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A Majority of Mormons Embraced Trumpism. Now What?
In the end, Utah Sen. Mike Lee rejected the voter fraud conspiracy. It’s time for repentance.
After the Capitol was cleared of rioters on January 6, lawmakers returned to the Hill to finish counting the nation’s electoral votes. Sen. Josh Hawley continued to support the voter fraud conspiracy theory by challenging Pennsylvania’s election results, but the Senate rejected his challenge by a vote of 92 to seven. Sen. Mike Lee was among the few Trump supporters who diverged from Hawley’s challenge; he registered his vote with a strident “hell no.”
Mike Lee and I are both Mormons. Mormons do not support Trump with the same fervor as some religious groups, but a majority of Mormons do support him—even though Joe Biden received the most votes of any Democratic presidential candidate in Utah since LBJ. Coming into the 2020 election, Lee was a powerful voice in that majority, and plenty of prominent Mormons joined Lee over the past four years: Former Sen. Orrin Hatch, Rep. Burgess Owens, and Rep. Chris Stewart are all Donald Trump loyalists. (Both Owens and Stewart supported the voter fraud conspiracy.) Utah’s Attorney General Sean Reyes was on the board of the election committee “Latter-day Saints for Trump.” Tim Ballard, a former DHS agent, known for his controversial anti-trafficking work, championed Trump’s border wall. Violinist Jenny Oaks Baker, the daughter of a Mormon apostle, performed at a Trump rally in August.
Mormons know repentance is not just an acknowledgment; it is an action. Repentance is not complete until we’ve made those we’ve hurt whole.
Donald Trump mined a vein of prejudice that has always run through America. Before the election, in an op-ed for Deseret News, Lee wrote of Trump, “He says things I would never say, but actions speak louder than words.” Those actions included separating vulnerable families at the border, degrading women (especially Black women), passing the Muslim ban, and stoking anti-Semitism.
In October, Lee spoke at a Trump rally in Arizona; he was there because Trump needed Mormon votes to help secure the state. It didn’t work; LDS votes were…
