Reuters photo.
WASHINGTON: Cloaking himself in religion for the second day in a row, President Donald
Trump
sought to seize the moral authority to justify his hard line against demonstrators protesting the killing of another black man in police custody and at the same time mobilize his religious conservative base.
Trump signed an executive order on international religious freedom on Tuesday and travelled to the Saint John Paul II National Shrine, where he and the first lady laid a ceremonial wreath and observed “a moment of remembrance”.
A day earlier, he had held up a Bible and posed for photos in front of a historic church across from the White House that had suffered fire damage from protesters. He strode through Lafayette Park to the church after authorities forcefully broke up peaceful protests there.
Trump’s religious outreach marked his latest efforts in a series of overtures to mobilise conservative voters of faith, particularly the white evangelical Christians who are among his most loyal supporters.
The furious, politically charged response to his gestures from less pro-Trump fa