The woke bishop who last month pleaded with President Donald Trump to show ‘mercy’ to members of the LGBTQ+ community and illegal immigrants has re-emerged with a defiant message.
The Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde took a break from social media following her controversial speech at the National Prayer Service, but returned with a video on Tuesday thanking her supporters and telling them to ‘have courage.’
‘I cannot tell you how much it’s meant to me to receive the letters and phone calls and notes and gifts and expressions of gratitude, support and encouragement,’ she told her more than 52,200 followers.
She went on to say that the messages convinced her ‘that there is a spirit of love and goodness in this land that flows through all of us and that now is the time for us to stand together, to take courage from one another and learn together how we are to be brave and to hold onto the things that are good about us and about our country.’
‘And that we can do this, especially if we remember that we are never alone and that when one of us falters, there are hundreds others that stand strong,’ she continued.
‘And that together God will work through us to bring about the kind of society, the kind of community that we all deserve and that we want to pass on to those who come after us.
‘So take good care, have courage and remember that together we can all be brave,’ the bishop concluded.
But Budde had also received hatred for her message, with Trump immediately demanding an apology and branding her a ‘Radical Left hardline Trump hater’.
‘She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way,’ Trump fumed. ‘She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.’
Budde also claimed she ‘had people wish me dead.’
‘I’m not sure they’ve threatened to kill me, but they’d seem to be pleased if I met my eternal destiny sooner rather than later,’ she claimed to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
‘And I would simply say, I was trying, actually, to encourage a different kind of conversation that you can certainly disagree with me.’
She also explained that she wanted her sermon to ‘counter the narrative that is so divisive and polarizing in which people are being harmed’ in an appearance on The View.
During her controversial speech, Budde begged the president to grant ‘mercy upon the people in our country that are scared now,’ invoking the bible as she said ‘God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger.’
‘There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives,’ she continued.
The woke bishop then turned her attention to illegal immigrants – a central issue of Trump’s presidential campaign – urging him not to follow through with his mass deportation plans.
‘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 might not be citizens or have the proper documentation,’ she said.
‘The vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. I ask you to have mercy Mr. President on those in communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away.’
Trump did not react to the pointed message as he stared at Budde, although others in his group – including Vice President JD Vance – had a more telling expression on their faces.
Speaking to reporters at the White House shortly after the service, Trump was more reserved than his Truth Social rebuke, but said briefly that he thought Budde ‘could have been much better.’
He later blasted the ‘boring’ sermon and refuted her statements about illegal migrants.
‘She failed to mention the large number of illegal migrants that came into our Country and killed people,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social.
‘Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions. It is a giant crime wave that is taking place in the USA.
‘Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job! She and her church owe the public an apology!’
But the reverend declined to address Trump’s calls for an apology on The View.
She said she would consider a one-on-one meeting with the president if the invitation came from the president personally, saying that she has a ‘great amount of respect’ for the presidency as she she promised to remain ‘respectful’ if a meeting were ever to occur.