Former US President Donald Trump on Saturday urged evangelical Christians, key to his run for the White House, to vote for him in the November presidential election, presenting himself as a crusader for religious freedom.
“Evangelicals and Christians, they don’t vote as much as they should,” said the right-wing candidate in Washington on Saturday, in front of hundreds of participants at a conference of the “Faith and Freedom” coalition. .
“They go to church every Sunday but don’t vote. And we need to make sure they vote, just this once,” he said. “In four years, you don’t have to vote, okay? In four years, don’t vote, I don’t care,” he added half-heartedly, sparking laughter in the audience.
The billionaire assured evangelicals, who played an important role in his rise to power in 2016 and many of whom are very loyal to him, that he would defend their faith.
Martyr?
He has already allowed them to win a historic victory on abortion by appointing three conservative judges to the Supreme Court, the institution which ended up shattering the federal guarantee of abortion in 2022.
On this sensitive issue, while many evangelicals want a nationwide ban on abortion, Donald Trump has not committed to going further.
He again welcomed the fact that the subject had been “taken out” of the hands of the federal government and returned to the states.
“The people will decide and that is the way it should be. The people decide now,” he said.
“Every voter must follow their heart and do what is right, but we must also get elected,” he warned. Abortion is one of the major themes of the presidential campaign, and in each local vote on this issue, it is the defenders of the right to abortion who have won.
The tycoon also promised to create “a new federal mission on the fight against anti-Christian prejudice”, the objective of which will be to investigate the “discrimination” and “persecution” of Christians in the United States.
Seeming to compare himself to a martyr, the one who is surrounded by legal proceedings spoke of his “wounds”.
“We stood up to communists, Marxists and fascists to defend religious freedom like no other president ever has. And I have sores all over my body. If I took off this shirt, you would see a beautiful, very beautiful person. But you would see sores all over me,” he said.
“You will keep your rifle”
Donald Trump was also acclaimed when he supported a very recent law in the very conservative state of Louisiana, which requires the display of the “Ten Commandments” in its classrooms.
The ex-president claimed that the Democratic camp of his rival, the current head of state Joe Biden, a Catholic, was seeking to “silence” Christians.
“They don’t want you to vote, that’s why you have to vote,” Donald Trump said. “If you vote, we can’t lose.”
The crowd responded by chanting “Vote, vote, vote” and cheering.
The former president also urged gun owners to go to the polls.
“You have a gun. You want to keep your gun, you better go vote,” he said, asserting that their rights were “under siege”.
In the rest of his speech, the billionaire returned to his favorite themes, such as immigration.
“On the first day (of a new term), I will launch the largest deportation operation in the history of the United States,” he said to cheers.
He also promised to build a “great Iron Dome over our country, a dome the likes of which we have never seen” – an anti-aircraft defense system. “Israel has one, why don’t we? “, he said.
In a press release, Joe Biden’s campaign team castigated an “incoherent” and “disjointed” speech.
Mr. Trump, who will be meeting in Pennsylvania on Saturday evening, will face Mr. Biden in a televised debate next Thursday, four months before the presidential election.