The Media Research Center wasn’t the only ConWeb outlet to have a fit that an Episcopal bishop pointed out Donald Trump’s lack of compassion toward others. Bob Unruh grumbled in a Jan. 21 post:
A leftist ideologue who preaches at the Washington National Cathedral Tuesday ranted about transgenders and illegal aliens to President Trump, who had gone to the iconic church in the nation’s capital for a prayer service.
Online reports said Trump and Vice President JD Vance were “blindsided” by the political activism in the National Prayer Service.
It was Marianne Budde, a bishop at the church, who “unleashed a wild sermon claiming trans kids were ‘fearing for their lives’ due to him being in the Oval Office,” according to a Daily Mail report.
It said Trump “was left is disbelief as he was forced to listen to a woke bishop.”
“Trump sat stony-faced in the front row, next to First Lady Melania Trump, as the bishop claimed some people in America were afraid following his election.” The report said.
Her diatribe:
“I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country that are scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives. 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 might not be citizens or have the proper documentation. The vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. I ask you to have mercy Mr. President on those in communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away.”
Trump and Vance visibly rolled their eyes during the remarks.
Unruh didn’t explain what is supposedly “woke” or “leftist” about asking Trump to show a little compassion for people he doesn’t like.
The next day, Unruh served up Trump’s own whining about the bishop:
A “Radical left hard line Trump hater” preacher who was given the privilege of speaking at the Washington National Cathedral for the National Prayer Service the day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration politicized the event by scolding the president over two of his “common sense” agenda points, the security of the nation and the end of the promotions of transgenderism.
And she’s earned not only herself, but her church, a public scolding from the president.
It was in an overnight post on social media that Trump responded to Mariann Budde’s decision to verbally berate him in what was expected to be a religious event.
“The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater. She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart. She failed to mention the large number of illegal migrants that came into our Country and killed people. Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions. It is a giant crime wave that is taking place in the USA. Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job! She and her church owe the public an apology!”
In fact, Budde promoted herself later on CNN, when she admitted using the event to berate the president publicly.
Unruh is lying. Budde did not say she used the event to “berate the president publicly” — Unruh knows this because he quoted Budde in the very next paragraph:
(I was) reminding us all that the people that are frightened in our country, the two groups that I mentioned, are our fellow human beings, and that they have been portrayed all throughout the political campaign in the harshest of lights. I wanted to counter, as gently as I could, with a reminder of their humanity and their place in our wider community. I was speaking to the president because I felt that he has this moment now where he feels charged and empowered to do what he feels called to do, and I wanted to say there is room for mercy. There is room for a broader compassion. We don’t need to portray with a broad cloth in the harshest of terms some of the most vulnerable people in our society, who are in fact our neighbors and our friends.
Again, there was no explanation of what is supposedly so “leftist” or “radical” about Budde.
We’ve noted that managing editor David Kupelian also complained about Budde in a Jan. 24 column, huffing that Trump and J.D. Vance were “being personally insulted and vilified from the pulpit” by Budde and that “‘Woke’ Christianity is increasingly widespread in America” — and again failing to explain how, exactly, what was “woke” about anything Budde said.