President Trump lashed out at a prominent evangelical magazine founded by the late Rev. Billy Graham for calling for his removal from office.
Trump said Friday that Christianity Today was a “far left magazine” and claimed it has been “doing poorly” after it published an editorial a day earlier that described his conduct as “profoundly immoral.”
The magazine “would rather have a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns, than Donald Trump as your President. No President has done more for the Evangelical community, and it’s not even close. You’ll not get anything from those Dems on stage,” Trump tweeted, adding that he would not be reading the magazine again.
….have a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns, than Donald Trump as your President. No President has done more for the Evangelical community, and it’s not even close. You’ll not get anything from those Dems on stage. I won’t be reading ET again!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2019
The editorial was a notable dissent among the religious conservative base that helped Trump win the presidency and has stood behind him through repeated controversy. Trump won 81% of the evangelical vote in the 2016 election, according to the Pew Research Center.
“None of the president’s positives can balance the moral and political danger we face under a leader of such grossly immoral character,” editor-in-chief Mark Galli wrote.
“To the many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say this: Remember who you are and whom you serve … To use an old cliché, it’s time to call a spade a spade, to say that no matter how many hands we win in this political poker game, we are playing with a stacked deck of gross immorality and ethical incompetence.”
Graham’s son, Franklin Graham, said his father would not approve of the editorial.
“For Christianity Today to side with the Democrat Party in a totally partisan attack on the President of the United States is unfathomable,” Graham wrote in a Facebook post. “Christianity Today said it’s time to call a spade a spade. The spade is this — Christianity Today has been used by the left for their political agenda. It’s obvious that Christianity Today has moved to the left and is representing the elitist liberal wing of evangelicalism.”
