Freed pastor to God: Give Trump ‘supernatural wisdom’
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Andrew Brunson, the American pastor freed from prison in Turkey, prayed over US President Donald Trump at the White House on Saturday, according to a report in The Guardian.
In response, the president asked who Brunson and his wife had voted for in the presidential election that took place weeks after the pastor’s arrest in 2016.
Brunson, who said he voted by mail, and his wife Norine, indicated they backed Trump. The president said he had known that already.
Minutes earlier, Brunson had kneeled, grasped Trump’s shoulder and asked God to grant the president “supernatural wisdom.”
“Make him a great blessing for this country,” Brunson said in the Oval Office, where he and his family gathered Saturday with Trump, administration officials, including the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and the national security adviser, John Bolton, and Republican members of Congress.
Trump said the release of Brunson after two years in Turkish custody was a “tremendous step” toward improved relations with Turkey, but he denied cutting a deal with Ankara.
“The only deal, if you could call it a deal, is a psychological one. We feel much differently about Turkey today than we did yesterday, and I think we have a chance of really becoming much closer to Turkey,” Trump told reporters during an Oval Office meeting with Brunson.
A Turkish court on Friday sentenced Brunson, who had been charged with links to Kurdish militants and supporters of a US-based Muslim cleric, to more than three years in prison but said he would not serve any further time because he had already been detained since October 2016.
The pastor’s release could signal a thaw in relations between the two NATO allies, which worsened in August after a deal to free Brunson fell apart and Trump authorized a doubling of duties on aluminum and steel imported from Turkey, helping drive the lira currency down against the dollar.
Trump did not pledge to lift the sanctions but said he welcomed an end to the “harsh relationship” the countries had over the past two months.
Trump also thanked President Tayyip Erdogan at Saturday’s meeting for helping secure Brunson’s release, despite a curt Twitter post from the Turkish leader earlier on Saturday repeating that Brunson’s release was a court’s decision to make, not his.