To reestablish himself in the Oval Office of the White House, Donald Trump is counting on evangelical Christians. In the middle of the American presidential campaign, he urged them on Saturday to vote for him in November.
“Evangelicals and Christians, they don’t vote as much as they should,” said the Republican candidate, 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.” “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.
Trump counts on his choices against abortion
Donald Trump 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. 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 national ban on abortion, he has not committed to going further. He just welcomed the fact that the subject had been “taken out” of the hands of the federal government and returned to the states.
“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 campaign, and in each local vote on this issue, it is the defenders of the right to abortion who have won.
Seeming to compare himself to a martyr, the one who is surrounded by legal proceedings also 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.
A call to those who have “a gun”
The former president further claimed that the Democratic camp of his rival, 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,” insisted Donald Trump. “If you vote, we can’t lose,” he predicted.
The former tenant of the White House also took the opportunity to rally gun owners in the United States to his cause. “You have a gun. You want to keep your gun, you better go vote,” he said, asserting that their rights were “under siege.” Joe Biden’s campaign team, for its part, criticized an “incoherent” and “disjointed” speech.
