Leaked emails show new Trump aide used to scorn him

Leaked emails show that the Iowan who is Donald Trump’s new national co-chairman was throwing bombs at him as recently as last month, expressing grave misgivings about the authenticity of Trump's religious faith and his conservatism.

“(Trump) left me with questions about his moral center and his foundational beliefs. ... His comments reveal no foundation in Christ, which is a big deal,” evangelical conservative activist Sam Clovis said in an email just 35 days before he quit his job as Republican Rick Perry’s Iowa chairman and signed on with Trump’s campaign.

In the emails, shared by Perry backers Wednesday with The Des Moines Register, Clovis castigated Trump for his past liberal positions and admission that he has never asked for God’s forgiveness for any wrongdoing.

In an interview Wednesday, Clovis verified that he’d written the sharply worded criticisms of Trump, including one email in which he praises Perry for calling Trump a “cancer on conservatism.”

Clovis said this of Trump: “I think when you sit down and ask him directly about those issues and you look him in the eye and ask him the tough questions like I had the opportunity to do,” he offers answers. “And I was satisfied with his answers,” he said.

Clovis defected from Perry’s team at a time when the former Texas governor has been struggling to cover his campaign aides’ salaries.

Iowa Republicans said Wednesday that Clovis’ move raises questions about how he reconciles endorsing Trump with his previous stances and statements, and whether he was motivated less by ideology and more by the promise of a big paycheck from a business mogul who has said he is willing to spend as much as a billion dollars to get elected.

“It brings back old memories, to say the least,” said state Sen. Brad Zaun, who was part of presidential candidate Michele Bachmann’s campaign in the 2012 cycle when fellow state senator Kent Sorenson dropped a political bombshell by abandoning his role as Bachmann’s Iowa chairman to endorse rival Ron Paul.

Zaun pointed out that there’s nothing illegal about switching campaigns for a bigger paycheck; it’s just illegal to lie about it to federal officials, as Sorenson has pleaded guilty to doing.

But when an Iowa influencer switches campaigns and compensation is involved, it diminishes the perception of the genuineness of the support, said Zaun, who is working for free for Republican Scott Walker’s campaign.

“(Clovis) certainly risks his reputation when you do something drastic like that,” Zaun said. “If he did take a load of money, I certainly think he risks losing credibility in the state of Iowa.”

Clovis on Wednesday declined to say how much he would be paid by the Trump campaign.

“I was recruited and hired because of my skills and my abilities. ... I’m an employee of the campaign,” Clovis told the Register. “I’m not going to talk about how much money I’m getting paid – it’s just not going to happen.”

Clovis would say only that he took an unpaid leave of absence from his job as a professor at Morningside College in Sioux City, and that his new position as national co-chairman is more than an honorary title. He will be a policy clearinghouse, working on policy statements, messaging and debate preparation, he said.

The message that Clovis was spreading around Iowa a month ago was that Trump was untrustworthy.

On July 20, Clovis returned an email from an Iowa woman who told him Perry was wrong to blast Trump for his remarks disparaging Arizona U.S. Sen. John McCain’s service in Vietnam. The woman said she was a strong backer of Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

Clovis, who served in the Air Force for 25 years, wrote in response: “Mr. Trump's remarks were insulting to me as a veteran and as a person whose family sacrificed for 25 years as I missed anniversaries, birthdays, holidays, Christmases and Easters."

“(Trump’s) comments were offensive and people responded accordingly," Clovis continued in the email. "I was offended by a man who sought and gained four student deferments to avoid the draft and who has never served this nation a day — not a day — in any fashion or way.”

Clovis, who has run in Iowa for both U.S. Senate and state treasurer, went on: “I ran for office on the same pretense that a person ought to be held accountable for not only what they say but also what they do. If that is the case, why should I not be suspicious of an individual who was pro-choice until he decided to run for president? Why should I not be suspicious of a person who advocates for universal healthcare? Why should I not be suspicious of someone who says he hates lobbyists and yet has spread millions of dollars around to Republicans and Democrats to enrich himself? Why should I not be suspicious of someone who cannot come to say that he believes in God, that he has never asked for forgiveness and that communion is simply wine and a cracker.”

Clovis told the Iowa woman it would be “intellectually dishonest of me” not to respond, or to “let Mr. Trump get away with something that I would not allow this president or any other progressive to get away with.”

In another email, to Perry campaign staff on July 22, Clovis praised Perry for saying in a speech that Trump “offers a barking carnival act that can be best described as Trumpism: a toxic mix of demagoguery and mean-spiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued.”

“(Perry’s) speech today was unbelievable. It brought tears to my eyes. Powerful stuff. Let's hope others react the same way,” Clovis wrote in the email to Perry campaign aides.

On Wednesday, Clovis acknowledged: “I thought he gave a tremendous speech. ... It was exactly right on.”

Clovis told the Register he knows that Trump’s stances have shifted, but argued that Democrat Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama have also shifted on matters such as same-sex marriage. “And more recently than Donald Trump shifted his positions,” Clovis said.

“I don’t know all the positions that Donald Trump has, but I do know this: I trust him to do what he says he’s going to do, and if we get him to Washington, D.C., that politics in America will be changed forever."

If any other Republican is elected, “it will just be more of the same,” he said.

Clovis, a former radio talk show host, has filled in as host for Simon Conway on WHO Radio and is a frequent guest of Conway and Jan Mickelson, both prominent conservative voices on WHO.

Clovis said he’s a “hard sell,” but Trump won him over.

“This takes a lot of courage to step out there and do this. You know you’re going to catch hell. And people have been vicious and mean and absolutely scurrilous in their attacks over the last 24 hours,” he said. “I wouldn’t be on his team if I didn’t believe he was the right guy.”