VoteNotes

I've attended the National Prayer Breakfast for much of the past two decades. I staffed the President and worked on his speech there for four years. I wrote extensively about the breakfast in my first book. One purpose of the Breakfast in history has been to position presidents and political leaders in such a way that they are humbled--their remarks typically focused on ways they fell short, the nation's reliance on grace that politics and politicians can't provide, etc. Not until this president has someone gone to the breakfast to make so much of himself, and so little of God. And he does it every year. These aren't policy disagreements. These aren't differences resulting from Church-State separation. This is Donald Trump going to a convening that has a central focus on the power of relationship with Jesus as the transformative force in the world, and he uses that opportunity to make light of prayer and suggest he'll go to heaven because he's earned his way in. He goes to a convening built on the premise that Jesus transcends all divides in society, including partisan ones, and says an entire group of people *who are specifically recruited and asked to be in the room and on the program* actually do not belong there. Like he did at a memorial service for one of his most prominent supporters, in previous years he's gone to the breakfast to directly contradict Jesus' teachings on loving your enemies. During the Clinton years, the Clintons sat on the dais while Mother Teresa lovingly confronted him on the issue of abortion. Now, people sit at their own breakfast while this president mocks their deepest beliefs to their face. And he tells them they love it. He tells them they're lucky to have him.