Donald Trump says Hillary Clinton has treated Catholics and evangelicals so poorly that they should not vote for her.
“She’s been terrible in what she’s said and her thoughts towards Catholics and to evangelicals,” the Republican nominee for president said in an interview with the Catholic Eternal World Television Network on Thursday.
{mosads}“Frankly, if any Catholic votes for Hillary Clinton, you know, I would say if I were a Catholic, I wouldn’t be talking to them anymore,” Trump told “The World Over” host Raymond Arroyo. “She was mocking evangelicals also.
“So you’d say, ‘Why would an evangelical or a Catholic, almost, you could say, anybody of faith, but in particular Catholics and evangelicals because they were mentioned, why would they vote for Hillary Clinton?”
Trump said the Clinton campaign’s hostility toward religion is well documented in hacked emails from campaign chairman John Podesta’s account earlier this month.
“It’s her staff but I think it’s her,” he said of his Democratic rival. “That’s her speaking, believe me. This is a top person in this campaign. I think it reveals her, yes. That’s her staff. That’s her thinking. She should apologize. I think she has to do more than apologize.”
WikiLeaks earlier this month began releasing allegedly stolen internal emails between Clinton’s staff.
One 2011 exchange finds Jennifer Palmieri, who is now Clinton’s communications director, commenting about Christianity.
The chain also includes Podesta and John Halpin, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.
The correspondence discusses conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch and NewsCorp Chairman Robert Thomson.
Halpin says the pair, both of whom are Catholic, like their faith because of “systemic thought and severely backward gender relations.”
“I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable, politically conservative religion — their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelical,” Palmieri responded.
Trump’s campaign manager said earlier this month the conversation shows the Clinton camp’s “hostility towards religious liberty.”
“We call on Hillary Clinton to apologize and to fire the staff who have engaged in this vicious, anti-Catholic bigotry,” Kellyanne Conway said during an Oct. 12 conference call with reporters.
Dozens of religious leaders, meanwhile, signed an Oct. 13 statement calling the comments “demeaning and troubling.”
“Podesta’s refusal to raise any objection makes him equally party to this bigotry,” they added.