Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde claimed on Tuesday that she felt obligated to stand “counter” to President Donald Trump.
Budde made an appearance on CNN — just hours after she’d used the pulpit at an inaugural prayer service to scold Trump for failing to embrace radical gender ideology and unchecked illegal immigration — where she told host Erin Burnett that she’d intended her message to appear as though she was “speaking directly” to the president at that moment.
WATCH:
🚨 Leftwing activist bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, who turned prayer service sermon into woke lecture, says she wanted to “counter” Trump. pic.twitter.com/Pio1BuRGRr
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) January 22, 2025
“I was looking at the president because I was speaking directly to him,” she said. “I was also, frankly, as you do in every sermon, speaking to everyone who is listening through that one-on-one conversation with the president, reminding us all that the people that are frightened in our country.”
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“The two groups of people that I mentioned are our fellow human beings, and that they have been portrayed in — all throughout the political campaign — in the harshest of lights,” she complained. “I wanted to counter as gently as I could with a reminder of their humanity and their place in our wider community.”
“And I was speaking to the president, because I felt that he has this moment now where he feels charged and empowered to do what he feels called to do and I wanted to say, you know, there is room for mercy,” Budde continued. “There’s room for a broader compassion. We don’t need to portray with a broad cloth in the harshest of terms some of the most vulnerable people in our society who are in fact our neighbors, our friends, our children, our friends’ children, and so forth.”
Budde’s assertion on CNN — namely that she had intentionally used that opportunity to “counter” President Trump’s political positions — flew in the face of her claim on Wednesday’s broadcast of “The View” on ABC News that it was not her, but everyone else, who had ascribed a political motive to her words.
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