To many, she is a heretic, a born-again huckster who tells followers they will receive wealth and material blessings if they accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior. It’s a message that appeals to many supporters of Donald Trump, who on Thursday announced he was appointing Paula White, his longtime spiritual adviser, to head up a White House Faith Office.
Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., an annual, bipartisan, interfaith gathering, Trump said White will assist in the fight against a perceived anti-Christian bias. Attorney General Pam Bondi will lead this new task force.
“The mission of this task force will be to immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at the DOJ, which was absolutely terrible, the IRS, the FBI and other agencies,” said Trump, adding, “anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society” will be fully prosecuted and vowed he will “move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide.”
Trump has increasingly cast himself as a man of God placed in the Oval Office by divine providence after surviving two assassination attempts while campaigning for a second term in 2024. His followers see him as their great protector, much like Cyrus the Great, who conquered the Neo-Babylonian Empire, liberating the Jewish people from years of captivity.
But the thrice-married face of material excess is far from devout, telling religious leaders in 2015 that he had never sought forgiveness from God.
“I think if I do something wrong,” Trump told attendees at the Faith Leadership Summit in Iowa. “I think, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.”
During his political career, Trump has often cast himself as a victim —- of overzealous prosecutors, woke warriors, establishment Republicans, the media and other assorted antagonists. Many of his white, evangelical supporters have followed his lead, claiming the Joe Biden White House and cultural elites in the media and academia tried to silence them for their beliefs.
White, among others, has helped encourage this cult of victimhood, telling followers in 2019 that some states have “already passed” laws declaring the Bible as “hate speech” and insisting America’s survival hinged on the confirmation of Trump’s judicial nominees. (No such laws exist.)
It’s not the first falsehood trafficked by White, who latched onto Trump’s unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats. In her opening prayer before the real estate mogul’s 2024 campaign kickoff, White, 58, declared “demonic confederacies” had aligned in opposition to the eventual Republican nominee, as reported by The Hill.
Her relationship with the Black community dates back to the earlier part of the century when she boasted of serving as a spiritual adviser to baseball star Darryl Strawberry and entertainer Michael Jackson. She forged strong ties with Black Christians through her mentor, Bishop T.D. Jakes and, according to Christian Post in 2017, the congregation at her church, New Destiny Christian Center in Apopka, Florida, was predominantly Black.
Many in the church said they felt alienated by White’s support of Trump, and subsequent comments by the charismatic leader have raised eyebrows. In 2019, she claimed that the president’s opponents “operate in sorcery and witchcraft” and ultimately will be “overturned by the superior blood of Jesus.” Black Lives Matter, she said, was “anti-Christ” and a “terrorist organization.”
White, who once prayed for the angels of “Africa and South America” to reverse the 2020 election, told the Universal Peace Federation in 2023 that she worked with Nelson Mandela to end apartheid in South Africa.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation’s Razia Saleh told the Post the foundation had no record of White ever working with the civil rights icon.
White’s duties with the White House Faith Office remain unclear, though Trump said the need to protect the religious liberty of Christians is his priority.
“If we don’t have religious liberty, then we don’t have a free country. We probably don’t even have a country,” Trump said
“While I am in the White House, we will protect Christians in our schools, in our military, in our government, in our workplaces, hospitals, and in our public squares, and we will bring our countries back together as one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all,” he said.
