DeSantis Joins Trump & Christian Nationalists In Opposition to Aid for Ukraine

This week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis joined Donald Trump and much of America's Christian right in opposition to continued aid to Ukraine, calling Russia's bloody invasion a "territorial dispute" and not within our "vital national interests." His stance is at odds with Republican leaders and most Reaganites in the GOP, but should appease the Party's MAGA base that seems to admire Vladimir Putin's authoritarian rule in Russia.

Yahoo News: One year into the war between Ukraine and Russia, most Donald Trump voters now say the United States has given “too much” military aid to Ukraine (51%) and that such aid should “decrease” going forward (54%), according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll."

And, among Republican voters, the group most likely to oppose further aid are Christian Nationalists, the group that has been most loyal to Donald Trump. Christian Nationalists represent a large subset of America's white evangelical Protestants.

Northeastern.edu: "Russian President Vladimir Putin has found support in an unlikely place: the U.S. Specifically, Christian nationalists, a subsection of America’s religious right, have flocked to the country’s autocratic leader, according to new research from a team of social scientists, including Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, an assistant professor of religion and anthropology at Northeastern University." ...

"Between Putin and Christian nationalists, the ideal is a “purity”––cultural, religious, racial or sexual––that’s in opposition to perceived social immoralities."

“LGBTQ+ rights, transgender rights, abortion access, reproductive equality––that is a threat to them because they perceive of that as somehow tainting the purity of their social culture,” Riccardi-Swartz says. “The goal then is to create a world in which the social values reflect that of their Christian values.”

So, Gov. DeSantis's stance on Ukraine makes perfect sense from a political perspective. DeSantis is building his national reputation as an anti-woke, pro-evangelical culture warrior, doing battle with the LGBT community and racial minorities. But if he intends to cut into Trump's support among white evangelicals, he has to align his foreign policy with their worldview. And it's telling that DeSantis decided to make his Ukraine announcement on Tucker Carlson's show, a favorite of older white evangelicals and Putin apologists.

#politics #DeSantis #culture

By: Don Lam & Curated Content