WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump told evangelicals they “cannot afford to sit on the sidelines” in the 2024 election and implored them: “Christians, go vote!”
President Trump also supported displaying the Ten Commandments in schools and other places while speaking to politically influential evangelical Christians in Washington on Saturday. He received cheers this week when he introduced a new law in Louisiana requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom.
“Has anyone ever read ‘Thou shalt not steal’? I mean, has anyone read this amazing stuff? “It’s absolutely incredible.” Trump said this at a gathering of the Faith & Freedom Coalition. “They don’t want it to go up. It’s such a crazy world.”
A day ago, President Trump posted a post supporting the new law on his social media. “I love the Ten Commandments in public schools, private schools, and other places. Read — How can we as a country go wrong???”
The former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee is seeking to energize his religious right supporters who have fiercely backed him since he first became suspicious of the twice-divorced New York City tabloid celebrity when he first ran for president in 2016. I supported the movement. .
Despite finding him guilty in the first of four criminal cases last month, a jury found him guilty of falsifying business records in what prosecutors said was an attempt to conceal hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels. And this support continued. Before the 2016 election. Daniels claimed she had sexual contact with Trump 10 years ago, but Trump denied this.
President Trump’s opposition to signing a nationwide ban on abortion and his reluctance to elaborate on his views on the issue are at odds with many members of the evangelical movement. A rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden.
But while many members of the movement would like to see him do more to restrict abortion, they root for him as the greatest advocate for abortion because of his role in appointing the U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned the nation’s abortion rights in 2022.
“We did an amazing job,” President Trump said Saturday, but the question will be left to those who make the decisions in America.
“Every voter must do the right thing with all their heart, but we must also get elected,” he said.
Trump still takes credit for overturning Roe v. Wade, but warned that abortion could be politically tricky for Republicans. For months he put off questions about his position on a national ban.
Last year, in a speech to the Faith & Freedom Coalition, President Trump said there was a “critical role for the federal government in protecting the life of the unborn” but did not provide further details.
In April of this year, Trump said the issue should now be left to the states. He later said in an interview that he would not sign a bill to ban abortion nationwide if Congress passed it. He still refused to elaborate on his position on women’s access to the abortion drug mifepristone.
About two-thirds of Americans said abortion should be generally legal, according to a poll conducted last year by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs.
People at an evangelical gathering Saturday said they would like to see a nationwide abortion ban, but that President Trump has lost none of their deep support.
“I wish he would sign a national ban,” said Jerri Dickinson, 78, a retired social worker from New Jersey and a member of Faith & Freedom. “But I understand that under the Constitution that decision should be left to the states.”
Dickinson said she couldn’t stand her state’s abortion law, which places no restrictions on the procedure based on gestational age. But aside from favoring a national ban, she said leaving the issue to the states was “the best alternative.”
John Ferdner, 59, who recently started a Faith and Liberty chapter in his home state of Wisconsin, said members of the movement feel loyal to Trump, but “we generally wish he were more pro-life.”
“I think there are a lot of people in the pro-life movement who think he’s too pro-choice,” he said. “But it’s a positive thing within the pro-life community because they think highly of his Supreme Court justices.”
About 8 in 10 white evangelical Christian voters supported Trump in 2020, and nearly 4 in 10 Trump voters identified as white evangelical Christians, according to AP VoteCast, an extensive survey of voters. White evangelical Christians made up about 20% of the electorate that year.
In addition to offering its own support in the general election, the Religious Freedom Coalition plans to use volunteers and paid workers to help win votes for Trump and other Republicans, with the goal of knocking on millions of doors in battleground states.
President Trump said Saturday that evangelicals and Christians “don’t vote as much as they should,” joking that he wants them to vote in November but doesn’t care if they vote again after that.
He portrayed Christianity as being threatened through the erosion of freedom, law, and borders.
He returned to the U.S.-Mexico border issue several times during his roughly 90-minute remarks, at one point describing immigrants crossing the border as “tough,” joking that he had told his friend Dana White, president of Ultimate. The Fighting Championship is meant to engage them in a new version of the sport.
″’Why not create a league of immigrants and have a league of regular fighters? Then you have a champion of the league. ‘These are the world’s greatest warriors fighting the champions of immigrants,’ Trump told White. “I think migrant workers might win. How difficult it is for those people. “He didn’t really like that idea.”
His story drew laughter and applause from the crowd.
President Trump plans to hold an evening rally in Philadelphia later Saturday.
Associated Press writers Tom Strong and Amelia Thomson DeVeaux contributed to this report.
