One of Donald Trump’s spiritual advisors claims she told him God wanted him to run for president – but 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 brought her to Atlantic City for private Bible studies.
She is one of several faith advisors to Trump, including Robert Morris, who resigned as pastor at his megachurch this week after admitting to sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s.
White lavished praise on Trump in a speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference at the Washington Hilton on Friday.
Paula White lavished praise on Trump in a speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference at the Washington Hilton on Friday
White claimed she told Trump God wanted him to run for president – but there would be a ‘price’ to pay
She said Trump told her in 2011 he didn’t ‘like the way this country is going’ and asked her what she thought of him running for president.
‘And then, he turned around, and he said, “Well, what does God say?”‘ she recalled.
White said she prayed with ’30-something’ friends and later told Trump: ‘Sir… you’re going to be president one day.
‘And a tear ran down my eye and I told him, “I hate the price that you’re going to pay.”
‘Little would any of us have imagined the price this man, his family and many of you – many of us – have paid.’
But White said she believed it was ‘worth it,’ due to 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 said Trump told her in 2014 when he decide to run for the 2016 election.
‘I’m not sure either one of us knew what we were doing, but I know God was with us.’
White has known the ex-president for 22 years after he saw her on TV, called her, and brought her to Atlantic City for private Bible studies
White led Trump’s Evangelical advisory board during his campaign and gave the invocation prayer during his inauguration.
She was later given an official White House job as an advisor for the Center for Faith and Opportunity Initiative.
White on Friday claimed religious freedoms were under attack ‘as never before’ during Joe Biden’s presidency, and this was frightening because religious freedom was ‘the bedrock which all our other freedoms fall upon’.
She then listed various incidents she claimed amounted to attacks on religious freedom.
‘Something is wrong and we have to stop it and this November we will absolutely make our voice heard,’ she said of the upcoming election.
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, who is the senior pastor at City of Destiny Church in Apopka, Florida, has been a consistent supporter of Trump through his legal woes.
White on Friday claimed religious freedoms were under attack ‘as never before’ during Joe Biden’s presidency
She called his 34 felony convictions ‘a sad day for all Americans as we watched firsthand the judicial system weaponized to go after President Trump for political gain’.
During his reelection campaign she claimed ‘Christians that don’t support President Trump will have to answer to God’.
After he lost the election, she repeatedly called for ‘angelic reinforcement’ to overturn Trump’s defeat.
Weeks later, she gave the opening prayer at a Trump rally that prompted the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.
Earlier in 2020 she declared: ‘We command any satanic pregnancies to miscarry right now!
‘We declare that anything that’s been conceived in satanic wombs that it will miscarry, it will not be able to carry forth any plan of destruction, any plan of harm.’
White is a controversial figure even among other religious conservatives for some of her beliefs, and faced legal scrutiny over one of her churches.
White led Trump’s Evangelical advisory board during his campaign and gave the invocation prayer during his inauguration (pictured)
White speaks during a Donald Trump campaign event courting devout conservatives by combining praise, prayer and patriotism
The Senate Finance Committee in 2007-11 investigated her former megachurch Without Walls International Church for alleged financial improprieties.
The investigation’s report found the church collected $150 million in donations in 2004 to 2006 and spent almost $900,000 in tax-exempt funds helping to pay for White’s waterfront mansion.
Without Walls also used the tax-free cash to pay salaries to members of her family, and for her private jet.
The church, which she founded with her then-husband Randy White, at its peak boasted 20,000 members but from 2008 fell on hard times.
Without Walls put both its Tampa and Lakeland, Florida, buildings up for sale citing financial difficulties, but managed to stay afloat by selling some of its land instead.
Both buildings were again at risk of foreclosure in 2011, and services ceased after the electricity was cut of over $50,000 in unpaid power bills.
Ralph Reed, from right, Dr Alveda King, Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain, and personal pastor to the president, Paula White Cain, and others pray on stage during a Donald Trump campaign event
White left the church in January 2012 for City of Destiny Church, allegedly taking church equipment with her.
Without Walls went bankrupt in 2014 with the Evangelical Christian Credit Union claiming it was owed $29 million.
White in 2017 denied responsibility for the church’s bankruptcy as she had left by that time.
‘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 nowhere near perfect, though nothing like what has been falsely conveyed in recent days.’