Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, who asked that President Trump “have mercy” on LGBTQ children and immigrants during a prayer service he attended Tuesday morning, said on ABC’s “The View” Wednesday she would welcome a one-on-one conversation with Trump.
“I wanted to emphasize respecting the honor and dignity of every human being, basic honesty and humility,” she said of the sermon at the National Cathedral, which quickly went viral online, from her home in Washington. “And then I also realized that unity requires a certain degree of mercy — mercy, and compassion and understanding.”
Budde, the first woman to serve as the spiritual leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, used Tuesday’s prayer service for the inauguration to make a direct plea to Trump — who sat in the first pew with First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance — on behalf of “people in our country who are scared now.”
“There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives,” Budde said during Tuesday’s service. She said most immigrants, even those without proper documentation, were good neighbors and the vast majority are “not criminals.”
“We were all once strangers in this land,” she said.
Trump, who on Monday during his first hours in office signed executive orders on immigration and transgender rights, told reporters after the service that it was “not too exciting, was it?”
“They could do much better,” he said.
Later, Trump wrote in a lengthy Truth Social post that Budde “is bad at her job” and called her service “uninspiring,” “nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.” She and her church, he wrote, “owe the public an apology.”
Appearing on “The View” Wednesday morning, Budde said she felt it her responsibility to use her pulpit “to pray with the nation for unity.”
“So, knowing that a lot of people, as I said, in our country right now are really scared, I wanted to take the opportunity in the context of that service for unity to say we need to treat everyone with dignity, and we need to be merciful,” Budde said.
“I was trying to counter the narrative that is so divisive and polarizing and in which people, real people, are being harmed.”
Budde declined to comment on Trump’s body language during her service. “I’ve been preaching for a long time, and I’ve long since given up trying to read people’s body language as I’m preaching because I’d be wrong most of the time,” she said. “I had what I felt was in my heart to say, and I had to leave it to them, to all of us, to take from whatever my words were.”
She added that she has never been invited to speak one-on-one with Trump but would welcome the opportunity.
Republicans on Tuesday leapt on Budde’s remarks, criticizing her failure to mention things like violent crimes committed by immigrants to the U.S.
Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who campaigned heavily against transgender athletes last year, called Budde a “woke Bishop” in a post on the social media platform X. Moreno, who immigrated to Florida as a child from Colombia, said Budde’s plea for mercy for undocumented immigrants was “insult to all of us who came to this country the right way.”
Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) said Budde, who was born in New Jersey, “should be added to the deportation list.”
Budde on Wednesday said she was not surprised that her remarks had been politicized.
“How could it not be politicized?” she said. “One of the things I caution about is the culture of contempt in which we live that immediately rushes to the worst possible interpretations of what people are saying. That’s part of the air we breathe now.”
“I was trying to speak a truth that I felt needed to be said, but to do it in as respectful and kind as I could,” Budde said. “And also, to bring other voices into the conversation, voices that have not been heard in the public space for some time.”
