Liberty U. Students Say They Still Support Trump
“it is a minority of people who do not agree with Trump or Falwell endorsing Trump,”
In recent days, a Facebook page appeared called “Liberty United Against Trump” which was meant to reflect the sentiments of students at Liberty University who had turned on their school’s president and his endorsement of Donald Trump.
Liberal media outlets picked up the story and ran. It was covered at outlets like the Huffington Post and the Washington Post:
Liberty University students protest association with Trump
Students at Virginia’s Liberty University have issued a statement against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as young conservatives at some colleges across the country reconsider support for his campaign.
A statement issued late Wednesday by the group Liberty United Against Trump strongly rebuked the candidate as well as the school’s president, Jerry Falwell Jr., for defending Trump after he made vulgar comments about women in a 2005 video.
“Donald Trump does not represent our values and we want nothing to do with him,” the statement said. “… He has made his name by maligning others and bragging about his sins. Not only is Donald Trump a bad candidate for president, he is actively promoting the very things that we as Christians ought to oppose.”
In response to these reports, some Liberty University students launched another Facebook page called “Liberty United for Trump” and claim that these reports have been overblown.
These students maintain that there’s still plenty of strong support for Trump and President Fallwell at Liberty University.
WSET News reports:
Liberty students unite ‘FOR Trump’
Right now a group of students is making a statement at Liberty University, and this time it’s not speaking out against their President’s endorsement of Donald Trump.
They formed a Facebook Page called “Liberty United For Trump.”
This page comes after the page “Liberty United Against Trump” started circulating a petition around campus last week from some students.
But this group of students says they want the world to know that simply is not the case.
The petition “Liberty United Against Trump” got a lot of media attention, and claimed the majority of students stood with them, but Cameron Francis says that’s not true. “Here at Liberty we actually still support him, we can look past things and look through forgiveness,” said Francis who is a Trump supporter.
He says lots of students stand with Trump as a conservative who must stand up for the principles that matter to him, like protecting the unborn, limited government, 2nd amendment rights, and religious freedom.
“We’re just trying to show exactly how Liberty thinks and being students on campus and being around everybody, we hear what people are talking about and honestly it is a minority of people who do not agree with Trump or Falwell endorsing Trump,” said student Louis Paone.
The rejection of Trump at Liberty looks manufactured to me. There may be some students who don’t like Trump at Liberty but the report linked above says that many of the students who signed the anti-Trump petition did so without official school email addresses which suggests non-students participated.
The left and their allies in media want it to be true and they want other people to believe it’s true. It’s part of an ongoing campaign to depress the vote for Trump.
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The editor of Liberty University’s official school newspaper, the Liberty Champion, says that an article that was critical of Donald Trump was shut down by Trump surrogate, Falwell Jr.
The editor, Joel Schmieg, posted a statement on his Facebook account claiming it was Jerry Falwell Jr., the university’s president and a Trump supporter, who spiked the column, which criticized Trump for lewd comments he made on a hot mic during a 2005 taping of “Access Hollywood.”
“Yesterday I was told [Falwell] was not allowing me to express my personal opinion in an article I wrote for my weekly column in the Liberty Champion about Trump and his ‘locker room talk,'” Schmieg wrote.
The paper’s opinion editor, Cierra Carter, backed up Schmieg, saying that their president had been very vocal in voicing his support of Trump. They would simply like the same freedoms.
In his Facebook post, Schmieg poked fun at a statement by Falwell earlier in the week, in which he said: “It is a testament to the fact that Liberty University promotes the free expression of ideas unlike many major universities where political correctness prevents conservative students from speaking out.”
“I find these words from Jerry amusing and extremely hypocritical,” Schmieg wrote.
If Falwell is now to the point where he’s censoring the speech of his students, in order to prop up and defend his candidate, then yes, it is very hypocritical and he is hurting the reputation of the school.
Falwell made his statements after a group of students calling themselves Liberty United Against Trump released a letter, repudiating Trump and Falwell’s support of him, which they felt was tying the good name of their school inextricably with the GOP candidate and all of his offensive talk.
-snip-
To further prove that associating too closely with Trump causes mental disturbances, Falwell went into full conspiracy theory mode.
“I think this whole tape … videotape thing was planned, I think it was timed, I think it might have even been a conspiracy among establishment Republicans who have known about it for weeks and who tried to time it to do the maximum damage to Donald Trump, and I just … I just think it just backfired on them,” Falwell told radio host Rita Cosby on Oct. 10.
http://www.redstate.com/sweetie15/2016/10/19/falwell-jr.-instituted-censorship-liberty-u.-students-critical-trump/
This is a microcosm of what Mr. Establishment is doing to the nation, but especially to the conservative movement.
The controversy is not about the exact number of students who support/not support Trump; it’s about the suppression of descent at Liberty University. And, in fact, Falwell looks even worse is the opinion he’s suppressing is a minority opinion.
I’d like my politics to have a little less religion and my religion to have a little less politics. Students can support any candidate they choose, but a university should not wade into muddy waters. Especially a Christian university. 2016 has created some really strange alliances…
Detailed analysis of the transactions in the “hot mic” incident.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok1Gd0CQsiM