Still, they believe their god has sent them useful infidels throughout the years.
I can't find the best article I read on this subject, but here are two that address it nearly as well:
Thomas Jefferson may have taken a razor to his personal copy of the Gospels, excising the tales of miracles, but he had friends among the Baptists, who supported his campaign to enshrine religious freedom into law. Trump is not the first politically useful infidel to find allies in the evangelical world.
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In any case, ideology is not the sole bond between conservative evangelicals and Donald Trump. His dictator-lite charisma is essential to his appeal. To the majority of Americans—those who did not vote for him—Trump has all the allure of the boorish boss who takes too many liberties at the staff Christmas party. But his authoritarian machismo is right in step with a long evangelical tradition of pastor-overlords who anoint themselves with the power to make their own rules—and, in the event of their own occasional moral lapses, assure their followers that God always forgives.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/05/a-match-made-in-heaven/521409/
But it was Tony Perkins, head of conservative Family Research Council, who abandoned any pretense that supporting Trump was about personal morality—it was about power.
“Evangelicals have been highly selective about how and when they decided to be outraged with a candidate’s behavior.”
“My support for Donald Trump in the general election was never based upon shared values rather it was built upon shared concerns,” Perkins told the Washington Post.
Liberals and conservatives alike chided such comments as hypocritical. Worthen, however, said they were par for the course.
“Evangelicals have been highly selective about how and when they decided to be outraged with a candidate’s behavior,” she said. “I’m not sure [disreputable behavior] has ever stopped them from making an alliance with a candidate who they may find useful for any number of reasons.
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https://thinkprogress.org/why-religious-conservatives-didnt-shame-trump-in-2016-and-probably-won-t-in-2017-either-44576f6761d9
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