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Trump has developed a sense of impunity when it comes to religious messaging, forged through a grand compromise with Christian conservatives who see him as a flawed — but effective — champion of their movement.
Trump's Bibles and the evolution of his messianic message

Okay. I'll bite. What "grand compromise" is Axios referring to? I don't really see Donald Trump as having conceded anything to Christian conservatives. Sure, he pays lip service to religiosity and advances policies that Evangelicals like, but there's no indication that prior to some negotiated agreement with some form of conservative Christian leadership. His buy-in to the idea that the "War on Christmas" has evolved into a broader "War on (conservative) Christians" was not something that Mr. Trump needed to agree to in order to obtain the support of a section of the electorate; it's a basic part of his general modus operandi of finding a fight already in progress and picking a side.

The whole point is that there was no compromise, in the same way that an expression of gratitude after a gift isn't understood to be a compromise. The attitude of Christians who see the former (and maybe future) President as a champion for their efforts to elevate their values and interests to a privileged place in American life have shifted from something along the lines of "God may use the flawed to further its ends" to "he's genuinely one of us." The fact that, over the past decade, he's shifted from someone considered to not know one end of a Bible from the other, to being considered more religious (among his base, anyway) than his famously Evangelical Vice-President shows that while there may have been a transaction here, it wasn't a compromise.

Similarly, prominent conservative Christians are well past the point of "holding their noses" to support Donald Trump. And they haven't needed to, or been asked to, give up anything in the name of forging an alliance with Mr. Trump, or Trumpism more broadly. Those people who were willing to air opposition to, or even reservations about, taking a seat on the Make America Great Again bandwagon have been sidelined. Mainly because the understood, if not always openly stated, goal of the entire MAGA project is to more than roll back the clock to a supposed halcyon age of the supremacy of Christian leadership from the pulpit. It's to implement a vision of Christian faith as the exclusive foundation of all American ideals; to move to an understanding that in order to genuinely believe in (and thus work to implement and sustain) ideas such as "equal protection under the law" or "freedom of expression," one must be an open, practicing Christian. It's an outgrowth of the idea that ethical behavior itself requires a belief in the Abrahamic God, and the only correct belief/faith in that deity is the Western understanding of Christianity. And this means buying into the idea that the supernatural war between "Good" and "Evil" is playing out in the material world.

Donald Trump has been able to insert himself into this narrative through his support of the worldview that Evangelicalism holds. Accordingly, his legal troubles stem not from a failure to "give to Caesar what is Caesar's," but from the "fact" that attempts to advance the cause of the divine in the world will be met by those who, inadvertently or knowingly, are on the other side. Much of modern American Christianity sees itself as persecuted because of an understanding (and this is a more common viewpoint than perhaps it's given credit for) that their values and goals are demonstrably the best thing for everyone, rather than a set of interests that are in opposition to those of other groups.

It may be very accurate to describe the political relationship between Donald Trump and the Christian Right in the United States as "a grand bargain." Both sides bring something important to the table, both sides see powerful benefits from the arrangement and each apparently believes in the other's sincerity. It's a good match. To look at that, and characterize it as "a grand compromise" is, I think, to demonstrate a lack of understanding of what's at stake here. True, Christian conservatives have decided that Mr. Trump's prior history and irreligiosity are things to be overlooked. But to call that a compromise is to elevate the importance of that factor far higher than history would warrant.