But in the past two years, largely out of view of the coastal media and the Washington establishment, a transformation has taken place. As Christian networks have become more comfortable with politics, the Trump administration has turned them into a new pipeline for its message. Trump has forged a particularly tight marriage of convenience with Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network, which since early in the 2016 campaign has offered consistent friendly coverage and been granted remarkable access in return. Trump personally has appeared 11 times on CBN since his campaign began; in 2017 alone, he gave more interviews to CBN than to CNN, ABC or CBS. Trump’s Cabinet members, staffers and surrogates also appear regularly. TBN has embraced politics more gingerly—it is still not a news-gathering organization—but Trump has made inroads there, too, starting with his kickoff interview on “Huckabee.”

The benefits are mutual. For the networks, having White House officials regularly on screen gives new legitimacy to media organizations that have long felt looked down upon. CBN has belonged to the White House press corps for decades and occupied a seat in the White House briefing room since the Obama era. But its status has risen dramatically during the Trump presidency, when press secretary Sean Spicer gave questions to CBN reporters three times in the first two weeks of the term. During a joint news conference with Netanyahu, Trump himself picked CBN’s chief political correspondent, David Brody, to ask the first question. “The Trump administration has given CBN News the opportunity to be recognized in places a Christian news organization normally wouldn’t,” CBN vice president and news director Rob Allman wrote in an email.