Hillary Clinton, the U.S. democratic presidential candidate, is in deep trouble with Republican leaders after WikiLeaks’ latest release of hacked emails shows her campaign communications director mocking both Catholics and evangelicals.
The latest to speak out over the leaked emails is House Speaker Paul Ryan, who says Americans should think hard before choosing who their next president will be.
“If anything, these statements reveal the Clinton campaign’s hostile attitude toward people of faith in general. This is the United States of America—for centuries, people fled to our shores to find refuge from religious persecution,” Ryan said. “All Americans of faith should take a long, hard look at this and decide if these are the values we want to be represented in our next president.”
Faith & Freedom Coalition chairman Ralph Reed joined the list of Catholic and evangelical leaders condemning emails by Clinton staffers.
WikiLeaks latest release of hacked emails shows the Democratic presidential nominee’s campaign communications director on Jennifer Palmieri mocking both Catholics and evangelicals in 2011.
Reed urges Clinton to “remove the stain” of “anti-religious bigotry” in her campaign.
“This is anti-Christian bigotry, pure and simple. It is sad, offensive, and un-American. It reveals a corporate culture at the Hillary Clinton campaign that tolerated the expression of bigoted and prejudicial views of people of faith,” Reed said in a statement Wednesday.
“No one should be attacked because of their deeply held religious beliefs, much less by senior officials of someone who aspires to the presidency,” he also said.
Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote.org, took an even harder stance. He is calling on Palmieri to resign immediately or be fired. The Catholic League is calling on Clinton to “sanction her bigoted chiefs.”
Reports on the leaked emails include one by Fox News between Palmieri and John Halpin, a fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress. Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, a Catholic, is also in the 2011 email chain but does not comment. All three worked for the Center for American Progress at the time.
Halpin writes to Palmieri about a New Yorker article chronicling Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch’s decision to raise his children in the Catholic faith.
“It’s an amazing bastardization of the faith,” he says. “They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy.”
Palmieri responded that politically conservative Catholics “think (Roman Catholicism) is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals.”
Wikileaks has posted more than 1,000 Podesta emails that were hacked.