Just days after American Jewish organizations criticized President Donald Trump’s anti-Semitic remarks in a speech he delivered before an American Jewish organization President Donald Trump added insult to injury Wednesday. At an early White House Hanukkah celebration the President asked an evangelical Southern Baptist pastor who believes Jewish people are going to hell to deliver remarks.
Dr. Robert Jeffress is among the closest of Trump’s Evangelical Christian allies. A Fox News contributor, Jeffress regularly lauds Trump on the conservative cable channel while verbally obliterating the president’s critics.
As The New York Times has documented, Jeffress indeed believes Jews will not be saved from eternal damnation.
In a now infamous 2011 interview, Dr. Jeffress said that “every other religion in the world is wrong: Islam is wrong, it is a heresy from the pit of Hell; Mormonism is wrong, it is a heresy from the pit of Hell,” and, “Judaism, you can’t be saved being a Jew.” He also included LGBTQ people in those remarks.
Jeffress sits on President Donald Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Board and is a member of his White House Faith Initiative.
On Wednesday Trump introduced Jeffress as someone who talks “really great about me.”
Also present during Wednesday’s event were Trump defender, attorney Alan Dershowitz, New England Patriots owner Robert Craft, who was arrested earlier this year on a solicitation charge, and John Hagee, a pastor who has called Hitler a “half breed Jew” and a “hunter” who was fulfilling God’s will.
Here is the full video of today’s event.