Pastor Robert Jeffress had a message on Monday for the people who “would like to make me the Jeremiah Wright of the right, or Rick Perry’s Jeremiah Wright.”
Jeffress told Fox News on Monday that Rick Perry “has never listened to a sermon of mine, he’s certainly never been a member of my church, we are just acquaintances.” (Wright, of course, was the Chicago pastor whose controversial comments and ties to President Barack Obama became an issue in the 2008 campaign.)
The pastor has been hitting the airwaves all weekend after he called Mormonism a cult after introducing Perry at the Values Voter Summit on Friday.
Just because Jeffress endorsed Perry doesn’t mean Perry endorses everything he believes, Jeffress said (like the idea that Islam promotes pedophilia, for example).
Jeffress also had a message for fellow Perry-endorser Bill Bennett, who criticized Jeffress’ comments in his subsequent speech at the Values Voter Summit.
“For Bill Bennett to call me a bigot because of my religious views seems be be kind of being guilty of the same sin that he’s accusing me of,” Jeffress said.
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council told reporters that they picked Jeffress to introduce but the Perry camp signed off.
Jeffress said that the Perry camp had “absolutely no idea” that he would make the anti-Mormon comments he did. “They did not invite me to introduce Rick Perry, that was the Family Research Council,” he told Fox News.
