Donald Trump tries to win over pro-lifers with promises on judges, religious liberty
Over 1000 evangelical, pro-life and conservative leaders assembled for a closed-door meeting with Donald Trump Tuesday, attempting to evaluate the presumptive GOP nominee and his commitment to issues of concern to faith-based voters.
Attendees of the invitation-only event were treated to a mixed bag of answers from Trump and came away with varied reactions. Event leaders met with Trump privately before he took the stage for questions in the morning after introductory remarks from Doctor Ben Carson, Reverend Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, Jr. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee moderated the Q and A.
“We are going to appoint great Supreme Court justices… These will be justices of great intellect… And they will be pro-life,” Trump. said.
photo/ donkeyhotey
During the meeting, Trump told them he would promote religious liberty and appoint pro-life judges.
“I believe that he came across very well as a messenger for everybody in the room, not just as a beneficiary of evangelical votes but as a fellow traveler. That’s not necessarily an easy distance for him to have traveled because people didn’t see him like that before,” said Marjorie Danenfelser of Susan B. Anthony’s List, which works to oppose abortion. “He made no missteps. There were no explosions.”
She said she couldn’t recall a candidate explicitly stating they would pursue “pro-life” justices. “They usually couch it in other words, like ‘constitutional,’” she said.
As president, he said, he’d work on things including: “freeing up your religion, freeing up your thoughts. You talk about religious liberty and religious freedom, you don’t have any religious freedom if you think about it,” he told the group.
“The number one issue (among the tens of thousands submitted) was religious liberty, more than anything else,” said Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, while presenting the first pre-submitted question of the day – how a Trump administration would promote religious freedom and other freedoms in the Bill of Rights. “Because all the other issues relate to that one.”
“We’re losing, we’re losing our religious liberty,” Dobson stated, pointing out that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats have stopped talking about freedom of religion and now speak only of freedom, with the goal of confining religion to within churches.
“It’s hard to be confident when these seem to be recent feelings and beliefs. The positive is, he is expressing those beliefs that concur with what we believe about pro-life justices and religious liberty. Am I comfortable? I’m encouraged,” said Trey Graham, pastor at First Melissa Baptist Church, north of McKinney, and host of a weekly radio show on politics.
“Trump is looking for this group’s support and this group is looking for a candidate to support,” he added, and while “Trump doesn’t speak our lingo” the way Ted Cruz or Mike Huckabee do, the election presents a binary choices. “It’s not Hillary versus Trump. It’s staying home versus Trump… The people here want to support someone.”
