Trump complains about ‘great disloyalty’ as feud with evangelicals continues
Ryan King
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Former President Donald Trump lashed out at evangelicals, torching them for declining to endorse his 2024 presidential bid.
Pointing to his appointment of three Supreme Court justices that paved the way for overturning abortion rights precedents set in Roe v. Wade, Trump bemoaned that evangelicals have returned the favor with “great disloyalty,” highlighting some of the growing friction between him and the core voting bloc.
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“Nobody has ever done more for right to life than Donald Trump. I put three Supreme Court justices, who all voted, and they got something that they’ve been fighting for 64 years, for many, many years,” Trump told conservative journalist David Brody during an interview Monday. “There’s great disloyalty in the world of politics, and that’s a sign of disloyalty.”
https://twitter.com/RealAmVoice/status/1615106045726322689?s=20&t=-_RlmFmQkoOCRfT2XDUL4g
Throughout his 2016 campaign, Trump courted evangelicals by touting his religious bona fides, tweeting about attending church and reading Bible passages, though mispronouncing key phrases. Evangelicals quickly became a critical base of support for Trump, but the feeling was not always reciprocated.
“Those f***ing evangelicals,” Trump once told GOP lawmakers at a meeting during his presidency, author Tim Alberta reported in his book American Carnage.
The former president frequently boasted about his strong evangelical support. In 2021, he reportedly told an Israeli reporter that “evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews in this country.” That remark drew backlash from Jewish groups such as the American Jewish Congress.
Now many evangelicals are keen not to give him a blank check.
“There’s no path to the nomination without winning the evangelical vote. Nobody knows that better than President Trump because, to the surprise of almost everyone, he won their support in 2016,” Ralph Reed, executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, argued. “No one should assume the evangelical vote is spoken for or foreclosed to them.”
A number of prominent evangelicals such as televangelist Robert Jeffress have teased that they would not back Trump until it becomes clear who will win the Republican nomination. Others have publicly analyzed that Trump’s evangelical support has softened in recent years.
“He does not have the support of the evangelicals that he did,” evangelical Mike Evans told the Jerusalem Post.
Perhaps his greatest gift to evangelicals was the three Supreme Court appointments, which helped achieve their five-decade goal of nixing Roe. But Trump has largely refrained from boasting about the milestone, which has mobilized stiff opposition from pro-abortion rights voters. Earlier this year, Trump rankled some evangelicals by pinning the GOP’s lackluster 2022 midterm outing on abortion.
“It wasn’t my fault that the Republicans didn’t live up to expectations in the MidTerms,” Trump wrote in a New Year’s Day Truth Social post. “It was the ‘abortion issue,’ poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters.”
Many anti-abortion groups issued a rare rebuke of the former president in response.
“Trump is way out of line here on life. He does not have a pulse on where his potential base is — as many believed he has in the past. This kind of nonsense will be a losing political strategy for him,” anti-abortion Live Action founder Lila Rose tweeted in response.
https://twitter.com/LilaGraceRose/status/1610079823204089856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1610079823204089856%7Ctwgr%5Edcc8b03c7a57835048b46b0865ad5f72cdfdfa7f%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.foxnews.com%2Fpolitics%2Flosing-strategy-abortion-groups-left-right-blast-trump-blaming-pro-life-candidates-midterms
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“The approach to winning on abortion in federal races, proven for a decade is this: state clearly the ambitious consensus pro-life position and contrast that with the extreme view of Democrat opponents,” the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony’s List tweeted.
https://twitter.com/sbaprolife/status/1610033565575843840
Trump declared his 2024 presidential campaign last November and is slated to head to South Carolina later this month for his first major campaign event of the year.