On Friday, President Joe Biden stated that March 31 would be observed as Transgender Day of Visibility, as it has been for the past 15 years.
But conservative Republicans objected to the fact that this coincided with Easter, a Christian holiday that is determined by the lunar calendar and includes pagan customs. MSNBC’s Morning Joe took some time Monday to clarify the situation.
MSNBC’s Jonathan Lemire reported on the GOP criticism that emerged after the proclamation, including from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and former President Donald Trump:
Those same Republicans also took exception to the White House’s guidelines for the annual Easter egg roll, asking for decorated eggs not to include “any questionable content, religious symbols, overtly religious themes, or partisan political statements.” But those guidelines, well, those have been in place for nearly 50 years. Katty, it is just one bad faith argument after another.
Before turning to MSNBC contributor Katty Kay, Lemire also pointed out:
President Biden is a Catholic of deep faith. He, of course, went to Easter mass yesterday. No word if Donald Trump went to any sort of religious ceremony. But it’s another issue where facts don’t matter, where Republicans are leaning in on the imagery that Trump is perhaps sent from God, he can hawk his own Bible, and no one seems to care… We have the lead story in The New York Times this morning is about how Trump is leaning into images of evangelical Christianity in his appeal to supporters. The Biden White House is simply following tradition. But yet that’s not breaking through.
Kay delved deeper into the Trump campaign portraying their candidate as a “messianic figure” — while he prepared to stand trial in his criminal case involving hush money for a porn star to conceal their affair — at the same time his support among white Evangelical Christians is “softening”:
There is some indication in polling that, Donald Trump’s support amongst white evangelical Christians may be softening. Yes, he’s still getting 68 percent of the white evangelical vote in the latest Fox News poll, but that is down from 73 percent in October. And look at the pushback that he got against that Bible sale from some evangelical leaders, Christian leaders. And I just wonder whether sometimes Donald Trump does something that even they find too difficult, and that softening of the support that you’re seeing, I think that’s going to be, I mean, it’s still a large chunk of evangelical Christians, and they still see him as a kind of a messianic figure. But it’s interesting that it’s down a bit, and I think it’s going to be an interesting trend to watch over the next six months how much they stay with him if he carries on doing things like this.
Watch the video above via MSNBC.
