WATCH: Trump says he will revoke church tax exempt status if leaders 'say something bad about' him

All religions need to be taxed like the businesses they are.

Kenneth Copeland

Trump is evil, but this man remains the only person I’ve seen I’m convinced is an actual demon. Video of him sets off my fight or flight response so hard.

Honestly, churches should have always stayed the fuck out of politics or lose their tax exempt status. Of course, that rule does not apply to the weepy Republicans, because the rules never do. They cry about "religious freedom", but want their cake and eat it, too, of course: the most radically right wing churches can say whatever the hell they want regarding telling their people how to vote and we all get to fund it, effectively.

Having the cake and eating it too is not an option for liberal churches, though.

Might be a good post for /c/LeopardsAteMyFace

How did religious people ever think he wasn't just wrapping himself in the garb of piety to get elected? He was on tape talking about grabbing women by the pussy because 'when you are famous they just let you do it'! Before the LAST time he was elected. Sheesh.

And... Scientology, on the issue of tax exempt status, really? Wow. Criminals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White

The churches that would call him out are likely the same few that actually do something to deserve their tax exempt status, like feeding the homeless.

As we predicted! I'm a priest in the Episcopal Church and at our recent clergy conference we were made aware of a letter being issued by a large number of our bishops, to be published in one of the big papers, denouncing ICE (it was distributed to us this past Saturday, but I have no idea if it's shown up in one of the papers or not). We discussed the possibility of Trump getting mad and revoking our tax exempt status because of it. Dude is quite predictable lol.

Is there some way we can make this more likely to occur? Maybe some AI videos of clergy calling him a shitty-pantsed child molester with small hands and short skyscrapers?

Seriously. Look, the piece of shit is in the oval office already, that ship has sailed. But we might actually have a good use for the cunt in this case. Let's make the most of it!

Oh please let him actually do it. It would be one of the only positive things to come out of this toxic festering dung heap of an administration.

Do it, coward

He is correct that churches shouldn't be exempt from taxes, just not for his reasons. They are tax shelters for political tools, and should be made into taxed businesses if they insist on being money making machines.

I'm all for ending the tax exemption for cults but using it as leverage not to have people speak out against you? Such a DICKtator move.

Had me in the first half

He will only attack orgs that are against him. This will lead to the loss of many different kinds of 501(c)(3) organizations with good missions and actions. This is a continuation of dismantling current institutions, and silencing dissent.

All churches in America need to start praying for Donny’s demise, show us what your god can do…

Hey Mormons!!!!! What do you think of Trump?

I share Thomas Cromwell’s views on churches so please make this happen.

He only has one trick, bully.

Seriously...

Wow 😮 Really coming full circle fucking around threatening a church's tax exemption status because you don't like free speech. If he wasn't just a fucking dumbass narcissist, I would almost think he's being clever, but there is no way.

The religious right movement was born when the federal government took away the tax exemption status of Bob Jones University for refusing to desegregate. This would become the first (but certainly not the last) major case argued in court by the new right against the federal government on the grounds of religious freedom.

I really have to wonder if sometimes his sycophants give him really bad advice on purpose because they think it's funny that he's always too dumb to get the joke until it's too late to take it back.

Or maybe not and the fabric of reality has just torn. Heritage Foundation. The moral majority. Ronald Reagan. Donald Trump. Project 2025. This is literally where it all started:

The real origins of the religious right

They’ll tell you it was abortion. Sorry, the historical record’s clear: It was segregation.

In Green v. Kennedy (David Kennedy was secretary of the treasury at the time), decided in January 1970, the plaintiffs won a preliminary injunction, which denied the “segregation academies” tax-exempt status until further review.... Later that year, President Richard Nixon ordered the Internal Revenue Service to enact a new policy denying tax exemptions to all segregated schools in the United States. Under the provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which forbade racial segregation and discrimination, discriminatory schools were not—by definition—“charitable” educational organizations, and therefore they had no claims to tax-exempt status; similarly, donations to such organizations would no longer qualify as tax-deductible contributions.

On June 30, 1971, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued its ruling in the case, now Green v. Connally (John Connally had replaced David Kennedy as secretary of the Treasury). The decision upheld the new IRS policy: “Under the Internal Revenue Code, properly construed, racially discriminatory private schools are not entitled to the Federal tax exemption provided for charitable, educational institutions, and persons making gifts to such schools are not entitled to the deductions provided in case of gifts to charitable, educational institutions.”

Paul Weyrich, the late religious conservative political activist and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, saw his opening. The Green v. Connally ruling provided a necessary first step: It captured the attention of evangelical leaders , especially as the IRS began sending questionnaires to church-related “segregation academies,” including Falwell’s own Lynchburg Christian School, inquiring about their racial policies. Falwell was furious. “In some states,” he famously complained, “It’s easier to open a massage parlor than a Christian school.”

One such school, Bob Jones University—a fundamentalist college in Greenville, South Carolina—was especially obdurate. The IRS had sent its first letter to Bob Jones University in November 1970 to ascertain whether or not it discriminated on the basis of race. The school responded defiantly: It did not admit African Americans.

Although Bob Jones Jr., the school’s founder, argued that racial segregation was mandated by the Bible, Falwell and Weyrich quickly sought to shift the grounds of the debate, framing their opposition in terms of religious freedom rather than in defense of racial segregation. For decades, evangelical leaders had boasted that because their educational institutions accepted no federal money (except for, of course, not having to pay taxes) the government could not tell them how to run their shops—whom to hire or not, whom to admit or reject. The Civil Rights Act, however, changed that calculus.

Bob Jones University did, in fact, try to placate the IRS—in its own way. Following initial inquiries into the school’s racial policies, Bob Jones admitted one African-American, a worker in its radio station, as a part-time student; he dropped out a month later. In 1975, again in an attempt to forestall IRS action, the school admitted blacks to the student body, but, out of fears of miscegenation, refused to admit unmarried African-Americans. The school also stipulated that any students who engaged in interracial dating, or who were even associated with organizations that advocated interracial dating, would be expelled.

The IRS was not placated. On January 19, 1976, after years of warnings—integrate or pay taxes—the agency rescinded the school’s tax exemption.

For many evangelical leaders, who had been following the issue since Green v. Connally, Bob Jones University was the final straw. As Elmer L. Rumminger, longtime administrator at Bob Jones University, told me in an interview, the IRS actions against his school “alerted the Christian school community about what could happen with government interference” in the affairs of evangelical institutions. “That was really the major issue that got us all involved.”

Weyrich saw that he had the beginnings of a conservative political movement, which is why, several years into President Jimmy Carter’s term, he and other leaders of the nascent religious right blamed the Democratic president for the IRS actions against segregated schools—even though the policy was mandated by Nixon, and Bob Jones University had lost its tax exemption a year and a day before Carter was inaugurated as president. Falwell, Weyrich and others were undeterred by the niceties of facts. In their determination to elect a conservative, they would do anything to deny a Democrat, even a fellow evangelical like Carter, another term in the White House.

The Bob Jones University case merits a postscript. When the school’s appeal finally reached the Supreme Court in 1982, the Reagan administration announced that it planned to argue in defense of Bob Jones University and its racial policies. A public outcry forced the administration to reconsider; Reagan backpedaled by saying that the legislature should determine such matters, not the courts. The Supreme Court’s decision in the case, handed down on May 24, 1983, ruled against Bob Jones University in an 8-to-1 decision. Three years later Reagan elevated the sole dissenter, William Rehnquist, to chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Land of the free, home of the brave etc. 

He did similar to universities, so why not?

Review ALL of them. Make them prove their nonpolitical and nonprofit like every other charity.

This is a fascist country. That's fascist behavior. Welcome to the New Normal.

Fascist behaviour

Haha Mike Johnson finally gets the inevitable slap in his face by this two faced troll.

We collectively call you out as a raping pedophile piece of shit living specimen

Father Shanley would like a word.

Oh wait he got murdered in jail for being a raping pedophile piece of shit specimen.

Fuck their tax exempt status. A broken clock is right twice a day.

What a whiny little bitch.

Look evil can do the right and just thing if they think its punishment.

Muh freeze peach

Fuck it, just deepfake all the pastors saying Trump is a pedophile. Get it going online and see if he melts down.