Donald Trump is a truth-teller and Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde is a liar, evangelist Franklin Graham told hosts of the Newsmax show “American Agenda” yesterday.
“Trump stands with truth,” Graham declared. “As president, if Trump tells you something, he’s going to do it. You know, the media tried to make him out as a liar. He not a liar. He doesn’t wake up in the morning and think, ‘I’ll see how many lies I could tell today.’ No, he may get some wrong information from a staffer, he may get some facts twisted up sometimes but he’s not purposely out there lying or misleading people. But this lady is. She’s misleading people, and she was wrong.”
In contrast, the Associated Press reported: In his first address after being sworn in on Monday, President Donald Trump repeated several false and misleading statements that he made during his campaign. They included claims about immigration, the economy, electric vehicles and the Panama Canal. In remarks later at the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall, he issued a number of other false claims, including one that distorts pardons made by President Joe Biden as he left office.”
“You know, the media tried to make him out as a liar. He not a liar.”
And in his first sit-down interview since reassuming office, Trump continued his well-known pattern of lying.
“Speaking with Fox News host and ardent supporter Sean Hannity in the Oval Office, Trump delivered familiar inaccurate assertions related to the 2020 and 2024 elections, immigration and the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021 — plus a highly dubious new declaration that the assaults of police officers that day, some of them vicious, were ‘very minor incidents,’” CNN reported.
“American Agenda” hosts Bob Brooks and Katrina Szish welcomed Graham as a friendly guest to support their view that Trump was wrongly accused by Bishop Budde during Tuesday’s interfaith prayer service at Washington National Cathedral. Trump and his allies have been vocal in expressing their displeasure at Budde speaking directly to Trump and urging him to “show compassion” for immigrants and the LGBTQ community who are living in fear of his campaign promises.
Evangelist Franklin Graham delivers an invocation during the inauguration ceremony of Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on January 20 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Saul Loeb – Pool/Getty Images)
The day before, Graham offered the invocation at Trump’s inaugural ceremony and inserted his own political commentary that God had spared Trump from an assassin’s bullet in order to Make America Great Again.
On Newsmax, the son of Billy Graham declared of Bishop Budde: “She was wrong to do that. That was really a national forum, a national stage pulpit that she was standing in and for her to use that for her own political agenda was wrong.”
Graham, who runs one of the largest international relief ministries in the world, said Budde and Trump’s critics misuse the appeal for compassion.
“If you’re talking about compassion, give me a break. If you want to have compassion then we should have just have 747s come from all around the world and let people just fly into the United States and let them off the airplane.”
No Democratic leader in Congress has proposed such open borders without vetting.
Graham continued, though, with a partisan slap of former President Joe Biden.
“The Biden administration is responsible for all of this mess.”
“What the Biden administration did was said, “Listen, the border is open. If you can make your way to the border, come on. And so people went to Venezuela, Mexico, Panama. Women were raped. People were killed. Children died along the way. And so now you get to the border (and) if you can come across the Rio Grande and make your way through the barbed wire, then compassion you know. Come on. These people suffered a lot to come here illegally and the Biden administration is responsible for all of this mess.”
In reality, the Biden administration deported more people than Trump did during his four years in office. Further, the Biden administration enacted more border restrictions that reduced immigrant apprehensions at the border.
Graham echoed Trump’s false claim that the Biden administration opened the borders for anyone who wanted to enter the country.
“People need to go back and come in legally,” Graham said. “So I support the president on that. That has nothing to do with compassion. It has to do with what’s right to do. If you want to have compassion, then have the law the same for everybody. Don’t have a law for one and another law for another group. No, it’s one law fits all, and we need to stay with that.”
Graham also has been among the Trump supporters who claim the former and now current president should not be held liable for his business dealings, for falsifying financial records, for stealing classified documents and for inciting the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
“If you want to have compassion, then have the law the same for everybody.”
On the first anniversary of January 6 attack, Graham tweeted that it’s not Trump who was responsible for what happened by “the swamp” of Washington, D.C.
“Today marks one year since the attack on our nation’s Capitol,” he wrote. “Many people may disagree with me, but I blame the swamp. If the ‘January 6 Committee’ wants to find the truth about who was behind the attack, they don’t have to look any further than Washington and its corruption. The vast majority of the million or so people who went to Washington that day were patriots who love this country and were there to take a stand for our nation. But those who stormed the Capitol were wrong.”
In the Newsmax interview, Graham doubled down on his criticism of Bishop Budde, calling her “a socialist activist” who favors LGBTQ inclusion.
“She’s just wrong,” he asserted. “I don’t know why they (the Episcopal Church) have her there but it’s not just her it’s the others that are there. They’re all the same stripe and they share the same goals. So these are activists and no question they hate Trump. I don’t know why they hate Trump.”
Graham, who has been criticized for being one of the most politicized religious figures in America, decried the politicization of Washington National Cathedral, which is part of the Episcopal Church.
“I would hope that whoever the powers that be would put somebody in the cathedral who doesn’t have a political agenda or a sexual political agenda, but just somebody who would be there to open up the word of God and to encourage people to worship God,” he said.
Cohost Brooks asked Graham about his introductory comments at the inauguration on Monday.
The evangelist explained that his reference to Trump facing “dark” days was about him coming “so close” to winning the 2020 election “and then to be drug into court to have lawsuit after lawsuit, false accusation after false accusation” lodged against him.
“And then to have all your sins, you know, put out in front of the whole world to see and, you know, the embarrassment and so forth, and look what God did when that bullet went past or through his ear and passed his head within a millimeter. He could have had his brains blown out across that field.
“I think at that moment I think God got his attention and I think it’s changed him a little bit,” Graham said of Trump. “I see a difference in President Trump. There’s just a different tone right now.”
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