WASHINGTON – Cloaking himself in religion for the second day in a row, President Donald Trump sought to seize the moral authority to justify his hard line against demonstrators protesting the killing of another black man in police custody and at the same time mobilize his religious conservative base.
Trump signed an executive order on international religious freedom Tuesday and traveled to the Saint John Paul II National Shrine, where he and the first lady laid a ceremonial wreath and observed “a moment of remembrance.” A day earlier, he had held up a Bible and posed for photos in front of a historic church across from the White House that had suffered fire damage from protesters.