February 9, 2020

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH.COM

The annual National Prayer Breakfast is DC’s premier assembly of Christian piety, organized by a secretive organization known as “The Faith” (whose formidable power and influence in the nation’s capital was recently profiled by Jeff Sharlet on “Netflix). It’s been a Washington institution since the ‘50s and attracts a ballroom-full cross-section of the most powerful people in Washington.

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Since Eisenhower spoke at the first National Prayer Breakfast, every year a president is the keynote speaker. In accordance of the occasion that is dedicated to an expression of faith, a featured president usually delivers a solemn invocation leading to a prayer.

Then came Donald Trump, who in one of his first appearances at a Prayer Breakfast began by boasting that Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn’t hold a candle to him in ratings for hosting “The Apprentice.” The audience who believes the nation’s self-appointed elite Christians represent a vanguard of Christ in the US government did not appear to take offense at Trump’s profane remarks over the years. According to Shalett, “The Family” regards Trump as a “wolf king,” a flawed vessel who heralds the Second Coming of Christ. Indeed, “The Family,” as with many Evangelicals, believes Christ’s mission will best be fulfilled by a leader who is flawed but authoritarian in representing Christian “values.”

That may explain why this year, the morning after Trump’s acquittal, “The Family” members, including the leaders of Congress, showed no disapproval when Trump used the Prayer Breakfast to politicize prayer by paradoxically denouncing Mitt Romney and Nancy Pelosi (who was in attendance on the dais), the sole Republican Senator to vote against his acquittal.

Trump also played upon the white Evangelical sense of grievance, as The Daily Beast noted:

President Donald Trump has attacked his impeachment enemies for taking about their faith—in a speech at a National Prayer Breakfast. Trump’s remarks appeared to be aimed at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, who both invoked religion when they explained why they believed Trump had to be removed from office. Trump began his speech by saying he’d “been put through a terrible ordeal by some very dishonest and corrupt people,” before praising “courageous Republican politicians and leaders” who supported him. Then, in his remarks seemingly aimed at Pelosi and Romney, Trump said: “I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong... Nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you’ when they know that that’s not so.” When Romney became the first U.S. senator to ever vote to remove from office a president of his own party, he invoked his Mormon faith, saying: “I swore an oath before God to exercise impartial justice. I am profoundly religious. My faith is at the heart of who I am.”

Politico called his remarks “incendiary” and further noted:

The president's appearance Thursday morning at the National Prayer Breakfast turned decidedly political as soon as he entered the Washington Hilton's ballroom, brandishing copies of USA TODAY and The Washington Post with news of his acquittal splashed across the front pages.

As he addressed the crowd, the president referred to "enemies" of the administration and equated the plight of Gen. George Washington and his troops at Valley Forge to the Trump campaign's prospects in the most recent White House race.

"Reminded me a little bit of 2016. We had very little chance of victory," he said. "Except for the people in this room and some others believed we were going to win. I believed we were going to win."

Trump later returned to the subject of impeachment, asserting that some of the breakfast's participants occasionally "hate people" — another apparent insult toward Pelosi, who was seated near the president on stage.

It takes a vile ringmaster of base emotions to pull off calling true believers — Romney, a Mormon, and Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic — impostors at an event devoted to prayer and forgiveness, but he did it again. Even among the self-appointed warriors for Christ of “The Family,” Trump’s aberrant behavior is normalized, allowing him — a man of no seeming religious belief — to turn a solemn religious morning of prayer into a vengeful attack on his “enemies.”

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