American Evangelical christian leaders say that President Trump showed a “moment of weakness” after he signed an “immoral” spending bill, which includes giving hundreds of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood:
Conservative evangelical leaders have issued a rare public condemnation of the Donald Trump White House after the president signed an “immoral” spending bill that they say “constituted a moment of weakness” for his administration.
Evangelical leaders with close ties to the administration were quick to voice their disapproval of the $1.3 trillion omnibus bill passed by Congress and signed by the president last Friday, because the bill provides substantial funding to the nation’s largest abortion provider, significantly adds to the national debt, and fails to protect unauthorized immigrants brought to the country as children.
A statement that emerged Saturday afternoon that was signed by a number of evangelical leaders recognizes the serious threat to national security a government shutdown could cause. However, the leaders don’t think that is a good excuse to pass what they consider to be an “immoral budget” on a number of fronts.
“Yet, sliding in $500 million dollars for Planned Parenthood in the Omnibus Spending bill constitutes an immoral betrayal by the leadership of the Republican Party and we are sorely disappointed the White House was unable to do more to stop it,” the statement explains. “This constituted a moment of weakness for an administration marked by the strength of its rhetoric and action.”
The statement was tweeted out by Johnnie Moore, an evangelical public relations executive who works closely in an informal advisory role with the administration. Moore also handles media relations for a number of Trump’s informal evangelical advisors.
“Please find below a statement signed onto by a growing number of evangelical friends of the White House (including myself) to clearly criticize the Omnibus Spending bill passed by Congress & signed by @POTUS, even while supporting necessity of avoiding a government shutdown,” Moore wrote in his tweet.
Moore told The Christian Post on Tuesday that former Southern Baptist Convention President Jack Graham “led a few of us in jointly drafting a statement which people ‘signed on to’ by tweeting/posting it.”
“Some of those who did included Jack Graham, Eric Metaxas, Mike Huckabee, Samuel Rodriguez, myself, and many many many others tweeted it,” Moore explained. “Huckabee’s tweet alone was retweeted almost 800 times and liked almost 3000 times. Today, My Faith Votes will send a similar statement to hundreds of thousands of people via email.”
The statement comes as pro-lifers have pushed for years to strip Planned Parenthood of its annual funding. With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress and the White House after the 2016 election, prominent pro-lifers were somewhat optimistic that Planned Parenthood would be stripped of its federal funding last year.
“The Trump administration has certainly demonstrated an unwavering — if not, historic — commitment to prioritize the sanctity of human life through actions like the expansion of the Mexico City Policy, and by working meticulously to undo excessive government regulations that intentionally violate the conscience protections of pro-life Americans,” the statement reads. “This is why we are disappointed they didn’t fight harder.”
The evangelical leaders’ statement was also critical of other elements of the omnibus bill.
“The problems with this budget do not end there,” the statement added. “It continues to expand the size of government on the backs of our future generations, it failed to force meaningful funding for border security and to support DACA recipients.”
The statement concludes by stating that it ultimately holds to GOP leadership in the House and Senate responsible for the bill. However, the leaders wanted to “make it clear” that more was expected from the White House.
“Next time, the administration should send a different message — ‘look me in the eyes; this is no longer business-as-usual.'”
Moore told CP that he feels the Republican leadership in Congress put the White House in an “untenable position of choosing between the military and a government shutdown.”
“We supported the military funding entirely, but we generally believe that should have been done separately and not part of a mammoth spending bill filled with special interests, some of which are immoral interests,” Moore explained. “It was a brazen failure by Republican leadership.”
Other conservatives have also condemned the final spending bill.
“This omnibus is nowhere close to what Republicans promised to fight for,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., wrote in a public statement last week.
Tom McClusky, vice president of government affairs for March for Life, said in a statement that Congress is broken.
“It cannot continue doing business through large ominous Omnibus or Continuing Resolutions,” McClusky said. “Until Congress repairs itself pro-life priorities, such as much needed conscience protections, will never get passed.” (source)
I am sure there are many Evangelicals right now feeling like chumps. With all respect to them, I can’t entirely blame all of them. After all, Trump DID promise to be a “different” candidate, and for all intensive purposes, given the unique way he entered into the 2016 election, it is unjust to say that such a view would be unqualified.
On a personal level, I supported Trump. I gave him his chance. I said privately (as I do not recall publicly) that if Trump was 10% better than what Hillary would have been, even that would be an improvement to the current situation.
Some people say that Obama was a terrible president, and in many ways he was, as evidenced by his actions. Obama was rightfully criticized and has received his place in American history. When he was in office, he routinely blamed President Bush for his bad decisions. The liberals who supported Obama said that Obama had to clean up Bush’s “mess,” and the conservatives who were against him said that Obama had to take responsibility for his own messes. In this case, the conservatives were right- Obama was the president, and it is not his job to complain about messes, but to clean them up.
Trump has been in office for 14 months. He is over 25% finished with his term as President. Yet there are now “conservatives” who blame Obama’s “mess” for Trump’s failures as a president, such has how he seems to be perpetuating the policies of Obama without any real changes and in some cases, making policy decisions that were worse than Obama’s.
Trump is curtailing gun laws that were liberalized under Obama.
Obama gave gun rights, Trump took them away.
Trump gave the largest ever “aid package” to the terrorist state of Saudi Arabia.
Obama gave aid, but never the largest.
Trump met with the head of Saudi Arabia and made deals to sell them weapons, and then he said that selling weapons to them is great because it will “create jobs” for American.
If Obama said something like that, people would say it was proof Obama was in a Muslim conspiracy to WAGE JEE-HAWD AGAINST AMERICA.
Trump now signed in a $500 million dollar stipend for Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider.
He knew that stipend was in the bill. He signed it anyways, knowing it was an outright betrayal of many promises he made during his campaign.
It is true that people change. However, listening to Trump’s past statements on abortion, how is it different from his views today?
He can say that abortion is wrong and that women who do it need to be punished. But he is not going to have them punished.
If he is not going to follow up his words, he doesn’t actually believe in them. He’s telling you what he thinks you want to hear.
The reason that abortion is NOT going to go away for the time is because as we at Shoebat.com have pointed out, abortion is tied to the eugenics industry. The bodies of aborted babies are being used for medical experiments, as David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress uncovered. As we at Shoebat.com have exclusively reported, these include experiments with cells for the creation of killer robots as well as for life-extension technologies that are being funded by the wealthiest people on earth in their attempts to become divine.
Trump has shown himself to be no different than his predecessors, for he is following the already established policy that has been America’s mode of operation since the Second World War. The Presidents can be likened to gears in what is the American war machine- the gears are changed out periodically, but the machine still continues to function as normal because the machine’s operation has not changed.
Earlier I mentioned that I supported Trump during the elections, and that I would give him a chance. That chance ended when Trump went to Jared, because as we reported, Jared Kushner has made multi-million dollar real estate deals by selling American owned assets to the Chinese government. This is at the very least highly questionable in a legal sense, if not illegal outright. When Hillary Clinton has been accused of doing this, she has met with scorn from the conservative movement, and rightly so. However, when Kushner did it, not only was it barely reported, but the silence or criticism about giving out criticism of Kushner were the only sounds heard.
People say “give Trump another chance.” Did Obama get another chance from conservatives when the liberals said Obama need “another one” even after he proved by his actions that he was a poor president? I say this in a strictly factual way.
Forget about talk of “draining the swamp” or “making America great again.” Trump IS the swamp, and the only person who he is going to make America great for are the financial interests who control the country.
As far as abortion or other campaign promises, they will be fulfilled in so far as they accord with the wills of the investors in the USA, and abortion is not one of the promises that accords with the financial, industrial, or military policy.
Yes, there were many evanglical advisors who supported Trump, but no politician is an idol. The fact is that Trump lied to their faces about a major issue that they trusted him on.
Trump is an example of the golden calf, as he has shown himself to be one. He has been presented as a golden promise to American Protestant Christians, and he has now betrayed them on a major issue.
This is NOT a “moment of weakeness”, but an exhibition of character.
The reason why so many people in the USA either leave Evangelical Christianity or remain secular is because American Protestant Christian politics is virtually synonymous with nationalism. This accords with the nature of Protestantism itself as we have discussed. American Evangelical Protestantism however, being a wholly American creation with roots as deeps as or more shallow than the historical depth of the nation itself (being founded in 1776), quickly is seen to be a Christian-coated version of Americanism. The religion naturally will blow in time with whatever wind there is of the cultural zeitgeist, and thus eventually forcing an individual to assume hypocritical beliefs.
At this point, the best thing that American Evangelicals could do is to simply stop supporting “Trump”. This does not mean to be in “opposition” to him or to abandon trying to be a positive influence on him, but to stop lauding him for something who he is not and to see him for who he is.
Trump is not the savior of America. Trump is a businessman who does not care for religion unless, like many men of the past have done, he can use it to increase his own wealth and power.
How do we know that Trump does not care for religion? Simple. When was the last time he was in a church for a reason not connected to a political, business, or otherwise non-service (he claims to be a Protestant) related function- as in to actually go to church?
The “pastors” here are better to stop worshipping the Golden Calf they have idolized in Trump and concentrate on praying for and influencing his beliefs and ideas for the sake of his soul, not even the nation. Nations come and go, but the soul does not die, and it would be a complete tragedy for these evangelicals to influence him to direct the nation in a positive direction yet have Trump lose his soul in the process.