WASHINGTON — President Trump said Thursday that his relationship with religion had “changed” after a pair of failed assassination attempts last year, as he advocated at the National Prayer Breakfast at the Capitol for Americans to “bring God back” into their lives.
“I really believe you can’t be happy without religion, without that belief,” Trump said at the Capitol. “Let’s bring religion back. Let’s bring God back into our lives.”
At the breakfast, a more than 70-year-old Washington tradition that brings together a bipartisan group of lawmakers, Trump reflected on having a bullet coming within a hair’s breadth of killing him at a rally in Butler, Pa., last year. “It changed something in me, I feel,” he said.
“I feel even stronger,” he continued. “I believed in God, but I feel, I feel much more strongly about it.” Speaking later at a separate prayer breakfast sponsored by a private group at a hotel, he said, “it was God that saved me.”
The president, who’s a nondenominational Christian, called religious liberty “part of the bedrock of American life.”
An hour after calling for “unity” on Capitol Hill, Trump struck a more partisan tone at the second event across town, announcing that he was forming a commission on religious liberty, criticizing the Biden administration for what he called “persecution” of believers for prosecuting anti-abortion advocates.
He also said he would name his new attorney general, Pam Bondi, to lead a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias.”
And Trump took a victory lap over his early administration efforts to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion programs and to limit transgender participation in women’s sports.
“I don’t know if you’ve been watching, but we got rid of woke over the last two weeks,” he said. “Woke is gone-zo.”
Trump and his administration have already clashed with religious leaders, including him disagreeing with the Rev. Mariann Budde’s sermon the day after his inauguration, when she called for mercy for members of the LGBTQ+ community and migrants who are in the country illegally.
Vice President JD Vance, who is Catholic, has sparred with top U.S. leaders of his own church over immigration issues. And many clergy members across the country are worried about the removal of churches from the sensitive-areas list, allowing federal officials to conduct immigration actions at places of worship.
Madhani writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Holly Meyer in Nashville, Tenn., and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.