© 2024 Blaze Media LLC. All rights reserved.
Inside Trump's Evangelical Meeting: Attendees Say He Promises to Appoint Pro-Life SCOTUS Justices
(Ralph Freso/Getty Images)

Inside Trump's Evangelical Meeting: Attendees Say He Promises to Appoint Pro-Life SCOTUS Justices

Trump "reiterated the most important pro-life commitment he has made to date: that he would appoint pro-life judges to the U.S. Supreme Court."

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump met with nearly 1,000 Evangelical Christian leaders Tuesday in New York City at an event called “A Conversation About America’s Future With Donald Trump and Ben Carson.” The meeting was billed as a way for Trump to address the concerns of some conservative Christians about his candidacy.

Dr. Alveda King, a pastoral associate and the director of Priests for Life’s African-American outreach program “Civil Rights for the Unborn,” was one of the leaders at the meeting.

In an interview with TheBlaze, King said that Trump pledged to those in attendance that he would nominate pro-life justices to the Supreme Court if elected.

Ralph Freso/Getty Images

Some pro-life activists have expressed doubts about Trump’s commitment to the pro-life cause due in part to his support for taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood and his past support for partial-birth abortion.

King said that, while she cannot speak for everyone in attendance, she was “very encouraged” by what took place at the meeting: “I can’t say they’ve all jumped on the Trump train, but he did address their concerns.” She added that she thought Trump was “very open, very candid” about the issues and that she agreed with his remarks about religious liberty, particularly the need to protect those who wish to “express their religious beliefs in the public square.”

King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called herself a “supporter, not an endorser,” of Trump and said that she doesn’t endorse candidates due to her role as an “evangelist.”

In a statement to TheBlaze, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, said that Trump "reiterated the most important pro-life commitment he has made to date: that he would appoint pro-life judges to the U.S. Supreme Court."

"He also spoke about the threats to religious liberty and how the federal government continues to threaten the freedom of speech of Christians to speak out in the public square. This is far from the end of the conversation. But it is important the conversation is taking place," Dannenfelser said, adding, "For our part we will also continue to educate voters in battleground states about Hillary Clinton's extreme record on abortion and the unprecedented threat the unborn would face under another Clinton presidency."

Bishop E.W. Jackson tweeted video of Trump at the meeting telling the faith leaders they should “pray to get everybody out to vote for one specific person.”

“And we can’t be, again, politically correct and say we pray for all of our leaders, because all of your leaders are selling Christianity down the tubes, selling the evangelicals down the tubes. And it’s a very, very bad thing that’s happening,” Trump said.

Follow Kate Scanlon (@kgscanlon) on Twitter and Facebook.

Want to leave a tip?

We answer to you. Help keep our content free of advertisers and big tech censorship by leaving a tip today.
Want to join the conversation?
Already a subscriber?