Utahns Rightfully Venerate the Constitution—Donald Trump Does Not

An interview with Chris Stevenson, a lifelong conservative who has pledged to do all he can to defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box this November

Editor’s note: While the Utah Monthly generally refrains from directly engaging electoral politics, we have decided that the stakes of the 2024 presidential election are far too high for us to remain silent. Donald Trump’s reelection as president will severely and perhaps permanently damage our constitutional system. We feel morally obligated to stand in opposition to his candidacy. This is not about politics, but rather the fate of our constitutional government. The following interview is the second in a series of posts on the 2024 presidential election as it touches Utah.

Could you talk a little bit about your political background prior to 2015?

I have always leaned towards conservative political philosophies in my approaches to governance and problem solving. I mostly participated politically, besides voting, in the public square by writing letters to the editor. These, in fact, were compiled into a book entitled Letters from an American Husband and Father: In Defense of the Most Durable Empire. In the early 2000s I became concerned about the means conservatives were using to accomplish their ends, ends with which I agreed. One of my friends began listening to a political commentator on the radio who was angry, mean-spirited, and extreme. I asked him why he listened and this friend said “because I don't have to think through things—he does it for me.” This seemed dangerous and I did not want to participate in that way. So while my ends matched those of the Republican Party generally, I made my own way in how to work towards them. I did join my county Republican Party and attended a few meetings, but became quite uncomfortable with the rhetoric, especially how they demonized Democrats. That felt wrong, because Democrats are my neighbors, church friends, teachers, family members, etc. 

How did Trump's arrival on the political stage change things for you? 

I remember how churlish and immature and fanatical and unkind and unlearned he sounded—which alerted me. I left the Republican Party publicly and loudly, voicing my feelings in an effort to warn any who would listen with a Facebook post I'll include below. It generated a huge amount of commentary.

July 19, 2016

Most, if not all, of you who read this will not really care too much, but I felt it important nonetheless to report my leaving the Republican party after 20+ years (though in fact it absolutely left me). I will be “unaffiliated.”

I will search for that political party that champions conservative principles of good, wise, reasoned and moral government, such that the American experiment in self-government does not perish from the earth. This appears not to exist today.

In the meantime I will be certain to cast a vote in November that does the most to deny the Republican candidate the sacred office he seeks.

This is a letter I wrote on November 1, 2016:

Dear Editor:

The Wall Street Journal’s declaration that Ms. Clinton's view of the “Supreme Court is far more threatening to American liberty” than Mr. Trump’s, irresponsibly and dangerously misses the mark (“Hillary's New Constitution,” October 21).

The paper's editorial board and other persons with conservative principles are thinking to cast their vote for Mr. Trump so that a Republican president can nominate the next Supreme Court justice. While this could be a reasonable concern, upon further thought it appears to be selling one’s political soul for a mess of pottage.

That is, beloved American governing principles of goodness, constitutionalism, decency, intelligence, progress, equality, integrity, wisdom, honesty, beauty, humility, morality, equanimity, peaceful transfer of power, due process, and the freedoms of religion and the press, at the very least, would be sold for the tempting mirage of a political Supreme Court as the final defender of a nation's morals, something completely foreign to the Founders.

In this and all things, Mr. Trump represents a new and terrible and calamitous thread, imperiously demanding to be woven into the divinely beautiful American fabric. But judge not that ye be not judged.

May we choose, rather, a strong and familiar thread, to heal and perpetuate the delicate and fracturing American experiment in self-government.

And then once he won:

Dear Editor -

Having won the election using methods previously untested in America, though well known in other countries, Mr. Trump has left much, very much, that is broken in his wake. Because of his chosen approach to this sacred office, Wednesday morning found my treasured and expansive patriotic soul full of pain, almost lifeless, kicked into submission and hanging by a thread. 

Texts of beloved, ancient patriotic hymns now fall too quietly and with some difficulty from my lips. Pledging allegiance to that hallowed flag, having waved over battlefields running with the blood of our true patriots, comes haltingly, and with new doubts. Right had always made might in this place; have we now demanded that might make right?

This is all so terribly foreign and despairing; losing elections before had never cast such a dark shadow.

If I am ever to become the American citizen Providence wills me to be, it will require time and no small effort, it seems. The path to that place, looking through a glass that is darker than before, I cannot yet make out, but I am trusting it is there.

With a firm reliance on Heaven, I will soldier on, building back hope, piece by piece, that this experiment in self-government never perish.

Why are you convinced that Donald Trump should not be president again?

He is unfit because he attempted to stay in power after losing a free and fair election by overthrowing the Constitution and because he cannot in any way be trusted, basing his campaign on the lie that he won the 2020 election. He has no respect for and undermines and dismantles the Constitution and deals dishonestly with the American people, manipulating and taking advantage of them.

How would you respond to those who say that this is just politics as usual, a race between two standard candidates who represent the country's two major political parties?

I would tell them that that is both untrue and a dangerous position for American democracy, and one which the former president hopes they believe. One candidate has tried to overthrow it and the other has not. One bases his campaign on a lie and the other does not. Senator Mitt Romney said this best when someone asked him what to do about those who really believe the former president's manipulative lie that he won the election: “tell them the truth.” 

It is not uncommon to hear people say that Trump and Biden are both flawed candidates. We at the Utah Monthly have previously made clear that we find this comparison deeply problematic. What are your thoughts?

This is exceptionally disingenuous and dangerous in that it allows them to avoid the most momentous aspect of this presidential contest—how each candidate views the Constitution. I would tell them, regarding the Constitution and the oath a president takes to “preserve, protect and defend” it, only one of the candidates has broken that oath, showing his contempt for it. And, regarding truth, only one lives in a lie and manipulates millions of people until they believe what is false. Such a presidential candidate is absolutely unfit for this office. 

Can you talk about your recent anti-Trump/pro-Constitution activism?  

In this election cycle I am working where I live in northern Virginia to bring prominence to these issues such that the local Loudoun County Republican Party (LCRC) and the general public is forced to reckon with these truths. I have written letters to the editor and demonstrated, with about two dozen others, at a local Republican event. We plan on doing this at their monthly meetings with the theme that the LCRC, because of its support for the former president, is a threat to democracy. Our hope is to persuade as many people as possible to reject the Republican Party and its candidate at the ballot box. These can be done at county Republican Party meetings throughout the country.

I have also thought a lot about the role that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can do in this time of Constitutional crisis, including communicating with the Wheatley Center at BYU to find synergies with their efforts to protect and support constitutional government. My thoughts can be found here.