In an interview with Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera on Thursday, Donald Trump took aim at Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his purported lack of faith, The Independent reported.
“I’m in favor of the Bible,” Trump said. “I’m in favor of Second Amendment. Biden is against all of those things. He’s against oil, he’s against the Bible — essentially against religion — but against the Bible, and he’s against the Second Amendment.”
“That may be a little harsh, him being against the Bible,” Rivera responded.
In the same interview, Trump said he does not believe he is trailing Biden in the polls, despite many sources that suggest otherwise.
As reported by Raw Story , CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale noted that Biden has been practicing Catholicism all his life. Conversely, Trump publicly identified as a Christian for the first time in 2015 when he began his presidential run. Notably, the real estate mogul’s stance on abortion has changed over the years, and he has only become staunchly pro-life in recent years.
Per Business Insider , recent polling suggests that Trump is losing ground with his white evangelical Christian voters, who have been some of his strongest supporters over the years. In a piece for The Atlantic , Adam Serwer argued that Biden does not arouse the same opposition in this demographic as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama did before him.
“Biden’s electability pitch was not just about being moderate relative to the rest of the primary field, but also about being a straight, Christian, white man, one whom Republicans would find difficult to paint as a dire threat to America as conservative white voters understand it.”
As The Inquisitr reported in June, Trump’s allies were allegedly concerned about Biden’s rising support from evangelicals. Notably, the former vice president appears to be following in Obama’s footsteps by making concrete attempts to reach out to the religious demographic. Reports suggested that this strategy helped double Democratic backing from the demographic by three points in the 2004 election.
Reports claim that one-third of Trump’s support in 2016 came from his evangelical base. Recent Public Religion Research Institute data suggested that the real estate mogul has lost 20 points of backing from this voting group since March, fueling worries from the leader’s allies about his chances against Biden.
Although Business Insider suggested it’s unlikely that Trump’s religious supporters will completely abandon him, the publication claimed that their recent wane in enthusiasm for the president is significant. Notably, Pew Research Center data from 2019 showed that 77 percent of Caucasian evangelical Protestants self-identify as either Republican-leaning or Republican.