NPR

For Trump, Conservative Catholics Are The New Evangelicals

The president's campaign now realizes it was not white evangelicals who got Trump elected in 2016 but conservative Catholics.

Four years ago, white evangelicals rallied behind Donald Trump's presidential candidacy, and he reveled in their adulation.

"The evangelicals love me, and I love them," Trump said repeatedly on the campaign trail. In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, evangelicals were the only faith group he singled out for thanks, saying their support was "a big reason for me being here tonight."

In the general election, however, it was not the evangelicals who carried Trump to victory but Catholics, a group he had rarely mentioned in his speeches.

"People were quite amazed at the overall impact that the white evangelicals had in the election,

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