President Donald Trump is struggling to keep support coming from evangelicals after many conservative Christians criticized his decision to remove U.S. forces from Syria because of fears of what could happen to Israel, religious persecution, and the threat to civilians in Kurdish-held regions near the Turkish border.
Several of the people who have supported the president through other controversies are condemning his move, including televangelist Pat Robertson, who declared Trump is "in danger of losing the mandate of heaven," reports Politico.
Family Research Council leader Tony Perkins called the troop removal "inconsistent with what the president has done" previously, and even former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a staunch supporter of Trump's and the father of his former press secretary Sarah Sanders, called Trump's decision a "huge mistake."
"I was concerned about it, but feel more confident after talking with POTUS and seeing the results of the cease-fire and the economic sanctions," Huckabee wrote in an email to Politico.
A longtime Trump friend whose name was not reported in the article called the Syria decision a "danger zone" for Trump's evangelical support base.
"What Trump keeps talking about is the land, and the money, and the deal-making," said the friend. "The moral compass is missing, and he's off-balance here with evangelicals."
Trump can't allow that support to drop, the friend added.
"If he's going to win in 2020, he has to be north of the 81% [of white evangelicals] he won in 2016," the friend said. "I'm not suggesting that the polling is all of a sudden going to show that his support is plummeting because of Syria. But if it stays stagnant, he's a one-term president."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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