Trump begins at the Florida megachurch by saying that there are "thousands of people outside trying to get in." As usual, I would appreciate your help if you are outside and can let me know if this is true.
Trump says Charlie Kirk would be a "very good pastor." He then baselessly claims that all of the department stores were not saying Merry Christmas before he was president but are now saying Merry Christmas.
Trump positions himself among believers, against people supposedly opposed to faith and family: "Our traditions and our values are timeless and immortal. They don't know what they're missing. Right? They don't know what they're missing. Our faith is needed now more than ever."
Trump, at a church, says his re-election will be a "monumental victory for faith and family, God and country, flag and freedom." That is a new or almost-new line.
Trump says he kept his promise to "get rid of this horrible Johnson Amendment." He has not repealed the Johnson Amendment, though he has declined to enforce it.
Trump did add later that "we're going to put it through and make it permanent, too," at least implicitly conceding that hasn't happened. He suggested he might do this during his 16 or 20 years in office, then said he tells this joke to drive media crazy.
Trump says maybe the media will be more honest because they're in church.
Trump complains about headlines that say he lied. He says that sometimes he's just a little off and other things are subjective -- "most of this I could argue with them."
Trump tells his story about how he's lost all his friends, and now he has no friends, because everyone is so respectful of the office that they call him "sir" and "Mr. President."
Continuing to be in church, Trump repeats various of his usual false claims. He says, for example, that Obama left him 142 judicial vacancies (104, in large part because of McConnell) and that presidents usually leave none (they regularly leave dozens).
Trump tells a sir story about how someone proposed that a 69-year-old be appointed a judge, but he realized that doesn't work well, so he's appointed young judges like a 38-year-old in Texas who went to Harvard and maybe Oxford and will be a judge for 50 years.
Trump makes fun of Buttigieg's name, uses a disparaging nickname about Buttigieg's appearance, and says Buttigieg is "trying to pretend he's very religious," wrongly claiming Buttigieg started talking about his faith about "two weeks ago."
So far, Trump's pitch to Hispanic evangelicals has centered on 1) judges; 2) abortion; 3) what he claims is a Democratic campaign against religion and people of faith.
Trump is doing a version of his usual complaint about not getting sufficient credit for criminal justice reform. "The only one they didn't thank was me. But that's the way it goes...you're welcome...but that's okay." He adds, "It's so easy to say thank you."
Trump expresses "unwavering solidarity with our Jewish brothers and sisters" over the recent anti-Semitic attacks. He says, "The love by evangelicals, Christians, for Jewish people and for Israel is incredible. It's incredible."
Trump's pitch: "I may not be perfect, but I get things done...and they're good things."
Trump claims that people "hate Jewish people," then says, "I won't name them. I won't bring up the name of -- Omar, Tlaib, AOC. I won't bring that name up. Won't bring it up. I will not bring it up. But where do these people come from?"
Trump repeats his eternal nonsense about the US visa lottery, saying, "Do you think their governments put their best people in the lottery?" Governments do not put people in the lottery. People put themselves in the lottery.
Trump falsely claims, again, that he got "the Bay of Pigs Award." He got an endorsement from a Bay of Pigs veterans' group, not an "award." He habitually turns endorsements and other non-award things into "awards."
Trump: "America was not built by religion-hating socialists. America was built by church-going, God-worshipping, freedom-loving patriots."
Trump says the National Mall, where he held his 4th of July event, is the same place where Martin Luther King gave his "great speech," and: "It was about the same crowd. It was about the same crowd." (I think he means the size of the two crowds.) (I will fact check this.)
To be clear, this is the president at a church in 2020 bragging that the event he invented had just as big a crowd as the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Trump says that when it was rainy and windy for his 4th of July event, he said, "God, why did you do this to me? I wanted to give everybody such a nice show."
Trump claims he got the votes of "84%" of "church members," or something. Exit polls found him getting 80+% of the *white* *evangelical* vote (independent of church attendance). For Catholics and non-evangelical protestants, it was much lower. pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016…
