White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah said Monday that President Trump does not agree with a controversial pastor’s claim that Jews are going to hell.
“I haven’t seen those remarks, but obviously those aren’t remarks that the president agrees with,” Shah said at the daily White House press briefing.
Shah was specifically responding to Dallas megachurch leader Robert Jeffress’ remark that adherents of various religions will go to hell for not holding a specific view of Jesus. Jeffress said a prayer Monday at the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.
In a 2010 lecture, Jeffress said: “God sends good people to Hell. Not only do religions like Mormonism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism — not only do they lead people away from God, they lead people to an eternity of separation from God in hell.”
Shah said he didn’t know how Jeffress was invited to the Embassy opening, but that “I think that he has a longstanding involvement with public officials.”
In a separate exchange at the daily briefing, Shah more broadly distanced the White House from controversial religious leaders connected to the embassy opening, including Israel’s chief Sephardic rabbi, Yitzhak Yosef, who called black people monkeys in a March sermon, and pastor John Hagee, who in a 1990s sermon called Adolf Hitler an instrument of God.
Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, both of whom are Jewish, received a blessing from Yosef, while Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, attended the embassy opening and gave a benediction.
“I don’t have any readout on how they became involved with these events,” Shah said. “All I’ll say is those specific views that you outlined, if they are accurate reflections of what was said, wouldn’t be embraced by this White House.”
The involvement of controversial religious figures in the embassy opening received attention Monday as 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a Mormon, denounced Jeffress’ involvement.
“Robert Jeffress says ‘you can’t be saved by being a Jew,’ and ‘Mormonism is a heresy from the pit of hell.’ He’s said the same about Islam. Such a religious bigot should not be giving the prayer that opens the United States Embassy in Jerusalem,” Romney said on Twitter.
