Pastor Paula White-Cain, spiritual advisor to President Donald Trump and a newly minted member of his administration, has revealed that long before winning the White House, Trump dreamed of building her a glass cathedral.
The televangelist, who befriended Trump in 2002, told “Fox & Friends” that Trump was inspired by a 2006 Newsweek cover that featured the Crystal Cathedral, a soaring, 78,000-square-foot glass megachurch in Garden Grove, California.
“He is such a great builder,” she said on Sunday about the real estate mogul. “He sent the article to me and he said, ‘Let’s do this before we both get too old.’”
“I think God maybe had other plans,” the preacher added about Trump. “We need him as president. He is fearless, he is fighting for this country.”
Neither White-Cain, who is better known as Paula White, nor the White House immediately responded to HuffPost requests for comment.
In an interview with The Washington Examiner, White said that in 2006, Trump’s plan was to build a “house of God” and have her lead it. She claimed the businessman had gone so far as to hire an architect for the structure. But those plans fell through because the timing wasn’t right for her, White said.
At the time, White was a popular televangelist from Florida who had shows on several networks, including Black Entertainment Television and the Trinity Broadcast Network. She was also facing an IRS probe into the finances of a church she co-founded with her ex-husband, whom she divorced the next year.
2006 was also a busy year for Trump. That year, his wife Melania Trump became a U.S. citizen and gave birth their son Barron. It was also the year that adult-film star Stormy Daniels claims she had an affair with Trump.
White, a millionaire who never graduated from seminary, said her friendship with Trump began when he called her after watching her televised sermons and told her she had the “‘it’ factor.”
The preacher has been credited as having “personally led [Trump] to Christ.” Trump reportedly attended Bible studies White led in New York.
White has been labeled as a heretic by some fellow evangelicals who accuse of her preaching the prosperity gospel, a teaching that suggests that wealth and health are guaranteed to those who practice their faith in the right way. She’s denied that she believes in the prosperity gospel.
White was part of Trump’s campaign-era evangelical advisory board. Today, she regularly facilitates conservative pastors’ meetings with the administration. She recently joined the White House staff in an official capacity as a faith adviser.
She told “Fox & Friends” that in her new role, she will be advancing the “faith agenda of all faiths, of all people,” and working on the Trump administration’s goals of “alleviating poverty, strengthening families, building better communities.”
Even though Trump’s glass cathedral hasn’t materialized, White mused that it could still be a possibility.
“Who knows, maybe after his presidency,” she told the Examiner.
