Anderson Cooper asked the candidates about the recent controversy involving minister Robert Jeffress, who at the Values Voters event endorsed Rick Perry and attacked Mitt Romney’s Mormon religion as a “cult.”
The audience began booing, at the mention of someone calling Mormonism a cult.
Perry did not disown Jeffress’s endorsement, but said that he did not agree with the attack on Romney’s religion.
Mitt Romney said that in regards to the attack on his religion, “I’ve heard worse.” He then invoked the words of the Constitution, and its forbidding of religious tests, to declare that the Founders did not want Americans to pick or reject a candidate based on their religion. And he again said that Perry should condemn Jeffress’s remarks.
