Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Bizarre Speech at Faith Luncheon Event

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

At a White House Faith Office Luncheon, Donald Trump delivered a meandering and often off-topic speech weaving from divorce jokes to trans athletes to divine intervention. Sam Stein and Andrew Egger break down the event’s surreal moments and what it says about Trump’s evolving relationship with the religious right.

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If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Ben MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hello everybody. It's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at The Bullock. I'm joined by Andrew Egger, fresh off his vacation looking rested, tan-ish. I got a lot of SPF 50 last week. Good for you. You got to preserve the longevity of the skin. Yeah.

Well, thank you for that. I appreciate that. For more skincare products, Andrew will do something special after this recording. But for this recording, we are going to be doing a little look at Trump's luncheon at the faith. What was it? A faith leaders luncheon. It was spectacular.

It was classically Trump. About I don't know, maybe two to 3% of it was faith oriented. Everything else was a classic primal stump speech. And we watched it so you didn't have to. Here's how I'll just tell the viewers how it went. I saw it. I watched it in 1.75 speed, which is the best way to watch a Trump speech. And I was just blown away at how, I mean, it's become commonplace now, but it was just

like, no pretense of religion in this thing. It was amazing. It's like anti-trans anti-democrat revealing some weird stuff about the Iran nuclear strike, talking about rich people losing their wives up, but I'm going to step back and let you do your riff and I want to hear some of the points you make and maybe we can just sort of play off of each other and decide what would the best parts were. Yeah.

The last thing you mentioned is one of the moments, and this is like a long speech, you talked for like 45 minutes. He just kind of bantered and did his bits and they were like normal Trump length at this point. Definitely. But you know, he was just feeling himself. They were all, they were all feeling it. They were having a good time.

But that, that, that bit you mentioned right at the end was maybe the most striking thing to me, which was talking about, you know, why it was so important to pass the big, beautiful bill so that the country would go into oppression so that all of the people in the audience, their wives would not divorce them. Get all these things and make the economy strong or you're gonna literally have perhaps a depression where you people so rich, so beautiful, so nice to look at will be totally busted and let's see how long your wife stays with you. You're beautiful. I said to one guy, he's a very, very unattractive man, but he's smart and he's rich. And I said, you better hope we get this thing passed because your wife will be gone within about two minutes. He said, you're right.

Like, like, like you guys, you guys got to keep bringing home the bacon or your wives are leaving you immediately. And they're all laughing it up. And it was such an evocative moment because first of all, let me back up just a little bit. This is a weird sort of event and an unusual and kind of a new thing. And I think something that's pretty fitting for this Trump White House, because they've launched this initiative that's called like the faith office, the White House faith office.

And the idea is like they've, they've got this initiative that's called like the Faith Office, the White House Faith Office. And the idea is like they've got this thing inside the White House now. He likes to talk so much about how it's inside the White House. So like faith concerns of whatever kind are like their like direct pipeline through this office to the president. But this lunch was not like a lunch of like faith leaders. It was not a bunch of like pastors or members of religious groups or things like that. This was a bunch of business leaders who donate a lot of money to or members of religious groups or things like that. That this was a bunch of business leaders who donate a lot of money to faith-based causes. So it's a different kind of guy, right?

It's like, it's not like a lot of bishops. It's like the CEO of Hobby Lobby and people like that. But they are religious figures. Right, right. And they have business leaders. And they absolutely are religious figures. And I think in a certain way, they are like more prominent religious figures.

Like this is kind of like the core of the religious figures now. And I think in a certain way, they are like more prominent religious figures. Like this is kind of like the core of the religious base now is not these people who are bringing this like religious perspective, but these people who are right wingers, and they're also religious, and they are the ones who this message is actually pitched to. So it's like, it would be kind of weird to have Trump go in and do that kind of banter to like a bunch of strongly committed like people of faith. You know what I'm saying? Would it be weird though or would it be totally in character? Billy Graham would not be super into like being told that like his wife was going to

leave him if the country, you know, and like the joke, the joke was that if the taxes were allowed, taxes were allowed to expire, they'd have a great depression again. And then people's lives would wives would leave them within a matter of weeks because they couldn't maintain their good looks. That was a little bit of a joke. Well, not even that they had good looks, but just that these people were married to them for their money. And they were like, ah, ha, ha. It's like this weird borscht belt kind of shtick.

Oh, totally. But yeah, that was one. Maybe this is my old Lib roots, but like, it was just obvious, there was no, I mean the gender wasn't even like in dispute. It was like, it wasn't that your husbands might leave you because there might be rich female CEOs in there, it was just your wives might leave you.

Yeah, and there were women in the audience. You saw that a couple of times. Yes, of course there were. But yes, it was obviously pitched to the fellas. So there was that, and then there was the, there was a whole diatribe around trans athletes that I thought was Classically faith-based. No, it was horrible and they were swimming and one girl was seriously injured

She Looked left and she saw the same girl. She grew up with Kelly in California same girls You know that young age they sort of rise to the top. She looked at the right She saw the same girls, but there was this giant standing right next to her. And he had transitioned, you probably heard this, he had transitioned. And she was, she'd never seen her before. And when the race was started,

he blew by her so fast that she suffered massive windburn. Do you have any additional thoughts on that one? Because that was really was like indistinguishable from the shtick that he'd do anywhere else. Like, it's just like, you know, like talking about like how one swim. I mean, it's weird, like because it's Trump. So it's like kind of magnetic and like weird. Like there is a charisma. He's a pretty good storyteller, except that the content is insane.

He's like talking about how like one swimmer is going on in the tree. Swimmer goes by her so fast she gets wind. There's some joke about like wind burns in the swim. Yeah. That makes sense to me. I think it was confusing running and swimming. There's a moment where he talked about Biden and the auto pen, which I guess is topical because Biden gave that interview.

We were run by an auto pen and nobody knows who used it. I think it's one of the biggest scandals, the history of our country. We were run by an auto pen. Nobody has any idea who used it, including Biden. He doesn't know. Again, you know exactly what you're doing when you're switching from Old to New Testament. You got to go to a button in the auto pen. Then he called Dems, I believe the quote is, their evil people.

The Democrat has far fewer. They're grandstanders. But you know, the one thing about them, they have bad policy. They're evil people in many ways. What was the context of that one? Just totally in passing. Like it was a he was he was talking about how Republican members of Congress give him so much grief, which is really funny, because I mean, like, we've never had a rubber stamp. So the stuff the president was ever fighting his grief at this point, they know it is such a remarkable little bubble that that he's in. But but yeah,

he's like, he's like talking about how like Thomas Massey and Rand Paul are, are, you know, going to vote against the members. And what he says is, you know, Democrats don't do that. Democrats never have it. Democrats are never in disarray and you know, they're evil people, but at least they all like get the get the assignment are all marching in the same direction. He's kind of like blowing by, but he's yes, it's just so weird that that's like, it's all just so in the water now. I mean, like we're the good guys, they're the evil guys, they're the craven people. Yeah, no, I know.

I thought about that for a little bit and I didn't want to like get too high-minded. But I do think it's worth pausing and just noting like, this is ostensibly a faith luncheon. He's like telling people that half the country's evil. And you know you kind of think about well what if the shoe were on the other foot we play this exercise all the time and I don't think it would go over particularly well if

Joe Biden had a faith luncheon was like Republicans are evil people I have a theory that Fox News might cover that one he did mention God at one point the quote I think you highlighted was you're very much into God in this room. You're very much into God in this room. And that's very nice. He did say that to them. Yeah, that's always so good when Trump talks about faith as in this like, in theory, like all these people also see him as a believer, he can he talks about himself as a believer. But like anytime he's talking about the experience of faith,

it's always like, yeah, that thing you guys get up to, which is so interesting. And he did, you know, he kept anytime he would return to his prepared remarks, he would look back down at his sheet and he'd read and there'd be some more lines about God and then he'd look back up and riff, you know, like he always does. There's this interesting thing happening here. I think the post had a piece on this. It's worth reflecting on, I think, at this juncture, which is because we're at the one year anniversary, maybe a day past of the attempted assassination of Butler, and there has been this sort of messianic interpretation of what happened that day on the right where, in the retelling,

God did come down and spared Donald Trump's life in that moment, allowed him to turn ever so slightly in the shooter mist. And Trump was recounting this story today, and he was talking about how his sons who are hunters correctly noted that the shooter was really close and probably shouldn't have recounting the story and today and he was talking about how his sons who are hunters, you know, correctly noted that the shooter was really close and probably shouldn't have missed but did and there's this kind of divine interpretation of what happened that day that does animate a lot of the right at this juncture and I haven't really like, I don't know if I appreciate it as much but it does seem to be fairly present in current discourse and it was certainly today at the luncheon. Yeah and that's the way that's the only reason that I know that there are even women in the audience right because

that was the moment at which he got a big standing ovation and the camera kind of panned back when he said you know I really think God caused that to happen so that he could put me back in this place to make America great again. Well, I believe that, and I do, I believe it that my life was saved by God to really make America great again. I really believe that. And that was kind of the key moment and the central moment for this audience. And I think like my point earlier about the change in what is driving the quote unquote religious right, who the kind of leaders are in the religious right as it exists today, it's a very different thing than just a little while ago. Back in maybe the before times when you were primarily

talking about faith leaders and religious institutions, it was more of a matter of them imposing, like having certain policy demands, that they wanted leaders that were gonna fight hard against abortion or fight against the LGBT lobby or same sex marriage or various things or fight for religious liberty, things like that. And some of that stuff is still present.

Trump didn't talk at all about LGBT stuff or abortion in this speech. He didn't talk about LGBT a little bit. He talked about the T's in the LGBTs, but yes. Yeah, that's fair. The T thing is still major and religious liberty is still there. But the primary thing that is driving this is not those issues. The primary thing is this sort of like identitarian thing where like we are the good guys because we're the Christians, we're the people of faith, the bad guys are over there. We know we're the

good guys because God is supernaturally reaching into history to protect our guy here. And so that's like the that's the force that's tying him to these people more so than like any particular policies. Let me ask you about that because you would certainly know more than than me. I don't know if I don't want to break news to you, but I'm Jewish. But the relationship with Trump and evangelical rights specifically, but I guess, you know, the religious right more broadly, my interpretation of it is that in 2016, it was very transactional, right? They thought, well, he can deliver, uh, he's speaking enough of our language

and promising enough of our priorities that, um, we can, we can support this man and certainly the selection of Mike Pence was done to at least assuage concerns. And then you flash forward eight years later and he runs as arguably the most muddied pro muddied abortion candidate in the Republican field. And he also has this thing happen to him where he's now considered so they don't care about that as much because they've, they've grown to know him and appreciate him. But then he has this near assassination happen and he becomes one of them in a way. And I feel like the relationship has really morphed into something quite different than it was. I don't know nine years ago.

Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting to like try to think about when those various inflection points happen. And for one thing, it's hard to talk about white Republican evangelicalism as one block. It's a big, wide, woolly world. It's very anti-institutional. It's all decentralized. And especially, the more decentralized it is, those are the people who like Trump disproportionately more. So it's hard to really get a beat on all those people.

I'd say there's a couple of things. One is that a lot of the people who were transactional at the beginning and like had kind of like thoughts and intention, just hard to keep like contradictory thoughts and intention over a long period of time, right? You make mental accommodations. You stop talking so much about the, well, you know, he's a conflicting person and he,

maybe there are these bad things about him, but maybe we need him for these other reasons. And you start leaning into more, well, maybe his enemies are worse. And then you start to just kind of, it just happens that you gradually come to like him personally more and more while you're living with that. At the same time, there is a new kind of sect, it's not really a strand. So yeah, like a mode of thinking among a lot of these people on the scenes that is explicitly kind of messianic that really sees him as a figure in history that's here to bring about, you know, like God's ends on earth and not just in kind of like the normal way that Christians think all rulers are in a certain sense, but like

here's the anointed one. And I think that at Butler a year ago, it's not like this was a big, it's not like he'd had problems with evangelicals before that, right? I mean, he already has the nomination locked up by Butler. There was no evangelical pushback, like at all during the primary. He won Iowa, despite the fact that like a few of the old kingmakers might have preferred for faith-based voters to go for Ron DeSantis or something like that. He cleaned them up.

He did fine. And he was talking in messianic terms at his campaign rallies. He was playing these crazy videos where like God picked Trump is like basically the idea. So God made Trump. I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle the deep state and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. But Butler is I think the moment that kind of catalyzes that for really the whole kind of like voting base where this is the way that they all talk now. And it's been that way ever since. And then you can say what you say at luncheons like this and get away with it because they

truly believe. All right, my man, thank you for doing this. I'm so glad that we got in touch with each other before the show to coordinate shirts. I just think that the viewer experience is going to be so much elevated when they decide which one is pink and which one is magenta and why are they dressed like this? Andrew Egger. You actually are tan. You look great, Sam. Thank you.

I appreciate that. I'm not going to reveal my skin routine. You can do that on a follow-up video. Andrew Egger, host of Morning Shots. Me, Sam Stein, managing art of on a file video. And rigger host of morning shots me Sam Stein managing out of the bulwark. Thank you guys for watching this both appreciate it.