Woman bishop directs far-left sermon at Trump, Vance during national prayer service

CV NEWS FEED // The Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C., delivered a stridently political sermon about “transgender children” and illegal immigrants in the presence of President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and their families during a traditional national prayer service held at the Washington National Cathedral Tuesday. Trump later dismissed the pointed homily in response to questions from the press.

On the first full day of Trump’s second term, Episcopal Bishop of Washington Mariann Edgar Budde presided over the Service of Prayer for the Nation. Trump attended the service with his wife Melania, other family members, Vance, and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-LA.

“In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” Budde preached to the president from her pulpit. “There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives.”

Budde went on to express strong opposition to Trump’s border security policies. 

“The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings,” she said, referring to illegal migrants, “they may not be citizens, or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”

“I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents would be taken away,” Budde continued. “Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land.”

The Episcopal Church to which the prelate belongs is a liberal mainline Protestant denomination that supports abortion, same-sex “marriage,” the subjection of children to experimental sexual surgeries, and the ordination of women. 

At the White House after the prayer service had concluded, reporters repeatedly asked Trump what he thought of Budde’s sermon.

“What did you think?” the president asked in response. “You like it? You find it exciting? Not too exciting, was it?” 

“I did think it was a good service though,” Trump told the reporters, referring to the prayer event as a whole. 

Budde’s history of staunch opposition to Trump’s first presidency and support for far-left political causes began to come under heightened scrutiny in the hours following her widely panned sermon.

FOX News noted that she “had been a vocal critic of Trump and the U.S. government following George Floyd’s death” in 2020.

The Daily Caller reported Tuesday that Budde “said during a phone call in 2020 that she was ‘outraged’ by the president’s speech about the importance of law and order at St. John’s Episcopal Church after it was set ablaze by Black Lives Matter protesters.”

Budde told an interviewer that same year: “We need to replace President Trump.”