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Paula White

Paula White, Donald Trump’s ‘spiritual counselor’

Trump ally last September when she helped organize a meeting of pastors at Trump Tower in New York City. A video emerged of her leading the group of around 20 other ministers, all men, in praying for Trump.

The group surrounded Trump, who held a Bible with both hands, and placed their hands on him. At one point messi-anic Jewish rabbi Kirt Schneider placed his fi ngers on Trump’s face. Trump stood stiffl y, his upper lip jutting out.

White closed that prayer session, a role reserved for leaders of leaders in Pentecostal culture.

“Father, we just secure him right now by the blood of Jesus. We thank you that no weapon formed against him would prosper, and any tongue that rises against him would be condemned, according to the word of God,” White prayed, one hand on Trump’s stomach and the other on his arm.

“I secure him, I secure his children, I secure his calling and his mantle, in Jesus’ name,” she said.

At that time, Trump led in the polls but was still not taken seriously as a contender for the GOP nomination. The fi rst primary votes were still three months away.

Similarly, White and the other pastors who met and prayed with Trump were largely from the Pentecostal televange-list world, which is largely dismissed by American evangelicalism.

The notion that “prosperity gospel preachers” are impostors is widespread enough that a 2013 rap song called “Fal$e Teacher$” denounced White.

“Some who claim to be part of His sheep got some sharp teeth (they’re wolves),” rapped Shai Linne, who in 2015 started a church in his hometown of Philadelphia.

White’s son, Bradley Knight, pushed back against Linne’s accusations.

“It is commonplace in our lives to be called ‘heretics,’ ‘false teachers,’ and ‘wolves,’” Knight wrote in an open letter.

“Can you fi nd one, even one instance in which my mother has ‘denied our sovereign Lord’? You cannot because it has never happened,” White’s son continued. “Come see the fruit my mother has borne. Visit the churches we assist in Haiti after the devastating earthquake they experienced … Spend time with us as we visit the prisons and feed the hungry, just as Christ commis-sioned us.”

There is, however, no question that White is extremely wealthy. Her salary is not known, but she

has been reported to receive a multi-million-dollar income and reportedly owns a US$3.5 million apartment in Trump Tower.

She has at points owned homes in San Antonio and Tampa, Florida, and she currently pastors New Destiny Christian Center, which rents a 7,600-square-foot (700-square-meter) house in the Orlando area for her, according to a 2012 magazine article.

“To me, it’s never been about money,” White told Larry King in 2007, at a time when Senator Chuck Grassley was

TELEVANGELIST and pastor Paula White has known Donald Trump since the early 2000s, and she is thought to be the U.S. president’s closest spiritual adviser.

She prayed at his inauguration, appeared with him when he signed his executive order easing restrictions on pastors engaging in politics, and said she is in the White House at least weekly these days.

This week, as Trump faced sustained criticism over his response to the violent white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, she proved her loyalty once more, appearing on the “Jim Bakker Show” on Monday to defend Trump’s presidency and his spiritual bona fi des in apocalyptic terms.

“Whether people like him or not, [Trump] has been raised up by God, because God says that He raises up and places all people in places of authority,” White told Jim Bakker, a right-wing pastor and vocal Trump supporter.

She added: “It is God that raises up a king, it is God that sets one down and so when you fi ght against the plan of God, you’re fi ghting against the hand of God.”

White, a controversial televangelist, preaches prosperity gospel — the idea that God will bless believers with wealth on Earth, as well as happiness in the afterlife.

In her appearance on Bakker’s tele-vision show, White compared Trump to Esther, the Biblical fi gure who rose from her childhood as an orphan to become the Queen of Persia. White said Trump is similar to Esther in that they both transcended their non-conventional backgrounds to become great leaders.

Trump has previously called White a “beautiful person” with “amazing insight.” White, too, has defended Trump, telling reporters that he “abso-lutely” has a relationship with God.

“He is a Christian, he accepts Jesus as his Lord and savior,” she said.

Like the president she supports, White is both rich and famous, but has endured ridicule from her

chosen tribe. Trump has long been con-sidered a laughingstock by New Yorkers, and White is viewed as a fringe character by many American evangelicals.

Russell Moore, who heads the South-ern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm and is one of Trump’s loudest public critics, once called White a “charlatan” and a “heretic” — serious charges — on Twitter.

Moore told Yahoo News that the prosperity gospel White preaches falsely claims that “God’s favor is seen in increasing wealth and freedom from sickness” and that emphasizes — often to lower-income, less-educated congre-gants — that the more money they give to the church, the more God will bless them.

“Orthodox Christians of every tribe recognize the prosperity gospel for what it is: an attempt to use the name of Jesus to prey upon vulnerable people,” Moore said.

White fi rst became known as a

White and other prosperity preachers lay hands on Donald Trump and pray for him at Trump Tower, from a video made September 2015. SD-Agencies

heading up a Senate Finance Committee investigation into whether her church had mishandled funds. (The probe found no wrongdoing.) “Financially, I personally believe that you should have enough to do the assignment that you feel is part of your life.”

It was a rare interview for White, who has plenty of forums where she can speak publicly on her own terms. For around 15 years, she’s hosted various iterations of a TV talk show that’s been aired on the Trinity Broadcasting Network — the one where people are often shown sitting in gold-encrusted, high-backed chairs — but also on BET and Spike TV.

Her website boasts that her shows reach “a potential viewing audience of 2.3 billion people worldwide.” At one point, she was even a “life coach” on “The Tyra Banks Show.”

White and Trump — who have known each other for more than a decade — share another experi-

ence that makes them targets for skeptics in the evangelical community: They have each been married multiple times. Both are on their third marriage, in fact, and have been the subjects of infi delity reports.

In 2010, the tabloid National Enquirer, which is owned by Trump pal David Pecker and has served as an outlet for some of Trump’s most outlandish conspiracy theo-ries and personal smears against political opponents, published photos of White holding hands with fellow televangelist Benny Hinn (then married) in Rome and alleged the two were having a torrid affair. Both denied it.

Three years earlier, White divorced her second husband, Randy White, after 18 years of marriage. The two were married in Maryland and moved to Tampa in 1990 to start the Without Walls International Church, which by 2006 boasted 23,500 attendees and upwards of US$40 million in donations.

White was raised in Mississippi and then in the semi-rural Maryland region about 65 kilometers north of Washington, D.C. Her personal origins story includes a single mother who became an alcoholic after her father committed suicide, leav-ing the young Paula at the mercy of men and caregivers, who she said physically and sexually abused her.

During her second marriage, White formed her own organization, Paula White Ministries, and began to outshine her hus-band. Years after the two divorced, she met Jonathan Cain on a fl ight, and the two were married in 2015. Cain is the keyboardist for arena rock band Journey and wrote one of the band’s most famous songs, “Don’t Stop Believin.’” (SD-Agencies)