With President Donald Trump standing awkwardly behind him, a Democratic congressman used his prayer at the National Prayer Breakfast to urge Trump to “think of families who are preparing to bury their loved ones in Minneapolis.”
Speaking at the bipartisan Washington, DC event on Thursday shortly after Trump delivered an entertaining address, Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.) offered a prayer for the “future of this nation,” asking God to “lead this president to greater levels of compassion.”
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Jackson, the son of civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, said, “Today, we remind him that the lives of millions of people are in his hands, and that he has the power to turn mourning into a dance or to reduce the country to a cosmic elegy of chaos and suffering.”
Jackson went on to appeal to Trump to be “aware of the poor” and “invest in alleviating the suffering that occurs on farms in the Midwest, in families preparing to bury their loved ones in Minneapolis.”
He added that “we are all Americans, all made in the image of God, and that none of us is free until all of us have our freedoms protected.” (See the video at the end of the story.)
When the prayer ended, Trump shook Jackson’s hand and appeared to say, “Great words.”
The Rep. Jonathan Jackson (far left) speaks as President Donald Trump listens during the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC SAUL LOEB via Getty Images
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During his address, the Republican president said he did not know “how a person of faith can vote for a Democrat.”
The plea to Trump came amid weeks of chaos in Minnesota as a result of his administration’s immigration crackdown, with the President’s rhetoric helping to sow discord.
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The president baselessly accused the state of harboring thousands of violent undocumented immigrants, calling them “the worst of the worst.”
Amid protests against the influx, federal agents killed two US citizens ― Renee Good, 37, and Alex Pretti, also 37 ― in separate incidents.
On Wednesday, the Trump administration announced it is scaling back immigration operations across Minnesota by withdrawing about 700 of the roughly 3,000 federal officials posted to the state.
Speaking to NBC News later that day, Trump admitted he could have adopted “a little bit of a softer touch” in the region.
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