Former President Donald Trump told Christian conservatives on Monday that they will "make a comeback like just about no other group" if he wins the 2024 presidential election.
Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee for president of the United States, delivered a pre-recorded message to the Danbury Institute's Life & Liberty Forum on Monday. The Life & Liberty Forum was one of several events that took place as part of the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana.
In his remarks, which lasted almost two minutes, Trump expressed gratitude to the attendees for their "tremendous devotion to God and to country" and their "tremendous support of me."
"I hope I've earned it because we've done things that nobody thought were possible to have gotten done," he said.
"These are difficult times for our nation and your work is so important," he added. "We can't afford to have anyone sit on the sidelines. Now is the time for us to all pull together and to stand up for our values and for our freedoms."
Trump told the crowd not to vote Democrat because "they're against religion; they're against your religion in particular."
Reiterating that "you cannot vote for Democrats," he insisted that "you have to get out and vote."
"We have to defend religious liberty, free speech, innocent life and the heritage and tradition that built America into the greatest nation in the history of the world," he said. "I know that each of you is protecting those values every day, and I hope we'll be defending them side-by-side for your next four years."
Trump assured Life & Liberty Forum attendees that "these are going to be your years because you're going to make a comeback like just about no other group."
"I'll be with you side-by-side" he said, urging religious leaders "to get their incredible people that love them so much and respect them so much ... out to vote."
The Danbury Institute was launched earlier this year by a coalition of leading churches, Christians and organizations to revive an effectual Christian worldview in a country increasingly sympathetic to the "sexualization of children, abortion on demand, and the infringement of religious liberty."
The organization describes itself as "committed to truth and virtue in a world that validates absurdity as normal and ridicules what 10 years ago was taken for granted." The organization identifies "the practice of abortion" as "the greatest atrocity facing our generation today" and condemns it as an example of "sacrifice on the altar of self."
After the U.S. Supreme Court's overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022, Trump has faced criticism from pro-life advocacy groups for suggesting that abortion laws should be left to the states and pushed back against the idea of enacting federal laws to restrict abortions to earlier phases of pregnancy.
Many pro-life organizations have condemned Trump's position as inadequate.
In addition to maintaining a steadfast opposition to abortion, the Danbury Institute has slammed the "rampant efforts to 'trans' our youngest generation." The group highlighted its belief that "God is the author of life and that he alone determines gender."
In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2023, Trump vowed to "revoke every Biden policy promoting the chemical castration and sexual [mutilation] of our youth and ask Congress to send me a bill prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states."
The 2024 presidential election is less than five months away. The RealClearPolitics average of polls asking voters who they plan on supporting in the 2024 presidential election, based on surveys taken from May 28-June 9, shows Trump leading Biden by 0.5% in a two-way race.
In a five-way race in which voters have the option to choose between Trump, Biden, independent candidates Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Cornel West, and presumptive Green Party nominee Jill Stein, Trump's lead grows to 2 points. The RealClearPolitics "no toss-up" map, which forecasts how each candidate will perform in the Electoral College based on polls conducted in each state, shows Trump would win 312 electoral votes while Biden would capture 226 electoral votes if the election were held today.
