"Well, you know, it's amazing because we were, you know, we had already booked you today and we knew the president was going to be giving a speech on religious liberty,” Posobiec said. “I did not expect him to go as hard as he did this morning. He went all the way in, he went absolutely in the paint and said, America must return to Christ.”
Posobiec said that Trump, who “doesn’t come from the religious background,” connected faith to the rise in crime and social decay. “Here he is saying, look, we need to bring faith back into America for America to get out of the situation we're in. It was nothing short of incredible.”
Basham said she believes Trump’s tone has shifted in recent weeks and especially after the assassination attempt in 2024. “After what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, I think we have seen a transformed president here,” she said. “I don’t know how you can look at those events and not see Providence’s hand on him. It clearly is.”
She added, “We know that God ordains leaders. He ordains when empires rise and fall and, whether you like it or not, he ordained that Donald Trump would be president of the United States.”
Basham argued that Trump is now focused on both restoring order and reaffirming moral grounding: “We need a government that does what Romans 13 tells us—that the government should terrorize the wicked for the benefit of the innocent. And for a long time, we have not seen that in our political leadership,” she said. “On the other side, we also have that famous John Adams aphorism that our republic cannot function unless we have a moral religious people. And I think that Trump clearly sees that, too.”
Basham was also critical of major Christian leaders who have not rallied behind Trump’s message. “What’s a little disappointing to me is how little support he has gotten from some of the mainstream, really well-known pastors who you think would be celebrating this effort,” she said. “Those who sit at the top of some of our most elite institutions, organizations like the National Association of Evangelicals or Christianity Today, they opposed him. And I don’t see how they can help be anything but shamed when they look at the positions he’s taking now.”
Trump, speaking at the Museum of the Bible, tied the issue directly to violent crime. He pointed to the recent stabbing death of Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee killed on a Charlotte light rail train.
“We’re all people of religion, but there are evil people,” Trump said. “And we have to confront that. I just give my love and hope to the family of the young woman who was stabbed… by a madman.”
“A lunatic just got up and started,” Trump added. “It's right on tape. Not really watchable because it's so horrible, but just viciously stabbed. She's just sitting there.”
"So they're evil people," Trump said. "We have to be able to handle that. If we don't handle that, we don't have a country."
