PRRI's Robert P. Jones: "Donald Trump sees himself as the king of kings"

The American people need to give up childish things and do the necessary hard work if they are to have any chance of saving their democracy from Trumpism and the larger right-wing antidemocracy revolutionary project. As James Baldwin counseled in a 1962 essay that appeared in the New York Times Book Review, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Unfortunately, there are very few indications of such newfound maturity. The American people remain in a deep slumber and state of learned helplessness as Donald Trump and his forces continue with the shock and awe campaign against American democracy, civil society, the rule of law, the Constitution and human decency. The mainstream news media as an institution appears to have chosen a strategy of anticipatory obedience and compliance, if not collaboration, in normalizing Trumpism and his attempts to become the country’s first elected dictator. The Democratic Party is mired in infighting and a perpetual post-mortem about how and why it was routed by Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans in the 2024 election. The concept of how to be an effective opposition party seems outside the grasp of its leaders.

Pro-democracy civil society organizations and the courts are trying to resist Trump’s attempts to neutralize them. Unfortunately, Donald Trump has great leverage in such a struggle and is using the near-limitless resources of the State to impose his will. For example, while the courts have repeatedly ordered a halt or pause on the Trump administration’s actions, it has and continues to treat such orders and rulings as optional, rather than as the commands of a co-equal branch of government, per the Constitution.

Donald Trump was democratically elected. By choosing him over President Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris, a majority of voters endorsed Donald Trump’s values, character, behavior and public aspirations to be a dictator on “day one”; This is a damning indictment.

After more than 10 years of the Age of Trump and all the horrible things it has spawned and encouraged, public opinion polls show that there are still many tens of millions of Americans who will not abandon Donald Trump under any circumstances. Moreover, by some metrics, Donald Trump has actually expanded his base of support among the most disgruntled and alienated members of the American public.

To that point, polling by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) has consistently shown that white right-wing Christians are the bedrock of Donald Trump’s support. This level of devotion gives Trump a great amount of power and flexibility in his quest for unlimited power because unlike his predecessors, he has a cult-like following that he can use to claim democratic legitimacy combined with autocratic powers and a willingness to shatter America’s political and societal institutions to achieve his personal and political goals. This combination is a powerful force multiplier for competitive authoritarianism and perpetual MAGA rule by Donald Trump and his chosen successors.

Robert P. Jones is the president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller "The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future," as well as "White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity."

In this conversation, Jones emphasizes how racism, white racial resentment, and white identity politics are central to Donald Trump’s appeal and the rise of his authoritarian populist movement. The denial and evasion of this reality by many white Americans — especially liberals and moderates in the news media and political class — explains why they have been so ineffective in stopping the rise of Trumpism and the larger antidemocracy project. Jones reflects on the Trump administration’s thought crime regime and what it feels like to be the author of a book that has been censored for being “unpatriotic” and contrary to “American values.”

Jones also explains how “conservative” so-called “values voters” have now replaced those values with Donald Trump and MAGA and see him as a tool to impose a White Christian nationalist theocracy on the American people. At the end of this conversation, Jones warns that the future of American democracy and “free and fair” elections in 2026 and beyond are far from guaranteed.

You and I have been engaging in a years-long conversation about the Age of Trump and America's embattled democracy. Trump is back in power as we warned. It has been more than 120 days, and matters are very dire here in the United States. How are you feeling?

Even as someone who lives and breathes politics in the United States, I continue to be in a state of perpetual disbelief. On the one hand, there's not much at this point that President Trump could do that really would surprise me. But at the same time, the speed of the destruction he has commanded and unleashed on so many fronts makes my head spin. I was prepared for Trump's return to the presidency to be ugly and disastrous. But seeing the reality of it — especially up close here in Washington, DC, where so many patriotic public servants’ lives have been decimated by Trump’s attacks on our government institutions — has been very upsetting. I love my country, and it is painful to watch it being dismantled and destroyed by Trump and his MAGA forces.

The Age of Trump and this assault on multiracial democracy have been the norm for American society. Black and brown Americans have only been equal citizens under the law for 60 or so years. In the immediate sense, the Age of Trump is the White backlash and White frontlash to President Obama, the country's first black president. But its origins are much deeper. Many white Americans seem to be in shock and still stunned because they believed in an America that did not really exist; Trumpism is quintessentially American.

I think you're right. I am white. Most white Americans are having a much harder time digesting what they're seeing from Donald Trump than Black Americans and other people of color, for the reasons you just explained. Most Black Americans have had the experience of living under a government that was openly malevolent toward them. They either directly experienced or otherwise know the history of Jim Crow racism. They have deeply felt these feelings before. It is not new, nor is its revival a shocking surprise.

On the other hand, white Americans, for most of our nation’s history, hypocritically said they supported democracy while still supporting white supremacy. The Civil Rights Movement fully exposed that hypocrisy and deep contradiction in American society, but white Americans have made heroic efforts not to see it. That is why so many White Americans are still, a decade after Trump’s first rise to power, expressing surprise at the MAGA movement's hostility to democracy.

I also do not believe that White Americans as a group have the coping skills to deal with the challenge of Trumpism to our democracy and freedom in the same way that Black Americans do. Black Americans created institutions of resistance and survival, including the Black church and a music and larger cultural life that channels the energy of survival and resistance. Most white Americans do not have that kind of history and resilience to fall back upon. In all, for many white Americans, the Age of Trump left them with a deep sense of vertigo. They feel, many for the first time, that their world is spinning, but really, it’s just that we are all finally reaping the white supremacist whirlwind.

How are your colleagues who work in civil society organizations feeling right now?

People are reacting in a wide range of ways. Some people are ducking and covering. For example, they are scrubbing their websites and materials of certain words and phrases such as "diversity," "equity," "inclusion," "race," "racism," "systemic," etc., etc. But there are other organizations and leaders saying "No!" We are not going to alter our mission statements and retreat. We have long histories and values we're committed to, and we're going to stay the course. And you know what? If we go down, then we are going to go down while being true to our mission. We at PRRI are committed to taking that course.

There are recent inspiring examples of that type of integrity and courage. Here is just one: the Episcopal Church refused to participate in the Trump administration's resettlement program for Afrikaners. The Episcopal Church has had a refugee resettlement program for more than four decades that's been in partnership with the United States government. They have helped needy and deserving people from all over the world get their footing here in the United States. Through common membership in the worldwide Anglican Communion, The American Episcopal Church is tightly connected with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA). The Episcopal Church courageously refused to play its assigned role in what is essentially a Trump-produced white supremacist morality play. Moreover, the Episcopal Church, in an act of protest, is shutting down their entire four decades-long resettlement program rather than comply with helping the Trump administration with its white identity politics propaganda program.

The Afrikaners are the descendants of and direct beneficiaries of Apartheid in South Africa. By privileging those Afrikaners over Black and brown refugees, many who have been waiting in line for years and who are actually deserving of help and protection, Trump is sending a very clear message about his and the administration's values and priorities. The Episcopal Church is a role model of resistance and principle in this dark time.

As part of its national whitewashing and Orwellian memory hole "patriotic education" program, the Trump administration is censoring books, targeting universities and colleges, and the American educational system more broadly, and even attacking museums and libraries. Your book was banned at the US Naval Academy. How does it feel to have such an "honor" and "distinction?"

The Nazis burned books to destroy knowledge. It was an analog world then. Now we are in a digital world, and the Trump administration can destroy and suppress knowledge and the truth with the push of a button. In addition to so much digital destruction, which materially would be the biggest book burning in history, the Trump administration is resorting to old-fashioned book bans. My book, White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, was one of 381 books, including seven books on Christianity, banned from the US Naval Academy. Guess what? Quite predictably, all those books were about Christianity's complicity with racism and white supremacy. But Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" was not banned. Apparently, books about Christianity's complicity with racism and white supremacy are too dangerous for midshipmen to read, but "Mein Kampf" is not.

But there has been important pushback. The New York Times published two different articles on the books being banned at the Naval Academy per Donald Trump and the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s directives. The American Academy of Religion organized a webinar featuring me and the other banned religious studies authors to denounce the bans and support academic freedom. A retired Navy commander organized an effort to make the banned books available to midshipmen. As a result, most of the banned books are now being put back on the shelves as the US Naval Academy. Personally, for the Trump administration to ban one of my books makes me feel like I must be doing something right.

Trump has now been president for more than four months, approximately 130 days. What are the polls telling us about his support among the American people, in particular white Christians?

White Christians are still largely supporting Trump. If you look at the voting and polling patterns, there is a stunning dichotomy between predominantly White Christian groups and everyone else. A recent PRRI poll shows that Trump's favorability among white evangelical Protestants is 73%. Trump also has majority support among other white Christians, too. White Catholics: 53% favor Trump. White non-evangelical Protestants: 52% favor. The LDS church, sometimes called the Mormons: 51% favor. Non-white Christian groups, non-Christian religious groups, atheists, agnostics and unaffiliated all hold unfavorable views of Trump.

Given Trump's behavior such as claiming he is chosen by God, is a type of prophet, comparing himself to Jesus Christ, invoking God and Christianity to justify his policies that should be antithetical to that faith tradition and the Bible, and his willful gross failings — that are publicly documented — of his morality, character and behavior, how are white Christians justifying their continued support of him?

The rationales that White right-wing Christians use to justify their support of Trump are all over the map. This is because there has been a desperate search for a plausible theological justification for a predetermined political decision for Trump. Some of the rationales for Trump's behavior are farcical, such as the claim that he is a "young Christian" who is still maturing in his faith. We heard that in the beginning with Trump. That excuse has been dropped because Trump is not changing and does not want to change. One big challenge is that Trump has explicitly said that he has never had to ask for forgiveness for anything that he has done in his life. The most fundamental commitment of being a Christian is to admit that you've sinned and that you need forgiveness from God. Even Trump’s denial of that basic Christian tenet has proved no obstacle for his white Christian supporters.

At this point, years later, it’s clear that Trump's relationship to white Christians is transactional. Now it is more common to hear white Christians instead claiming that he is a tool of God and prophecy. Ultimately, white conservative Christians are trying to find a theological justification for what is really a political transaction that gives them the power they want in American society — and Trump is making it increasingly clear that much of that power is oriented around the preservation of white supremacy.

What does it mean to be a "values voter" in the Age of Trump and his return to power?

Very few people use that language anymore. We heard those types of appeals during the George W. Bush presidency and even in the beginning of Trump's first term. For obvious reasons, most white evangelicals have dropped that terminology. A major hub for white evangelical organizing in 2004, ivotevalues.com, for example, is now defunct. Now their appeals are about how "Trump is going to protect our way of life" and "Trump is going to protect our religion." Only the thinnest veil of Christian morality is pulled over the MAGA movement today — it is transactional and about power. Even the cruelest policies, such as Trump’s illegal renditions of immigrants to hellhole prisons in other countries without due process guaranteed to all by the Constitution, evoke little protest. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that, if we take this support seriously, such cruelty is in fact a reflection of the values of these voters.

After the passing of Pope Francis. Trump shared an AI-generated image of himself as Pope Francis’ successor. How did white Christians, and white Catholics, specifically, react to such an act of disrespect?

White evangelicals are the ones who get much of the attention from the news media and public. But white Catholics and white non-evangelical Protestants have supported Trump every time he has been on the ballot. There is no such thing as blasphemy from Donald Trump's point of view. There cannot be, since blasphemy depends on the acknowledgment of the sacred. Trump sees himself as the king of kings, the ruler of the world. Posting an image of himself as the new Pope fits Trump's brand and ego perfectly. He got very little pushback from his white Catholic base about that act of gross disrespect.

What role do race and racism play in terms of white Christian support for Donald Trump and his MAGA movement? This is another area of great failure by the white-dominated mainstream American news media. There are the same evasions and rhetorical tricks applied in the news media's discussions of "working class" support for Donald Trump. Race is central here and not coincidental and/or peripheral.

When I hear "working class," I always add "white" to the front of those two words. When I hear "Christian nationalism," I do the same thing. To your point, if you look at the data, you don't see huge class breaks among African Americans, for example, in terms of support for Trump. There is economic anxiety on both sides of the color line. But non-whites suffer much more from economic disadvantage and inequality than do white Americans.

What we found here at PRRI, looking at the data going back to 2016, is that both economic and racial anxiety are independent predictors of support for Trump. If you were making a recipe, it would be two parts white racial anxiety and one part economic anxiety that made up the toxic cocktail that drove people to support Donald Trump. However, among Latinos in particular, there was an economic headwind that really hurt Kamala Harris and helped Donald Trump among that group. Those roads were mostly paved by economic concerns. There is also research that suggests that some Latinos and other non-whites supported Trump because they wanted a type of honorary Whiteness.

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But our 100-day poll shows that the group that has moved the farthest away from Trump is Latino Protestants, a group that voted two-thirds for Trump in 2024. Trump's favorability is down from 51% to 32% among that group in just 100 days. The economic chaos Trump has unleashed, together with Trump's nativism, racism and the violence that is being visited upon Latinos as part of the mass deportations, is pushing them away from Trump.

Is there anything that Donald Trump could conceivably do that would cost him the support of his white Christian followers, or his MAGA people, more generally?

The public opinion research shows that Donald Trump is a fairly unpopular person in terms of his favorability. In 2016, his favorability was only 24% before he secured the nomination and became the official Republican presidential candidate. Then partisanship takes over, and the Republican Party rallies around him. Since his first term, Trump’s favorability is consistently at about 40 to 45 percent. That is his ceiling and floor. But Trump’s favorability among Republicans has never dipped below 70 percent. That support is rock solid, and there is virtually nothing Trump can do for the Republican base to not support him. In fact, in one of our polls here at PRRI, we asked people who had favorable views of Trump the following question: Is there anything Trump can do to lose your support? Two-thirds of the respondents said there is absolutely nothing Trump could do to lose my support. Trump's MAGA base is that locked in. It is going to take independent voters moving away from Trump to potentially weaken him to any significant and/or long-term amount.

As for some hope, the polls do show that Trump's tariffs, his corruption and disregard for the rule of law, his abuses of power, and his attacks on the social safety net are hurting him with independent voters. Once the impact of the tariffs hits, I think we may see even bigger swings. If Trump launches mass deportations that feature militarized internment camps for undocumented immigrants in this country, that will also be another inflection point. But Trump’s base will be with him: six out of ten Republicans support military internment camps for undocumented people.

Why believe that given Donald Trump and his forces’ autocratic and increasingly fascist and authoritarian assaults on democracy and the rule of law, there will even be “free and fair” elections in 2026 and beyond? That is a huge assumption that hangs over all these conversations about the future and resistance to Trump and the MAGA revolutionary project’s drive for unlimited power.

When I talk about the midterms, I preface that with the qualifier, "if we have free and fair elections." It is very conditional. In theory, if the Democrats take back control of Congress, they could reverse some of Trump's most onerous policies. But, like you, I am quite worried that the midterms and beyond will not be "free and fair" and that Trump and the Republicans will basically have sham elections in key states to "legitimate" their rule.

I am from Mississippi. Elections during Jim Crow segregation were supposedly "free and fair," and they were anything but. This is part of America's living history and present — the Republicans in the South are rolling back civil rights and voting rights laws to bring back a 21st-century version of Jim Crow at the ballot box. This is not something in the distant past or in a distant country. American democracy and its principle of "free and fair" elections are not something to be taken for granted. In fact, truly free and fair elections have only been with us for about one-quarter of America’s nearly 250-year history. And that achievement will not be preserved without an active effort to protect it next fall.