Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde Appears On ‘The View’: No Apologies For Trump Sermon, Condemns “Culture Of Contempt”
The bishop who publicly urged Donald Trump to “have mercy” on immigrants and LGBTQ people – and was dismissed as “a Radical Left hard line Trump hater” by the president – responded with an appearance, remotely, on ABC’s The View today, giving a full-throated plea for “unity.”
Introduced by moderator Joy Behar (Whoopi Goldberg is out for the week) as a woman who has “more fearlessness than anyone in Congress right now,” Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde said today, “My responsibility that morning, yesterday morning, was to reflect, to pray with the nation for unity…And then I also realized that unity requires a certain degree of mercy, mercy and compassion and understanding and so knowing that a lot of people, as I said, in our country right now, are really scared, I wanted to take the opportunity in the context of that of service for unity, to say we need to treat everyone with dignity, and we need to be merciful. I was trying to counter the narrative that is so, so divisive and polarizing and in which people, real people, are being harmed.”
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Watch the segment below.
During yesterday’s inauguration prayer service at Washington National Cathedral, Budde said to Trump during her sermon, “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and Independent families, some who fear for their lives. And the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals, they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors.”
Trump immediately griped about the sermon, telling reporters he “didn’t think it was a good service.” He followed that up with a Truth Social post this morning calling the bishop a “Trump hater” and demanding an apology.
Appearing via remote on The View today, Budde did not apologize, acknowledging, “I think if you read what I said, how could it not be politicized? We’re in a hyper political climate. One of the things I caution about is the culture of contempt in which we live that immediately rushes to the worst possible interpretations of what people are saying and to put them in categories…That’s part of the air we breathe now. And I was trying to speak a truth that I felt needed to be said, but to do it in as respectful and kind a way as I could, and also to bring other voices into the conversation, voices that had not been heard in the public space for some time.”
Asked by The View‘s resident conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin if the bishop had considered voicing her concerns privately to Trump rather than during a public sermon, Budde said, “I’ve never been invited into a one-on-one conversation with President Trump, and I would welcome that opportunity. I have no idea how that would go. I could assure him and everyone listening that I would be as respectful as I would with any with any person, and certainly of his office, for which I have great deal of respect, but the invitation would have to come from him.”
Asked by co-host Sunny Hostin about Trump’s “crackdown on immigration” that includes no longer honoring churches as sanctuaries, Budde said it was “heartbreaking” but added, “Let me be clear that it was never encoded in law. Any of the police officers and officials could come into our churches if they felt they had just cause. Now, they would need a warrant. They would need all the legal requirements to enter into such spaces, at private spaces, as they would be necessary elsewhere, because churches are public spaces, they could go into them always.
“But you are right. It has been a practice. It has been an unwritten policy, that there are some places, and particularly churches, schools and other places where all sorts of people gather to create a sense of safety and to allow people’s basic human and spiritual needs to be met. We have a lot of churches in our particular denomination that meet the needs of immigrants and other vulnerable populations and we need now to be a specially mindful and to make sure that basic human rights are protected and people’s needs can be met.”
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