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It did not take very long for the legacy media to elevate the first #Resistance figure to emerge in the second Trump presidency.
Mariann Edgar Budde, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, went viral Tuesday morning for her pointed message directed at President Donald Trump, who was joined in the pews by Vice President JD Vance and their families for the National Prayer Service.
“Let me make one final plea, Mr. President,” Budde said. “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the 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.”
“And the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shift in hospitals, they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors,” she continued.
Hours later, Budde appeared on CNN to explain why she made such a plea to Trump.
“I was speaking to the president because I felt that he has this moment now where he feels charged and empowered to do what he feels called to do, and I wanted to say there is room for mercy,” Budde told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “There is room for a broader compassion. We don’t need to portray with a broad cloth, in the harshest of terms, some of the most vulnerable people in our society.”
Trump repeatedly bashed Budde and the service, calling her a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” on Truth Social and saying “she and her church owe the public an apology!”
The growing feud has only fueled Budde’s media tour. In addition to speaking with The New York Times on Tuesday night, she appeared on “The View” and “The Rachel Maddow Show” on Wednesday as well as granted interviews to NPR, TIME Magazine and The Associated Press.
“You seem to have more fearlessness than anyone in Congress right now,” Joy Behar told Budde at the beginning of the “View” interview.
“The Episcopal Bishop of Washington DC, looked into the front row of the National Cathedral in Washington during the National Prayer Service, looked into the eyes of the incoming president, and very calmly, very clearly, gave us the illustrated dictionary definition of what it means to speak truth to power,” Maddow said as she previewed her one-on-one with Budde.
DePauw University journalism professor Jeffrey McCall said Budde is filling a void for the media that’s in desperate need of a formidable opponent in the public arena since Trump’s election victory.
“Bishop Budde saw her opportunity to put herself in the middle of a political fray and happily jumped into the spotlight,” McCall told Fox News Digital. “She immediately became the darling of the resistance media because she is really the only person who’s rhetorically laid a glove on Trump during the first couple of days of his current presidency. “
The New York Times offered a dramatization of Budde’s sermon, saying she “locked eyes with President Trump and made a plea for mercy — and the war over spiritual authority in America was ignited anew.”
“Standing in the storied Canterbury Pulpit above the president on Tuesday, Bishop Mariann E. Budde was a little afraid,” the Times told its readers. “President Trump, seated seven feet below and some 40 feet to her right, made eye contact. One representation of American Christianity began speaking to another, and the most powerful man in the world was arrested by the words of a silver-haired female bishop in the pulpit. Until he turned away.”
“For everyone watching, the vastness of Washington National Cathedral compressed, in one stunning moment, into a sudden intimacy. And with it, all the existential fights not simply of politics, but of morality itself. In a flash, the war over spiritual authority in America burst into a rare public showdown,” the Times continued.
The Washington Post, which said it spoke with Budde even before the National Prayer Service, plastered its homepage with a video of her sermon.
ABC News correspondent Mary Bruce heralded Budde “confronting” Trump in a report on “Good Morning America,” airing extended portions of her sermon.
Cornell Law School professor and media critic William A. Jacobson called Budde the “latest twinkle in the eye of anti-Trump media.”
“The bishop is following a well-traveled path forged by the likes of Michael Avenatti,” Jacobson told Fox News Digital. “The bishop will become a media darling for a while, only to replaced by the next big anti-Trump thing. It’s all so tiresome and predictable.”
Other news outlets leveraged the sermon in hopes of embarrassing Trump. The Daily Beast ran the headline “Female Bishop Calls Out Trump to His Face at Church Service,” telling readers, “By the look of discomfort on the First and Second Families’ faces, they perhaps weren’t expecting a public rebuke of Trump’s policies.”
New York Magazine’s The Cut had a similar take with the headline “Trump Didn’t Appreciate Being Called Out in Church,” mocking how the president was “throwing a tantrum” about it on Truth Social.
MSNBC published an op-ed with the headline “Trump’s angry response to a viral sermon should worry all Christians.”
“Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s words reflect the values held by a majority of American Christians — a fact that Trump’s divisive rhetoric seeks to obscure,” Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons of Interfaith Alliance wrote in the op-ed.
Even the liberal late night shows offered Budde high praise at the expense of the president.
“That was beautifully said,” CBS host Stephen Colbert reacted. “Not only was it beautiful, it took courage to stand up there and say something so simple, something so kind, something so true to the example of Christ. And even better, it made Trump super uncomfortable.”
“I don’t know what you people are clapping for, but that bishop has no business bringing the teachings of Jesus into that church,” ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel joked to his audience, adding, “Good for her.”
“Can you imagine going to church and the pastor is only addressing you?… No one has ever had a worse time in church than Trump did,” Ronny Chieng of “The Daily Show” said. “And you could tell he had a bad time because of the way he came out of the church super b—-y.”
