Washington Post regurgitates Bernie Sanders’ smear against Christian Trump official

A year ago, an agitated man yelled at a Christian for believing that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the light. The grumpy bigot chewed out the believer for saying that no one can come to the Father and salvation except through faith in Christ.

While religion can make everyone testy, there was a bigger problem with this otherwise unremarkable exchange. The bigot was a Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; the believer, Russ Vought, then Trump’s nominee to serve as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget; and the entire exchange was a violation of the Constitution’s prohibition on religious litmus tests.

Vought was later confirmed, and all of this would be an unfortunate and isolated incident — except a team of nationally respected reporters casually committed journalistic malpractice in an article published Thursday. They didn’t bother to get the whole story.

“The White House nerve center spearheading the erratic response to the government shutdown is run by an interim director and longtime conservative firebrand,” begins a Washington Post profile of Vought. His confirmation, the introduction continues, “was nearly derailed because of his inflammatory comments about Muslims.”

Except not. A convenient narrative, but the characterization is lazily incomplete. Here is what happened.

Sanders attacked Vought over a blog post the nominee wrote concerning the 2016 decision of Wheaton College, his evangelical alma mater, to fire a political science professor for wearing a hijab and not affirming the evangelical school’s statement of faith. Vought supported the move.

Writing in the conservative Resurgent, Vought warned that the theological stakes were high. A budget wonk at the Heritage Foundation at the time, he weighed in with what throughout western history would be considered an innocuous statement of standard Christian faith. He said Christianity was the only true religion:

Irked by the nominee’s personal beliefs, Sanders would point to this statement to turn the confirmation hearing into a politically correct inquisition. “In my view, the statement made by Mr. Vought is indefensible, it is hateful, it is Islamophobic, and it is an insult to over a billion Muslims throughout the world,” Sanders railed. “This country, since its inception, has struggled, sometimes with great pain, to overcome discrimination of all forms … we must not go backwards.”

When Sanders asked Vought whether that statement was Islamophobic, the nominee responded calmly “absolutely not, senator. I’m a Christian, and I believe in a Christian set of principles based on my faith.”

Washington Post reporters Damian Paletta, Robert Costa, and Josh Dawsey get this back-and-forth right in their profile. What they got wrong is when they described Vought’s blog post as “incendiary commentary,” as if repeating established Christian orthodoxy was suddenly inflammatory.

All faiths make exclusive truth claims about salvation. If the Washington Post hadn’t noticed, it is kind of how religion works. This was inoffensive for millenia until Sanders decided to attack Vought for how he spends his Sundays and how he lives his private life. In case the Washington Post is also unfamiliar, religious discrimination is illegal. It’s in the Constitution.

Anticipating bigotry and with the religious wars of Europe in their recent memory, founding-era politicos wrote in Article VI that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

But the reporters didn’t bother to mention that when they filed their long story. They smeared Vought instead, injecting their opinion that Vought’s words were “incendiary” and “inflammatory.”

Vought wasn’t confirmed immediately because Vought got caught up in a larger political chess match. He became a bartering chip for federal funding, and Sanders or religion had absolutely nothing to do with it. Other than making headlines, the socialist senator didn’t have any power to delay the nomination. It was Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, who kept Vought in parliamentary purgatory.

Cornyn wanted relief funding for Texas after that state was battered by Hurricane Harvey. The second-ranking Republican, he controls the floor schedule, deciding what comes up for a vote and when. So Cornyn took Vought hostage, placing a hold on the nomination that would last for more than four months.

It had nothing to do with religion. It had everything to do with money. It is how our convoluted legislative process works. Cornyn even said as much when Axios reported on the abduction.

Later in February, as soon as the funding was secured, a Cornyn aide confirmed to me that he “has lifted his hold on the nomination of Russ Vought.”

None of this is particularly hard to find. It didn’t take place behind closed doors. The drama played out publicly with numerous outlets reporting and columnists commenting for months. A quick Google search would have shown all this spilt ink. But the Washington Post didn’t bother.

Those reporters papered over the actions of Sanders, who took an oath to uphold a Constitution that explicitly rejects religious litmus tests, yet still discriminated against a nominee because of his faith. Then they repeated that smear and got the backstory over the delayed nomination completely wrong.

Democracy, it would seem, dies in selective reporting.