Reported in partnership with Type Investigations.

In mid-October, less than a month into the House Democrats formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, Jim Bakker, the televangelist and convicted fraudster , was in front of a studio audience at his Morningside Church complex in Blue Eye, Missouri, a remote village of less than 200 people in the Ozarks. As the crew prepared the semicircular desk where the 79-year-old conducts freewheeling interviews with evangelical celebrity guests, Bakker took a moment to deliver an important message to the hundred or so people who had come to watch the taping: Gods sending judgment.

God, Bakker continued, anointed your president. Anyone who crosses the divinely chosen leader, he implied, is risking Gods wrath.

That morning, news had broken of the unexpected death of Democratic Congressman and House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, who aggressively investigated Trump and who would have played a key role in impeachment proceedings. But there would be no prayers or condolences for the civil rights advocate from Bakker, who would only call Cummings that man. Instead, Bakker concluded with satisfaction, one of the number-one enemies of our president fell dead last night. A man who insists on impeaching the president of the United States, he fell dead.

As Trump faces increasingly grim polling numbers over impeachment, white evangelicals have dug in as his most loyal defenders. According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted in late October, about a month after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the official launch of the impeachment probe, 80% of white evangelicals opposed impeaching Trump and removing him from office (compared to just 47% of the public at large). Two-thirds of white evangelicals believed Trump did nothing wrong in his dealings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Among white evangelicals who identify as Republican, 99% of them opposed impeachment, according to an October analysis by the Public Religion Research Institute.

This unwavering support is consistent with white evangelical voters attitude toward Trump in general. In 2016, 81% of them voted for him, and over the course of his tumultuous presidency, polling has consistently shown white evangelicals to be unfazed by Trumps scandals and corruption from pussy grabbing to Stormy Daniels to family separations to Russian election interference. Moreover, white evangelicals approve of Trumps job performance more than any other demographic does a rate 20 and 30 points higher than those of white mainline Protestants and white Catholics, respectively. These numbers have remained static even in the face of House Democrats probe into Trumps efforts to shake down Zelensky for the public announcement of a corruption probe against Joe Biden and his son.

In early December, as the House Judiciary Committee held impeachment hearings, Mark Meadows, the Republican congressman from North Carolina, accepted an award at the Impact Luncheon, hosted by Ginni Thomas, a conservative activist and the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Speaking at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Meadows drew enthusiastic applause for his shoutout to his two buddies, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Andy Biggs of Arizona, who were fighting the impeachment fight as we speak. With Thomas at his side, Meadows said he wanted to figure out how to compete with mainstream media, when theyre out there each and every day trying to form a narrative that would suggest that this president should be impeached. He then credited grassroots activists for retweeting his and Jordans tweets enough times that they received 163 million impressions, which is more than the viewership of all the networks combined.

As impeachment moves to the Senate, where a Republican majority will control the trial, GOP lawmakers are acutely aware of the clout wielded by the Christian right not only in the upcoming elections, but in the Trump White House. For them, crossing Trump does not just mean facing his wrath, but also, by extension, the wrath of his most devoted base in the voting booth.

An Evangelical Bubble

Trumps evangelical base is a sprawling, interconnected network of political advocacy groups, megachurches, White House advisers, televangelists and prayer warriors. It also includes a formidable, data-driven get-out-the-vote operation. Top names in this circle include Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Ralph Reed of the Faith & Freedom Coalition. The two are part of a group of about two dozen Christian leaders who meet regularly at the White House and who blast out full-throated defenses of the president through their organizations mailing lists, radio shows, podcasts and television programs.

Inside this ecosystem, impeachment is, at best, a partisan sideshow concocted by Democrats to distract the public from Trumps many important accomplishments. At worst, it is a satanic scheme to upend Gods plan for America, which was to install Trump in office in order to ensure the nation is governed by Christians who espouse biblical values.

Just before Thanksgiving, as the House Intelligence Committee completed its crucial round of public hearings, Reed made a plea for donations, promising that while we fight to defend the President from the Democrats ongoing political assassination attempt, were also laying the groundwork for a historic effort that will secure his reelection next year. In December, as the House Judiciary Committee began a new phase of the impeachment proceedings, Perkins warned followers that the radical Left is rallied around a single goal: impeaching this president to stop his pro-life, pro-family values, pro-religious liberty agenda, so they can force their radical, anti-American agenda onto voters.

This rear guard has been poised at every turn of the impeachment investigation to defend Trump. The Family Research Councils marquee annual event, the Values Voter Summit, came this year in October, just days after FBI agents arrested Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, associates of presidential attorney Rudy Giuliani, as they were attempting to leave the country. The two were charged in a scheme to violate election laws by funneling foreign money to Republicans including then-Texas Rep. Pete Sessions, who in turn pressed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to recall the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. (Both men have pled not guilty.) As the Values Voter Summit got underway, Yovanovitch testified that she had been told by a top State Department official that she was recalled from her post prematurely due to a concerted campaign against me, and that the Department had been under pressure from the President to remove me since the Summer of 2018.