TEL AVIV – President Donald Trump said that evangelical Christians have been more appreciative of his decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem than American Jews have been.
In an interview with Mike Huckabee at the White House broadcast on TBN Christian broadcast network, Trump said he received more thanks from the large evangelical community than American Jews, who historically vote Democratic. According to recent surveys, three-quarters of evangelical Christians support Trump.
“I tell you what, I get more calls of thank you from evangelicals, and I see it in the audiences and everything else, than I do from Jewish people,” Trump said. “And the Jewish people appreciate it, but the evangelicals appreciate it more than the Jews.”
“It’s not a surprise though, Mr. President, because evangelicals are people of the book,” Huckabee said in response. “And they believe you kept a promise, were fulfilling really a 3,000-year-old commitment to recognize Jerusalem as the capital.”
“I think it’s a nice thing to say because it really affects Jewish people in theory more, but as you say people of the book, people of the Bible,” Trump said. “But the evangelicals really appreciate it and that makes me feel good.”
Huckabee, who is the former governor of Arkansas and identifies as an evangelical, attended the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem last month.
“It was a campaign promise, I was going to keep it,” Trump said of the embassy move. He added that until he was petitioned by world leaders not to go through with the move, he never understood why presidents before him had continued to sign the waiver keeping the embassy in Tel Aviv.