Pro-Trump pastor Robert Jeffress said that he believed that evangelical faith leaders who publicly criticize President Trump do so because they are bitter that they incorrectly predicted the results of the 2016 election and because they don’t truly adhere to the evangelical Christian worldview.
Fred Jackson, sitting in as guest host during this morning’s episode of “Sandy Rios in the Morning,” told Jeffress that evangelical faith leaders who “beat the drum against this president” puzzle him, citing Franklin Graham’s proclamation that Trump has done more for Christians than another recent president. In response, Jeffress told Jackson that he believed there are two forces at play among those evangelicals: They are embarrassed that they predicted Trump would lose and they don’t truly adhere to the evangelical worldview.
“I think there’s several different agendas at work here. I think some of it is just wounded pride. They know they were wrong and they just have a hard time admitting it. But I think there’s something else that may be going on, Fred,” Jeffress said.
He explained, “I think there’s just been a disconnect, a continued disconnect, between what I call the evangelical elites and the average person in the pew.”
Jeffress said he couldn’t understand how faith leaders couldn’t support Trump, claiming that Trump is the “most pro-life, most pro-religious liberty, most pro-Israel president we’ve had in history.”
“Probably they deep-down don’t embrace those beliefs that the people in the pews do. I mean, if you talk to them privately, many of them, they are just as concerned—perhaps more concerned—about the Palestinians as they are about the Jews who have a right to live in the land that God gave them. When it comes to those Colorado bakers, they really believe—if you talk to them privately—they should be forced to bake that cake for the gay wedding. When it comes to abortion, they are more concerned with the plight of the DREAMers than they are about protecting the unborn. That’s what I think it gets down to,” Jeffress said.
