At a major event for conservative Christians on Friday, a Republican senator from Georgia opened his remarks encouraging attendees to pray for our current president—which seems nice enough and, frankly, a very American thing to do.
Sen. David Perdue, a freshman senator from Georgia, opened his remarks at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference by asking those in the audience to do so this way: “We should pray for him like Psalms 109:8 says: Let his days be few, and let another have his office,” the freshman senator said in a mocking tone, reports the Daily Beast.
The rest of that passage, which Perdue did not recite (but ostensibly was very familiar to the crowd), reads, “May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes.”
It continues, “Let the creditor seize all that he has, and let strangers plunder his labor. Let there be none to extend mercy to him, nor let there be any to favor his fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off, and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.”
Say whet?
Predictably, the senator’s remarks provoked immediate backlash. A spokesman for Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid tweeted, “Republican Senator David Perdue is praying for President Obama to die. This is why Trump is the GOP nominee.”
Perdue spokeswoman Caroline Vanvick gave this statement later that day, blaming the press for reporting “creating controversy” with the story:
“Senator Perdue said we are called to pray for our country, for our leaders, and for our president. He in no way wishes harm towards our president and everyone in the room understood that. However, we should add the media to our prayer list because they are pushing a narrative to create controversy and that is exactly what the American people are tired of.”
Read more at the Daily Beast.