Former President Donald Trump is calling on Christians to vote in November, warning that incumbent Joe Biden’s administration poses a serious threat to Christian values.
At the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, Trump told conservative Christians in attendance, “We have to get out there, we have to vote, we have to make sure everything’s honest.”
Referring to voter fraud, Trump reminded his audience that Americans can “police” their votes.” He said, “If I knew there was not going to be corruption, if I knew that everything would be honorable and honest as it should be, I’d stop campaigning right now, we’d have this thing won.”
The presumptive Republican nominee for president continued to tout the work done by the Faith & Freedom Coalition, saying, “You are truly, and I mean, indispensable. This is a great group of people and you’re warriors, in the truest sense.” However, Trump said, “The evangelicals and the Christians, they don’t vote as much as they should. … They go to church every Sunday, but they don’t vote.”
He proceeded to urge American Christians to vote “just this time,” asking, “Do you know the power you have if you would vote?” Trump promised to “straighten things out” if reelected and told Christian voters, “Working side by side, we’re going to defeat crooked Joe Biden, we’re going to defend our values, and we’re going to make America great again.”
Borrowing a famous line from his former reality show “The Apprentice,” he added, “We need Christian voters to turn out in the largest numbers ever to tell crooked Joe Biden … ‘Joe, you’re fired. You’re fired, Joe! Get out of here, Joe. You’re no good, you’ve been the worst president ever, you’re fired, Joe. Get out.’”
“The radical left is trying to shame Christians, silence you, demoralize you, and they want to keep you out of politics. They don’t want you to vote, that’s why you have to vote,” Trump said, continuing, “If you vote, we cannot lose. They don’t want you to vote. But Christians cannot afford to sit on the sidelines. If Joe Biden gets in, Christianity will not be safe in a nation with no borders, no laws, no freedom, no future.”
“You see what they’re doing?” he asked. Comparing the Biden administration’s actions to those of a “third-world dictator,” Trump went on to note that the incumbent president has violated and undermined the rule of law to target political opponents, has aggressively prosecuted pro-life Americans, and has promoted “radical gender ideology” in schools, concluding, “It’s a disgrace what’s happened to our country in such a short period of time.”
He pointed to the Biden administration’s targeting of American Catholics and asked, “What’s going on with Catholics? They are being persecuted. Catholics. What is that all about?” Under Biden, the FBI has been accused of illegally spying on American Catholics, relying on left-wing think tanks to declare Catholics “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” according to a memo leaked last year.
Should pastors encourage church members to vote?
Biden’s Justice Department has also targeted pro-life Catholics like Mark Houck, who was accused of a Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act violation. Houck had previously agreed to cooperate with prosecutors if charges were filed and he was quickly acquitted in court, but not before approximately two dozen FBI agents armed with automatic weapons and riot gear raided his home and arrested him in front of his wife and children.
Although Biden claims to be Catholic, numerous leaders in the Catholic Church have condemned his open opposition to Catholic moral teaching, including on such subjects as abortion, same-sex marriage, and transgenderism. Trump said that Biden may have “no idea” what’s going on, adding, “I don’t think he knows he’s alive, if you want to know the truth.”
“The reason the radical left will always come after religious believers is simple,” Trump said, “because they know that our allegiance is not to them, our allegiance is not to them. Our allegiance is to our country and our allegiance is to our Creator. And we do not answer to the bureaucrats in Washington, we answer to God in Heaven.”
The former president said, “You’re not even allowed to say that anymore. Today, if you say that, they want to arrest you.” Referring to a recent Louisiana law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools, Trump laughed and said, “They think it’s such a bad thing. I said, ‘Has anyone read these? Though shalt not steal, thou shalt not’ — I mean, has anybody read this incredible stuff? It’s just incredible. They don’t want it to go up.”
Trump also touted his presidential record and said, “In my first term, I defended Judeo-Christian heritage like no president in the history of our country. And with your help, I will continue to fight for our values and our civilization for four more years in the White House.”
He continued, “We’re going to straighten it out, we’re going to straighten it out fast,” highlighting his defense of religious liberty and freedom of speech, as well as his support for conscience protections in the medical field and his role in appointing U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade.
“Thanks to these justices,” he said, “we have also achieved what the pro-life movement fought to get for 49 years and we’ve gotten abortion out of the federal government and back to the states.” He added, “If the radical Democrat extremes get their way, they will have a federal law for abortion to rip the baby out of the womb in the seventh, eighth, and ninth month and even execute the baby after birth.” Trump also noted that Democrats “are the radical ones on this issue, far and away the radical ones, not us.”
He continued, “Above all, in the Republican Party, we will always support family, babies, life — very, very important to the Republican Party. By contrast, Joe Biden is weaponizing the Justice Department to viciously persecute pro-life activists and Americans of faith.” Referring to pro-life Americans imprisoned by the Biden administration, Trump said, “This is just crazy. We’re going to get that taken care of immediately, first day. But let’s call these brave Americans what they really are: it’s persecuted Christians, that’s what they are, they’re persecuted.”
“I always say we’re a nation in decline, we’re a nation in really serious, serious decline,” Trump lamented. He pledged, “But we will rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner who’s been unjustly victimized by the Biden regime … so we can get them out of the gulags and back to their families where they belong.”
The former president also repeated his promise to form a “federal task force on fighting anti-Christian biases.” He explained, “It’s mission will be to investigate all forms of illegal discrimination, harassment, persecution against Christians in America. … Never again will the federal government be used to target religious believers, Americans of faith.”
As Matt Carpenter, director of FRC Action, told The Washington Stand, “The former president is right to remind Christians they ultimately answer to God. As much as the current administration might want us to think we answer to their judges and prosecutors, Christians know who ultimately is in charge.”
Carpenter went on to note, “I don’t think in 2020, when these two candidates first met in the presidential election, Christian voters thought for one minute the DOJ would be arresting pro-lifers for praying in abortion clinics or trying to erase Resurrection Sunday with ‘Transgender Day of Visibility,’” he pointed out. “Like the sons of Issachar, I think many of them understand the times we are living in and are ready to send a message to Washington, D.C. in a few months.”
This article appeared originally on The Washington Stand.
