CNA Staff, Mar 1, 2024 / 17:00 pm (CNA).
Former President Donald Trump this week reiterated his claim that President Joe Biden is persecuting Catholics, saying Biden has “weaponized” the Department of Justice (DOJ) against them.
In an interview with Sean Hannity on Feb. 29, the former president asserted that “Christians and Americans of faith are being persecuted like nothing this nation has ever seen before.”
“I don’t know what’s going on with the Catholics,” Trump said, saying that Biden has “weaponized the FBI and the DOJ to go get his political opponents and many other people.” The most recent comments echo ones Trump has made on the campaign trail, including in December when he said Biden is “going violently and viciously after Catholics” by “sending undercover spies” and sending “SWAT teams to arrest pro-life activists.”
Trump, who is not Catholic and whose views differ from those of the Church in a number of key areas, has frequently accused Biden, a professed Catholic who also disagrees with numerous Church teachings, of persecuting his fellow Catholics.
Under Biden, the DOJ has brought numerous charges against peaceful pro-life demonstrators for violations of the federal FACE Act, which prohibits “violent, threatening, damaging, and obstructive conduct intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with the right to seek, obtain, or provide reproductive health services.”
In recent years perhaps the most notable FACE Act charge was made against Mark Houck, a Pennsylvania father of seven who made national headlines when he was arrested by armed authorities at his home on Sept. 23, 2022, and eventually cleared of all charges.
Trump and others who allege Biden is targeting Catholics cite a now-retracted FBI document that appeared to suggest an FBI investigation into “radical traditionalist” Catholics and their possible ties to “the far-right white nationalist movement.”
The leaked FBI memo, dated Jan. 23, 2023, claims that racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists will likely become more interested in “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology” within the next 12 to 24 months “in the run-up to the next general election cycle.” In response to an inquiry from CNA at the time of the leak, the FBI said it would remove the document because “it does not meet our exacting standards.”
After the memo was leaked, the U.S. bishops denounced it as “troubling and offensive.”
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Are the scare quotes there for any reason other than this is a story about Trump?
I’m not sure about the reason behind the quotation marks in the headline but I absolutely believe persecution has been a real thing under the current administration. And it doesn’t just target Catholics but anyone in their crosshairs who retains a biblical view of family and marriage.
I suspect the quotes simply indicate that the word “persecuting” was actually used by Trump and is not an editorial interpretation.
Thank you for clarifying that Mr.Olson.
Trump trolling for votes with the victimization card, by appealing to Blacks and Catholics, VERSUS Biden trolling for votes by appealing to the “gay” lobby, and the Abortion industry.
Meanwhile, the half-truth of January 6, under the earlier Pelosi regime pinning the tail on the Donkey (I mean, the Elephant), while dismissing the inseparable and enabling insurrections less than a year earlier in Minneapolis, Portland, and in Seattle also with a few fatalities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest). Had these “insurrections” not happened without consequence, January 6 would have been unthinkable.
In non-amnesiac history, real insurrections were our Civil War and, at the same time in China, the Taiping Rebellion which claimed some 20 million lives. Politics and disturbances of all kinds are downstream of culture. Culture, what’s that?!? The culture is marked by border-free disintegration into abortion, euthanasia, fentanyl, pandemic sexual perversion, prime-time hyperbole-parties, and lip-syncing media talking heads.
It’s time to replay the 1976 flick “Network” with at least one media guru awake enough (not “a-woke”!) to holler “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
The incidents in Portland, Minneapolis and Seattle were more riots than insurrections. January 6 was not so much a insurrection, as a riot encouraged by the President to interfere with an orderly transition of power. Would that be an “insurrection” it was a rather incompetent attempt. Trump was impeached and should have been convicted and prevented from running again rather than prosecuted.
The fact that Trumpwill likely be the Republican nominee speaks volumes about a Party that is nominating a man who seemed to have no problem with his Vice President zmike Pence lynched by a mob.