“One week after Reuters published an explosive report on an alleged sexual and financial relationship between Jerry Falwell Jr., his wife and a Miami man named Giancarlo Granda, responders were called to the Falwells’ house in Bedford County, Virginia,” the HuffPost reports.
“According to records and 911 audio… on the night of Aug. 30, Jerry Falwell Jr. was intoxicated and apparently injured; his wife, Becki Falwell, described ‘a lot of blood right now.'”
Politico: “In 2016, Mormons rejected Donald Trump in numbers unheard of for a Republican nominee — viewing the thrice-married, immigrant-bashing Republican as an affront to their values.”
“In 2020, the president is going all-out to change Mormons minds — a little-noticed effort that could make or break him in Arizona and Nevada, home to more than a half-million Latter-day Saints combined. Joe Biden’s campaign, sensing an unlikely opening for a Democrat, is also targeting Mormons in the pair of Western swing states.”
Politico: “He’s waved a Bible in front of a shuttered church. He’s pushed to reopen worship houses despite evidence of being coronavirus super spreaders. He’s shouted, tweeted and whispered at every level that he’d support the aims of religious conservatives. And now President Donald Trump is using the 2020 Republican convention stage to make one last pitch: Please don’t defect to Joe Biden.”
“Facing signs of slippage in his appeal among religious voters who helped seal his victory in 2016, Trump is carving out a deliberate and vocal message this week to evangelicals and Catholics who may be tempted to stay home on Election Day due to frustrations over the faltering U.S. economy, ongoing coronavirus pandemic or recent Supreme Court losses.”
“It’s a relief. The quote that keeps going through my mind this morning is Martin Luther Ling Jr: ‘free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I’m free at last’… I see a role in other areas, I don’t know what it is yet but I’m not done. This happened for a reason.”
— Jerry Falwell Jr., quoted by the Lynchburg News & Advance, on formally resigning as president of Liberty University amid a sex scandal.
Embattled evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr. agreed to resign as Liberty University’s president but withdrew his resignation when media reports about the decision emerged, CNN reports.
Miami Herald: How sex in Jerry Falwell’s ‘pool boy’ saga finally went public, and what’s left unsaid.
For members: The real backstory of Jerry Falwell’s Trump endorsement.
Jerry Falwell Jr. the embattled president of Liberty University and one of the biggest champions of President Trump, has resigned, Religion News Service reports.
Washington Post: “Opposition to his presidency had been growing, but came to a dramatic head after two new reports about a young man Falwell and his wife befriended at a Florida pool, went into business with and who allegedly was sexually connected to the couple.”
“A business partner of Jerry Falwell Jr has come forward to say he had a years-long sexual relationship involving Falwell’s wife and the evangelical leader,” Reuters reports.
“Giancarlo Granda says he was 20 when he met Jerry and Becki Falwell while working as a pool attendant at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel in March 2012. Starting that month and continuing into 2018, Granda told Reuters that the relationship involved him having sex with Becki Falwell while Jerry Falwell looked on.”
Said Granda: “Becki and I developed an intimate relationship and Jerry enjoyed watching from the corner of the room.”
Washington Examiner: “Jerry Falwell Jr., suspended as president of Virginia’s Christian-focused Liberty University after a string of embarrassing acts, today said that he has suffered depression caused by a former family friend who had an affair with his wife and has been threatening to expose it.”
“Falwell revealed his wife Becki’s affair for the first time, said it was short lived and that the two reconciled quickly. But, they claimed, her former lover has threatened them over the past several years and they are done with it hanging over their heads.”
Yes, it was the “pool boy.”
Foreign Affairs: “Since 2007, there has been a remarkably sharp trend away from religion. In virtually every high-income country, religion has continued to decline. At the same time, many poor countries, together with most of the former communist states, have also become less religious. From 2007 to 2019, only five countries became more religious, whereas the vast majority of the countries studied moved in the opposite direction.”
“The most dramatic shift away from religion has taken place among the American public. From 1981 to 2007, the United States ranked as one of the world’s more religious countries, with religiosity levels changing very little. Since then, the United States has shown the largest move away from religion of any country for which we have data. Near the end of the initial period studied, Americans’ mean rating of the importance of God in their lives was 8.2 on a ten-point scale. In the most recent U.S. survey, from 2017, the figure had dropped to 4.6, an astonishingly sharp decline.”
Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. apologized for posting a photo of him in unzipped pants and arm around a woman — but also defended the incident as a vacation “costume party” that was “just in good fun,” Politico reports.
Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), a leading contender to be Joe Biden’s running mate, heaped praise on the Church of Scientology at a 2010 ribbon-cutting ceremony for a Los Angeles facility, the Daily Caller reports.
“A Christian nonprofit organization that fights world hunger asked Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL) to resign from its board after he confronted a female colleague and then reportedly used a sexist expletive after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was out of earshot,” the Washington Post reports.
“One month after President Trump ordered the nation’s governors to immediately reopen churches, his administration is facing a difficult dilemma,” Politico reports.
“Clusters of Covid-19 cases are surfacing in counties across the U.S. where in-person religious services have resumed, triggering questions about whether his administration should reassess its campaign to treat houses of worship the same as other essential businesses, or leave them alone and risk additional transmission of the deadly coronavirus — including in communities that are largely supportive of the president.”
Only 27% of registered voters in a new Politico/Morning Consult poll said they somewhat or strongly agree that President Trump himself is religious, while 55% somewhat or strongly disagree.
“So I think maybe I have, from the standpoint that I see so much that I can do. I’ve done so much for religion.”
— President Trump, in an interview with Newsmax, when asked by Sean Spicer if he prays, if he’s grown in his faith, and what religion means to him.
Televangelist Pat Robertson joined the religious leaders criticizing President Trump for his “law and order” response to the nationwide unrest following the death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police, the Washington Post reports.
Said Robertson: “It seems like now is the time to say, ‘I understand your pain, I want to comfort you, I think it’s time we love each other. But the president took a different course.”
He added: “You just don’t do that, Mr. President. It isn’t cool!”
“President Trump triggered sharp condemnation from top religious leaders for the second time in two days on Tuesday, with Washington Archbishop Wilton Gregory slamming his visit to a D.C. shrine honoring Pope John Paul II,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Gregory: “I find it baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles, which call us to defend the rights of all people, even those with whom we might disagree.”
Religion News: “The photo opportunity had an eerie quality: Trump said relatively little, positioned stoically in front of the boarded-up church, which had been damaged the day before in a fire during protests sparked by the death of George Floyd.”
“The church appeared to be completely abandoned. It was, in fact, abandoned, but not by choice: less than an hour before Trump’s arrival, armored police used tear gas to clear hundreds of peaceful demonstrators from Lafayette Square park, which is across the street from the church.”
“Authorities also expelled at least one Episcopal priest and a seminarian from the church’s patio.”
The White House released a video last night glorifying Trump’s photo op.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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