'Christians don’t need trump': Religious group leads attack on president as support drops in polls

‘He does not value faith. Not really,’ super PAC claims

A new bipartisan Christian super PAC that is aiming to weaken support for Donald Trump among evangelical voters has criticised the president in a new ad, as he continues to lose ground in nationwide polls.

The ad comes from the new super PAC, Not Our Faith, which will spend six figures on television and digital adverts targeting evangelical and Christian voters in Pennsylvania and Michigan in the final weeks of the presidential campaign, according to the Associated Press.

The new ad titled, Not Our Vote. Not Our Faith, begins with the narrator saying: “Donald Trump could have upheld faith in America. He could have lifted up what is good and true about our faith.

“Instead he has used Christianity for his own purposes. He does not value faith. Not really,” as a clip of the president outside St John’s Episcopal Church is shown.

Mr Trump was widely criticised earlier in the year, after he had his photo taken in front of the church minutes after peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters were cleared from outside the White House so that he could walk there for the photo opportunity.

Mr Trump has repeatedly praised conservative Christian groups in speeches and interviews over the last four years, and has attempted to position Democratic nominee for president Joe Biden as being against Christianity.

During a rally for evangelicals earlier this year, Mr Trump said that his “administration will never stop fighting for Americans of faith,” while at an event in Ohio in August, Mr Trump said that Mr Biden, who is catholic, is “against God”.

The narrator continues: “Christians don’t need Trump to save them. The truth is that Trump needs Christians to save his flailing campaign.”

On Tuesday, the University of Southern California’s presidential polling tracker, which collates weekly responses from 6,000 Americans nationwide, showed that Democratic challenger Joe Biden is now than 12 points ahead of Mr Trump.

The president received a majority of the white evangelical Christian vote in 2016, but a poll released by the Pew Research Centre on Tuesday showed that his support among Christians has also fallen.

The poll found that Mr Trump’s support among white Catholics has dropped by 7 per cent since July, while it has fallen by 6 per cent among white Protestants.

Although support for the president from white evangelical Protestants is still overwhelmingly in his favour, the amount of evangelicals telling Pew they would vote for him has dropped from 83 to 78 per cent since August.

The narrator finishes: “Mr President, the days of using our faith for your benefit are over. We know you need the support of Christians like us to win this election, but you can’t have it.

“Not our vote. Not our faith.”