Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made an unusual acknowledgement of his ongoing struggle to win over Utah voters on Thursday, asking a group of evangelical Christian pastors if they could help him garner votes in the region — even though the state is overwhelmingly Mormon.
Trump delivered the remarks while speaking at the American Renewal Project conference in Orlando, Florida, where roughly 700 evangelical ministers have assembled for a gathering widely panned as anti-LGBT in nature.
“You gotta get your people out to vote,” Trump said. “And especially in those states where we’re represented…We’re having a tremendous problem in Utah. Utah is a different place. Is anybody here from Utah?”
As the crowd laughed, Trump responded, “I didn’t think so.”
Watch video of the quip below.
Donald Trump: "We're having a tremendous problem in Utah." Full video here: https://t.co/AC5vzVwxg7https://t.co/z4QloLvc75
— CSPAN (@cspan) August 11, 2016
The line left some confused as to whether Trump was conflating evangelical Christianity and Mormonism.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Evangelicals. https://t.co/bEa6NPDPJu
— Damon Linker (@DamonLinker) August 11, 2016
Donald Trump asks for help with Utah in a room of evangelicals. Doesn't even get why that's a problem.
— Natalie Andrews (@nataliewsj) August 11, 2016
Trump struggling to understand the difference between Mormons and evangelical Christians https://t.co/OQfAxFxc0X
— Dom Pagliara 🌹 (@dapagliara) August 11, 2016
Others thought Trump’s question about whether any audience members were from Utah just seemed, well, kind of funny.
Trump asking Evangelicals to help with turnout in Utah because of his "tremendous problem" there is hilarious. https://t.co/NPu7VvK2kE
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) August 11, 2016
hahahaha https://t.co/5Kg4a4zmVv
— McKay Coppins (@mckaycoppins) August 11, 2016
To be sure, it’s not immediately clear what Trump was suggesting by bringing up his Utah “problem” in front of a group of evangelical ministers. It’s possible he was hoping one of the pastors could help him turn out Utah evangelicals, for instance, although white evangelical Protestants represent a only 3 percent of the population in the overwhelmingly Mormon state, according to PRRI.
Regardless, Trump does have one thing right: he does, in fact, have a “problem” in Utah. Although the state hasn’t voted for a Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson, Mormons — the most reliably Republican religious group in America — have thus far roundly rejected Trump. Several polls have The Donald beating his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton by much smaller margins than Republicans of previous years, and others even show the two in a statistical tie. Meanwhile, many Republicans have defected from the GOP to support Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, and earlier this week Evan McMullin, a former Republican strategist and a Mormon, announced his independent candidacy for president and vowed to “aggressively contest” the state.
Trump’s “Mormon problem” hasn’t gone unnoticed by the Clinton campaign. Clinton published an op-ed in the Utah-based Deseret News earlier this week in which she directly appealed to the Mormon vote, championing her dedication to “religious liberty” and making several references to Mormon history.
It remains to be seen whether Trump can make up ground in the Beehive state, but he may want to start by asking for help from Mormons — not evangelical Christians.