Russell Moore Says in Light of Overturning Roe v. Wade, Conservatives Who Voted Trump Have NOT Been Vindicated

Despite being all but completely radio silent on the overturning of Roe v. Wade, making nary a comment about it on Twitter, Facebook, his podcast or his personal website, the former head of the ERLC is discovered to have addressed it at least one time by offerings a few thoughts during a Faith Angle West event in late June, surrounded by like-minded folk. He did not express any elation or joy at the supreme court decision, but rather bemoaned the way it went about and the negative repercussions it would have long term.

At one point, Moore says “Some of the people who have been the most own-the-libs-ish in the way that they’re speaking are the people who’ve been the least involved in the actual trenches of the pro-life movement” with WokePreacherTV noting that “What this does tell us is he *was* online, not at a monastery, after the decision was released, but chose to stay silent.”

Rather than praising the overturning like a normal Christian leader, which resulted in dozens of states outlawing abortion or heavily restricting it in ways not previously thought possible, giving Trump credit for his nominations that led to this, Moore instead offered up that conservative who held their nose and voted for Trump in hopes that he would impact the courts have not in fact been vindicated, and that his concerns over Trump’s presidency and legacy are proving true. While Moore has said that neither parties represent him (though he is a former Democrat who has voted for Hillary in the past) he has given his blessing to anyone who wished to vote for either party and mockingly doubted that Trump would elect conservative Supreme Court Justices.

—TRANSCRIPT—

MOLLY BALL: I’m sure this is an argument that you heard a lot, that we all heard a lot in the Trump years, this idea that sort of a vulgar vessel was necessary to achieve holy aims. And in the wake of this decision, a lot of those people are taking a victory lap, saying, see? We were right. He gave us what we wanted. Are they, in fact, vindicated?

RUSSELL MOORE: Well, here’s the argument that they would use. The argument that they would use is that there had to be a disruptive figure who would be willing to do whatever it took to appoint the sorts of people who would hand down the Dobbs case. I don’t buy that argument for a number of reasons. And one of them, the author of the Dobbs case is a George W. Bush appointee. I don’t think that you would have had largely any different decision from a Jeb Bush court or Marco Rubio court, a Ted Cruz court, than you would have with a Donald Trump court, especially given the way that attention is so carefully paid now on both the right and the left to court appointments. So I don’t think that Donald Trump uniquely was going to make judicial appointments that someone else wouldn’t have made.

I also think that one has to look not only at the final result in this case but what is the cost of hitching the pro-life movement to a figure such as this. Now again, I think people can make arguments in various ways, but that is deeply concerning to me. I don’t think you can have, long term, a pro-life ethic without a concern for vulnerability, a concern for women, character. I mean, I think all of those things matter.

… [Nearly 2 hours later, during a Q+A]

The question is going to be, when it comes to the pro-life movement, as with every other social reform movement, there are two parts of it that are both necessary. There’s a legal aspect of it and there also is a cultural persuasion aspect of it. And you can win the one while losing the other. That’s what I think is going to be important right now, is making sure that you don’t end up with a short-term court win or political win and a long-term loss in terms of persuasion. That was what I worried about and prayed that I was wrong about, but I don’t think I was.

Which is, when people would say to me, “We’re voting for Trump as a lesser of two evils,” and this is a transactional sort of arrangement. One of my friends said, “I’m not voting for one person. I’m voting for a thousand people in an administration.” I think that’s a reasonable argument. I do. It’s not the calculation I’d make, but I think it’s a reasonable argument.

The thing I worried about was that we’re in an America where not only do I morally think lesser of two evils is not workable, it’s that I don’t think it’s possible in this sort of environment. And so if there had been people who were actually going to say, “We’re with you on some of your court picks and we think that the way that you’re speaking after Charlottesville is reprehensible,” or, you know, many other things all the way through. “We like Amy Coney Barrett, and we think January 6 is horrific,” that would be one thing. We’re living in an American context where that is very, very difficult. People find their tribal leaders and tend to become shaped by them.

h/t to @WokePreacherTV, purveyor of the finest primary sources, for the vid and transcript.

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