Donald Trump is clearly attempting to shore up his support among evangelicals as he pushes into the 2024 campaign season.
The president was speaking on 24 April with the Victory Channel’s Gene Bailey at Mar-a-Lago. During the interview, he spoke about his own Christian upbringing, and claimed that he regularly attended Sunday school.
He also joked that the Bible blew his own book — a coffee table book of pictures released after he left the White House — “out of the water”, a comment that drew praise from Bailey.
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” the right-wing host said reassuringly.
The odd moment comes as Mr Trump is clearly facing pressure on the right as he prepares for a bloody brawl for the 2024 GOP nomination. Already facing a handful of low-polling challengers, he is likely to see Florida’s Ron DeSantis mount a bid later this year.
Such a move could present the first real challenge to Mr Trump for control of the Republican Party since 2016, when he steamrolled Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich to win the Republican nomination that year. Since then, he has been the de facto leader of the party even through 2022 when a handful of his selected acolytes lost narrow races to their Democratic competition in the midterm elections.
The ex-president has long used overt plays for support among Evangelical Christians as a campaign strategy. In 2020, he posed for a photo on the steps of a DC church while raising a Bible in his hand, a photo op made possible by his order for federal authorities to clear Lafayette Park outside of the White House, removing protesters and others from the area.
