President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw troops from Northern Syria has disappointed evangelical Christian leaders and might cost him votes with that important demographic, according to Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody.
"There's a lot of – I think the best word to describe this, I think is – sadness," Brody told NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro. "Maybe there's a word of disappointment as well, because they talk about fighting for religious persecution, and all of a sudden we see this move. And it just it just doesn't jibe with everything they've seen thus far, and it's led to some soul search and some scratching of within the evangelical community."
The Trump administration's campaign against religious persecution worldwide conflicts with his move of troops out of Syria, where Christians – some even among the Kurds – have been persecuted.
"He has been 100% close to perfection for evangelicals, and this comes along," Brody said. "That's why I call it a mini-crisis. It's not a crisis, but something that bears watching as to how much of a slip we may see in terms of evangelical support. Because, I think within the base, they're saying, 'look, there's an asterisk,' and the asterisk is let's see how this plays out as we move forward, if we're talking genocide, if we're talking about a slaughter, about a lot of p.r. [public relations] disaster pictures coming out – already starting to see."
After Trump's withdrawal of U.S. service men, Turkey staged an incursion against the Kurdish forces in the region.
"The president of the United States is in danger of losing the mandate of heaven," Pat Robertson told CBN's "The 700 Club."
CBN's Brody also pointed to the roughly 5% increase in support in a Fox News poll for impeachment proceedings against the president as "very concerning."
"But, at the same time, we're in the narrative stage, which side – the Republicans and Trump or the Democrats and some would say the mainstream media – will craft the narrative here," Brody added. "And so far Democrats are winning the narrative battle and I think the polls indicate that."
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