Franklin, Andrews, Kramer & Edelstein

[BullNBear52]

Pastors who stood by Trump after Charlottesville plead for him to show ‘heart’ for ‘dreamer’ immigrants

Pastor Jentezen Franklin looked at President Trump across his desk in the Oval Office last week and made an impassioned plea for empathy.

For several minutes, Franklin, leader of a multiethnic megachurch near Atlanta, pressed Trump to understand the plight of the hundreds of thousands of young immigrants who had been brought to the United States illegally by their parents, received legal status under the Obama administration and now feared that Trump would order their deportation.

“I know these kids,” Franklin recalled telling Trump.

“They are good kids?” Trump asked, according to Franklin.

“Yes, sir,” Franklin said he replied. “They are.”

Then the pastor, a father of five, noted the president’s love for his own kids. “I want to see that kind of heart toward these children,” Franklin said he urged.

The extraordinary meeting represented an opportunity for Franklin and a handful of black, Hispanic and white evangelical pastors to describe to the president the racial tensions they know, three weeks after Charlottesville and just days before the president’s anticipated Tuesday announcement of a delayed rollback of the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. It also illustrates why Franklin and other members of an evangelical advisory board formed during last year’s campaign have decided to remain by Trump’s side despite widespread calls for them to resign after his response to the white-
supremacist demonstrations.

Some corporate leaders took public stands against Trump and resigned from advisory boards, but the evangelicals have been conspicuous in their choice to stay put. One quit. But, for the most part, the group remains intact — with its members committed to using their direct access to the president to pursue their agendas.

Franklin said he doesn’t think Trump is racist — but he feels that had he resigned in protest over Charlottesville, he would not have been there to make the case for young immigrants.

“If I resign every time [the president] does something I don’t agree with, then I lose the ability to have influence and speak up for the ‘dreamer’ children [and] the minorities that feel offended and hurt by the Charlottesville incident,” he said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pastors-who-stood-by-trump-after-charlottesville-plead-for-him-to-show-heart-for-dreamer-immigrants/2017/09/04/0f5c4312-90a2-11e7-8754-d478688d23b4_story.html?utm_term=.402c7d4712e4