Before playing golf on Saturday, Donald Trump took time to spread a false claim about God on Twitter.
“The Democrats took the word GOD out of a duty of trust with the Democrats [sic] National treaty, ”the president said wrote.
‘At first I thought they were making a mistake, but it was not. It was done on purpose. Remember Evangelical Christians, and ALL, this is where they come from – it’s done. Stim nov[ember] 3! ”
Although Trump’s own religious beliefs have often been called into question, evangelical Christians form an important bloc of support when he runs for office against Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
As the website Politifact pointed out, the demand for the Democrats and the Pledge of Allegiance spread online to Peggy Hubbard, a failed Republican senatorial candidate in Illinois, made it in a Facebook post on August 20th.
The social media giant, which is collaborating with Politifact, flagged the post as untrue.
“Some Democratic caucus members have rejected the Pledge of Allegiance during ‘One Nation Under God’ [convention] meetings, ”wrote the fact-checking website. ‘But the line was not excluded from any of the convention’s primetime television spots.
The first night participants sang the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ instead of saying the Pledge of Allegiance. On the second, third, and fourth nights, ‘under God’ was included in the building. ‘
Under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, church and state are formally separate.
The Pledge of Allegiance was written by a Baptist minister in 1892, but did not include the words “under God”. They were formally added in 1954, when President Dwight D Eisenhower signed them into law.
The mention of God in the speech has survived several legal challenges, some of atheists and humanists and some reaching the Supreme Court.
The building is extensively, though not entirely, recited in American public schools, which under a 1943 Supreme Court ruling could not force students to say so.
In 2019, an 11-year-old student was arrested in Lakeland, Florida, after refusing to stand in front of the building at the beginning of his sixth-grade day because he believed the American flag was the oppression of Afro- Americans symbolize.
Police said the boy was arrested for causing a disturbance. The case was eventually dropped.
