Donald Trump promises conservative Christians a “task force” to protect their “religious liberty”

The night before his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Donald Trump joined a nationwide “prayer call” sponsored by a Washington-based Christian group in support of the former president.

As in his sputtering debate performance, on the call, Trump blamed America’s woes on a “flood” of “millions and millions of illegal aliens” entering the country.

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For the Christians praying for Trump, he said an effort by Harris to naturalize these “criminals,” “mental patients,” and “rapists” – his words – would come at Christians’ expense.

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“Every day, she is flooding our country with millions and millions of illegal aliens. She wants to make them citizens, she wants to have them vote,” Trump said. “Which will destroy the voting powers of Christian conservatives forever.”

“And once that starts happening, and once you get those numbers involved, you lose everything,” he said.

During his prayer call, Trump promised to “create a task force” to fight “anti-Christian bias.” pic.twitter.com/imEgzzbyxc

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) September 10, 2024

Trump’s false claims about immigrants — from stealing Christian votes and “Black jobs” to eating Ohio pets — support his showy promises of “mass deportation.”

But Trump also doubled down on a more insidious past promise to provide legal cover for Christians to discriminate, a pledge he avoided repeating in public on the debate stage Tuesday night.

“When I win, I will stop the weaponization of our government against Christians, will defend religious liberty at the highest level, and I’ll create a task force of anti-Christian bias,” Trump shared on the prayer call. “We will fight it like nobody has ever fought it before. I’ll protect Christians in our schools, our government, public square, and we’ll bring our country back together as ‘one nation under God.’ We will make America great again.”

“It’s all very simple,” Trump added, “but not so simple.”

“Defending religious liberty” is another way of saying “imposing religious exemptions,” an effort Trump started in his first administration and is now vowing to expand with the support of a hard-right Supreme Court and the Christian nationalist blueprint Project 2025 commissioned by the Heritage Foundation.

From small businesses to religious schools, individuals and organizations would be told they’re free to discriminate against anyone, including LGBTQ+ people, if they claim such discrimination is part of their religious beliefs.

Trump’s promise on the prayer call promoted what he’s called a “war on Christians.”

“As soon as I get back in the Oval Office, I’ll also immediately end the war on Christians. I don’t know if you feel it. You have a war. There’s a war,” Trump said at an Iowa rally in December.

“Under crooked Joe Biden, Christians and Americans of faith are being persecuted and government has been weaponized against religion like never before. And also presidents like never before,” he added. “I always say Al Capone was treated better than I was treated.”

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