President Trump’s re-election campaign announced the creation of an ’Evangelicals for Trump’ coalition hours after the president slammed a top Christian magazine Friday.
Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign said in an email Friday evening that the president will launch the “Evangelicals for Trump” group at an event in Miami on January 3, 2020.
“The event will bring together Evangelicals from across the nation who support President Trump’s re-election,” said the announcement.
The email capped off hardly a full day of feuding that began when the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, a leading evangelical magazine founded by the late Rev. Billy Graham, called for Mr. Trump’s removal from office in an article Thursday.
Citing the congressional proceedings that resulted in the House of Representatives voting to impeach Mr. Trump this week, Mark Galli wrote in the editorial that the “hearings have illuminated the president’s moral deficiencies for all to see,” adding: “None of the president’s positives can balance the moral and political danger we face under a leader of such grossly immoral character.”
“That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments,” Mr. Galli wrote in the op-ed.
Mr. Trump subsequently took aim at Christian Today from his personal Twitter account Friday morning, calling the publication a “far left magazine” and tweeting that he “won’t be reading” it again.
“His characterization of us as being far-left is far from accurate. We consider ourselves, and most people consider us, a pretty centrist magazine in the evangelical world,” Mr. Galli told CNN later Friday.
“It’s factually inaccurate we’re far-left,” said the editor.
Mr. Trump recently filed paperwork changing his primary residency from New York, New York to Palm Beach, Florida, and his re-election campaign held a “homecoming” rally last month around 40 miles north of Miami.
A venue for the January event has not yet been announced.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.