‘God squad’ holds sway at WH

WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Donald Trump said at his inauguration that he had been “saved by God.” Now he appears to be returning the favor with an increasingly conservative, religious focus in his second term as US president.

The three-times-married billionaire signed an executive order on Friday to open a “Faith Office” at the White House, led by the televangelist Paula White, Trump’s so-called spiritual advisor.

A day earlier Trump had unveiled a task force under new Attorney General Pam Bondi to root out what he called the “persecution” of Christians in the United States.

The Republican has also appointed several cabinet members with links to Christian nationalists, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

All of this comes despite the fact that Trump has long had an ambiguous relationship with religion.

Unlike his predecessor Joe Biden, a devout Catholic, Trump rarely appears in Church. He was confirmed into the Presbyterian church but said he was “non-denominational.”

Then there are the sexual scandals — and a criminal conviction in a porn star hush money case — and the selling of $60 Trump-branded Bibles on the campaign trail.

Yet evangelical Christians continued to back him in the 2024 election, just as they did in 2016.

During his first term, Trump certainly dabbled with religion.

He posed with a Bible outside a church near the White House after security forces cleared out “Black Lives Matter” protesters, and had prayer meetings in the Oval Office with evangelicals.

But now Trump claimed to have had what amounts to a religious awakening.

The 78-year-old said that he had become more religious since he narrowly escaped death when a gunman’s bullet hit him in the ear at an election rally in Butler, Pennsylvania last year.