President Donald Trump’s role in securing a peace deal between Israel and Hamas should cause never-Trumpers to change their minds, according to Dallas megachurch pastor Jack Graham.
On Monday, Oct. 13, as hostages and prisoners were exchanged in the Middle East, Graham tweeted: “This might be a really good time for some well-known SBC leaders and former leaders to admit they were wrong about Donald Trump. But don’t hold your breath.”
Those “former leaders” no doubt include Russell Moore, editor-in-chief of Christianity Today who was forced out as head of the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, in part, because of his opposition to Trump on moral grounds.
Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in the northern suburbs of Dallas, is a former SBC president and one of Trump’s chief religious allies. He has participated in numerous events at the White House and posed for group photos with Trump in the Oval Office.
Even evangelical leaders who support Trump were expressing caution as the delicate deal began to play out this week.
Tony Perkins
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins called yesterday a “day of unspeakable joy.”
And while the hostage release is an “encouraging first step toward peace in the Middle East,” he cautioned the world should not be “deceived into believing that peace will endure while evil is allowed to linger at the borders.”
“We must also remain realistic: Scripture makes clear that true and lasting peace will come only when the Prince of Peace reigns,” Perkins said. “Until that day, we are called to pursue a managed peace — one grounded in strength, guided by truth, and anchored in biblical reality.”
The Trump administration’s apparent victory in getting Israel and Hamas to negotiate left many never-Trumpers wondering how to praise that victory while pointing out their serious fears about Trump’s own campaign of terror in the United States.
Ehud Olmert
Ehud Olmert, former prime minister of Israel, wrote a column for The Independent in which he explained how Trump’s strong-arm tactics made a difference here.
“No other leader could have made this sequence of events happen except for Trump. The efforts invested by Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer, Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney, and many others in the international community helped to facilitate an end to the war. They deserve thanks and appreciation. However, only one leader made a dramatic difference,” he wrote.
“Trump deserves appreciation and gratitude from Israel, especially for forcing its prime minister to do what he had refused to do for over a year. This agreement was possible a year ago — but only when Trump decided did it become reality.”
While pleased with the current outcome, Olmert warned this really is not a lasting peace deal.
Yet former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were among those giving credit to the Trump administration for the present victory.
“President Trump and his administration, Qatar, and other regional actors deserve great credit for keeping everyone engaged until the agreement was reached,” Clinton said.
Even as Trump celebrated his team’s success in the Middle East, the irony of his words stood out.
In a trip to Egypt and Jerusalem this week, he said: “We have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to put the old feuds and bitter hatreds behind us.” He urged leaders “to declare that our future will not be ruled by the fights of generations past.”
On the home front, however, Trump continues to perpetuate his own old feuds and bitter hatreds.
On the home front, however, Trump continues to perpetuate his own old feuds and bitter hatreds. Just days before this speech, he had directed the Justice Department to seek an indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James in a scheme of political retribution. That followed days after the Justice Department sought an indictment for another Trump enemy, former FBI Director James Comey.
Last week on CNN’s Inside Politics with Dana Bash, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called out Trump’s hypocrisy.
“The former head of the FBI has been accused of lying to Congress. There’s one point I want to make,” Pelosi told Bash. “And that is nobody has lied more to Congress than Donald Trump, and that’s why I tore up his speech because it was a manifesto of lies. And I said [it] at the time.”
In 2020, Pelosi, then speaker of the House, ripped up a copy of Trump’s State of the Union speech after his address to Congress.
Religion News Service columnist Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin addressed the dichotomy of this moment, acknowledging many on the Left doubt the peace plan because it comes from the Trump administration.
“My critiques of the Trump presidency are numerous and public,” he wrote. “But integrity requires the capacity to give credit where it is due. It does not damage my soul to thank a man I distrust when he accomplishes something that lessens human suffering. We just marked two holidays that lift up the paradoxes of human existence: Yom Kippur and Sukkot, where the sukkah is a shelter, albeit a flimsy one.
“My solution is to praise the Trump team for what they got right and continue to condemn them for what they get wrong. Hold two thoughts on your brain and in your soul.”