President Donald Trump invited members of the Little Sisters of the Poor on stage ahead of his signing of a religious liberty executive order Thursday.
“We know, all too well, the attacks against the Little Sisters of the Poor,” Trump said, “Incredible nuns who care for the sick, the elderly and the forgotten.”
“Where are they, by the way, where are they? Could you stand, sisters? Stand,” Trump said, gesturing toward the crowd seated in the White House Rose Garden. “Come on up here, sister, come on up.”
A summary of the executive order given to reporters Wednesday said it would give the IRS discretion to allow religious organizations more leeway to act politically, and that it would authorize “regulatory relief” from Obamacare’s mandate that insurance plans offer contraception, which Little Sisters of the Poor and others have challenged in court for years.
The White House posted the executive order text online Thursday afternoon, after the ceremony had ended.
Trump congratulated the group’s lawyers, and asked if he might hire them for himself.
Watch below:
This post has been updated.
I don’t think Frank is gonna like this. They’re hanging around with a guy who spits in the face of the message from Jesus of Nazareth.
Which happened just moments after the Bowling Green Massacre.
You might not be old enough to have heard it, but “the Little Sisters of the Poor” was a very common rhetorical trope used by high school and college football coaches back in the '50s, '60s, and '70s. It was frequently trotted out by the coaches before an important game to drive home how talented the opposition was going to be: “Goddammit, it’s time you boys stopped screwing around in practice—we’re not playing the Little Sisters of the Poor next Saturday—we’re playing those big, mean sumbitches at Alabama!” (or UCLA or Ohio State or South Central High or wherever…)." Another common usage was in demeaning the opponents that your hated rival has played, as in “Big deal—so the Buckeyes beat the Little Sisters of the Poor 78-0 last week—just wait until they play us!”
I would bet a big box of money that’s the only context in which Trump has ever heard them referenced.
Why not. It’s not like it’s possible for anything short of polygamy involving children to lose you tax exempt status.
“‘We know, all too well, the attacks against the Little Sisters of the Poor,’ Trump said.”
I had never even heard of this group until today, so I am absolutely certain Trump didn’t know who they were until somebody (like Bannon) recently told him he could parade them in front the cameras.
This is actually a good thing for me. Since I belong to the United Reformed Church of Atheists and Agnostics, I am now free to discriminate against Evangelical Christianists, Baptists, Scientologists, Opus Dei Catholics, Mormons, Christian Scientists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Seventh Day Adventists. The next one of them that knocks on my door is going to get a visit from my lawyer filing suit for abusing my religious right to be free of God-bothering, Bible-banging assholes.