Minimizing the Past and Supporting the Vessel

This analysis examines the third-party support that evangelical leaders David Brody, Jerry Falwell Jr., Franklin Graham, and Robert Jeffress provided President Donald Trump during the Stormy Daniels scandal. In their defense of Trump, evangelical leaders argued that he represented an imperfect vessel sent to protect evangelical values. During cable news interviews, the leaders relied on the image repair strategies of minimization, transcendence, bolstering, denial, attack accuser, and differentiation. This crisis communication analysis found that evangelical leaders’ defenses of Trump were effective in maintaining evangelical support for the president. Implications are drawn concerning the role of religious voices in public political discourse and how third-party defenses can help rhetors repair their images with targeted audiences

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