How Iowa evangelicals rallied around Trump’s ‘holy war’

Donald Trump’s closing message in Iowa before the first votes of the 2024 presidential election was a familiar one. He’s convinced his supporters that his legal problems are their own, and that he’s the only one who can stop them, while stringing along a fake narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from them.

As he targets a key Republican voting bloc of evangelical Christians, the former president is leaning into a fantasy among supporters and social media influencers depicting him as something of a messianic figure, who was sent by God as a “shepherd to mankind” who ends his week in the Oval Office “by attending church on Sunday,” according to one video shared by his campaign.

Mr Trump never joined a church during his presidency, nor was he seen attending services more than a handful of times. Nevertheless, he shared the video, from a group of meme creators who have worked closely with the former president’s campaign, hours before votes were cast in Iowa.

The caucuses are “your personal chance to score the ultimate victory” against his political enemies, he told a rally crowd on 14 January. “The Washington swamp has done everything in its power to take away your voice,” he said.

His campaign has relied on the mountain of criminal charges and lawsuits against him to cast himself as a victim of political persecution. His evangelical support has cast him as a Biblical David against the “deep state” Goliath, while he echoes white supremacist manifestos and plots his revenge against the justice system.

In 2016, with evangelical Christian voters making up roughly two-thirds of votes cast, Mr Trump lost the Iowa caucus to Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

Eight years later, polls show the former president consolidating support