At meeting with evangelicals, Donald Trump plays up his problem among Mormons

Donald Trump kicked off his "Pastors in the Pews" meeting with evangelical Christians in Orlando on Thursday with a joke. "For evangelicals, for the Christians, for the everybody, for everybody of religion, this will be, may be, the most important election that our country has ever had," he said. "And once I get in, I will do my thing that I do very well. And I figure it is probably, maybe the only way I'm going to get to heaven. So I better do a good job." Trump dedicated about 20 minutes of his speech to vowing to scrap the Johnson Amendment so churches can engage in partisan politics, and then he made a number of allusions to Mormons.

"I'm having a tremendous problem in Utah," he said. "Utah is a different place. Is anybody here from Utah? I didn't think so." The audience laughed. No Democrat has won Utah since Lyndon Johnson (who sponsored the Johnson Amendment as a senator) in 1964, and Trump will probably get Utah's six electoral votes, though Hillary Clinton is within striking distance and knows it. In fact, Bill Clinton was in Salt Lake City at a fundraiser on Thursday night. Trump also blamed evangelicals for Mitt Romney's loss in 2012. "Honestly, you did not vote for Romney," he said. "Had you voted for Romney, it would have been much closer.... You did not vote for Romney. Evangelicals, religion, did not get out and vote. And I don't know why. Whatever the reason, I'm not sure why."

At The Washington Post, Tom Hamburger and Sean Sullivan note that some of the evangelical Christian leaders Trump was addressing "have privately expressed skepticism about Mormons," suggesting that Trump's highlighting his problems in the only majority-Mormon state is "an apparent play for support" from the white evangelicals Trump needs to turn out and vote for him.

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Mark Silk at Religion News Service doesn't tiptoe around Trump's insinuation. "White evangelicals turned out and voted for Romney at rates equal to or greater than they did for the two previous GOP presidential candidates," he said, though Trump "knows perfectly well why evangelicals might not have voted for a Mormon." And at Thursday's meeting with evangelicals, Silk added, Trump was "sucking up to them by implying that the Mormons are against him. Honestly."