Deception

As you may know, I listen regularly to white evangelical leaders in the hope that they will lead us through the times in which we find ourselves with truth and clarity. I would like to hear them show us how to live in a pluralistic society in which white evangelicals are not in the majority, as was the case in the first couple of centuries of the Christian church.

I occasionally respond to podcasts, as I did to a podcast of the Rev. Dr. Al Mohler called The Briefing, a daily news and commentary presented from a Christian ethical and worldview perspective. Here is what I sent him via the contact form on his website, based on his podcast of August 12, 2026.

In today’s Briefing you discussed the “ethical” issues (or some of them) involved in Trump’s flight out of Turkey last month. You focused on the moral issue of whether, and if so, when, deception in an instance like this is justified (morally defensible). You referred to the incident with Bill Clinton in 2000 between India and Pakistan. You mentioned in only a sentence or two that the press corps aboard AF1 last week was not aware of what was happening.

You avoided consideration of what I and many consider the real moral issue here: that the President of the United States used his press corps as a decoy in an event that was considered a serious and credible threat without informing them.

The press corps, crew, and senior staff aboard Trump’s Air Force One served as human decoys for an active missile or assassination threat intended for the President without their knowledge or consent, while key staff and press corps members aboard Clinton’s flight were informed of what was happening and were aware of the dangers. In fact, they cooperated in the deception for the safety of the President and the good of the country, a standard of informed duty that has been customary throughout American history.

That, in my mind, is the far more significant and concerning ethical issue here. Here you have a President and his immediate staff who, in the face of a serious threat, offered up the lives of press corps and staff without informing them at the time, AND kept it a secret from the nation for weeks afterward.

“Jose Zamora, Committee to Protect Journalists’ regional director for the Americas, said the administration had a responsibility to ensure reporters weren’t exposed to unnecessary danger. ‘Reporters should be informed of credible security threats so they can make informed decisions about their safety,’ he said. ‘Transparency should be the norm for any administration, particularly when safety is at stake.’”

“James Jeffrey, a former US ambassador to Turkey and deputy national security adviser under George W Bush who is now a distinguished fellow at the pro-Israel Washington Institute, said the secrecy around moving Trump to another aircraft pointed to serious intelligence behind the threat.

‘This is very unusual, and indicates that they had very good intelligence of a threat, and that they did not trust the aircraft that he was in,’ said Jeffrey, who has extensive experience traveling onboard Air Force One.”

[ Source: Trump’s Air Force One deception faces scrutiny over ‘decoy’ passengers | Donald Trump | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/11/trump-air-force-one-deception-democrats]

Then you follow this section with your commentary on former Cambridge professor Jason Arday and the house of cards he built with his lies about his life, which collapsed this week.

Your comment is: “That’s a huge morality tale. And it also has to do in this case with a situation that’s in the larger context. The worldview issues here are massive.”

I agree with you. This is a huge morality tale, related to the larger context, and the worldview issues are massive.

Donald Trump has a documented record of making false or misleading statements about every aspect of his personal and public life, including the events with AF1 in Turkey last month and the aftermath of those events. He routinely fabricates stories and misrepresents events publicly.

Arday is one person who, in terms of his impact on the world stage, is virtually insignificant. By tomorrow his story will be yesterday’s news. Cambridge University is not insignificant, but it too is a small player on the world stage. In Trump you have a twice-elected President of the United States, with the power to change and even destroy lives with a word.

The moral and worldview implications of the lies told by Trump are massive, yet you hardly mention them. It is hard for me to avoid the impression that because Arday and Cambridge University come from the ”Left”, they receive your sharpest worldview critique, while Trump and right-wing political leaders escape your ominous moral and worldview judgment.