Crude Don slap at evangelicals

Talked trash on ’16 Iowa loss

Then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump railed against “socalled Christians” and “pieces of s--t” evangelicals who supported Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in the 2016 Iowa caucuses, according to a forthcoming book.

At the time, allies of Cruz had been making hay of Trump’s flub before an audience at Virginia’s Liberty University, a conservative evangelical college, in which he botched a question about his favorite Bible verse and replied that it came from the book of “Two Corinthians,” rather than “Second Corinthians.”

“The laughter and ridicule were embarrassing enough for Trump,” Tim Alberta writes in his new book, “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism,” an excerpt of which was reported by the Guardian.

“But the news of [Family Research Council President Tony] Perkins’ endorsing Ted Cruz, just a few days later, sent him into a spiral. He began to speculate that there was a conspiracy among powerful evangelicals to deny him the GOP nomination,” Alberta adds.

“When Cruz’s allies began using the ‘Two Corinthians’ line to attack him in the final days before the Iowa caucuses, Trump told one Iowa Republican official, ‘You know, these socalled Christians hanging around with Ted are some real pieces of s--t.’ ”

Despite Trump’s defeat by Cruz in Iowa, the now77-year-old scored convincing victories in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries as a springboard to the Republican nomination — and, eventually, to the White House.

Now the runaway frontrunner for the GOP nod in 2024, Trump further slighted evangelicals during his term of office, using “even more colorful language” to do so, Alberta points out.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, 45, who polls show is in a distant second place to the thrice-married real estate billionaire and former reality TV star, on Tuesday won the endorsement of “Iowa Caucus kingmaker” Bob Vander Plaats, a prominent Christian evangelical leader in the Hawkeye State.

“What we saw in 2022, the supposedly ‘red wave,’ really only happened in Florida and in Iowa,” Vander Plaats told Fox News’ “Special Report.”

“Gov. DeSantis took a reliable toss-up state in Florida and made it completely red . . . by being a bold and courageous leader,” the CEO and president of the Family Leader conservative group added.