The Democratic Party is driving away the religious vote with “anti-Christian” policies, as former President Barack Obama called it. President Donald Trump Catholic League President Bill Donohue said the organization works to attract Catholics and other Christians.
“They’re anti-Christian and that’s driving people out,” Donohue said in a phone call with Democrats. He cited similar comments by former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who recently endorsed Trump. “And the people I’m talking to don’t even think about abortion that much. They feel like they don’t speak the language anymore. This whole idea of letting men compete with women in sports, using toilets, they think they’ve just gone crazy.”
Donohue spoke to Fox News Digital about the Trump campaign’s launch of a “Catholics for Trump” coalition, which aims to “create a nation where every individual’s right to freely practice their religion is protected.”
,Kamala Harris hates Catholics And everything we hold sacred. We cannot pretend otherwise. Our institutions, family, culture, and belief in the sanctity of all human life are antithetical to their vision for America. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance — and now RFK — are the antidote to the ruling class that has destroyed our country,” said Brian Burch, president of the conservative nonprofit CatholicVote, in a Trump campaign press release.
Republican presidential candidate, former US President Donald Trump participates in a Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity at the New Holland Arena on September 4, 2024 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Trump also wished the Virgin Mary a happy birthday on Sunday. The Catholic Church believes The birthday of the Mother of Jesus is celebrated on 8 September, which falls nine months after the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Lord Jesus on 8 December every year.
President Biden, who is Catholic, dropped out of the presidential race at the end of July. Donohue said Biden’s exit from the race will have no effect on the Catholic vote, except perhaps benefiting Harris because voters are unfamiliar with her policies.
Donohue said, “I suspect that in terms of Biden being out, it might help Harris a little bit, even though she’s less well-known. But once people realize that her views are not that different from Biden’s, including on survival protection laws at birth … when a baby is born as a result of a failed abortion, Democrats — most of them, not all, most of them — say the doctor has no obligation to save the baby. You can let the baby die on the table. Most Americans oppose that.”
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Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the American Federation of Teachers’ 88th National Convention in Houston, Texas, on July 25, 2024. The American Federation of Teachers is the first labor union to endorse Harris for president since she announced her campaign. (Montinique Monroe/Getty Images)
While serving as a California senator in 2020, Harris voted against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, a law that would have penalized healthcare workers who fail to care for babies born alive after a failed abortion. Harris is a staunch supporter of abortion access and made history earlier this year by visiting a Minnesota Planned Parenthood with her future 2024 running mate — marking the first time a sitting U.S. vice president visited an abortion provider.
Abortion-rights protesters hold a placard during a rally in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on May 14, 2022. (AP)
Pew Research data shows Trump won 52% of the Catholic vote in his successful 2016 election cycle against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while Clinton received 45%. In 2020, 52% of Catholic voters voted for Biden and 47% for Trump, according to Gallup.
Donohue said there is a huge difference between the way Catholics vote and the way baptized Catholics who no longer practice their religion vote. He pointed out that religious Catholics have “almost nothing to do with secular Catholics,” who often vote for Democrats. The same is often true for religious Jews versus cultural Jews and evangelical Protestants versus mainstream Protestants, he said.
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In addition to the Catholics for Trump coalition, the campaign also launched the “Believers for Trump” coalition, which works with a variety of organizations. End of religious communities According to its website, it is the Biden-Harris administration’s “anti-faith agenda for good.”
“The Democrat Party and the Harris-Biden administration have waged a war against Christianity with his support for abortion “From birth to now, the Justice Department’s targeting and jailing of pro-life activists, and the FBI’s plot to infiltrate Catholic Masses to spy on attendees,” Carolyn Levitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, told Fox News Digital.
“Kamala and Biden shamefully declared the holiest day on the Christian calendar ‘Trans Visibility Day’ and allowed a transgender activist to lift her shirt and expose herself on the South Lawn of the White House. President Trump will restore Christian conservative values like faith, family, and freedom, end the discrimination against Christians by the Harris-Biden administration, and stand up for religious freedom, just as he did in his first term.”
Donohue said the Catholic vote historically favored Democrats until the 1960s.
“Everybody was a Democrat. Everybody Catholics were Democrats.That didn’t change until the late ’60s, early ’70s, certainly until ’72, when McGovern was running against Nixon. And people said, ‘Wait a minute.’ But then Catholics felt homeless, because Republicans never wanted Catholics. Republicans have always been the party of abortion,” he said.
George McGovern ran as a Democrat against President Nixon in the 1972 presidential election and was presented as a candidate who supported “amnesty, abortion and acid,” just a year before the Supreme Court’s landmark decision. Roe vs. Wade decision.
Pope Francis holds incense as he prays to the Virgin of Guadalupe (Our Lady of Guadalupe) at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican on December 12, 2018. (Photo: Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images) (Getty Images)
Fast forward to the present day, the Republican Party has become the pro-life party. The Supreme Court Roe vs. Wade In 2022, Trump praised this decision and is now campaigning on a platform where abortion laws are left up to individual states.
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“Ever since Dobbs, abortion has been a monkey wrench for Republicans. They lost because some pro-life extremists in the Republican Party tried to do an all-or-nothing approach, but that’s a stupid proposition. We always lose on it. You have to make exceptions, the proverbial exceptions that everybody accepts. And you know, later in the term, there’s less tolerance for abortion. So you have to play on that. So Trump was advised, I think correctly, to get the abortion issue off his back, because it’s a disadvantage for Republicans. And just say, ‘Listen, the goal was to get rid of the abortion issue.’ Roe vs. Wade “So it’s up to the states to decide what they want to do,” Donohue said.
Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is hugged by U.S. President Joe Biden during a campaign event at IBEW Local Union #5 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on September 2, 2024. President Joe Biden joined Vice President Harris at her second Labor Day event, the first during the campaign since she left the Democratic ticket and Harris was confirmed as the Democratic Party’s nominee for the 2024 presidential election against Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump. The event was attended by members of the IBEW, United Steelworkers, AFSCME and other unions. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) (Getty Images)
Trump has sparked condemnation from some pro-life conservatives for the GOP’s more muted language on abortion this election cycle, and for saying last month that Florida’s six-week abortion ban is “too small.” He has since said he would vote against a Florida amendment that would legalize abortion up to the 9th month of pregnancy, and he has reiterated that abortion laws and issues should be left up to the states to decide.
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St. Peter’s Square during the Holy Mass with the College of Cardinals for the opening of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in Vatican City on October 4, 2023. The Holy Mass for the opening of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops began with a modern version of the traditional Laudes Regia hymn, invoking God’s protection and blessing on the Church, Pope Francis and the bishops and flocks entrusted to them, and on civil leaders and all women and men. (Photo: Antonio Masiello/Getty Images) (Getty Images)
Meanwhile, anti-Catholic attacks have increased in recent years, especially Dobbs The decision, when radicals attacked Catholic churches, and when reports of an anti-Catholic FBI memo targeting traditional Catholics as potential “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists,” made national headlines. The DOJ cleared the FBI of wrongdoing earlier this year in an inspector general’s review that found the agency did not intentionally target traditional Catholics.
“Many Catholics feel alienated,” Donohue said, praising Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan for investigating anti-Catholic bias in the federal government.
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“Many of them have found a new anchor with the Republicans. And listen, the people I hang out with at my Irish pub are with me, too,” Donohue said. “Every one of these people is union member, and many of them are retired. They’re all lifelong Democrats, and Every single one of them is voting for TrumpEvery single one of them is voting for Trump because they say the Democrats have abandoned them.”
