Speaking on his 700 Club TV show this Tuesday, evangelical leader Pat Robertson had some critical words for President Trump regarding his threats to deploy the military against protesters and his disparaging of state governors in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
“It seems like now is the time to say, ‘I understand your pain, I want to comfort you, I think it’s time we love each other,'” Robertson said.
“But the president took a different course,” he continued. “He said ‘I am the president of law and order’ and he issued a heads-up. He said, ‘I am ready to send in military troops if the nation’s governors don’t act to quell the violence that has rocked American cities.’ Matter of fact, he spoke of them as being ‘jerks.’ You just don’t do that, Mr. President! It isn’t cool!”
Robertson was partly referring to a Monday phone call Trump had with the nation’s governors, where he told them that “most” of them were “weak,” adding that they “have to arrest people.”
Watch an excerpt of Robertson’s comments, via Right Wing Watch:
Pat Robertson tells Trump that his response to the George Floyd protests "isn't cool." pic.twitter.com/vDBYxxUp10
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) June 2, 2020
Other notable conservatives are voicing displeasure with Trump’s behavior as of late, namely a handful of GOP senators who spoke out this Tuesday about Trump’s photo op in front of a church.
“There is no right to riot, no right to destroy others’ property … but there is a fundamental — a Constitutional — right to protest, and I’m against clearing out a peaceful protest for a photo op that treats the Word of God as a political prop,” said Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse.
Also speaking out was South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate.
“Obviously, if your question is, should you use tear gas to clear a path so the president can go have a photo-op, the answer is no,” Scott said, claiming that he didn’t the incident himself.
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said it was “painful to watch peaceful protesters be subjected to tear gas in order for the president to go across the street to a church that I believe he’s attended only once.”
Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma called Trump’s walk to the church “confrontational,” adding that it “distracted from his important message in the Rose Garden about our national grief, racism, peaceful protests and lawful assembly.”
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