Donald Trump relied on evangelical voters to win the White House in 2016, and he was a key part of that bloc when he lost in 2020.
Now, Trump has turned on some leaders in the movement for not being loyal enough after some spoke out against his 2024 presidential campaign.
“This is a sign of disloyalty,” the former president said in an interview with David Brody on the right-wing Real America’s Voice network. “There is great disloyalty in the world of politics, and this is a sign of disloyalty.”
Trump crowed that three Supreme Court appointees overturned Roe v. Wade, a long-time goal of the religious right.
Now, Trump said, he is “disappointed” with those same voters.
“I thought they could have fought much harder during the election, the ’22 election,” he said, blaming them for the GOP’s lackluster results in the midterm elections.
Many analysts, however, believe the Republican Party underperformed because Trump supported unelectable candidates in key states including Herschel Walker for senator in Georgia; Blake Masters for senator and Kari Lake for governor in Arizona; and Doug Mastriano for governor and Mehmet Oz for senator in Pennsylvania.
But Trump pointed to evangelicals.
“A lot of them don’t fight or don’t really fight,” Trump said of evangelicals.
Trump’s announcement in November of his 2024 campaign was met with criticism in some right-wing circles, including from some evangelicals who have supported him in the past.
“There are a lot of people who share the same thoughts but don’t want to go on the record,” evangelical activist Bob Vander Plaats, a 2016 Trump supporter, told Vanity Fair last month. “You can see that almost the majority is silent now.”
Mike Evans told The Washington Post in the fall that Trump was “using” evangelical voters.
“We had to close our mouths and eyes when he was talking about horrible things,” Evans told the paper. “I can’t do it anymore.”
Washington Times columnist Everett Piper, another evangelical who has previously endorsed Trump, was even more blunt.
“If he is the nominee in 2024, we will be destroyed,” he wrote.