During a prayer service at Washington's National Cathedral Tuesday, the Episcopal bishop of Washington directly confronted President Trump while he and Vice President J.D. Vance were seated in the front row.
"Let me make one final plea, Mr. President," Bishop Mariann Budde said in her 15-minute sermon. "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 "recognizing 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.
"The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals, they – 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 neighbors," said Budde.
Budde has long criticized 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."
Towards the end of her sermon Budde said, "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. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land."
Asked about the service on Tuesday, Trump told White House reporters that he, "didn't think it was a good service."
At 12:40 on Wednesday morning, Trump posted on his social media website about the service, calling it "very boring and uninspiring." He also called Budde "a Radical Left hard line Trump hater" who "brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way.
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