How Trump Turns Disasters Into Plausible Deniability and Counts On You to Let Him
There is a consistent pattern to how Donald Trump governs — not in the sense of policy coherence or ideological consistency, because those don’t exist, but in the sense of how he manages the consequences of his decisions. The pattern is this: create or escalate a crisis, identify an external actor to blame, accept the grace offered by his most loyal supporters, and move on before the accounting arrives.
He has done it twice now in ways that have cost Americans at the pump, at the pharmacy, and at the kitchen table. He is in the process of doing it a third time in the Persian Gulf.
The Forgiveness Reflex
Trump won 82 percent of white evangelical voters in 2024. He won 80 percent in 2016 and 76 percent in 2020. This is not a voting bloc — it is a floor. And for years, that floor held because of a theological and political framework that his evangelical supporters built specifically to accommodate him: the Cyrus model, borrowed from the Old Testament, which holds that God sometimes works through flawed and ungodly instruments to achieve divine purposes. “Evangelicals used to maintain that personal morality was a key reason to support one candidate over the other. Now, they use things like the biblical story of Cyrus to maintain that God can use imperfect vehicles to more perfect spiritual ends,” explained one political scientist. NewsweekNewsweek
In practice, this means that Trump is pre-forgiven. The theological architecture was designed before the crimes were committed. Whatever he does — the pandemic mismanagement, the January 6th incitement, the felony convictions, the sexual abuse liability finding, the hush money, the classified documents, the pardons — can be absorbed by a framework that says the ends justify the instrument. He is Cyrus. Cyrus didn’t have to be good. Cyrus just had to be useful.
The problem with pre-forgiveness is that it makes accountability impossible. And Trump knows it.
COVID and the Gas Price Precedent
“You know what does not have a short shelf life is gas prices,” said Ryan Burge, an expert on religion and polling at Washington University in St. Louis. He said this while analyzing the slow erosion of evangelical support that began in early 2026 — erosion driven not by the felonies or the moral failings or the cruelty of his policies, but by what people were paying at the pump. 270toWin.com
This is instructive. Trump survived COVID — a catastrophe of federal mismanagement that killed more than a million Americans — because he had China, and he had Anthony Fauci, and he had the media, and he had the deep state, and he had the vaccine manufacturers. The blame was distributed so broadly and so loudly that the specific decisions he made — the downplaying in January 2020, the ventilator shortages, the hydroxychloroquine, the bleach — were absorbed into a general ambient story about enemies of America trying to destroy him and by extension his supporters.
The template was successful. The pre-forgiven man was forgiven again.
Now there are gas prices. In late February, the average gallon of gas was less than $3. By late April, the national average had reached $4.24 — a spike directly tied to the Iran war that began February 28 and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which carries roughly 20 percent of the world’s energy supply. UMass Lowell
Just 35 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy — tied for his worst mark ever. His approval rating among white evangelical Christians has fallen from 82 percent at the 2024 election to 52 percent in a June 2026 Reuters/Ipsos poll. The most recent NPR/PBS News/Marist poll shows 32 percent of white evangelicals said gas prices have put a “major strain” on their household budgets, while 48 percent identified them as a “minor strain.” RealClearPolling270toWin.com
And yet, 69 percent of white evangelicals plan to support the Republican candidate in their district in the upcoming midterms. 270toWin.com
The floor holds. It is cracking at the edges, but it holds. And Trump is counting on it.
The Iran War and the Plausible Deniability Play
Hostilities broke out after US-Israeli airstrikes targeting Iranian military and government sites resulted in the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. These attacks were launched amidst Iran-US negotiations to reach a nuclear peace agreement. Newsweek
Negotiations. During which he launched the strikes. This is not a detail the administration highlights.
What the administration does highlight is that Iran is the aggressor, Iran closed the strait, Iran caused the gas prices, Iran caused the economic pain. The fact that the United States launched the strikes that triggered the Iranian response — during active peace talks — is the kind of sequencing that gets lost in the fog of war, particularly when the fog is being deliberately generated.
The White House sent Congress a letter stating that “the hostilities that began on February 20, 2026, have terminated” — even as the president simultaneously said he could restart the war at any time. A Yale Law professor called it “as if the president is trying to rewrite the war powers resolution and add a pause button.” 270toWin.com
This is not confusion. This is architecture. The war is on when it serves Trump’s purposes and off when it creates legal obligations. The gas prices are Iran’s fault when they’re high and Trump’s achievement when they tick down. Trump continues to negotiate a peace deal with Tehran, and uncertainty about when the Strait of Hormuz will fully reopen means oil prices are unlikely to decrease much during summer months when demand is highest. UMass Lowell
Meanwhile, gas prices above $6 per gallon were being displayed at stations in California in late April. Senators from both parties introduced legislation to suspend the federal gas tax. Trump expressed interest. The relief, if it comes, will be credited to Trump. The prices that necessitated it will remain Iran’s fault. PollingSource
This is the plausible deniability play. It worked with COVID. The virus caused the deaths. China caused the virus. The media caused the panic. Trump caused none of it. Now the war caused the gas prices. Iran caused the war. Trump caused neither.
The Moral Ledger
Here is what is actually true: a president who claimed he would end wars, not start them, launched strikes against a country during active peace negotiations, triggering a closure of the world’s most important oil shipping lane, causing gas prices to spike by more than a dollar a gallon in roughly 60 days, hitting hardest the working-class and rural families who voted for him most enthusiastically.
High gas prices, inflation, and tariffs have eroded Trump’s economic approval, with just 35 percent rating his handling of the economy positively. Trump’s approval ratings have nosedived because of all that’s happened in the past year, including tariffs, continued higher-than-pre-COVID prices, and now rising gas prices because of the Iran war. NBC NewsRealClearPolling
And evangelical leaders are already doing the work of re-absorption. The theological machinery is running. The Cyrus framework is being re-engaged. The forgiveness is being pre-dispensed before the accounting is complete.
“The links between evangelical Americans and Republican voting run very deep,” said Nancy Ammerman, professor of sociology at Boston University. “They have taken hold in the culture of churches so that no one has to say anything to know that the proper way to vote is to vote for Trump.” Newsweek
No one has to say anything. The structure handles it. The man does what he does. The prices rise. The people hurt. The machinery of forgiveness engages. The floor holds.
Until it doesn’t. And based on the polling trajectory, the question is not whether the floor will crack further — it already is. The question is whether it cracks fast enough to matter before November, and whether the Americans who are paying $4 gas and watching their grocery bills and absorbing the tariffs connect the policy to the man who made the policy.
Trump is betting they won’t. He has bet this before. He has been right before.
The gas prices are real. The war is real. The deniability is constructed. And the forgiveness is already in the mail.