Donald Trump blasts evangelicals for ‘disloyalty’ over lack of 2024 support
Former President Donald Trump lashed out at evangelicals for not supporting his latest presidential campaign, saying it was a “sign of disloyalty” after he appointed three conservative Supreme Court justices and made their long-held dream of overturning Roe v. Wade possible.
Trump, 76, told Real America’s Voice’s “The Water Cooler” Monday that the religious bloc of voters who were key to his 2016 victory have not yet come out to back his 2024 White House bid.
“That’s a sign of disloyalty,” Trump told host David Brody. “There’s great disloyalty in the world of politics, and that’s a sign of disloyalty.”
The 45th president said his appointments of Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch paved the way for the high court to knock down the landmark 1973 abortion decision last year.
“Nobody has ever done more for right-to-life than Donald Trump. I put three Supreme Court justices who all voted, and they got something that they’ve been fighting for … many, many years, but nobody said they could win it. They won — Roe v. Wade — they won. They finally won,” Trump said.
But the former president added that he was “disappointed” that evangelicals failed to rally behind the court’s decision during the midterm elections, when many Democratic candidates campaigned on the issue.
“And I was a little disappointed because I thought they could have fought much harder during the election, during the 2022 election,” Trump said.
“Because, you know, they won, and a lot of them didn’t fight or weren’t really around to fight. And it did energize the Democrats. But a lot of the people who wanted and fought for years to get it … they weren’t there protesting and doing what they could have done,” he added.
“With all that being said,” Trump continued, “there’s nobody that’s done more for the movement than I have.”
Trump announced in November that he would run a third time for the White House, but some evangelical leaders, including influential Dr. Robert Jeffress, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, have yet to jump on the bandwagon.
Asked earlier this month whether he would support former Vice President Mike Pence in 2024, Jeffress told Fox News that “he’ll certainly be a strong contender.”
Jeffress, a longtime Trump supporter, also said he was holding back on endorsing a Republican candidate.
“My sense of where we are right now — and I’ve talked to the former president recently — I think that, eventually, if not immediately, evangelicals will end up coalescing around former President Trump again,” he said.
