WASHINGTON — A Democratic bishop asked President Trump to have “mercy” on migrants as he sat in the audience during a National Prayer Service on Tuesday — and the commander in chief was not amused.
Asked by reporters about the service afterward, Trump responded, “They could do better.
“Not too exciting, was it?” he added.
The Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde — the Episcopal bishop of DC who has a long history of publicly criticizing the president — called out Trump directly in her sermon as he sat in the front row of the Washington National Cathedral, asking him to go easy on illegal migrants, refugees and members of the LBGT community.
“There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives,” Budde said from the pulpit of the famed cathedral, which is an Episcopal church and where presidents have held their inaugural faith services after every election since Ronald Reagan came into office in 1985.
“And the people, 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,” said Budde, who gave the welcome and blessing at Trump’s service at the cathedral after his first inauguration in 2017.
“But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals,” Budde said, noting that her “plea” was directly aimed at Trump.
“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 will all want strangers in this land.”
Trump remained stone-faced during the lecture and was often spotted looking down at his program.
The tension between the bishop, who has been at the church for nearly 13 years, and Trump was not new.
In 2020 during the George Floyd riots, Budde said she had “given up” trying to speak to Trump and proposed that the country needs to “replace” him.
She was outraged when Trump used security to clear protesters blocking the way from the White House to the church during the ongoing unrest, claiming his actions were intended to “inflame violence.
“Everything he has said and done is to inflame violence,” she said to the Washington Post at the time. “We need moral leadership, and he’s done everything to divide us.”
Budde donated to former President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012, one year after she was selected as bishop of Washington.
Trump announced several executive orders on the southern border Monday, enacting a national emergency there and directing the military to get involved to block illegal migrants.
The orders are intended to deport illegal migrants and keep them out the country. Refugee resettlement will also be suspended for at least four months.
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homanm said Tuesday that ICE raids are already happening across the country to deport criminal illegal migrants.
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