Paula White: the pastor who helps Trump hear ‘what God has to say’ by Jessica Glenzain for The Guardian
The head of a Florida megachurch says Trump spent hours seeking advice from God on a presidential run
Paula White, Donald Trump’s spiritual adviser and personal pastor, re-enacted a moment at a private White House dinner last month which would eventually make headlines for showing the president’s hardline stance on abortion.
The evening before the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump approached the US senator Chris Coons, a Democrat and Presbyterian, about an expansion of abortion rights in New York state. The law is reviled by evangelicals like White.
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Trump thrust his face over the Democrat’s shoulder, so they were nearly cheek to cheek, and said in his ear: “So, you can do that to a baby … And that’s not a human, is it? And you have no problem?” He followed up: “Isn’t it called murder?”
Trump was “just right in his face, and I was like, ‘Whoa,’” said White, leaning over the ornate dining room table in her nearly 6,000-sq-ft home in Florida.
White runs a megachurch in Florida, and is a link between the evangelical community, which she has navigated for decades, and a president whom she describes as not speaking “Christian-ese”. Although she has evaded the constant scrutiny of some in Trump’s circle, she is nevertheless a controversial figure, who said she has regular calls with the president and ministers to his family.
That White chose to tell this story underscores why she might be useful for Trump, whose past as a Manhattan playboy with multiple marriages might not have obvious appeal to the Christian right.
Weeks after the dinner, anonymous sources told Politico about the confrontation. At least one Republican senator present denied the account, but it had already scored important points with Trump’s evangelical base – suggesting that his anti-abortion rhetoric is evidence of a private conviction, not political expediency.
