Miranda Devine: Egomaniacal Bishop Budde’s woke rant just makes her another liberal pawn aiming to cut down Trump
Jaws dropped throughout Washington’s National Cathedral when an egomaniacal Episcopal female bishop sabotaged the Inaugural Prayer Service with a left-wing rant from the pulpit about illegal migrants and LGBT issues, aimed directly at President Trump, who was sitting politely in the front pew.
What the Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, 65, was supposed to do Tuesday, at the historical inter-faith service, was to bless the incoming administration and pray for God’s guidance and protection for the nation.
She should have been fostering unity, not exacerbating false divides and making the ceremony all about her.
Addressing the new president, Budde asked for his “mercy” for illegal migrants and “transgender children” who “are scared now” that he is in office.
“There are gay, lesbian and transgender children . . . who fear for their lives,” she intoned in a saccharine parody of a Christian sermon.
She patronizingly described migrants as “the people who pick our crops [and] wash the dishes.”
And about the victims?
But her performative empathy did not extend to Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, Rachel Morin or the other women and girls raped and murdered by illegal migrants, and in whose names the Trump administration is securing the border.
Nor did she seem to care about the susceptible children abused and irreversibly mutilated on the altar of a gender ideology that no Christian church should support.
The president, first lady, Vice President JD Vance and their families retained admirable composure during the grossly inappropriate lecture, but displeasure was written on every face.
Donald Trump curled his lip slightly and looked away with scorn.
Melania Trump narrowed her eyes and glared at the bishop without blinking.
If looks could kill, Budde would have expired on the spot.
Vance cocked his head in disbelief and glanced over at Trump to take his cue on how to handle the affront.
Other Trump family members exhibited stoic disdain, with mouths agape or a slight shake of the head.
They’re used to the social cruelty of Washington by now.
“It was a joyous event, and she just dropped a t-rd in the punchbowl,” one unimpressed member of the congregation said of Budde.
If she wants to be a politician, Budde should hand in her robes and go run for Congress.
She would fit right in with The Squad, as is obvious from her Trump-deranged outbursts in 2020 when she joined George Floyd protests wearing an oversized mask and declared: “We need to replace President Trump.”
Trump knows exactly who she is, writing in a Truth Social post Wednesday: “The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater. She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way.”
But the National Cathedral buzzkill was an unpleasant reminder of the sly resistance that faces the second Trump presidency, despite the emphatic mandate he has been gifted by the American people, in every electoral metric and demographic.
This time, however, a battle-hardened Trump will be less magnanimous, and he has surrounded himself with formidable warriors, like Treasury Secretary-nominee Scott Bessent, who will not allow resistance activists to lie about the president and derail his America First agenda.
Bessent became increasingly incensed as he sat in the cathedral listening to Budde that morning, saying she just “proved herself to be a narrow-minded, out-of-touch elitist with little regard for facts.”
No words of ‘peace’
He points out that Trump will bring peace to the world, as he did the first time.
“Where was her prayer for peace? Where was the thank you for bringing the [Gaza] hostages home and [vowing to] end the Ukraine war?”
Budde “chose selfishly to steal the spotlight and air her personal litany of political grievances at a joyous event,” Bessent wrote in a statement provided exclusively to The Post.
“After a morning of music and blessings, she chose to hijack the day . . . She decried the ‘outrage industrial complex’ but appeared on CNN just a few hours later to further politicize a traditionally religious event.
“She regurgitated the tired trope of the fears of the LGBTQ+ and immigrant communities [yet] on November 5th, President Trump received record support from the gay and lesbian community and shattered voting records with Hispanic voters.
“Her reductionist views were shocking as she described illegal immigrants as those who ‘pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in our poultry farms and meat packing plants [and] wash the dishes’ . . .
“More importantly, the Bishop showed no empathy to the American citizens who have seen their communities overrun, their children die from cross-border drugs and their wages crushed by illegal immigration.”
As for Budde’s implication that Trump is anti-LGBT, Bessent will be the highest-ranking openly gay official in the history of the United States when he is confirmed by the Senate, indicative of the fact that “President Trump is devoid of prejudice when it comes to sexual preference” and advocates a return to a “merit-based” society.
“Does [Budde] believe God frowns on meritocracy?”
While she didn’t specifically mention it, Budde’s comments about “transgender children” (an abusive fiction that no Christian church should encourage) must allude to President Trump’s brilliant executive order declaring that there are only two sexes, male and female.
DEI agenda on display
Perhaps she also was referring to his EO banning DEI or another declaring there be only one flag displayed outside federal buildings at home and overseas.
This would preclude the disgraceful spectacle last year when Joe Biden hoisted the transgender flag alongside Old Glory for a Pride month celebration at the White House during which a male-to-female transgender person pranced around exposing her fake breasts.
No such unseemly sight will ever blight a Trump presidency, nor will such follies occur as when the Biden administration flew the Pride flag over the US embassy in Kabul, two months before the Taliban overran the building.
Bessent says Budde should apologize or resign, and the hierarchy of the Episcopal Church of America “should publicly condemn her usurping of the day; otherwise, the Inaugural Prayer Service should be moved from the National Cathedral.”
But Budde’s boss, Bishop Sean Rowe, the primate of the Episcopal Church in the US, declined to comment when The Post asked for his view of Budde’s sermon, and the media offices of the church’s headquarters in New York and in DC didn’t reply to repeated emails.
Budde’s counterfeit compassion is a fig leaf for self-flattering virtue-signaling, as she made clear in her appearances on CNN and, naturally, “The View” after her sermon.
“I was trying to speak a truth that I felt needed to be said,” she boasted, before bemoaning the “culture of contempt” without any appreciation of the irony that she was the one who had injected contempt into a joyous occasion.
She sees herself as a hero speaking truth to power but only thinks of herself and her small-minded, outmoded political outlook.
No wonder the Episcopal Church is hemorrhaging adherents.
On any given Sunday, only 400,000 people fill the pews of their churches across America.
Sadly, the fastest-growing religious denomination is “no affiliation,” and we can thank prideful shepherds like Budde for making the situation worse.