Catholic League President Bill Donahue said Democrats were alienating the religious vote with “anti-Christian” policies as former President Donald Trump sought to win over Catholics and other Christians.
“They're anti-Christian and they're pushing people away,” Donahue said in a phone interview with Democrats, citing similar comments made by former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who recently endorsed Trump. “The men I'm talking to don't even have an issue with abortion. They just feel like it doesn't speak their language anymore. The very idea of pitting men against women in sports is toilet abusing, and they think they've gone crazy.”
Donahue spoke to Fox News Digital about the Trump campaign's launch of a “Catholics for Trump” coalition, which aims to build “a nation in which the right of every individual to freely practice their religion is protected.”
“Kamala Harris hates Catholics and everything we hold sacred. We can't pretend otherwise. Her belief in our institutions, family, culture and the sanctity of all human life is the antithesis of her vision for America. Donald Trump, J.D. Vance and now RFK are the antidote to the ruling class that has destroyed our country,” Brian Burch, president of the conservative nonprofit Catholic Vote, said in a press release from the Trump campaign.
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Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump attends a Fox News town hall meeting with Sean Hannity at New Holland Arena in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, September 4, 2024. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
President Trump on Sunday celebrated the birthday of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, which the Catholic Church celebrates annually on September 8, nine months after the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8.
Biden, who is Catholic, dropped out of the presidential race in late July. Donahue said Biden's withdrawal from the race may give Harris an advantage because voters are less familiar with her policies, but it likely won't affect the Catholic vote overall.
“If Biden drops out of the race, I think it might give Harris a little bit of an advantage just because she's less well known. But if we see that Harris's views are indistinguishable from Biden's, such as the Surviving Child Protection Act, if a baby is born as the result of a botched abortion, Democrats — most, not all, but most — would argue that doctors have no obligation to save the baby. It's okay to let the baby die on the table. Most Americans are against that,” Donohue said.
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Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the American Teachers Union's 88th National Convention in Houston, Texas, on July 25, 2024. The American Teachers Union is the first labor union to endorse Harris since she announced her presidential candidacy. (Montinique Monroe/Getty Images)
As a California senator in 2020, Harris voted against the Abortion Survivors Protection Act, a bill that would have imposed penalties on health care providers who fail to care for babies born alive after botched abortions. Harris is a vocal supporter of abortion access in general, and made history with her 2024 vice presidential candidate earlier this year when she visited Planned Parenthood in Minnesota, believed to be the first time a sitting U.S. vice president has visited an abortion provider.
A pro-abortion rights demonstrator holds a sign during a rally in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on May 14, 2022. (Associated Press)
Trump won a majority of Catholic votes in the 2016 presidential election, defeating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with 52% of the vote to Clinton's 45%, according to data from the Pew Research Center. In 2020, 52% of all Catholic voters voted for Biden, while 47% voted for Trump, according to Gallup.
Donahue noted that there are stark differences in the voting behavior of practicing Catholics and baptized Catholics who no longer practice their faith, explaining that devout Catholics “have very little in common” with secular Catholics, who tend to vote Democratic, adding that the same is often true between religious and cultural Jews, and evangelical and mainline Protestants.
Biden “doesn't understand the Catholic faith,” the bishop said. “I'm not mad at him, I just think he's stupid.”
In addition to the Catholics for Trump coalition, the campaign has launched a “Faithful People for Trump” coalition to work with various faith communities to end the Biden-Harris administration's “permanently anti-faith policies,” according to the campaign's website.
“The Democratic Party and the Harris-Biden administration have waged war on Christianity, with their support for abortion up to birth, the Department of Justice targeting and imprisoning pro-life activists and the FBI attempting to infiltrate Catholic masses to spy on attendees,” Caroline Leavitt, national spokesperson for the Trump campaign, told Fox News Digital.
“Kamala and Biden also shamefully declared the holiest day in the Christian calendar 'Transgender Day of Visibility' and allowed a transgender activist to strip shirtless and expose himself on the South Lawn of the White House. President Trump will restore Christian conservative values of faith, family and freedom, end discrimination against Christians in the Harris-Biden Administration, and stand up for religious freedom as he did in his first term.”
Donahue added that the Catholic vote has historically favored Democrats up until the 1960s.
“Everybody was a Democrat. Catholics were all Democrats. That changed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, especially 1972 when McGovern ran against Nixon. People said, 'Wait a minute,' but Catholics felt homeless because the Republican Party never wanted Catholics. The Republican Party has always been the party of abortion,” he said.
George McGovern ran against President Nixon as a Democrat in the 1972 presidential election and was promoted as the “amnesty, abortion and acid” candidate just one year before the Supreme Court's landmark Roe v. Wade decision.
Pope Francis holds a censer as he celebrates Mass for Our Lady of Guadalupe (Virgin Mary) in St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican on December 12, 2018. (Photo by Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images) (Getty Images)
Fast forward to the present day, and the Republican Party has become the pro-life party: the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, President Trump praised the decision, and he is now campaigning on a platform of leaving abortion laws up to the states.
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“Abortion has become much trickier for the Republican Party since Dobbs. They lost because some of the pro-life extremists in the Republican Party said it was all or nothing, but that's a stupid proposition. We lose on that all the time. You have to make an exception, a famous exception that everyone accepts. And as the term goes on, tolerance for abortion fades, so you have to use that. So Trump was advised, and I think he was right, to not let the abortion issue get in the way because it's a losing issue for the Republican Party. And just say, 'Listen, the goal is to get rid of Roe v. Wade and let the states decide what they're going to do,'” Donahue said.
Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is embraced by U.S. President Joe Biden during a campaign event for IBEW Local 5 on September 2, 2024, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. President Joe Biden was with VP Harris at her second Labor Day event, her first campaign event since he left the Democratic ticket and Harris was confirmed as the 2024 Democratic nominee against Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump. The event was attended by members of the IBEW, United Steelworkers, AFSCME and other unions. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) (Getty Images)
Trump drew criticism from some pro-life conservatives for being a reticent Republican on abortion during the election campaign, and for saying last month that Florida's six-week abortion ban was “too short.” He later said he would vote against a Florida amendment that would legalize abortion up to the ninth month of pregnancy, and stressed that abortion laws and issues should be left to individual states to decide.
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St. Peter's Square as the College of Cardinals celebrates Mass during the opening of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Cardinals in Vatican City on October 4, 2023. The opening solemn Mass of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Cardinals began with a modern rendition of the traditional hymn “Laudes Regiae,” which invokes God's protection and blessing on the Church, Pope Francis and his bishops, the faithful entrusted to him, as well as civic leaders and all men and women. (Photo by Antonio Masiello/Getty Images) (Getty Images)
Meanwhile, anti-Catholic attacks have increased in recent years, especially after the Dobbs decision and the national coverage of an anti-Catholic FBI memo that suggested extremists were attacking the Catholic Church and targeting traditional Catholics as possible “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.” Earlier this year, the Justice Department cleared the FBI of wrongdoing in an Inspector General investigation that found the bureau had not intentionally targeted traditional Catholics.
“Many Catholics feel alienated,” Donohue said, praising the work of Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who has investigated anti-Catholic bias in the federal government.
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“A lot of them have found a new home in the Republican Party. And listen to the guys I hang out with in the Irish pub,” Donahue said. “They're all union members, many of them retired. They're all lifelong Democrats, and they're all voting for Trump. They're all voting for Trump because they say the Democrats have abandoned them.”
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