Bishop Confronts Trump During Inauguration Sermon: NPR

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde arrives as President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance look on during the Prayer for the Nation service at Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday.

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During a prayer service at Washington’s National Cathedral on Tuesday, the Episcopal bishop of Washington directly confronted President Trump while he and Vice President JD Vance sat in the front row.

“Let me make one last prayer, Mr. President,” Bishop Mariann Budde said in his 15-minute homily. “Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy on the people of our country who are afraid. now, Budde said as she appeared to look towards the President.

“There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some fearing for their lives.”

This came just a day after Trump issued a list of orders, including one which has a section dedicated to “recognizing that women are biologically separate from me,” one who declared a national emergency at the country’s southern border and issued several others related to immigration, including a trying to do away with birthright citizenship.

Budde challenged these orders and much of the rhetoric that has surrounded them.

“The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who work in poultry farms and meatpacking plants; who wash up after we eat in restaurants and work night shifts in hospitals, they – they may not be citizens or have proper documentation But the vast majority immigrants are not criminals, they pay taxes and are good neighbours,’ said Budde.

Budde has long criticized Trump, and made headlines for doing so in 2020 when Trump took a photo outside a clothed St. John’s Episcopal Church with a Bible. Law enforcement had used chemical agents to pay off racial justice protesters, and Budde was outraged. The That was reported by the Washington Post at the time Budde said, “All he has said and done is to incite violence… We need moral leadership and he has done everything to divide us.”

After the service on Tuesday, Republican U.S. Representative Mike Collins of Georgia posted a video clip of X of Budde’s sermon, along with the text: “The person who preaches this sermon should be added to the deportation list.”

Towards the end of his sermon, Budde said, “I am asking you, Mr. President, for mercy on those in our community whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those fleeing from war zones and persecution in their own countries to find compassion and welcome here, Our God teaches us to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land.

Asked about the service on Tuesday, Trump told reporters at the White House that he, “did not think it was a good service.”