Former President Donald Trump joined several prominent conservatives and Republican lawmakers from the Church — including Sen. Mike Lee and Blaze Media CEO Glenn Beck — on a phone call Sunday night, where Trump and the others pitched voters on why they should give him the should support in the near future. presidential elections.
Many of the people who spoke on the call also joined Trump earlier in the day at a rally in Prescott Valley, Arizona.
In addition to Lee and Beck, attendees included Utah Reps. Burgess Owens and Celeste Maloy, Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich, Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador and organizer and host Travis Padilla. Each is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was not immediately clear how many people listened to the webinar.
One theme of the call was forgiveness — several speakers said voters should not blame him for past mistakes — while another theme was respect for the Constitution.
The Trump campaign’s appeal and outreach efforts are not affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or its leaders. The church takes a neutral position when it comes to politics. The Church recently issued an official statement reiterating that it “does not endorse, promote or oppose political parties and their platforms or candidates for political office.”
Trump asks Latter-day Saints for their on-call vote
Trump touched on several themes in his remarks on the call, including the central role of the family, religious freedom and the Constitution.
“We believe that faith in God and our Judeo-Christian values are essential to a healthy American society,” he said. “We believe in family, we believe in parental rights. In fact, we believe that freedom of religion is the foundation of all our freedoms.”
He also criticized his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, on social, economic and border issues. Trump spoke of his relatively strong support among Latino voters, compared to previous Republican presidential candidates, and said that, as he did during his first term, he would appoint judges who support the Constitution as written.
During the phone call, Trump directly asked Latter-day Saints several times to vote for him. He said this would help him in Arizona and Nevada, two swing states that Trump hopes to capture in November.
Constitution and religious freedom cause Senator Lee to support Trump
Lee, who represents Utah in the Senate, said he knows both Trump and Harris, and that “neither will be mistaken for your stake president or your Relief Society president.”
Quoting Latter-day Saint Scripture on the U.S. Constitution, Lee said the Constitution is “something special because it was written by the hands of wise men whom Almighty God established for that purpose, and we must defend.’
Trump could do a better job defending the Constitution’s structural protections, Lee said, adding that he doesn’t think that will happen “right in the nick of time.”
In his remarks at the Prescott Valley rally, Lee told a story about a time when his wife’s mother was sick and Trump called to ask him about a “legislative matter,” but after hearing about Sharon Lee’s mother, he asked to speak to her. She put Trump on speakerphone and Lee said he had “comforted the whole family.”
During the meeting and on the call, Lee spoke about his concerns about Harris on the issue of religious freedom. He said the legislation she supported, the Do No Harm Act, would have taken away religious freedom protections under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
After talking about the founding of the Church and the early persecution of the Latter-day Saints, Lee said he worries about what could happen to religious freedom in the future.
“Today we are persecuted much more because of the fact that many of the teachings of our church and our core doctrines are simply incompatible with the woke, radical, progressive agenda, and so that is the basis of our persecution,” he said. “If you elect Kamala Harris as our next president today, you will be sowing the seeds for the destruction of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and with it, religious freedom itself.”
Glenn Beck explains why he supports Trump
Beck, who like Lee did not initially support Trump, expressed his full support for the former president during Sunday’s call and at the rally. But he spent more time laying out his concerns about what he believes Harris would do if elected, including on issues such as abortion, free speech and religious freedom.
Beck encouraged those on the call to “find a person who is on the fence. Find a person of our faith who won’t just say, “I can’t vote for Donald Trump because of XYZ.”
“If it’s because of who he is as a man, or what he’s done with his, you know, his divorces and everything else. If you want to know what Donald Trump thinks about women, ask his daughters,” Beck said. ‘His daughters are strong, decent, honorable people who love their father. I have to tell you, if I could have the success that man has had with his family and his daughters in a broken marriage where he was still co-parenting with his ex-wife, that’s miraculous.
Reps. Biggs, Owens and Maloy endorse Trump
Several Republican members of the Latter-day Saint Congress also expressed support for Trump during the call.
Owens said he hopes voters won’t hold Trump’s past mistakes against him, saying he has made mistakes too.
“We are in a spiritual war” for freedom, Owens said.
“We need someone who loves our nation, who is courageous enough to stand up against the evil forces that are now against us, who want to uphold the basic concepts of faith, family, free market and education. That’s President Trump,” he said.
Maloy focused her comments on the “administrative state,” saying Trump would do a better job fighting back against the growing power of the bureaucracy.
“We have bureaucrats making decisions about the air we breathe, the water we drink, the cars we drive, the roads we drive on, what our children learn in school, how we live our lives,” she said. Almost every aspect of our lives is governed by rules that have the force of law, which are not law.”
These elections are crucial in the fight for individual freedoms, Maloy said, adding that she believes Trump will continue his work in reducing the administrative state.
Biggs, who represents a district in Arizona, focused many of his comments on the Constitution and the border.
“Do you want an open border for another four years?” he asked. “I mean, we all want legal immigration. In fact, we give more legal status to more people every year than all other countries in the world combined. But we can’t continue to take in the whole world without some control.”
Biggs also criticized the Biden administration for inflation and spoke about Trump’s character, saying he finds the former president “merciful” and saying everyone needs “mercy.”
“When I look at where we are as a nation today, in some ways I see us as having some sort of existential crisis. But the dichotomy between President Trump and his opponent is so great, so stark – and when people say, well, he has mean tweets, or he said the wrong thing, or he’s not the kind of man I want to be, or that type. of thing. Look, no man and no woman is perfect.”
Kamala Harris also tries to reach the Latter-day Saints
Harris has also asked Latter-day Saint voters to support her in the upcoming election. She has launched formal efforts to reach Latter-day Saint voters in Arizona and Nevada.
At a rally in Arizona on Saturday, Harris addressed “the LDS community here,” says, “We have so much more in common than what divides us, especially on the fundamentals. And with that I say that I am all committed to being a president for all Americans and working together again as we must.”
