By AAMER MADHANI Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday that his relationship with religion had “changed” after a pair of failed assassination attempts last year, as he advocated at the National Prayer Breakfast at the Capitol for Americans to “bring God back” into their lives.
Trump joined a more than 70-year-old Washington tradition that brings together a bipartisan group of lawmakers for fellowship.
“I really believe you can’t be happy without religion, without that belief,” Trump said at the Capitol. “Let’s bring religion back. Let’s bring God back into our lives.”
Trump reflected on having a bullet coming within a hair’s breadth of killing him at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year, telling lawmakers and attendees, “It changed something in me, I feel.”
“I feel even stronger,” he continued. “I believed in God, but I feel, I feel much more strongly about it. Something happened.” Speaking later at a separate prayer breakfast sponsored by a private group at a hotel, he remarked, “it was God that saved me.’
He drew laughs at the Capitol event when he expressed gratitude that the episode “didn’t affect my hair.”
The president, who’s a nondenominational Christian, called religious liberty “part of the bedrock of American life” and called for protecting it with “absolute devotion.”
Trump and his administration have already clashed with religious leaders, including him disagreeing with the Rev. Mariann Budde’s sermon the day after his inauguration, when she called for mercy for members of the LGBTQ+ community and migrants who are in the country illegally.
Vice President JD Vance, who’s Catholic, has sparred with top U.S. leaders of his own church over immigration issues. And many clergy members across the country are worried about the removal of churches from the sensitive-areas list, allowing federal officials to conduct immigration actions at places of worship.
In 2023, the National Prayer Breakfast split into two dueling events, the one on Capitol Hill largely attended by lawmakers and government officials and a larger private event for thousands at a hotel ballroom. The split occurred when lawmakers sought to distance themselves from the private religious group that for decades had overseen the bigger event, due to questions about its organization and how it was funded.
An hour after calling for “unity” on Capitol Hill, Trump struck a more partisan tone at the second event across town, announcing that he was forming a commission on religious liberty, criticizing the Biden administration for “persecution” of believers for prosecuting anti-abortion advocates.
He also said he would name his new attorney general, Pam Bondi, to lead a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias.”
And Trump took a victory lap over his early administration efforts to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion programs and to limit transgender participation in women’s sports.
“I don’t know if you’ve been watching, but we got rid of woke over the last two weeks,” he said. “Woke is gone-zo.”
The Republican president made waves at the final prayer breakfast during his first term. That year the gathering came the day after the Senate acquitted him in his first impeachment trial.
Trump in his remarks then threw not-so-subtle barbs at Democratic then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, who publicly said she prayed for Trump, and Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who had cited his faith in his decision to vote to convict Trump.
“I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong,” Trump said then in his winding speech, in which he also held up two newspapers with banner headlines about his acquittal. “Nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you,’ when they know that that’s not so.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first president to attend the prayer breakfast, in February 1953, and every president since has spoken at the gathering.
Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas are the honorary co-chairs of this year’s prayer breakfast.
In 2023 and 2024, President Joe Biden, a Democrat, spoke at the Capitol Hill event, and his remarks were livestreamed to the other gathering.
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AP writers Holly Meyer in Nashville, Tennessee, and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.