Paul Nehlen (R), who is running against Speaker Paul Ryan (R) in a Wisconsin primary and has been praised by Donald Trump, told a radio station that the United States should have a “discussion” about deporting all Muslims from the United States.
Said Nehlen: “The question is, why do we have Muslims in the country?”
Former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) told a conservative radio host that Donald Trump “gets and understands religious liberty,” the Huffington Post reports.
Bachmann shared an anecdote: “He even said, ‘I don’t understand, when I was growing up, everybody said Merry Christmas. Even my Jews would say Merry Christmas.’ New York City, there are a lot of Jews, and they would even say Merry Christmas. Why can’t we even say Merry Christmas anymore?’”
Bachmann added that Trump had “1950s sensibilities” and “1950s common sense,” and warned that Hillary Clinton would bring “certain destruction” and “catastrophic decline” and a “godless United States that will walk into certain catastrophe.”
A new Pew Research survey finds that evangelical voters are rallying strongly in favor of Donald Trump, with 78% saying they’ll vote for him.
Indeed, the latest survey finds “that despite the professed wariness toward Trump among many high-profile evangelical Christian leaders, evangelicals as a whole are, if anything, even more strongly supportive of Trump than they were of Mitt Romney at a similar point in the 2012 campaign.”
“Do Republican officials actually agree with this?”
— President Obama, quoted by the New York Times, denouncing Donald Trump for singling out immigrants and entire religious communities as responsible for terrorism.
After Donald Trump announced his plan to ban Muslims from entering the United States, Muhammad Ali condemned it without even mentioning the Republican presidential candidate’s name:
I am a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino, or anywhere else in the world. True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so called Islamic jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion.
We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda. They have alienated many from learning about Islam. True Muslims know or should know that it goes against our religion to try and force Islam on anybody.
Speaking as someone who has never been accused of political correctness, I believe that our political leaders should use their position to bring understanding about the religion of Islam and clarify that these misguided murderers have perverted people’s views on what Islam really is.
Donald Trump “made an aggressive overture to the Mormon community here in Utah Friday evening, praising members of the church while also off-handedly mocking the authenticity of 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s faith,” the Washington Post reports.
He added: “I have many friends that live in Salt Lake. I have a lot of friends, I have a lot of friends. By the way, Mitt Romney is not one of them. Did he choke? Did this guy choke? He’s a choke artist, I can’t believe. Are you sure he’s a Mormon? Are we sure?”
“Nobody reads the Bible more than me.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by USA Today.
“I wonder if President Obama would have attended the funeral of Justice Scalia if it were held in a Mosque?”
— Donald Trump, in a tweet earlier today.
“Listen, that’s between Donald and the pope… I’m not going to get in the middle of that. I’ll leave it to the two of them to work it out.”
— Sen. Ted Cruz, quoted by the Dallas Morning News, on Donald Trump’s dispute with Pope Francis.
“In his most audacious attack yet on a revered public figure, Donald Trump veered into risky political territory as he denounced Pope Francis, seeking to galvanize Republicans who worry about border security and appeal to evangelical voters who regard Francis as too liberal,” the New York Times reports.
“Following the pontiff’s remarkable contention that Mr. Trump ‘is not Christian‘ in proposing deportations and a wall with Mexico, the candidate said Francis’s criticisms were ‘disgraceful’ and ‘unbelievable,’ and charged that the Mexican government had hoodwinked the pope into criticizing him.”
Politico: Pope attack could help Trump in South Carolina
“Inserting himself into the Republican presidential race, Pope Francis suggested that Donald Trump ‘is not Christian’ because of the harshness of his campaign promises to deport more immigrants and force Mexico to pay for a wall along the border,” the New York Times reports.
Said Pope Francis: “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”
A fissure has opened wide among South Carolina evangelicals, the Greenville News reports.
“The cracks began to open in 2012 when a twice-divorced Newt Gingrich won South Carolina, but it’s been ripped wide open by a twice-divorced Trump. As candidates court the roughly 65 percent of GOP voters in the state who count themselves as evangelicals, many of those voters are looking beyond faith to choose their candidate.”
Evangelicals “are split into two camps and the divide has grown… Trump, and to a lesser extent Cruz, have tapped into the ‘populist evangelicals,’ those working-class folks who listen to conservative talk radio, are drawn to mass rallies and hold the idea that motivating great masses of people is the way to achieve political influence… Rubio has garnered the support of the bulk of the GOP evangelical power brokers… ‘cosmopolitan evangelicals,’ the strategy-minded, highly educated evangelicals who are reliant on their connections.”
Donald Trump told Fox News that President Obama visited a mosque because “maybe he feels comfortable there.”
Said Trump: “We have a lot of problems in this country. There are a lot of places he can go, and he chose a mosque.”
He added: “That’s his decision. That’s fine.”
Washington Post: “Donald Trump has been looking for ways to reach out to evangelical voters before the GOP primaries. On Sunday, the businessman and his wife attended church services at the nondenominational First Christian Church, in Council Bluffs, Iowa. But when the Communion plates were passed, Trump mistook the silver plates for the offertory, digging out several bills from his pocket.”
Said Trump later: “I thought it was for offering.”
A new Pew Research Center survey finds that “being an atheist remains one of the biggest liabilities that a presidential candidate can have; fully half of American adults say they would be less likely to vote for a hypothetical presidential candidate who does not believe in God, while just 6% say they would be more likely to vote for a nonbeliever.”
That said, many Republicans think Donald Trump would be a good president despite his perceived lack of religiousness among GOP voters.
Jeb Bush said he doesn’t think Donald Trump is a Christian, ABC News reports.
Said Bush: “No, I don’t know what he is. I don’t think he has the kind of relationship he says he has if he can’t explain it any way that shows he is serious about it.”
Of Jerry Falwell Jr.’s endorsement, he added: “For a guy who has stated he has never sought forgiveness, it’s hard to imagine how someone who is a strong believer would embrace that idea. There may be other reasons that Mr Falwell is supporting him.”
Donald Trump called on Christians to “band together” and “unify” at an address to Liberty University students, Politico reports.
Said Trump: “Christianity, it’s under siege. We don’t band together. Other religions, frankly, they’re banding together… we have to unify.”
New York Times: “In dozens of interviews with evangelical voters in 16 states, from every region of the country outside the Northeast, those supporting Mr. Trump sounded a familiar refrain: that his heart was in the right place, that his intentions for the country were pure, that he alone was capable of delivering to a troubled country salvation in the here-and-now.”
“To the best of my knowledge, not too many evangelicals come out of Cuba, okay?”
— Donald Trump, quoted by the New York Times, taking a swipe at Sen. Ted Cruz.
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.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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