U.S. President Donald Trump took credit for the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas and expressed hope that peace deals will define his presidency in remarks at the annual National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday.
“Just days before taking office, my team negotiated a breakthrough ceasefire agreement to stop the bloodshed and killing in the Middle East and return the hostages held captive by Hamas back home to their loved ones,” Trump said at the Hilton Hotel in Washington. “The Bible says, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ and to that end, I hope my greatest legacy, when it’s all finished, will be known as a peacemaker and a unifier.”
Trump spoke at two different events that are part of the prayer breakfast on Thursday morning, one at the Hilton and the other in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol.
The president noted that several families of hostages taken during Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel were in the audience at the Hilton.
“I know I speak for everyone here today when I say that we are keeping you in our hearts and our prayers,” Trump said. “As president, I will not rest until every remaining hostage has been returned to their families.”
“The innocent civilians attacked on Oct. 7 were targeted for one reason, because they were Jews,” Trump added. “They were murdered and kidnapped because of their faith, and these events remind us of how blessed we are to live in a nation that has thrived for two-and-a-half centuries as a haven of religious freedom.”
The president announced that he was forming a commission on religious liberty and said that later on Thursday, he would sign an executive order instructing Pam Bondi, the newly sworn-in U.S. attorney general, to combat “anti-Christian bias.” (Per the National Prayer Breakfast Foundation website, the events promote Christian values.)
It’s unclear what the composition of the newly-announced commission will be or with what it will be specifically tasked, but Trump pointed to the case of pro-life protesters sentenced to years in prison under the Biden administration for blocking access to an abortion clinic in 2020.
Trump pardoned the protesters in one of the first actions of his new term. He told breakfast attendees that Paulette Harlow, 75, who was present, “was sentenced to two years in prison for peacefully praying outside of a clinic, charged under an obscure law that hadn’t been used in years, selectively weaponized against Christians by the previous administration.”
“Paulette, what happened to you must never, ever happen again in America,” he said.
In both prayer breakfast events, the president also reflected on his religious views, musing that God had saved him from an assassination attempt in July and describing the role of religion in public life.
“I really believe you can’t be happy without religion, without that belief,” Trump said. “So let’s bring religion back. Let’s bring God back into our lives.”
