Evangelical Christians used to care a lot about morality in politics.

Christian leaders besieged Jimmy Carter for giving an interview to Playboy. They called Bill Clinton unfit for office because of his marital infidelity and other failings.

Then Donald Trump carried out a hostile takeover of the Republican Party, defeated Hillary Clinton and became president. Suddenly, evangelical leaders saw fit to emphasize parts of the Bible focusing on forgiveness and imperfect leaders. Look, they rationalized, it's a modern King David!

No one played a greater role than Mike Pence in anointing the “grab them by the p----” president as God's chosen leader. As McKay Coppins wrote in a 2018 profile in The Atlantic, Pence's "servant leadership" astounded even those closest to Trump.

“He was our top surrogate by far,” an anonymous senior adviser to Trump told The Atlantic. “He was this mild-mannered, uber-Christian guy with a Midwestern accent telling voters, ‘Trump is a good man; I know what’s in his heart.’ It was very convincing – you wanted to trust him. You’d be sitting there listening to him and thinking, 'Yeah, maybe Trump is a good man!' "

Why evangelical voters flock to Trump:Trump's questionable morality gets a pass from........

© USA TODAY