In an increasingly fevered attempt at convincing himself that he's not an outlier as a Mormon who didn't vote for Trump, Peterson gives his readers another healthy dose of cherry picked "snippets". First he tries to demean and belittle and move the goalposts
A number of years ago, I was chatting with a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy (now long emeritus) about partisan politics and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (This member of the Seventy held a doctorate in political science from Harvard University and had had an impressive international academic career prior to his call to full-time ecclesiastical work.) He recalled a conversation with the late Michael Deaver, who had served for several years as deputy White House chief of staff under Ronald Reagan, in which Deaver thanked him for Latter-day Saint loyalty to the Republican Party. Feeling impish, Elder X responded that, actually, the majority of Latter-day Saints were probably socialists. Mr. Deaver was surprised and puzzled, so Elder X explained that most members of the Church now live outside of the United States and that, for example, most Venezuelan Saints were almost certainly Chavistas.
Mr. Deaver had forgotten — or, more likely, didn’t know — about the existence of Latter-day Saints beyond the borders of the United States of America. And so too, seemingly, do those who prattle confidently about how almost all members of the Church are absolutely in love with Donald Trump. It turns out, though, that most members of the Church aren’t Americans at all, let alone MAGA Republicans.
Nobody was claiming that globally, most Mormons are MAGA Republicans. That wasn't even the question Peterson himself was answering yesterday. He said, and I quote "To me, while the data above clearly demonstrate Utah to be a reliably Republican state, they fail to suggest an exceptional Utah surge toward Mr. Trump in particular." The data 45.5% of the vote in 2016, 59.4% of the vote in 2024, shows a 30% surge (which is exceptional in politics) toward Mr Trump in Utah in the 202
4 election.
If someone is "prattling on" it's Peterson himself. His final point amounts to a "Yeah, but..."
One final point: There is, it seems to me, a significant difference between someone who is enraptured with Mr. Trump in particular and a habitual Republican voter of more or less conservative inclinations who opted for Mr. Trump (a) because Mr. Trump was the Republican nominee and (b) because that voter regarded Hillary Clinton and/or Joe Biden and/or Kamala Harris as flatly unpalatable. I know a few genuine Trump enthusiasts. I know many more people, though, who simply oppose the current Democratic Party, which they associate with transgender athletes, defunding the police, overregulation, urban anarchy, and a host of other positions that they deem beyond the pale. The former are MAGA Republicans. The latter are just Republicans, or conservatives.
In other words, most LDS voting for Trump in 2024 weren't really voting for Trump. He seems desperate to ignore the obvious.
Given the highly political content over the last two days, one assumes those donors who threatened to withhold future donations were Peterson to use his blog as a platform to discuss politics have already stopped donating.
