Former President Donald Trump told a group of evangelicals that they “cannot afford to sit on the sidelines” of the 2024 election, at one point imploring them to “get out and vote, Christians, please!”
Trump also approved displaying the Ten Commandments in schools and elsewhere while speaking to a group of politically influential people evangelical Christians Saturday in Washington. He drew cheers as he invoked a new law signed this week in Louisiana that makes it the first state to require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom.
“Has anyone read ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal’? I mean, has anyone read this incredible stuff? It’s just unbelievable,” Trump said at the Faith & Freedom Coalition meeting. “They don’t want it to go up. It’s a crazy world.’
Trump posted an endorsement of the new law on his social media network a day earlier, saying, “I LOVE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, PRIVATE SCHOOLS AND MANY OTHER PLACES. READ IT – HOW CAN WE, AS A NATION, GO WRONG???”
The former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee backed the move as he tries to energize his supporters on the religious right, which has fiercely backed him after initially being suspicious of the twice-divorced New York City tabloid celebrity when he first ran for office in 2016 for the presidency. .
That has moved on his belief in the first of four criminal cases he faces, in which a jury found him guilty last month of falsifying business records for what prosecutors said was an attempt to extract a hush-money payment from porn actor Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election to cover up. Daniels claims she had a sexual encounter with Trump ten years earlier, which he denies.
A federal ban on abortion
Trump’s declared against the signing a nationwide ban on abortion, and his reluctance to detail some of his views on the issue, are at odds with many members of the evangelical movement, a key part of Trump’s base that is expected to will help shape voters in his November rematch with the Democratic Party. President Biden.
But while many members of the movement would like to see him do more to restrict abortion, they are cheering him as the cause’s biggest champion because of his role in appointing Supreme Court justices who overturned the nation’s abortion rights in 2022.
Trump emphasized that Saturday, saying, “We did something great,” but the issue would be left for the people of the United States to decide.
“Every voter must go with their heart and do what is right, but we also need to be elected,” he said.
While he continues to take credit for the reversal of Roe v. Wade, Trump has also warned that abortion could be politically difficult for Republicans. For months, he has deferred questions about his position on a national ban.
When Trump addressed the Faith & Freedom Coalition last year, he said there is “a critical role for the federal government in protecting unborn life,” but provided no further details.
In April this year, Trump said he believed the issue should now be left to the states. He later stated in an interview that he would not sign a nationwide ban on abortion if it were passed by Congress. He still does not want to comment on his position on women’s access to the abortion pill mifepristone.
Some anti-abortion activists, including Jocaved Torres, have said they will push Trump to support a federal ban.
“The people he surrounds himself with are pro-life, so we are confident he can change his mind,” Torres told CBS News at the Faith & Freedom Coalition event.
“There is a lot the former president could do if he were returned to power with executive action alone,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the political arm of Planned Parenthood.
Johnson says reproductive rights are still driving support for Biden.
“The energy is on fire on the ground,” Johnson said. “People understand what it means to have a freedom taken away, especially a freedom that we have enjoyed for almost 50 years.”
Biden is expected to attack Trump as a threat to abortion rights during Thursday’s presidential debate as both campaigns hope to make inroads with undecided voters.
About two-thirds of Americans believe abortion should generally be legal, according to a poll last year by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
While still taking credit for the reversal of Roe v. WadeTrump has also warned that abortion could be politically difficult for Republicans. For months, he has deferred questions about his position on a national ban.
When Trump addressed Reed’s group last year, he said there is “a critical role for the federal government in protecting unborn life,” but provided no further details.
In April this year, Trump said he believed the issue should now be left to the states. He later stated in an interview that he would not sign a nationwide ban on abortion if it were passed by Congress. He still does not want to comment on his position on women’s access to the abortion pill mifepristone.
In 2016, white evangelical Christians were initially reluctant to support Trump and distrusted his image as a twice-divorced New York City gossip celebrity who had at one point described himself as “very pro-choice.”
But his promises to appoint justices to the court who would overturn Roe, along with his decision in 2016 to name Mike Pence, an evangelical Christian, as his running mate, helped him win the movement’s support.
Evangelical support
According to AP VoteCast, a broad-based survey of the electorate, about 8 in 10 white evangelical Christian voters supported Trump in 2020, and nearly 4 in 10 Trump voters identified as white evangelical Christians. White evangelical Christians made up about 20% of the total electorate that year.
In addition to offering just their own support in the general election, the Faith & Freedom Coalition plans to help turn out votes for Trump and other Republicans, aiming to use volunteers and paid workers to knock on millions of doors in battleground states to knock.
Trump said Saturday that evangelicals and Christians “don’t vote as much as they should,” joking that while he wanted them to vote in November, he didn’t care if they voted again afterward.
He portrayed Christianity as threatened by what he suggested was an erosion of freedom, justice and the nation’s borders.
He returned several times during his roughly 90-minute remarks on the topic of the U.S.-Mexico border and at one point, describing the migrants crossing the border as “tough,” joked that he told his girlfriend Dana White , the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, to bring them into a new version of the sport.
“Why don’t you create a migrant league and have a regular league of fighters. And then you have the champion of your league, these are the greatest fighters in the world, fighting the champion of the migrants,” Trump described. say to White. ‘I think the migrant man could win, they are that tough. He didn’t like that idea very much.’
His story drew laughter and applause from the audience.
Several Republicans seen as potential running mates for Trump also spoke at the conference, including New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, former presidential candidate and Trump Housing Secretary Ben Carson, and Arizona Senate candidate. Kari Lake. Stefanik and Carson are among Republicans who have received vetting papers from the Trump campaign in recent weeks.
Ralph Reed, the founder and chairman of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, said members of his coalition are watching them closely and looking for Trump to elect someone who shares his views.
“We are looking for someone who will be a champion, a pro-family and pro-life and pro-Israel champion. And we are looking for someone who has the ability to bring some new people into the group and act as an ambassador for our values,” he said.
Reed wouldn’t name anyone in the field as strongest or weakest, calling it “an embarrassment of riches.”
Later Saturday, Trump plans to hold an evening rally in Philadelphia.
