Trump said that church just “made me feel good, even at a young age, it made me feel good.” Nevertheless, he said, “Sometimes you couldn’t get out of there fast enough, I have to be honest with you. A lot of it depended on who was there and who was your teacher.”
Trump’s family later started attending Marble Collegiate Church in Midtown Manhattan, which Rev. Norman Vincent Peale pastored. Peale is the author of “Trump told White that Peale was an “unbelievable speaker, who loved God.”
“The other person that I found incredible” was Billy Graham, said Trump, because “my father would take me to Yankee Stadium to see [him]…Billy Graham was great. He had an influence. He had a real influence. And it’s nice to see [his son] Franklin Graham doing so well. He’s doing so many things for so many people.”
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Trump joked about recently receiving a letter from Franklin Graham asking him to refrain from using foul language during his rallies and speaking engagements. “Sometimes I’ll use a little bit, not hard foul, but soft foul,” Trump said. “We call it soft foul, but, you know, to emphasize something about somebody’s capabilities, or whatever I might be talking about.”
Trump shared that he told Franklin that he would “try. And I did try.” Trump then joked that he hasn’t done that well. Sometimes you “need a little bit of something, a little spice, a little spice to juice them up a little bit,” Trump told the faith leaders. He said that Franklin’s letter made him laugh and that Trump told him, “I’m not sure you’re right about this Franklin, but I’m going to give it a shot.”
An emotional White asked Trump about the day of the first assassination attempt against him. “Share just a tiny bit about God in your life now,” she prompted. “Because we all have these journeys of faith. We have ups, we have downs, we fall, we get back up. But you’ve consistently had this deep respect and honor of God in your life, and that day, I think, showed the world when you knew that God saved you for a purpose.”
Trump responded by sharing what one of his son’s told him on the phone after he had been shot. “You know,” Trump recalled Don Jr. saying. “Somebody was protecting you up there, because it’s almost impossible for even a bad shot to miss you from that distance.”
Trump shared that his son told him that it was a “miracle” he was alive and that “God has to have done this, because it’s impossible.”
Trump then said that the doctor at the hospital told him that he was the “luckiest guy.” According to Trump, the doctor said, “I’ve been doing this for 25 years. That I’m even talking to you is a miracle.”
“I would like to think,” Trump said, “that it’s because [God] wants our country and maybe the world to be helped. God wants our country to be helped.”
, the National Faith Advisory Board hosted their Inaugural National Faith Summit, which featured an exclusive interview with former President Donald Trump.){kind=link}