Evangelical leaders are a reliable clientele for the Trump hotel in Washington
President Trump’s Washington hotel, where the average guest pays about $650 per night, has served as an epicenter of conservative politics during his administration.
And among its high-profile visitors are the president’s evangelical advisers, according to records obtained by The Washington Post. They include James Dobson, a co-founder of Focus on the Family; John Hagee, head of Christians United for Israel; and evangelist Franklin Graham. The historic building that includes the old post office and clock tower completed in 1899 has also hosted several high-profile religious events since Trump took office as well as less formal gathering, such as meetings of the president’s unofficial group of faith advisers.
It’s unclear how much evangelical leaders have spent at the hotel in total in the past four years, but they are a reliable clientele for the hotel, which has been struggling financially and was running about half empty even before the
coronavirus pandemic began. Asked how they came to stay there, they offered a variety of answers, ranging from convenience to social comfort.
Jerry Falwell Jr.,
Robert Jeffress,
J.D. Greear, president of the Southern Baptist Convention,
Tennessee megachurch pastor Steve Gaines,
Bill Dallas... who organized a high-profile gathering of nearly 1,000 evangelical leaders with Trump before his election in 2016,
Hagee,
Dobson
Graham
Pastors who stay in luxury hotels might get a variety of reactions from parishioners who often pay their salaries and cover their travel expense, said Rusty Leonard, who founded a group called Stewardship Partners and has been a financial watchdog of many evangelical ministries. “A pastor’s need to stay in a five-star hotel probably isn’t the highest need in the world,” Leonard said. For many churches, which do not have to file 990s like other tax-exempt organizations, Leonard says there can be less oversight over finances.
But followers of prosperity gospel, which teaches that God will bless followers with health and wealth, might want Florida megachurch pastor Paula White, a friend of Trump’s who stays in the hotel, to stay in a nice place. “Prosperity theology has to be demonstrated by the preacher and people soak it up. They aspire to live the same kind of life,” Leonard said. “If you stay at the Hampton Inn, they might say, ‘What’s gotten into her?’”
While some might question the extravagance, others will see it as part of a bigger strategy toward power and influence in Washington, said John Fea, a historian at Messiah College, a Christian college in Pennsylvania. “You want to have a story to tell your congregation to show how important you are, to show you have the ear of power,” he said. “It sends a message that these are people who are part of the power elite in the country. They are shaping the president’s agenda in some ways.”
Some evangelical leaders likened being there to feeling part of the club. Falwell referred to it as ‘an oasis” for conservatives. He mentioned seeing former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani there once. White, who oversees Trump’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative at the White House; author and radio host Eric Metaxas; and Gary Bauer, a Trump appointed commissioner on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, have also been spotted there. (They declined to comment on their visits to the hotel.)
