Trump’s National Prayer Breakfast in Washington

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The U.S President Donald Trump has accidentally informed an audience of global religious leaders during the National Prayer Breakfast that America’s greatest accomplishments include the abolition of civil rights. Trump said on Thursday, “Since the founding of our nation, many of our greatest strides, from gaining our independence to the abolition of civil rights, to extending the vote for women, have been led by people of faith and started in prayer. When we open our hearts to the faith we fill our hearts with love”.

Trump attended the breakfast in Washington, where speakers addressed the level of division in the country and what one described as a fracturing of the American family. The members of the president’s cabinet and members of Congress, including Democratic house speaker Nancy Pelosi attended the annual gathering. The president offered a fierce denunciation of late-term abortions during his State of the Union address. He moved to re-energize evangelical voters who have been among his most loyal supporters and who will be vital in heading off any possible 2020 primary challenge.

The president also thanked the wife of vice president Mike Pence, Karen Pence for taking on her new job as a teacher at a Christian school. Karen Pence has come under fire for the job after it was reported the school has a strict anti-LGBT+ enforcement policy in which students and their parents aren’t allowed to engage in homosexual acts.

A member of the International Justice Mission, Gary Haugen spoke about a fracturing of the American family and described a weary spirit of discouragement in the country. Haugen added, “For our American family, I do sense that we are in a national moment of perilously mounting discouragement”. He said, “Our tribal divisions, our institutional dysfunctions, our desperate winner-take-all contests of cultural resistance or survival, they seem to be pressing in our chests with swelling anxiety of national disintegration”.