Donald Trump’s historic felony conviction in New York on Thursday hasn’t deterred his evangelical supporters. Instead, together with fellow Trump loyalists, they’ve directed their ire on the justice system that issued a guilty verdict against him.
“People think that is type of the top of America,” Chad Connelly, CEO of Faith Wins, a conservative Christian organization, told CT. “I don’t confer with anybody that thinks that is anything aside from a sham case.”
A jury of 12 New Yorkers found Trump guilty on all 34 counts brought by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, concluding that Trump falsified business records as a part of an effort to maintain a sex scandal from influencing the 2016 US presidential election.
“This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt,” Trump told reporters in a temporary statement after leaving the courtroom.
“The real verdict goes to be November 5 by the people,” Trump added. “We didn’t do a thing incorrect. I’m a really innocent man. … Our whole country is being rigged straight away.”
Connelly, who previously served because the Republican National Committee’s national director of religion engagement, said that he believes the decision will only “strengthen people’s resolve” to vote for Trump come November.
More than 9 in 10 white evangelical voters said a guilty verdict within the hush money trial would make no difference of their vote or would make them more prone to back Trump, in response to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll conducted last week. Only 7 percent of white evangelicals said a conviction would make them less prone to vote for him for president.
Overall, two-thirds of registered voters said a conviction makes no difference to how they’ll vote; 17 percent said they might be less prone to vote for Trump after a conviction, 15 percent said more likely.
As he prolonged prayers for the previous president on Thursday, Georgia megachurch pastor Jentezen Franklin said that he “can’t wait to vote for him,” and encouraged followers to register to solid their ballots in November.
Politicians, pundits, and evangelical leaders who served as faith advisers to the previous president quickly responded to the decision, declaring that the choice was an indictment of the justice system slightly than of Trump himself. They saw the trial as an effort to unfairly go after Trump for partisan reasons during his election yr.
“Without query, the most important loser yesterday was trust in America’s institutions,” Andrew Walker, associate dean in The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s School of Theology, told CT. He said the choice to prosecute was “plagued with questions and concerns from the beginning,” while also adding that Trump’s actions resulting in the case “were incorrect and inexcusable.”
“If the text messages I received last evening are any indication of responses to the convictions and their potential fallout in November, it seems the convictions have raised alarms and will drive people to the polls with greater fervor,” Walker added.
Southern Baptist pastor and televangelist Robert Jeffress, also a Trump evangelical advisor, said the conviction was less about evidence and more about Trump’s rising poll numbers.
Ben and Candy Carson stated that “the judicial system has been weaponized.” Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and staunch Trump ally, called the decision “a travesty of justice,” and dubbed the state court a “kangaroo court.”
“This is a dark day,” Eric Teetsel, vice chairman of presidency relations on the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, posted on the social platform X.
Heritage president Kevin Roberts called the decision “a travesty to our republic” and blamed the Biden administration.
“What we’re seeing now’s what we traditionally see in so-called Banana Republics,” Drew McKissick, South Carolina GOP chairman and former RNC cochair, said in a statement. “Every American who believes that justice ought to be applied equally and fairly ought to be appalled by what we’ve seen during the last yr.”
The morning of the decision, McKissick posted Proverbs 29:23 on X: “A person’s pride shall bring him low: but honour shall uphold the common-or-garden in spirit.”
The felony conviction, a primary for any US president, also plays into one in all the themes of Trump’s campaign: that he’s persecuted by political opponents.
The theme may resonate with Christian supporters particularly, in response to political scientist Ryan Burge, since they could superimpose themes of Christian persecution into the world of politics (sometimes literally: Eric Trump shared an illustration of his father in court with Jesus’ hands on his shoulders.)
“He’s a martyr for the cause,” Burge said in an email. “Trump almost paints himself in a messianic light. And all messiahs face persecution.”
The verdict could have the impact of strengthening Trump’s support in some quarters: Just minutes after the decision’s announcement, WinRed, the Republican donation platform, crashed after Trump and other GOP politicians directed supporters to the web site to present financially.
“What took place today is nothing wanting an abuse of power that may ultimately backfire against the left,” said Tony Suarez, vice chairman of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and Trump evangelical advisory board member.
Mark Burns, a televangelist who has campaigned for Trump, said the decision showed “a two-tiered injustice system” and that the conviction would help Trump electorally: “Trust me, Donald Trump is about to leap up ten points.”
Conservative Christians within the “Never Trump” camp—a minority amongst white evangelicals—saw the decision as further confirmation of concerns around Trump’s moral standards and fit for office.
Third-party voter Bob Stevenson, a pastor in Aurora, Illinois, said he’s frustrated with the pro-Trump crowd’s “willingness to solid entire institutions as suspect as long as they get the W” (a slang expression for “the win”). “It’s like chopping off the branch you sit on,” he added.
Meanwhile, Trump’s evangelical supporters, including many members of Trump’s religious advisors, said they planned to take up the matter to the next authority.
Evangelist Franklin Graham asked for prayer in the times leading as much as the trial, asking that “God’s can be done.” After the decision, he called for prayer for the country, saying that many Americans were now questioning “whether our legal system might be trusted.”
Trump supporters including Harvest Christian Fellowship pastor Greg Laurie and Prestonwood Baptist Church pastor Jack Graham shared similar concerns and calls for prayer.
“I remember reading that Abraham Lincoln said persistently he was driven to his knees [in prayer] because he had no place else to go,” Winsome Earle-Sears, lieutenant governor of Virginia, posted. “And so when a verdict like this comes down, then I pray. I pray to grasp what God is attempting to do.”
“Please, pray for America,” Laurie said. “Pray for America such as you never have before.”
Meanwhile, the Biden campaign said in a statement that the decision showed that “nobody is above the law.”
“But today’s verdict doesn’t change the indisputable fact that the American people face a straightforward reality. There remains to be just one solution to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: on the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump can be the Republican nominee for president.”
Some evangelical Trump supporters sounded a note of caution with making sweeping conclusions from the trial.
“I hold America’s justice system in slightly high regard,” Byron Foxx, an evangelist and the founding father of Bible Truth Music, told CT in a phone interview. “Bad behavior brings bad consequences. You know, fornication, adultery, all this stuff, they’ve consequences.”
“Our country and our republic can be very damaged if we’re going to have selective prosecution and never be equitable across the board. That’s an awesome danger to our entire society. That being said, I used to be not within the courtroom,” he added. “Our system allows for an appeal process. And that, in all likelihood, will happen.”
Foxx said he hopes Christians basically will “decelerate, take a superb take a look at things. If wrongdoing has been done, then there are consequences to that. And there’’s nobody perfect except Jesus.”
Trump supporters’ criticism of the court system follows their efforts to contest the outcomes of the 2020 election and their ongoing distrust of the electoral system.
Trump’s sentencing is scheduled for July 11, lower than every week before the Republican National Convention, where he’ll officially secure his party’s nomination for president.
Trump’s legal team is prone to appeal the decision, a process that will take months to unfold. Trump still faces other legal battles, including a case over his handling of classified documents and one other coping with the attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
