Hello there, I'm Chuck Todd and this is the Chuck Todd cast.

When Donald Trump took over the Republican Party in 2016, he also took over the most loyal

part of its base, White Evangelicals.

In this week's episode of Meet the Press Reports, we're looking at how Trump's influence

has radically changed things for evangelical voters.

And joining me now is Kristen Dumack.

He's the author of one of these surprising bestsellers when it hit Jesus and John Wayne,

how White Evangelicals corrupted a fate and fractured a nation.

Kristen, thank you for joining me.

And what we explore here is sort of the, I guess it's the de-religionosity, I don't even

know if I've just made up a word, but it's like we've taken, and this is sort of the

complain of Russell Moore in our interview I did with him.

The religion has disappeared from evangelicalism and it seems to be your thesis here, right?

I mean, it is and it isn't because it's a little bit more complicated than that.

I push back against any claims that this is politics hijacking religion.

Because if you look to history, you can see that you know, religion was really at the

court.

It was at the core of the rise of the religious right.

It really shaped our modern Republican Party.

And it embraced, you know, the religious leaders within American evangelicalism embraced

Donald Trump.

Now they did shift towards more of a kind of God in country, Christian nationalist faith,

...