Sen. Ben Sasse accused President Trump of using the Bible as a “political prop” following a visit to St. John’s Episcopal Church during protests on Monday.
Protesters that were gathered in front of the White House were forcibly cleared from the area 15 minutes before Washington’s curfew took effect to allow Trump to walk to the church, which suffered fire damage from the riots on Sunday night. In a statement posted on Tuesday, Sasse condemned Trump’s decision to remove the protesters before heading to the church and holding up a Bible.
“There is no right to riot, no right to destroy other’s property, and no right to throw rocks at police. But there is a fundamental — a Constitutional — right to protest, and I’m against clearing out a peaceful protest for a photo op that treats the Word of God as a political prop,” the Nebraska Republican said.
“Every public servant in America should be lowering the temperature and that means saying two basic truths over and over: (1) police injustice — like the evil murder of George Floyd — is repugnant and merits peaceful protests aimed at change; (2) riots are abhorrent acts of violence that hurt the innocent,” he added. “Say both things loudly and repeatedly, as Americans work to end the violence and injustice.”
Statement I just got from Ben Sasse knocks Trump on last night’s photo op: pic.twitter.com/WYw3o5HAnq
— Declan Garvey (@declanpgarvey) June 2, 2020
Trump’s visit to the church has been criticized as a photo opportunity by many. The Rev. Mariann Budde, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, condemned Trump’s visit as “antithetical to the teachings of Jesus.”
“The president just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese without permission as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and everything that our churches stand for,” Budde said.
Protests against racial injustice and police brutality have been popping up throughout the nation following Floyd’s death. Floyd, an unarmed black man, died after being arrested by a white Minneapolis officer who held him down by kneeling on his neck for several minutes. Some of the protests turned violent when rioters looted, burned, and vandalized cities.
Sasse recently won his primary election in Nebraska and is up for reelection to his seat in November.
