Eric Trump claims his father ‘literally saved Christianity’
President Trump’s son Eric Trump claimed that his father “literally saved Christianity” when touting the commander in chief’s accomplishments during a recent interview on a North Dakota radio show.
“He’s literally saved Christianity,” Eric Trump told “What’s on Your Mind” host Scott Hennen in remarks first highlighted by CNN. “I mean, there’s a full out war on faith in this country by the other side.”
“The Democratic Party, the far left, has become the party of the ‘atheists,’ and they want to attack Christianity, they want to close churches, they’re totally fine keeping liquor stores open,” he said, referring to COVID-19 orders by governors in some states labeling liquor stores as “essential” businesses, while also putting limitations on the number of people allowed in houses of worship.
In May, President Trump called on governors to “do the right thing and allow these very important essential places of faith to open right now.”
However, public health experts have warned that places of worship tend to be more prone to becoming sources of COVID-19 infections if social distancing guidelines are not properly implemented.
“You have to be careful, it depends on the particular state, city, region, county that you’re in, and what the dynamics of the outbreak are,” Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious diseases expert, told The Hill at the time.
Trump has gained support from many evangelical leaders for his promise to appoint conservative justices to the Supreme Court, which Trump has acted on most recently with the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
According to reports from the Pew Research Center, white evangelical voters are more than twice as likely to say Trump is religious. The same study, however, found that fewer than half of Americans overall think Trump is a Christian.
Despite Trump’s public praise of conservative Christian leaders, The Atlantic reported last week that Trump had allegedly called evangelical pastors “hustlers” in a 2015 conversation with his then-lawyer Michael Cohen.
Former aides also told the magazine that they heard the president mock conservative religious leaders, adding that he saw them as a group to be “schmoozed, conned or bought off,” according to The Atlantic.