Trump now a "martyr" and Catholic Church is "cult-like" according to pastor

First Baptist Dallas’ Robert Jeffress weighed in on the recent war of words between Pope Francis and Donald Trump, according to The Dallas Morning News.

“The pope needs to ask for Donald Trump’s forgiveness for saying such an outlandish thing,” Jeffress said. “I do have to hand it to the Pope. He performed a miracle today. He has done what nobody in history’s been able to do: He has turned Donald Trump into a martyr.

“And I believe because of that, Trump’s poll numbers are going to continue to go up, because as much as people respect the pope, they don’t want the pope inserting himself in the American election, and they sure don’t want to be taking advice from the pope on American security.”

This isn’t the first time the megachurch pastor has commented on politics, or the Catholic Church for that matter.  According to a Politico report from 2011 he said that the Catholic Church is influenced by “cult-like, pagan religion,” and was a “counterfeit religion.”

“Isn’t that the genius of Satan?” he said. “If you want to counterfeit a dollar bill, you don’t do it with purple paper and red ink. You’re not going to fool anybody with that. But if you want to counterfeit money, what you do is make it look closely related to the real thing as possible.”

According to Right Wing Watch, in 2012 Jeffress criticized Mitt Romney for his Mormon faith when he introduced Rick Perry at the Values Voter Summit. Jeffress also declared that a Mormon president would cause God to judge America and that Mormons, Muslims, Jews and most Catholics are destined for hell.

Jeffress has also warned that the gay rights movement "will pave the way for that future world dictator, the Antichrist, to persecute and martyr Christians without any repercussions whatsoever," and similarly declared that the Supreme Court's marriage equality ruling signaled the coming of the Last Days.

The Gayly- 2/19/2016 @ 5:06 PM CST