Trump on US embassy move: ‘I receive more praise from evangelicals than from Jews’
“I tell you what, I get more calls of thank you from evangelicals, and I see it in the audiences and everything else, than I do from Jewish people,” said the U.S. president. “And the Jewish people appreciate it, but the evangelicals appreciate it more than the Jews.”
(June 25, 2018 / JNS) U.S. President Donald Trump has received tremendous support from Jews for his decision to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but even more so from evangelical Christians, according to an interview with the U.S. leader by talk show host Mike Huckabee.
During a June 18 interview that aired over the weekend with former Republican governor of Arkansas and U.S. presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee on his show on the TBN Christian network, Trump told Huckabee that it “makes me feel good” that evangelical Christians are so pleased with his decision.
Huckabee responded that the revelation is “not a surprise” because evangelicals are “people of the book” who “believe you kept a promise, were fulfilling really a 3,000-year-old commitment to recognize Jerusalem as the capital.”
Huckabee was in attendance for the grand opening of the new U.S. embassy in the Arnona neighborhood of Jerusalem on May 14.
“It was a campaign promise; I was going to keep it,” Trump said of the controversial move, which was immediately followed by the embassy moves to Jerusalem of Guatemala and Paraguay, as well as a commitment by Honduras and pledges of interest from other countries to do the same.
Trump added that it was not until dozens of leaders from around the world called to pressure him not to move the embassy to Jerusalem that he finally understood why previous American presidents had not made good on their promises to relocate the facilities.