Paula White: Of Course Evangelicals Should Vote for Trump
4 years ago
Paula White #PaulaWhite
Never before in the history of our nation, have we been at this type of a crossroads. There are two very distinct visions for America. At the end of the day those who we elect into office will legislate what happens to our children and future generations. A very beautiful and compelling opportunity is in our hands and we get to decide what America, and specifically the church in America, will be like in the coming years and decades. Your voice and vote will make that decision in just a few days.
I have had the opportunity and privilege to know President Trump up close and personal for over 19 years, and to work with him and his family as a faith leader in their lives. I’ve seen him firsthand as a father, a husband, a leader, a businessman and now the President of the United States of America. I also recognize most people have secondhand information that mischaracterizes the man I know. Therefore, I will talk about the “good fruit” (or what we call in politics — “policy”) that has come from this “good tree” — President Trump.
Here are ten reasons you should give the president four more years.
He has reset our courts for a generation. The president promised to appoint originalist judges to our Supreme Court who would protect our religious freedoms and not legislate from the bench. He has now appointed more than 200 of them, including three Supreme Court justices. He has flipped three of the Circuit Courts and given us a super majority on the Supreme Court. Biden has made it clear that he’s considering “packing the court” – fundamentally altering our third branch of government – and he will appoint progressives to the court in the vein of the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
He has protected the unborn. Over sixty million children have been aborted in America yet President Trump is the first Republican president in our lifetime who hasn’t been timidly pro-life. On the contrary, President Trump has been “all in” on the pro-life agenda. He expanded the Mexico-City policy which has forbid over $9 billion dollars of tax-payer money from funding foreign abortions. He audited the entire federal government to ensure its policies promoted life, and he became the first President to ever address the March for Life. In exchange for the Democratic nomination, Biden rejected forty years of support for the Hyde Amendment, and now – with Kamala Harris – is leading the most extreme abortion ticket in American history. They literally support abortion to birth, and Kamala Harris even blocked the “Born Alive” bill in the United States Senate.
He has preserved religious freedom. Protecting religious freedom at home and abroad has been at the very heart of President Trump’s domestic and foreign policy. He signed executive orders mandating religious freedom training for all State Department employees and granted hundreds-of-millions of dollars to aid programs that specifically promote religious freedom, including in Iraq and in Syria. Even the historic Abraham Accords include “religious freedom.” At home, Trump mandated that all federal government departments protect conscience rights. As Vice President Pence said recently, “when Joe Biden was Vice President, we saw a steady assault on religious freedom and they even hauled a group of nuns into federal court.” Abroad, the Obama/Biden administration refused to designate the monsters of Boko Haram as terrorists and refused to designate ISIS guilty of genocide until both the House and the Senate forced them to by unanimous votes.
He has an astonishing foreign policy record. President Trump moved our Israeli Embassy to Jerusalem, aggressively ended America’s foreign wars, and defeated ISIS while ending the reign of the arch-terrorists Soleimani and Al-Baghdadi. He negotiated the first Middle East peace agreement in thirty years, negotiated peace between Kosovo and Serbia and – just this week – announced a new agreement with Sudan bringing it into the modern world alongside its own peace with Israel. President Trump has sanctioned more human rights violators than any previous President, including more Russians, Chinese and Iranians. Biden made a deal with Iran that allowed them to engage in proxy wars across the middle east, let the pressure off of Cuba and Venezuela, and his own Defense Secretary Bob Gates wrote in his memoir that Biden had been wrong on virtually every foreign policy question for 40 years. Not to mention, the Biden family appears to have profited immensely from foreign governments by selling access to the Biden family.
He has built our economy. President Trump’s economic policies built the largest economy in American history, including by providing record home ownership and record low unemployment for women and people of color. His tax policies doubled the child tax credit resulting in 2019 alone a savings of $88 billion dollars to 40 million families. He renegotiated flawed trade deals such as NAFTA and created the USMCA which early on generated $68 billion dollars to the US economy and 176,000 new jobs. No one is more capable of bringing a more robust economy back to America than President Trump. Biden’s support for terrible trade deals sent millions of jobs to China and he has made it absolutely clear that he intends on immediately raising taxes on all Americans, for those making more than $400,000 that could result in more than a 70% tax bracket disincentivizing private investment in the economy. The Hoover Institute at Stanford says his plan will reduce household income by $6500, shrink the economy by $2.5 trillion, and kill 5 million jobs. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute found that ending fracking would double gasoline prices as oil prices spike to $130 per barrel, raise the average cost of living by $5,661 per person and reducing employment by 19 million people over a 5 year period.
He has strengthened minority communities. Some politicians speak about helping minority communities, but it is President Trump who led the historic reform of our Criminal Justice System (through the First Act). As a result of this thousands of Americans have been released from prison and 90% of those who have had their sentences reduced are black Americans. He provided permanent funding for historically black colleges and universities. He signed legislation creating Opportunity Zones, providing investment in nearly 9,000 economically distressed communities with more than $75 billion in funds. In his next term, he promises to turn his support for school choice into law. Biden sponsored the 1994 Crime Bill, said “you ain’t black” if you don’t vote for him, and has caused great alarm among Latinos for his support of progressive social policies and his efforts at normalization with rogue regimes in Cuba and Venezuela.
He has promoted social justice. I understand the religious left talks a big game when it comes to social justice. I’ve come to realize that it’s actually the right which gets the job done and the President has done more in this area than almost any other. Earlier this year, when the black Republican from South Carolina Senator Tim Scott proposed a second Criminal Justice Reform bill, focused on law enforcement, the President promised to sign it. The only issue was that Democrats wouldn’t even let it be debated on the Senate floor, despite that the original draft included over 80% of their demands to start the negotiation. Why? Because they didn’t want it to be signed by President Trump, of course. Over the last six months alone, the President’s “Farmers-to-Families” program has kept farmers in business (buying their produce) while feeding the hungry; giving out over 102 million food boxes, many through communities of faith. President Trump addressed our opioid and drug crisis, he went after the pharmaceutical companies who helped create the crisis, while also mandating lower costs for medication. The Trump administration has made record improvements in combatting human trafficking leading the charge on nine pieces of legislation, 5,000 arrests of wicked traffickers, and budgeting hundreds of millions of dollars to end human trafficking. Then, there are achievements that have almost been unrecognized like the administration’s historic efforts to facilitate and promote adoption also leading to a record number of kids who no longer require foster care. It’s one of the great mysteries to me why Barack Obama and Joe Biden didn’t do anything of these things, especially when they held Democrat majorities? In fact, Obama deported 100,000 more people each year than Trump has in his first term.
He has kept us safe. At home and abroad, President Trump has kept us safe. He’s rebuilt our military with $2 trillion dollars, and given our troops a much needed 3.1% pay raise. He has helped our veterans get the help that was denied to them in the previous administration, and he has cherished American freedom and the life of America’s soldiers by disentangling America from foreign conflicts. At home he has strongly supported our law enforcement officers and their families. He has pledged not to defund the police, established a commission to evaluate best practices for recruiting, training and supporting law enforcement officers. Biden refused for months to denounce those in his party that wanted to “defund the police.” Abroad, Biden has promised to reduce our military force and to pacify some of our adversaries.
He has reached across the aisle. The Democrats, who never accepted the 2016 election results chose to embrace an un-American strategy of “resistance,” but President Trump didn’t. He has significantly, regularly reached across the aisle with a problem solvers mentality. That’s why so many of the policies above aren’t traditional, Republican policies, and it’s why evangelicals have found in this President someone who promotes much more of what they support than those who came before.
He has never been ashamed of America. Then, of course, the president isn’t ashamed of America. As I’ve heard him say thousands of times “I’m going to fight for you!” He means that, and he means it for all Americans— even those who have opposed him every day. He believes America is still the brightest light on the global horizon and— despite our flaws— we should never reject our identity.
Of course, I could have taken these few words and filled them with nearly twenty years of personal experiences as the spiritual advisor to the Trump family. I know this family. They are good people who’ve sacrificed much to serve our nation. They do not deserve the way they have been treated for it. Yet, elections aren’t about personalities. They are about policies and policy is character when you do what you say you will and—especially—when those policies are righteous.
