The President has already rounded second base in his campaign of public disenchantment with the news media. The Pew Research Center reports "a quarter of American adults (26%) haven't read a book in whole or in part in the past year, whether in print, electronic or audio form." Worse, some 29% of adults, ages 50 and older, also haven't read a book in the past year"
Add to this the finding of the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy that thirty-four million adults can't read at all and twenty-one percent read at only the 5th grade level and you can believe the President recognizes the roots of this "natural" constituency and is calculating carefully when he teaches the evangelicals (25-35 percent of faith communities according to Pew) to put their trust in him because like them, he is chosen!
While the fall of Mike Flynn as director of the NSA shows the not so invisible hand of the intelligence agencies at work, it is no guarantor of their future results because the obsessions of President Trump include this large measure of calculation aimed at both voters and the apparatchik of Washington.
The biggest potential obstacle to the Trump advance along the base paths should be the faith communities, especially faith groups that have realized that the idea of "chooseness" is more liability than asset. Shedding that liability means cleaning up some commonplace illusions; one of them being the high degree of believer self-regard that turns the god idea into a personal possession. This personal "get out of jail free" theology guarantees deliverance even when righteousness has not been practiced.
If it is fair to say that the rise of Trumpism represents the greatest threat to democratic institutions since the civil war 150 years ago, it is important also to say that it was the long stand of faith communities for Abolition that set the moral stage for Emancipation. Such faith groups weren't in the majority, but standing against slavery and for Abolition put them into the long arc of justice. It was their vocation.
What is not yet clear today is whether new energies in the faith communities will now take an immovable righteous stand for the human rights of all their immigrant neighbors.
Bear in mind that the pivotal part of the Trump era authoritarian anti-media stance counts on the passivity of faith communities whose first loyalty is usually to their institutions. Even more liberal segments among the faithful think it's an emergency when the church roof blows off but not an emergency if democracy might fall or racism continuies to be tolerated because it's too political to talk about.
Also bear in mind that much is required of People of the Book. The Trump game won't change even if Trump falls sooner rather than later. His success demeaning the news media is attracting understudies who will take his place for at least four more, maybe eight more years of near total Right wing control; long enough to establish a new autocracy and send discouraged people of faith back to the old self-regarding faith in a god acting just for them.
Today's Trump order (2/21/17) requiring ICE to arrest any undocumented person they encounter should be the end of such cheap grace. As if floating on a metaphorical raft in the Mediterranean millions of our immigrant neighbors face mass deportation. Blocking ICE's path may divide faith groups, impair annual budgets, but it can give fresh definition to people of the book by defining righteousness and its requirements: loving justice, doing mercy, walking humbly. [Micah 6:8]
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