It is an improbable love story, between a former president with a professed taste for transgression and a religious community which represents more than a quarter of the American electorate. On Saturday June 22, Donald Trump urged evangelical Christians to vote for him in the November presidential election, during a conference organized by the “Faith and Freedom” coalition. It is “a leading community-based Christian organization, with more than 3 million members across the United States,” observed Fox News.
“Vote for me, I will defend you,” declared Donald Trump, while promising to create “a new federal mission on the fight against anti-Christian prejudice”, the objective of which will be to investigate “discrimination” and the “persecution” of Christians in the United States.
The former reality TV star above all acquired the support of the evangelical community by proposing to appoint anti-abortion judges to the Supreme Court, a favorite theme for this segment of the electorate, and the outcome of which was the elimination of the guarantee constitutional amendment of the right to abortion in 2022. While each federal state can now decide whether or not to authorize abortion, a decision which has created gynecological deserts in certain parts of the country, many evangelicals however want a broader ban of abortion at the national level.
On this subject, Donald Trump did not commit to going further, but remained vague. “The people will decide and this is how things must happen,” he declared this Saturday. THE New York Post also recalls that if Trump “declared to the crowd that he [croyait] abortion in cases of rape and incest or to save the life of the mother”, this did not prevent him from “touting the ‘incredible’ success” of the Supreme Court’s repeal of the right to abortion at the federal level.
A special relationship with God
Another measure supported by Trump during this event, and welcomed with acclamation: the display of the Ten Commandments in schools, decided this week by the governor of Louisiana. “There are millions of people in this country who truly believe, deep down in their flesh, that America […] has a special relationship with God. Therefore, fight for America [comme le prétend Trump]”is fighting for God”, analyzes journalist Tim Alberta, interviewed by AFP.
Result: when Americans went to the polls in November 2016, 77% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, according to the Pew Research institute. Support that increased to 84% in the 2020 election, with the evangelical community feeling like “Trump is on their side.”
The ex-president, who wishes to become one again, ended his speech this Saturday by affirming that the Democratic camp of his rival Joe Biden, a Catholic, was instead seeking to “silence” Christians. It must be said that the current American president has become one of the most vigorous defenders of the right to abortion, accusing Trump last April of having taken American women “one hundred and sixty years back in time”. “The electorate will hold Trump accountable,” he proclaimed, taking the example of states like Florida, where abortion was banned beyond six weeks on May 1. Thursday June 27, the two presidential candidates will face each other during a televised debate, four months before the election.