‘I ask you to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now’
A bishop delivered a powerful speech to Donald Trump urging him to have mercy on LGBTQ people and migrants targeted by his administration’s policies.
During an inaugural prayer service yesterday, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, said: “I ask you to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now”.
Rev Budde added: “There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and Independent families, some who fear for their lives.”
“The people who pick our crops, and clean our office buildings, who labour in poultry farms and meat packing plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants, and work the night shifts in hospitals”, she said, “they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”
She added: “They pay taxes and are good neighbours.”
In reference to Trump’s immigration policies, Budde said: “I ask you to have mercy Mr President on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.”
“Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land.”
Between 2017 and 2021, the previous Trump administration separated at least 3,900 children, some only a few months old, from their parents under what it called a “zero-tolerance” policy against people crossing the US-Mexico border illegally.
Trump sat with a stern, irritated expression beside Melania Trump and Vice President JD Vance during Budde’s speech.
Online, people have praised the Reverend’s courage for “speaking truth to power”.
Trump told reporters, “I didn’t think it was a good service,” and in a video on X, Georgia Representative, Mike Collins, suggested: “The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list”.
In an unhinged rant on Truth Social, Trump attacked the Reverend stating: “The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater”.
“She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart…. She and her church owe the public an apology!”
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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