t give a damn about their purported values even though Trump doesn’t adhere to them. They’ll overlook the whole “family values” thing if Trump is separating families. They’ll ignore the whole “care for the least of these” thing if Trump is punishing refugees who have nowhere else to turn.
It also didn’t surprise me he was underwater with the religious “nones.” But I was really curious where Trump stood with atheists in particular.
Exit polls in 2024 showed that only 27% of religiously unaffiliated voters supported Trump. The percentage for atheists is likely much smaller, though polling organizations have not published those numbers specifically.
So when Pew published the data on religious support (or lack thereof) for Trump, I asked them if they had the numbers for atheists as well. They did. And I can now share them exclusively with you.
(There’s one important caveat to all this: Because of the small sample size of atheist participants, there’s a much larger margin for error. In other words, the numbers for atheists are far less precise than the numbers we have for the different religious groups.)
Let’s start with approval for Trump overall. We know 72% of white evangelicals support him while only 26% of religiously unaffiliated Americans feel the same.
Among atheists, though? Support for Trump is at a dismal 15%. You have to be one of those clueless “Atheists for Liberty” types at this point to still think Trump is on the right track.
What about ethics? 69% of white evangelicals think the Trump administration’s ethical standards are “excellent” or “good.” Only 23% of the religiously unaffiliated feel the same way.
Among atheists, however, the number drops even lower to 14%. In fact, a whopping 80% of atheists say the administration’s ethical standards are “poor.”
And what about trusting Trump compared to previous presidents? 57% of white evangelicals say they trust Trump more than the alternatives while 18% of religiously unaffiliated Americans feel the same way.
But only 11% of atheists agreed. (And given the margin of error, it’s theoretically possible the true answer is much closer to 0%.)
Basically, no matter what question you ask about the quality of this presidency, white evangelicals overwhelmingly approve of Trump while atheists overwhelmingly reject him. No margin of error takes away from that basic fact.
Given the way the American public is fed up with his incompetence, with a majority of the country now disapproving of his presidency, it seems that atheists are far more representative of the public at large—ahead of them, arguably—than white evangelicals.
We’re the ones whose patriotism shouldn’t be questioned, whose demand for quality isn’t subject to a right-wing purity test, and whose respect for the unappreciated work done by federal workers should be admired by the rest of the country.
If Democrats want to recapture Congress and win the presidency, it would be smart of them to start by reaching out to their most loyal voters—Secular Americans—and openly advocate for church/state separation, funding of scientific research, accountability for all employees, acceptance of reason-based policies, and a return to actual goddamn morality as pillars of what the party represents moving forward. The Congressional Freethought Caucus is already doing this, but the entire party ought to follow suit.
Donald Trump cheated everyone he ever did business with. He never signed a contract he wouldn't violate. He was a draft-dodger of the lowest order. He repeatedly cheated on all three of his wives. He is a known associate of sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. He played no role in the lives of his children until they were adults. He is an adjudicated rapist and has been convicted of thirty-four felonies. When the Evangelicals continue to see Donald Trump as ethical, it illustrates the disconnect between religion and morality about as well as it can be. Trump has played the Evangelical preachers for the fools they are.
Okay, so who's surprised by this? Anyone? Considering that your average evangelical is probably getting all their news from Fox and rarely if ever pick up a newspaper or be bothered to look at an alternative news source, the above should catch any one of us unawares on a day that doesn't end in Y.
The fact is that it hasn't really hit the fan just yet. When the store shelves at Walmart and Target start to go empty, we may find something of a different story here.
As it comes to that, we may not have long to wait.