A public call for mercy from an Episcopal bishop to the President of the United States has ignited a firestorm of outrage among Donald Trump supporters.

On Tuesday, Episcopal Bishop of Washington, D.C., Mariann Edgar Budde spoke directly to Trump in a national prayer service following his inauguration on Monday, saying, “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” including undocumented immigrants and LGBTQ+ children.

Related

The world sees Elon Musk’s gesture as a Hitler salute even if many Americans deny it
“A Hitler salute is a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute,” one German paper’s headline read.

The prayer sent Trump and his allies off the deep end.

LGBTQ+ news you can rely on

Keep track of the ongoing battle against bias and for equality with our newsletter.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

“The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater,” the president posted to his Truth Social platform late Tuesday night. “She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart. She failed to mention the large number of illegal migrants that came into our Country and killed people. Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions. It is a giant crime wave that is taking place in the USA.”

Trump’s allies on the right took his cue and piled on with open contempt for the Episcopal priest in menacing posts and commentary.

Appearing on The Rachel Maddow Show, Budde said she’d received hate messages verging on death threats from Trump’s MAGA supporters. “I’ve had people wish me dead,” she said during the interview. “I’m not sure they’ve threatened to kill me, but they seemed to be pleased if I met my eternal destiny sooner rather than later.”

The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh said that “hell exists for people like Mariann” and called her “exhibit A for why women should not be pastors, priests, or bishops,” displaying his usual, open misogyny in a catalog of abusive responses compiled by Media Matters. 

“She would rather engage in emotional blackmail and blasphemy than preach the word of God,” Walsh said. Trans kids, he added — mocking her call for compassion — “fear for their lives because they’ve been exploited and brainwashed by wicked witches like Mariann.”

On The Charlie Kirk Show, priest and conservative commentator Calvin Robinson went further, claiming that Budde was “breaking the Church law, by being at the pulpit in the first place,” and accused her of lecturing Trump on “her leftist, radicalist, extremist politics, which just goes to show the mess the Church is in at the moment.”

“‘A woman should be silent in church,'” Robinson said, twisting Scripture to attack the Episcopal priest.

Walsh’s colleague at The Wire, Michael Knowles, stooped equally low, calling Budde a “fake priestess lady” and her sermon “heretical.”

“It is no wonder that a woman who would mistake herself for a bishop might also confuse a foreign national for an American citizen, or even a little boy for a little girl.”

Fox host Jesse Watters called Budde “the new face of the resistance: woke bishops and insufferable blue hairs,” while right-wing podcaster Steven Crowder termed Budde’s sermon “satanic.” 

Trump’s favorite evangelical, Franklin Graham, who led a prayer at Trump’s swearing-in ceremony, called Budde a socialist with an activist “LGBTQ+ agenda.”

Trump is “not purposely out there lying, misleading people, but this lady is, she’s misleading people, and she was wrong,” Graham said.

Loathsome White nationalist podcaster Stew Peters summed up the MAGA pile-on in a post to Telegram, asking, “Why does the Episcopal Church allow bull-d*kes as bishops?”

Maddow told Budde her sermon was “the illustrated dictionary definition of what it means to speak truth to power.”

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.