The New York Times on Monday published a column by Buzzfeed senior political writer McKay Coppins that accused leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump of tapping into “the same visceral force that animated the witch trials in Salem and set fire to the crosses in front of black churches.”
Coppins, who has a contentious relationship with Trump, argued in the column that Trump, a Presbyterian, has often used religion to a negative effect in order to attack political opponents and rally up his own supporters, many of them white evangelicals.
“By focusing his rhetorical firepower largely on minority faiths that have grown in size and influence in the United States over the past 60 years — displacing the old Protestant monopoly — Mr. Trump is stoking a tribal hostility toward those who worship differently, one that hucksters have seized on throughout history to infect and co-opt America’s faith communities,” Coppins wrote. “It is the same visceral force that animated the witch trials in Salem and set fire to the crosses in front of black churches.”
Trump’s campaign has become largely been defined by a proposal to monitor Muslims in America and a call to halt immigration of Muslims into the country.
He has also taken none-too-subtle digs at the religious convictions of his GOP rivals.
In October, as Ben Carson’s poll numers rose to tie Trump nationally and in early primary state Iowa, Trump said at a campaign rally, “I don’t know about” Seventh Day Adventists.
Then in December, at another rally, Trump said of Ted Cruz, “not a lot of evangelicals come out of Cuba, in all fairness.”
A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign did not return a request for comment from the Washington Examiner media desk.
