Trump blasts magazine that called for his removal

WASHINGTON >> President Donald Trump blasted a prominent Christian magazine on Friday, a day after it published an editorial arguing that he should be removed from office because of his “blackened moral record.”

Trump tweeted that Christianity Today, an evangelical magazine founded by the late Rev. Billy Graham, “would rather have a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns, than Donald Trump as your President.”

The magazine “has been doing poorly and hasn’t been involved with the Billy Graham family for many years,” Trump wrote. He questioned whether the magazine would prefer a Democratic president “to guard their religion.”

Some of his strongest evangelical supporters, including Graham’s son, rallied to his side and against the publication. Their pushback underscored Trump’s hold on the evangelical voting bloc that helped propel him into office and suggested the editorial would likely do little to shake that group’s loyalty.

Rev. Franklin Graham, who now leads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and prayed at Trump’s inauguration, tweeted Friday that his father would be “disappointed” in the magazine. Graham added that he “felt it necessary” following the editorial to share that his father, who died last year after counseling several past presidents, voted for Trump. The president thanked Graham for the disclosure. Christianity Today “represents what I would call the leftist elite within the evangelical community. They certainly don’t represent the Bible-believing segment of the evangelical community,” Graham told The Associated Press.

He wrote on Facebook: “Is President Trump guilty of sin? Of course he is, as were all past presidents and as each one of us are, including myself.”

In a statement issued by the Trump reelection campaign, Cissie Graham Lynch, an advisory board member of Women for Trump and Franklin Graham’s daughter, said she was “outraged” to see the publication invoke her grandfather’s “name to support their personal political agenda.”

The magazine’s circulation is estimated at 130,000. In the editorial titled “Trump Should Be Removed from Office,” Editor-in-Chief Mark Galli wrote that Democrats “have had it out for” the president since he took office.

But Galli asserted that the facts “are unambiguous” when it comes to the acts that led to the president’s impeachment this week by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.

Trump “attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents,” Galli wrote, referring to former Vice President Joe Biden. “That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.”