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After all, there are quite a few people who once worked in the Trump Administration that are virulently anti-Trump; does their experience working in his Administration make their opinion more reliable?
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Gendron however is no Chris Christie!
Gendron forms his thesis on historical data and not temporary fame.
From what I've seen, the "historical data" he uses is generally either (a) wrong or (b) misinterpreted to a degree that is utterly blind (to be charitable) or otherwise malicious. (After all, he himself professes on his ministry's website that "after 35 years of being a devout Catholic, I had a crisis of faith when I began reading the Bible for the first time." Given that Bibles in the English vernacular (particularly the Challoner edition of the Douay-Rheims translation) had been published for lay usage in America since 1790, the prospect that he had not cracked open a Bible during his first 35 years of life strikes me as highly implausible for a "devout Catholic" to admit.)
Also, his ministry — "Proclaiming the Gospel", whose website features a store and a donation page — as a 501(c)3 organization, has its public filings available for public consumption. The most recent year I was able to download (2019 Form 990; 2020 and 2021 were not available for me to download) shows some interesting information:
- Revenue in the form of $244,485 "contributions and grants" and $24,437 in "investment income";
- Total compensation to Mike Gendron was reported as $75,000 in reportable W-2/1099 compensation, with "other compensation" equaling $44,087; for $119,087 in toto;
- Total compensation to his spouse Jane Gendron was $15,600 in W-2/1099, with "other" being $10,487, for $26,087 in toto;
- In terms of all expenses, this means given $145,174 in compensation to the Grendons and $48,507 in "management and general expenses", this left $96,667 to be spent towards actual "program service expenses" (i.e. what was actually spent to "fulfill the mission of the organization"); in other words, not even 40% of the contributions/grants received in 2019 went towards program services, well below the 65% threshold recommended by the Better Business Bureau for what constitutes a "good" charity;
- Most interestingly, the ministry's balance sheet reported $23,061 in cash on hand, and $1,266,116 in "savings and temporary cash investments".
Not a bad gig for what amounts to selling recycled talking points and ancient argumentation that can be found on the Internet for free.
Whether or not there's any "temporary fame" (small-scale or otherwise) associated with his Proclaiming the Gospel organization, there is absolutely a monetary/temporal benefit that he's gaining which cannot be discounted.