We live in a strange age when good Christian men are slandered in defense of men of low character. Still, I would have never suspected to see such calumny on the Acton PowerBlog. Unfortunately, my new colleague Silvio Simonetti has used our site to assassinate the character of my friend—and Acton ally—David French.

Simonetti says that French is “One of the most outspoken instigators of conspiratorial theories about the collusion between Vladimir Putin and Trump. . .” Perhaps if Simonetti had read the Mueller Report rather than relying on second-hand summaries from talk radio he’d know that the Trump campaign had indeed attempted to “collude” with Russia but that collusion is not a “term of art in federal criminal law.” What Muller found was not that there was no collusions (the president has made it clear he’d happily collude with foreign government’s interfering in our elections) but rather that there was not enough evidence for a charge of criminal conspiracy.

Simonetti then goes on to say that,

David French always make it clear just how good a person he is. Reading his articles, we can hear the sermons of a true disciple of Christ and find out just how heroic his performance was in Iraq or that he has an adoptive daughter. A real contrast to the sinner Trump and his followers.

The reality is that French is indeed a good man, while Trump is not. French is a man of unimpeachable integrity while the evidence over a lifetime in the public view shows that the president is a man of low moral character. While I disagree with Simonetti about whether French is virtue-signaling, French at least has some virtue to signal; Trump does not.

Simonetti also claims that, “French, who sells himself as pro-life conservative, sees no problem in going to left-leaning pro-abortion mediaoutlets to bash Trump and point out the president’s alleged lack of morality.” Perhaps Simonetti isn’t aware that Trump was a lifelong abortion supporter (and even supported forms of infanticide) before he decided to run for president. In fact, Trump came out in support of partial-birth abortion on a “left-leaning pro-abortion media” network that owns the channel Simonetti plaining about.