Evangelical conference lauds Trump as 'Good Samaritan'

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

From the stage at the 2019 Faith & Freedom Coalition (FFC) “Road to Majority Policy Conference” at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, President Donald Trump was praised as a “Good Samaritan,” with the jubilant crowd exuberantly continually crying out, “Four more years!”

During his sixth speaking engagement at the prominent conservative Christian grassroots event, Trump addressed the ecstatic crowd in a speech that lasted over an hour, when he listed off his administrations many accomplishments and executed goals over his past three years in the White House.

Hitting crucial Christian issues

One of the major efforts Trump discussed was his support of the Right to Try bill that he signed into law last year so that individuals afflicted with life-threatening medical conditions can be provided with experimental drugs yet to be tested by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) so that patients don’t die before they have a chance to use them.

Natalie Harp – one of the first to benefit from the legislation – shared with the crowd how her medical condition progressed to stage 2 bone cancer after doctors made an error that resulted in her almost imminent death, and how Trump’s signing of the bill essentially saved her life.

“You know, we all know the story about the Good Samaritan, [and] what you don’t know is that I was that forgotten person on the side of the road,” Harp spoke to the crowd, according to The Christian Post (CP). “First, the medical establishment – they came by and they saw me there. So they wrote prescriptions for opioids and they walked on. Next, the political establishment – they saw me there. They stopped just long enough to come over and tell me how to die, how to speed up my death so I could somehow die with dignity.”

Unlike former President Barack Obama – who aggressively pushed the culture of death’s Right to Die, abortion and euthanasia agenda – Trump has unapologetically advocated the biblical precept of the sanctity of human life, and Harp strived to make this known to all in attendance.

“But then, an outsider – my good Samaritan, President Donald J. Trump – he saw me there and he didn’t walk by. He stopped,” the cancer survivor continued. “And for every single one of us, he gave up his own quality of life so we could live and work and fight with dignity because he believes in survival of the fighters, not the fittest.”

She then saluted the Republican commander-in-chief for keeping his 2016 campaign promises.

“So, Mr. President, I have to say, you have made a lot of promises to us, and you have kept every one of them,” Harp told Trump from the stage. “So now we are going to make you this promise: Just as you fought for us, forgotten America will never forget how you saw us on the side of the road, and you walked over and you picked us up, and you made us great again. Now we are going to fight for you, Mr. President. God bless you.”

A standing ovation and, “Four more years!” emanated from the crowd as Harp left the stage and Trump took the podium while commenting on her radically improved condition.

“She was in a wheelchair. She was in bed. It was so incredible,” Trump told the crowd, according to CP. “They were actually preparing her for death. Because of Right to Try, they had a medicine that wouldn’t have been approved for years – it was looking very good.”

He explained how pharmaceutical companies have blocked Right to Try for decades because they didn’t want the deaths of people who were far advanced in their diagnoses as terminally ill blemishing their records and hurting their subsequent sales.

“We made a second record that people don’t see,” Trump added. “You know it is unfair to them, but they didn’t want it on their record because people were very far along, unfortunately. But cases like Natalie have not even been that unique. We have saved many lives with what is going on. But also, I guess that is probably also the best test for the medicine to see whether or not it is good. It has worked so well, and we are so proud of it.”

On to the border …

Immigration – the most important issue for 2020, according Republican polls – was also addressed by Trump, who stressed the fact that even though Democrats and the mainstream media have played up poor conditions and the separation of children from parents of illegal border-breaking immigrants, illegals are treated better now than they were under former President Barack Obama … who was the one who built the border facilities and started the separation policy.

“We are taking care of them – much better than President Obama took care of them,” Trump said from the stage in the nation’s capital, noting how the mainstream media refused to cover this at the time and give any negative narrative about his predecessor. “I can tell you that- much better. He was the one that had separation. I am the one that keeps them together.”

CNN National Security Analyst Sam Vinograd, who served in Obama’s National Security Council, said that the Obama administration separated children from their parents to protect them from traffickers.

“When President Obama separated children from their families – or from adults – it was for their protection. It was if there was a risk of trafficking or other kind of harm that might have been incurred,” Vinograd explained to CNN in April . “But even if he did do that, why is Donald Trump saying that two wrongs make a right? Again, Obama wasn’t wrong, but so he’s saying that because something happened under President Obama, he’s repeating it and upping the ante."

This account was corroborated in a government report, and Trump made it clear Wednesday that Democrats and the media are doing all they can to use the border crisis to their advantage – a dilemma that pro-immigration liberals in Congress created by refusing $5 billion in border wall funding.

In 2016, a Senate report found that although the Department of Health and Human Services was trying to protect children, it actually gave traffickers custody of around a dozen minors after failing to conduct background checks for those claiming to be caregivers or guardians,” CP noted. “As thousands upon thousands of migrants from all across the world are being detained at the U.S. southern border, Trump told the crowd that Democrats are to blame for the migrant crisis because they don’t want to close legal loopholes that incentivize child smuggling.”

Trump again insisted that blame should rightly be put on Democrats for the border mess – not him.

“Democrats are solely responsible for the humanitarian crisis because they refuse every single effort to shut off the magnets of child smuggling,” Trump argued. “As long as coyotes believe they can use children to evade our laws, children will continue to be endangered. If Democrats [who control the House of Representatives] had a shred of moral decency [on the immigration issue, they would immediately change immigration laws].” 

He explained how criminals and other lawbreakers from south of the border have been encouraged by Democrats to break into the U.S. to take advantage of the system – to Democrats’ political gain.

“How do you have thousands of thousands of children?” Trump posed. “We have them because the law incentivizes criminals to bring children up and use those [children] to get people into our country. Can you ever imagine this? We are the only country in the world that has this.”

The president went on to insist that the Mexican government – with its recent move to mobilize 15,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border that was spurred by Trump’s tariff threat – is doing more to end the border crisis than Democrats, who he said are making drug and smuggling cartels rich by opposing his tough-on-immigration plans.

“People are saying they are making as much money or more money with people now as they do with drugs,” Trump explained. “These are rough people, these are bad people, and we can solve it so easily. They've got to fix the loopholes and fix asylum.”

He also explained why – against Democrats’ wishes – he cut millions of foreign aid dollars to the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

”We are close to an agreement with Guatemala, which you will appreciate it,” Trump assured. “They are doing much better for us now than when we paid them. When we paid them, they would just take our money and laugh at us. Now, they will do anything to get that money back. If they do a great job, I think maybe we will do that.”

Trump appears to be saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars that will no longer go into funding the countries – and saving them billions more in the future that would go into accommodations and other benefits that illegal immigrants from those nations would eventually absorb if they were allowed illegal entry into the U.S.

“A State Department official said $432 million in aid allocated in fiscal year 2017 will continue, while $185 million would be withheld until the U.S. determines that Central American governments have taken sufficient steps to reduce migration,” CBS News informed . “The approximately $370 million allocated for fiscal year 2018, meanwhile, will be suspended entirely. The official said the administration will work with Congress to reprogram these funds to other ‘foreign policy priorities.’"

Kudos for taking action

A number of other triumph from the Oval Office over the past three years were mentioned by the president.

“In his speech, Trump praised other gains his administration has made with the support of Christian conservatives,” CP’s Samuel Smith noted. “Those include the nomination of two Supreme Court justices and over 140 federal judges, which he said is the highest percentage of judicial appointments of any president other than George Washington. Trump also boasted about pro-life and religious freedom advancements, the passing of criminal justice reform last year and Supreme Court victories.”

But he told the crowd and conservatives across America to beware of complacency by not voting in the 2020 election, which could end up handing things over to the Democrats, who he said would destroy the gains his administration has fought so hard to make for evangelicals over the past few years.

This could all change very quickly,” Trump cautioned. “We have done things that nobody would have thought possible. We have done things that are so good and so righteous but so, so fragile. But the wrong person in office … could change it very quickly.”

A true champion of evangelicals

FFC Executive Director Ralph Reed emphasized how Trump’s 83-percent job approval rating among American evangelicals is unprecedented.

“[Trump’s 83-percent approval is the] highest ever recorded – I just want to know who the other 17 percent are,” Reed told the crowd, according to CP. “You see it here today at this conference – this is the largest Road to Majority Conference ever. This ballroom is packed, and we had to turn away 750 to 1,000 people who stood in a line that snaked all the way to the street.”

He said Trump has boldly gone where no other president has gone by not giving in to the pressures of his politically correct detractors.

“The truth is, we have been at this project now for 30 or 40 years – we have had some great leaders,” Reed added. “There has never been anyone who has defended us and fought for us, who we have loved more than Donald J. Trump. Despite the critics and the media … despite the carping from the peanut gallery and the unfair attacks, not only on him but on us and our community, questioning our faith and our integrity because we stand with this good man, the reason why [we support Trump] is because we have seen his heart and he is everything he promised he would be and more.”