Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump says there’s nobody and no thing like God and that he considers taking communion “asking for forgiveness in my own way.”
“Well I say God is the ultimate,” Mr. Trump told the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody, speaking from one of his golf courses in California. “You know you look at this … here we are on the Pacific Ocean. How did I ever own this? I bought it fifteen years ago. I made one of the great deals they say ever, this piece of land.”
Mr. Brody had asked Mr. Trump who God is to him.
“I have no more mortgage on it as I will certify and represent to you,” Mr. Trump continued in the clip of the interview posted online Wednesday. “And I was able to buy this and make a great deal. That’s what I want to do for the country — make great deals. We have to, we have to bring it back, but God is the ultimate. I mean, God created this … and here’s the Pacific Ocean right behind us. So nobody, no thing, no — there’s nothing like God.”
Mr. Trump, who said in July he’s not sure that he’s ever asked God for forgiveness, has predicted he will do well among evangelical Christians, who make up a sizable portion of the GOP primary electorate.
Asked by Mr. Brody in a separate clip posted this week if he believes it’s important to ask God for forgiveness, Mr. Trump said: “Well, I do. I think it’s great.”
“I consider communion to be a very important thing,” he said. “When I go to church and I take communion I consider that asking for forgiveness in my own way. And I do think it’s a great thing and I think it’s an important thing.”
Mr. Trump acknowledged that “maybe I was getting a little bit cute” with his answer in July, but that the crowd at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa gave him a standing ovation when he left.
Asked by GOP pollster Frank Luntz back then if he had ever asked God for forgiveness, Mr. Trump said: “I’m not sure I have — I just go and try and do a better job from there; I don’t think so.”
“I think if I do something wrong, I think I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t,” he said.
Mr. Trump also said then that he guessed taking communion — “when I drink my little wine, which is about the only wine I drink, and have my little cracker” — is a form of asking for forgiveness.
“I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed, okay?” he said in July.
He told Mr. Brody that “we were all having fun — I didn’t know it was going to be such a big deal.”
“And actually, it turned out not to be a big deal, because the polls came out right after that and the evangelicals like me, so I was happy about that” he said.
“But no — I think communion, to me, is very important,” he said.
He said he was told soon afterward that he’s done a really good job raising his children.
“It’s an important element, and to me that’s a part of the whole process of God and religion and study, and they’ve been terrific,” he said. “So I’m very proud of my children.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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