One of Donald Trump’s spiritual advisors claims she told him that God wanted him to run for president, but that there would be a “price” to pay.
Televangelist Paula White has known the ex-president for 22 years after he saw her on TV, called her and took her to Atlantic City for private Bible studies.
She is one of several faith advisers to Trump, including Robert Morris, who resigned this week as pastor at his megachurch after admitting he sexually abused a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s.
White praised Trump in a speech Friday at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference at the Washington Hilton.
Paula White praised Trump in a speech Friday at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference at the Washington Hilton
White claimed she told Trump that God wanted him to run for president but that there would be a ‘price’ to pay
She said Trump told her in 2011 that he “didn’t like the way this country is going” and asked her what she thought about him running for president.
“And then he turned around and said, ‘Well, what does God say?'” she recalled.
White said she prayed with “30-something” friends and later told Trump, “Sir… one day you will be president.”
“And a tear ran down my eye and I said to him, ‘I hate the price you’re going to pay.’
“Any one of us could have imagined the price this man, his family and many of you – many of us – paid.”
But White said she believed it was “worth it” because of the pro-religion laws Trump passed during his four years as president.
“I’m going to be president, and you’re going to be faith director,” she told her in 2014 when he decided to run for the 2016 election.
“I’m not sure if any of us knew what we were doing, but I do know that God was with us.”
White has known the ex-president for 22 years after seeing her on TV, calling her and taking her to Atlantic City for private Bible studies
White led Trump’s evangelical advisory board during his campaign and delivered the invocation prayer at his inauguration.
She later took an official job in the White House as an adviser to the Center for Faith and Opportunity Initiative.
White claimed Friday that religious freedoms were under attack “like never before” during Joe Biden’s presidency, and this was frightening because religious freedom was “the foundation upon which all our other freedoms fall.”
She then listed several incidents that she said amounted to attacks on religious freedom.
“Something is wrong and we have to stop it and in November we will absolutely make our voices heard,” she said of the upcoming elections.
White added that people in the room would say, “devil, we’ve had enough… this is an ideology that is against God, against our faith and against our rights.”
White, the senior pastor of City of Destiny Church in Apopka, Florida, has been a consistent supporter of Trump despite his legal troubles.
White claimed Friday that religious freedoms were under attack “like never before” during Joe Biden’s presidency
She called his 34 felony convictions “a sad day for all Americans as we saw firsthand how the justice system was weaponized to go after President Trump for political gain.”
During his re-election campaign, she claimed that “Christians who do not support President Trump will have to answer to God.”
After he lost the election, she repeatedly called for “angelic reinforcement” to reverse Trump’s defeat.
Weeks later, she delivered the opening prayer at a Trump rally that sparked the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Earlier in 2020, she stated, “We command every satanic pregnancy to miscarry at this time!
“We declare that anything conceived in satanic wombs that will fail, will not be able to carry out any plan of destruction, any plan of harm.”
White is a controversial figure even among other religious conservatives because of some of her beliefs, and has faced legal scrutiny of one of her churches.
White led Trump’s evangelical advisory council during his campaign and delivered the invocation prayer at his inauguration (photo)
White speaks at a Donald Trump campaign event to woo devout conservatives by combining praise, prayer and patriotism
The Senate Finance Committee investigated her former megachurch Without Walls International Church in 2007-2011 for alleged financial irregularities.
The investigative report found that between 2004 and 2006, the church raised $150 million in donations and spent nearly $900,000 in tax-exempt funds to pay for White’s waterfront mansion.
Without Walls also used the tax-free money to pay salaries to her family members and for her private jet.
The church, which she founded with her then-husband Randy White, had 20,000 members at its peak, but fell on hard times starting in 2008.
Without Walls put both its buildings in Tampa and Lakeland, Florida up for sale due to financial difficulties, but managed to stay afloat by selling some of its land instead.
In 2011, both buildings were again at risk of foreclosure and services were cut off after electricity was turned off on more than $50,000 in unpaid utility bills.
Ralph Reed, from right, Dr. Alveda King, Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain and the president’s personal minister Paula White Cain, and others pray on stage during a Donald Trump campaign event
White left the church in January 2012 and attended City of Destiny Church, reportedly taking church equipment with her.
Without Walls filed for bankruptcy in 2014, with Evangelical Christian Credit Union claiming it owed $29 million.
White denied responsibility for the church’s bankruptcy in 2017, saying she had left by then.
“I have been called a heretic, an apostate, an adulterer, a charlatan and an addict,” she said in a CNN interview.
“It has been falsely reported that I once filed for bankruptcy and that I deny the Trinity. My life and my decisions have been far from perfect, even if nothing resembles what has been wrongly conveyed in recent days.”