As one of the biggest supporters of President Donald Trump, prosperity gospel preacher Kenneth Copeland (who’s also one of his evangelical advisers) took to the stage last week, doling out steaming words of praise for the president during the annual Southwest Believer’s Convention, conveniently held at Copeland’s Texas church.

Copeland used this opportunity to excuse Trump’s perpetual swearing by purporting that the president is too busy to watch Christian television and then went on to make further excuses by insisting that Trump “can talk any way he wants to talk,” Right Wing Watch reports.

And while preaching last Friday, Copeland also praised Trump for signing a virtually meaningless executive order in 2017 that Trump continually hypes and falsely claims “got rid of” the Johnson Amendment so that pastors and churches can participate more incisively in elections and partisan politics. That’s according to The Washington Post, but it doesn’t prevent Copeland from misinforming people.

“Thank God for Jesus and Donald Trump,” Copeland announced. “I can talk about this in church. I can talk about it on camera. I can talk about it anywhere, any time I want to.”

“He did it by executive order,” Copeland said. “Now when we reelect him this time, then it can be ratified and it will no longer be illegal to preach politics in the pulpit, where it should be preached. I’m Donald Trump’s partner, and he’s my partner. I’m on his spiritual advisory council.”

 

But here’s the thing: Trump didn’t get rid of the Johnson Amendment. It’s still on the books. His executive order doesn’t lessen the Amendment’s restrictions, and while section 501(c)3 of the U.S. Tax Code grants tax-exempt status to nonprofit groups like religious organizations, charities, and universities, that code clearly states these tax-exempt groups “are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign, on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective office,” the Internal Revenue Service reports.

At one point Copeland remembered an event organized by Paula White, another one of Trump’s spiritual advisers who’s also a prosperity gospel preacher in which Trump told Copeland and his wife that he watched them on television “all the time.”

“Until he got elected president, gospel TV is all he ever watched,” Copeland said (somehow I really doubt this.) “He didn’t watch anything else. I like that. You say ‘Well he still uses foul language.’ Yeah, but he’s the president of the United States, he can talk any way he wants to talk. And the Lord showed me what happened: He got over into the place where he didn’t have time to watch gospel television, and it slipped back in his mouth. But I’d rather have a man that just stands up there and just cuss on TV than to have one to go behind your back and cuss like a sailor.”

So, in other words, he’d rather have a man who signs meaningless executive orders and lies whenever it suits him (which is pretty much all the time). Because that’s where we’re at right now. And the liar-in-chief has been spreading all sorts of misinformation about saving the country economically while the pandemic continues to worsen in the U.S.

But that’s no big deal for Copeland. At least as long as he can continue to also lie in church.

Here’s what he had to say in the video below.