Paula White, President Trump’s Evangelical spiritual adviser, took center stage this Tuesday night at his reelection rally held at the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida to give the opening prayer before Trump announced his bid for reelection to thousands of supporters.
She asked the crowd to join hands and pray, and in the middle of the prayer interrupted it to speak.
“Now, I need you to really go with me here,” she began as the crowd cheered.
“Right now, let every demonic network who has aligned itself against the purpose, against the calling of President Trump, let it be broken, let it be torn down in the name of Jesus!” she continued. “I declare that President Trump will overcome every strategy from hell and every strategy from the enemy, every strategy, and he will fulfill his calling and his destiny.”
White is a wealthy televangelist who is controversial even in Christian circles. However, she has a large online following. She spreads messages of unwavering support for all of Trump’s policies to her Facebook following of more than 3 million regularly.
White has helped Trump to get widespread evangelical support by championing his immigration policies and saying that God has blessed all of his plans. On Tuesday, Trump repeated his 2020 plans, which include mass deportations.
As the spiritual adviser to the president is not an official position or title, it is unclear how much influence she truly has on Trump. However, those close to Trump have made it clear that the pair have a close relationship. According to White, they connected when Trump reached out to her after seeing some of her sermons on TV. He called her and told her that she has the “it” factor.
White has defended him relentlessly throughout his presidency. She has even loosely used hypotheticals about Jesus to justify Trump’s immigration policies, which have separated refugee families and are holding them in conditions many have compared to concentration camps.
“I think so many people have taken biblical scriptures out of context on this, to say stuff like, ‘Well, Jesus was a refugee.’ And yes, he did live in Egypt for three and a half years,” she once said. “But it was not illegal. If he had broke the law, then he would have been sinful and he would not have been our Messiah.”
Watch video of White at Tuesday rally below:
Featured image via screen grab/CNN
