Lol. They should know better than to ask him for a biblical reference by now.
“I’m not sure I can hear you, if you’d like to say something, I’d like to hear that.” But don’t ask me for anything specific ok? I don’t have a clue about prayer and the Bible, ok?
Lucky for him they don’t care. Remember this?
There were a few stumbles during Donald Trump’s sojourn to Liberty University on Monday.
He mispronounced a book of the Bible. He cursed — twice. And on Martin Luther King Day, the GOP presidential candidate said he was honoring the slain civil-rights leader by dedicating to him the record crowds he says he drew for the school’s opening convocation. (Students are required to attend.)
“We’re going to protect Christianity. I can say that. I don’t have to be politically correct,” he thundered at the beginning of his speech at the conservative evangelical university.
Then he moved on to cite “Two Corinthians 3:17, that’s the whole ballgame. … Is that the one you like?” Trump asked. “Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
Liberty University students (from left) Austin Miller, James Ford, Jeremy Boyd, Josiah O’Boyle and Cody Hildebrand wear “TRUMP” shirts while waiting to hear the Republican presidential candidate.
Students in the room snickered and laughed, and advisers to two of Trump’s top rivals, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, were quick to point out the gaffe on Twitter.
Trump was once leading with conservative evangelical voters in the polls, but that support has slipped, especially in Iowa, which votes in two weeks. And it’s Cruz who’s challenging him the most heavily for religious conservatives.
Trump has boasted of his religious credentials, but there have been some missteps along the way. Last year, he told an Iowa evangelical gathering he had never asked God for forgiveness — a central tenet of the Christian faith — and he repeated that Sunday on CNN. He’s declined to cite his favorite Bible verse or even his favorite testament. And the Presbyterian church he says he attends in Manhattan has said he’s not an active member.
Those discrepancies haven’t mattered yet to many evangelicals, and also didn’t seem to faze many Liberty students either.
Sophomore Kathy Abdallah said she liked what Trump had to say, but as to whether his faith was genuine, she said she was taking his word for it.
There were still other head-scratching moments from Trump. He was speaking on Martin Luther King Day, a choice which had already angered some students and alumni due to inflammatory and controversial remarks Trump has made about Muslims, Mexican immigrants, women and other minorities during the course of his campaign — something they say isn’t in line with the spirit of Dr. King.
The school defended the pick, telling Yahoo News, “I think this one was picked to afford Mr. Trump the opportunity to, among other things, honor Dr. King. It wasn’t like we said, ‘Let’s go find someone who would be anti-Martin Luther King.'”
But Trump did not use his speech to pay homage to King and only acknowledged him in the context of boasting about the record crowd size he drew.
“And the first thing I said to Jerry and Becki [Falwell] when I got here: ‘Did we break the record?'” he told students. “They said, ‘Yes, you did, by quite a bit.’ So we’ll dedicate that to Martin Luther King, a great man. And that’s a little bit of an achievement, I will tell you.”
That was nothing to the visit he paid in 2012 in which he advised student to get a pre-nup and wreak revenge on their enemies.
And yet, nobody loves him more than conservative evangelicals. They form the backbone of his MAGA movement.