Trump Says Evangelicals Can Expect 'Violence' If Republicans Lose Power in the Midterms

At a dinner with evangelical leaders held at the White House on Monday, Donald Trump warned of “violence” if Republicans lose power in the midterms, according to audio recording obtained by NBC News. “You’re one election away from losing everything that you’ve got,” he said.

In the recording, he emphasized, somewhat cryptically, that “the level of hatred, the level of anger is unbelievable” when talking up the stakes of this year’s midterms:

If the GOP loses, he said, “they will overturn everything that we’ve done and they’ll do it quickly and violently, and violently. There’s violence. When you look at Antifa and you look at some of these groups—these are violent people.”

The scare tactic, grotesque and baseless as it is, was largely unnecessary. Evangelical voters refuse to quit Trump, who despite being almost comically immoral by conservative Christian standards has been a reliable ally on court appointments and abortion politics. God doesn’t care about anything else, right?