Donald Trump and JD Vance, together with their spouses, on Tuesday, attended the National Prayer Service at Washington’s National Cathedral, another inauguration custom.
During the service, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, Mariann Edgar Budde, appealed directly to the president to rethink some of his hardline policies, particularly towards immigrants and transgender people.
Here’s what she said:
“Let me make one final plea, Mr president. Millions have put their trust in you, and as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God.
In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now”, said Budde, as she appeared to look towards the president.
“There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives.”
This came just one day after Trump issued a slate of executive orders, including one which has a section dedicated to “recognising that women are biologically distinct from men,” one that declared a national emergency at the country’s southern border and issued several others related to immigration, including one attempting to do away with birthright citizenship.
Budde challenged these orders and much of the rhetoric that has surrounded them.
“And the people, the people, who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals, they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbours. I ask you to have mercy, Mr President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here,” Budde said.
Watch part of her 15-min speech, below:
Neither Trump nor Vance showed much obvious reaction to her words.
Budde has long criticised Trump, and made headlines for doing so in 2020 when Trump took a photo outside of a boarded up St. John’s Epsicopal Church holding a Bible. Law enforcement had used chemical agents to disburse racial justice protesters, and Budde was outraged. The Washington Post reported at that time that Budde said, “Everything he has said and done is to inflame violence… We need moral leadership, and he’s done everything to divide us.”
After the service on Tuesday, Republican U.S. Representative Mike Collins from Georgia posted a video clip on X of Budde’s sermon along with the text, “The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list.”
Asked about the service on Tuesday, Trump told White House reporters that he, “didn’t think it was a good service.”
Billionaire Elon Musk, a staunch Trump ally, also knocked Budde’s remarks in a post on his social media platform, X. “She got the woke mind virus real bad,” he said.
Musk is the father of a transgender daughter who in 2022 filed a court petition to change her name, saying: “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.”
Also read: Breaking down all of Trump’s day 1 presidential actions
Source: The Guardian/ NPR
