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President Trump at Values Voter Summit, 2016.Claire Chretien / LifeSite

September 15, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – The political neophyte, Donald Trump, has undergone a transformation in recent months that many did not think possible.  As for myself, I found his performance during most of the leadership debates difficult to endure, especially when he often called his opponents liars. One evening he repeatedly called three of them liars. I thought, this man has brought the presidential nomination process down into the gutter. Now mind you, at the same time, neither were many of the other candidates seen as saints – just not so unbelievably crass.

Lately, though, Trump has increasingly not seemed to be the same man – with lapses now and then to the boorish Trump. He is starting to act and look like a real statesman, proposing some excellent policies and showing impressive empathy for those enduring hardships generated by Obama/Clinton regime policies.

Not taking any sides, we have been obliged to report the facts on Trump’s record, as we do with any candidate on the life and family related issues.  On Feb. 1st this year, in ‘Anyone but Donald Trump’: Here’s his record on life, marriage, and religious liberty, we noted that “female pro-life leaders across the country urged voters to “support anyone but Donald Trump.”

The letter’s ten signatories included some of the most prominent women in the pro-life movement, including Beverly LaHaye, Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List, talk show host Star Parker, and former Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave.

Then on Feb. 8th we published a concerning report, Trump vows to push LGBT rights, hedges on pro-marriage litmus test

On Feb. 17th we noted Trump's famous statement that he repeated a number of times, Planned Parenthood ‘does do wonderful things’. Yikes, we thought, he has no idea at all about how very bad Planned Parenthood really is, their publicly exposed criminal wrong-doings on ghoulish baby body parts sales, major financial misreporting and much more.  Talk about real “liars!”

On April 21, we published, Donald Trump would liberalize the Republican Party platform on abortion. This man was deeply concerning and we realized he could cause many social conservatives to stay home or vote for a third party candidate.

Then Trump had that June 21 meeting with 1000 pro-life, evangelical leaders in which he pledged to appoint only pro-life justices to the Supreme Court.

From that time on, Donald Trump started to become a different Republican presidential candidate. He also made major staff changes placing some impressive social conservatives into key positions on his campaign.

On July 15, Trump officially announced Indiana’s pro-life governor Mike Pence as his VP. Impressive.  Pence had moved from being a strong Ted Cruz supporter to being Trump’s running mate. Concerned Women for America President Penny Nance responded, “Trump is moving in the right direction and is showing that he's taking the Evangelical Christian voting bloc seriously.”

Trump vowed, in Cleveland on July 22, to repeal the Johnson amendment that placed IRS restrictions on churches’ free speech.

However, regarding that same evening presentation, LifeSite’s Ben Johnson, noted,

“Together with a pledge to appoint originalist justices to the Supreme Court, the IRS measure was one of the few appeals made to conservative Christians during his 75-minute-long presidential acceptance speech. He did not mention the sanctity of life, but did invoke “the LGBTQ community” and appealed for support from Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders’ supporters.”

On August 1st we reported, “Donald Trump signs first-ever presidential anti-porn pledge”.  This was major.

I was impressed that Trump handed the stage over to Britain’s Nigel Farage who gave a rousing speech at the Aug. 24 Trump Rally Aug. 24, in Jackson, Mississippi. Nigel “Smashed the establishment” in the EU and England with his Brexit initiative, and that was a much-needed miracle for freedom. The EU has been growing into a dangerously tyrannical anti-life, anti-family and anti-Christian monster. 

Trump's Tribute to Mother Teresa on Sept, 3, to commemorate the Indian saint of the poor’s canonization, was impressively done. 

On September 9, we were gladly able to report Donald Trump’s 4 promises to the Values Voter Summit. The growing list of unprecedented promises by a Republican presidential candidate were making it increasingly difficult to continue to write him off as a reckless clown or likely tyrant.

Trump's low key, very respectful and sensitive remarks on Sept. 10 at Phyllis Schlafly’s Funeral in St. Louis, Montana showed another, positive side to the man that most had never seen before. 

And today, we report Trump’s proposed tax break for stay-at-home moms. This is no small thing.

However, we see that there are still issues that Trump has a long way to go to be a candidate that we can be enthusiastic about. On “The Dr. Oz Show” yesterday, Trump essentially said “he believes women should be able to obtain birth control without a prescription”, according to a report on SFGate.com. I am not surprised. I suspect he really knows very little about the implications of what he said and how contraception can harm women and has been declared to be carcinogenic, how it can often be abortifacient and how it generates a contraceptive mentality that frequently leads to abortions after failed contraception, which Planned Parenthood counts on all the time.

Still, there is now a wide chasm between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The two are night and day, as their respective parties also are, on most, not all, of the policies of greatest concern to the defenders of life, family and faith.

There is still much concern that Trump is dreadfully weak, if not completely on the wrong side, regarding the tyrannical gay and transgender movements.

Perhaps, just as he has been about Planned Parenthood, Donald Trump does not have a clue how much these movements are threatening American freedoms and rights of religious belief and conscience. He needs to be quickly educated about how they corrupt legal and political processes and institutions, they viciously abuse, threaten and legally persecute good people who simply do not agree with them, and have infiltrated most education institutions with their child-abusive, indoctrinating sex ed programs.

Donald Trump has been making many attractive promises, promises that in some cases, no presidential candidate in recent memory has made. If he is sincere about these, he is undoubtedly seen by some of our usual opponents as their worst nightmare.

That is another thing that has caused me to take another look at Trump. Anyone who is hated as intensely as he is by the Democrats and all the radical feminist, pro-abortion, anti-religion leadership and mainstream media, has to have something good going for him.

The big question of course is, can Donald Trump be trusted to follow through on all his grand promises? I don’t have any idea. I have always said Trump is extremely unpredictable. 

A Flight 93 Election?

What we can be certain of, however, without any doubt, is that Hillary Clinton, or any Democrat that might replace her, will certainly advance the culture of death and greatly endanger whatever freedoms Americans have left.

Another Democrat win will bring America to the peak of corruption and evil similar to that which came into the Roman Empire just before its collapse.

There are quite a few of us who fear that the result of this election could head America off a cliff. In his fascinating article, “The Flight 93 Election” an anonymous author argues that “a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.” He also finds it “puzzling that those most horrified by Trump are the least willing to consider the possibility that the republic is dying. “

He ends his article stating that this election, is in his view, the final test—of whether there is any virtù left in what used to be the core of the American nation” and that if Americans cannot pass the test, they are “doomed”.

He may be right, from all the signs I have been seeing and we have been reporting on LifeSite in recent years.

However, this article just presents thoughts and information for you to consider and then make up your own mind. The still off and on vulgar buffoon Donald Trump might yet be preferable to the certain evil of a Clinton or otherwise Democrat presidency.

What a time we are in. God help us.

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Steve is the co-founder and managing director of LifeSiteNews.com.