One of the Democratic front runners, former South Bend Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg claimed that politics has no religion, and then backtracks it by saying that he sees no compatibility between being a Christian and a Trump supporter. Last Tuesday on CNN town hall, realtor Kristen Makhathini asked Buttigieg how he could close in the gap between being a Democrat and a Christian. Buttigieg began his statement by saying, “It starts with sending the message that God does not belong to a political party. And by the way, it’s also very important to make clear that the presidency and the Constitution and my presidency will belong to people of every religion and of no religion equally. This is not about imposing my faith on anybody.” Minutes later, moderator Erin Burnett brought up a remark Buttigieg had previously made “Faith calls upon you to help the marginalized, those who are afflicted, to comfort people, to strive for humility and decency as the Christian faith does. …I just can’t imagine that requires of you that you be anywhere near this president.” In which Burnett then asked, “Do you think it is impossible to be a Christian and support President Trump? Buttigieg responded, “Well, I’m not going to tell other Christians how to be Christians, but I will say [that] I cannot find any compatibility between the way this president conducts himself and anything that I find in Scripture,” as the audience applauded. “Now, I guess that’s my interpretation, but I think that’s a lot of people’s interpretation, and that interpretation deserves a voice,” after he implied in an earlier statement that God is probably not a Republican.

However, this is not the first time that Buttigieg had shared his views about religion. During an interview on NBC, host Craig Melvin asked “You also spend a fair amount of time talking about your faith. Why?”

Buttigieg responded that “It’s important to meI think it’s also important that we stop seeing religion used as a kind of cudgel, as if God belonged to a political party. If he did, I can’t imagine it would be the one that sent the current president into the White House.”

The irony is that the openly gay Democratic candidate also supported abortion polices, even refusing to classify late-term abortion as “murder.”

Buttigieg attempted to explain by responding, “Think, think about the situation, if this is a late-term situation, then by definition it’s one where a woman was expecting to carry the pregnancy to term, then she gets the most perhaps devastating news of her life.” He also added, “We’re talking about families that that may have picked out a name, maybe assembling a crib, and they learn something excruciating and are faced with this terrible choice, and I don’t know what to tell them morally about what they should do; I just know that I trust her and her decision medically or morally isn’t gonna be any better because the government is commanding her to do it in a certain way.”

On the other hand, Trump whom Buttigieg considered as someone who conducts himself outside of the “scriptures,” had been a staunch pro-life supporter. In fact, early in his term, Trump had issued an executive order which blocked federal funds for family planning abroad who seek to go with groups who had advocated abortion.