When Donald Trump jokes about separating out a religious minority, where does the joke end?

[rug]

By Philip Bump
September 29 at 2:04 PM

Sometimes, Donald Trump jokes. He jokes a lot, sometimes because he is actually joking, and sometimes he is joking retroactively in an effort to wave away something he said that annoyed people.

On Wednesday afternoon, it seems to have been a bit of both. When Trump asked audience members in Council Bluffs, Iowa, to raise their hands if they weren't "Christian conservatives" and then asked everyone else — the vast majority — if the non-Christian conservatives should be allowed to stay at the event, it was a goof. Just fun. No big.

Not everyone took it that way. The Council on American-Islamic Relations released a statement citing Trump's "history of targeting religious and ethnic minorities" as reason for the comment to be considered critically. It's a fair point. Coming from another candidate at another time, it probably would be considered an awkward joke. Coming from Trump — after months of suggestions that, for example, Muslims should be barred from entering the United States, added to a federal database and surveilled at their places of worship — the tone and implications are different, especially for someone seeking the presidency.

The politics of the comment are one thing. Iowa is mostly Christian, if not mostly conservative. (In the Iowa caucuses this year, 85 percent of Republicans identified as conservative — but that's just half of the fairly low turnout.) According to data from the Pew Research Center, 77 percent of the state is Christian, with 28 percent identifying as evangelical, the denomination most regularly associated with political Christian conservatism. Trump was clearly in front of a friendly crowd for the question, but that Christian conservative group is still a minority of the state. Trump repeatedly has had trouble figuring out how to expand his political base, and joking about kicking out those who aren't Christian conservatives doesn't seem like the sort of thing that might appeal to non-Christian conservatives.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/29/when-donald-trump-jokes-about-separating-out-a-religious-minority-where-does-the-joke-end/

[packman]

1. Gotta help me with the math

" According to data from the Pew Research Center, 77 percent of the state is Christian, with 28 percent identifying as evangelical"- according to my highly trained math brain that comes out to 105% and that does not even include the other "fringe" religions such as Buddhists or even atheists.

[rug]

2. This is how I read it.

77% are Christian.

Of those, 28% are Evangelical Christians and 49% are non-Evangelical Christians.

28 + 49 = the 77% of the population.

23% of the population do not identify as Christian of any type.

[packman]

3. Thanks - my wife and I now both understand