President Trump and Republicans this week slammed a plea for “mercy” by Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde during a Tuesday morning prayer service, calling it unjustified and inappropriate. But she is unfazed by their denunciations.
With Trump seated in the first pew of Washington National Cathedral, alongside first lady Melania Trump, Vice President Vance and second lady Usha Vance, Budde asked the new administration to “have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.”
The Episcopal leader for the Washington area said most immigrants, even those without proper documentation, were good neighbors, and the vast majority are “not criminals.” She added that “there are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives.”
President Trump and Vance listened, with Vance twice slowly turning his head toward his wife, who didn’t acknowledge the gestures.
Returning to the White House, Trump told reporters that Budde’s service was “not too exciting, was it?” Later, in the early hours of Wednesday, Trump fumed at Budde on Truth Social.
“The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater. She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way,” Trump wrote, adding that her service was “uninspiring,” “nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.”
“She is not very good at her job! She and her church owe the public an apology!” he wrote.
Budde’s sermon followed Trump’s quick Inauguration Day actions and reaction to them.
Calls and text messages to a crisis line operated by the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention organization, rose by 33 percent on Inauguration Day, the group said this week, after jumping an unprecedented 700 percent on Nov. 6, the day after Trump was elected.
On Monday, during his first hours in office, Trump signed executive orders on transgender rights and immigration, with one of the latter category being blocked by a federal judge on Thursday. His sweeping executive order on gender, which pledges to defend women from transgender “ideology,” directs the federal government to recognize only two sexes, male or female.
Trump touted the order via teleconference Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, adding that his administration will no longer allow transgender athletes to compete on women’s sports teams, and transition-related surgeries, which he claimed have become “the rage,” will from here on out “occur very rarely.” He did not say what restrictions on gender-affirming surgeries will look like or specify an age range or limit.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Wednesday that Budde had chosen to “weaponize the pulpit,” adding that her remarks “were egregious, and she should apologize to President Trump for the lies that she told.”
“Everybody there was shocked and mortified,” said Leavitt, who attended the service with other Trump administration officials.
In interviews with Time magazine and NPR, Budde said she does not “hate” Trump, as he said in his Truth Social post, but she also has no plans to apologize to him or anyone else.
“I am not going to apologize for asking for mercy for others,” said Budde, the first woman to serve as spiritual leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, a position she has held since 2011.
Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who campaigned heavily against transgender athletes last year, called Budde a “woke Bishop” in a post on the social platform X. Moreno, who immigrated to Florida as a child from Colombia, said Budde’s plea for mercy for immigrants without legal status was an “insult to all of us who came to this country the right way.”
Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) said Budde, born in New Jersey, “should be added to the deportation list.”
Others’ attacks were more personal.
Fox News’s Sean Hannity said Budde, whom he described as a “so-called bishop,” “made the service about her very own deranged political beliefs with a disgraceful prayer full of fearmongering and division.” Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire, a conservative media company, said Budde is a “fake bishop” and mocked her appearance.
“Who knew Satan wore granny glasses and stole his haircut from John Denver?” said Fox News personality Greg Gutfeld.
“Trump has changed,” Gutfeld later remarked on his late-night show. “I mean, he didn’t even call her ugly.”
During an appearance on ABC’s “The View” on Wednesday morning, Budde, 65, said she was not surprised her remarks had become politicized.
“How could it not be politicized?” she said. “One of the things I caution about is the culture of contempt in which we live that immediately rushes to the worst possible interpretations of what people are saying. That’s part of the air we breathe now.”
Speaking to Time on Wednesday, Budde said she does not feel personally at risk over Trump’s targeting her, “although people have said they do wish me dead, and that’s a little heartbreaking.”
“It was a pretty mild sermon,” Budde said of Tuesday’s service. “It certainly wasn’t a fire and brimstone sermon. It was as respectful and as universal as I could, with the exception of making someone who has been entrusted with such enormous influence and power to have mercy on those who are most vulnerable.”
