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Trump: We Don’t Know ‘About Hillary In Terms Of Religion’


trRepublican Donald Trump appeared to raise questions about likely rival Hillary Clinton’s religious faith at a closed-door meeting with evangelical leaders on Tuesday.

The presumptive GOP nominee, in a video clip of his remarks, appeared to suggest the public doesn’t know “anything about Hillary in terms of religion.”

“You know, she’s been in public eye for years and years, and yet there’s no, there’s nothing out there. There’s like nothing out there,” he told the group.

“It’s going to be an extension of Obama, but it’s going to be worse because with Obama you had your guard up, with Hillary you don’t. And it’s going to be worse,” he warned.

A spokeswoman for Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on exactly what Trump meant.

Footage of Trump speaking at the meeting at a Times Square hotel, which was closed to reporters, was posted by attendee Bishop E.W. Jackson on his Twitter feed.

Jackson told The Associated Press that Trump had been talking about the idea that conservatives are constantly scrutinized over their religion, how devout they are and their positons on social issues.

“He was saying in the context that liberals and the Democrats don’t get those kinds of questions, they don’t get their faith examined in that way,” he said.

“He wasn’t questioning her Christianity, but he was questioning the implications of her faith, compared to how conservatives tend to have their faith examined.”

Clinton grew up in the Methodist church, attending church youth group and teaching Sunday school like her mother. While she doesn’t often talk about her faith on the campaign trail, she occasionally quotes biblical verses and mentions her experiences in church.

“I am a person of faith. I am a Christian. I am a Methodist. I have been raised Methodist,” she told voters in Iowa in January.

In the posted footage, Trump also takes issue with the idea of encouraging prayers for all leaders.

“I said: Well you can pray for your leaders, and I agree with that, pray for everyone. But what you really have to do is you have to pray to get everybody out to vote for one specific person,” he said. “And we can’t be again politically correct and say we pray for all of our leaders because all of your leaders are selling Christianity down the tubes, selling evangelicals down the tubes.”

Trump has sometimes struggled to discuss religious issues. He has declined to cite his favorite biblical verse and has toted around a photo from his confirmation as evidence of his Christian upbringing.

But in another video clip from Tuesday’s event, Trump talked about the meaning of faith in his life.

“Christianity, I owe so much to it in so many ways, through life, through having incredible children, through so many other things,” he said, noting his great support from religious voters in GOP primaries.

“The evangelical vote was mostly gotten by me,” he said.

Trump also talked in another clip about the lack of “spirit” in inner cities.

“We’ve got to spiritize this country. And I’m not only talking about the inner cities. I’m talking about everywhere,” he said, coining a new word.

Trump’s campaign on Tuesday also announced the formation of a new “Evangelical Executive Advisory Board” that will advise the candidate “on those issues important to Evangelicals and other people of faith in America,” according to a release.

Members of the new group include former Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. and Faith and Freedom Coalition leader Ralph Reed.

Jackson, the bishop who posted video to Twitter, said that he’d walked into the meeting as more of an anti-Clinton voter than pro-Trump one, but said the meeting had changed his view.

“The thing I’ve heard most people say is, ‘He moved the needle,'” he said. “People who came in with reservations, they have fewer reservations. Others left thinking, ‘Maybe I need to take a look at him again.'”

(AP)



4 Responses

  1. Actually we know a lot about Clinton’s religion. She is a lifelong Methodist and a regular churchgoer; she regularly took her daughter and dragged her husband to services at Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington when her husband was President. Among the other members of that congregation was Sen. Robert Dole, who ran against her husband for President in 1996. More recently she made a loud public denunciation of the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement immediately before the United Methodist Church General Assembly was to vote on the issue, putting her own prestige on the line. Baruch HaShem her Church agreed with her! May more religious Christians take such stands and be listened to. Note also that the United Methodist Church decades ago voted for a theological position that God’s covenant with the Jewish people is not and will never be broken. (How many of Trump’s evangelical advisors would agree?)

    Trump, OTOH, has never belonged to any church as an adult, couldn’t even identify a favorite bible verse when asked, nor any sins for which he felt he needed forgiveness.

  2. I think Trump was hinting that Hillary may be a Moslem. Trump has no involvement in his religion even though he’s mentioned he’s a Presbyterian and even has shown a bible he got as a child. He has butchered phrases from his religions testament on several occasions and seems to have no familiarity with it.

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