Religious leaders pray for President Donald Trump in the White House Oval Office. The woman in white on the right is Pastor Paula White-Cain.

The background behind President Donald Trump's strong statement of "never condoning" the raids on churches by the Lee Jae-myung administration was the White House Faith Office, according to Jin Cummings, former publisher of Asia Post, on Friday the 29th.

In a Facebook post, Cummings cited an analyst working at the State Department's Office of International Religious Freedom (IRF), stating that since entering his second term, President Trump has been basing all policies on Christian principles.

Therefore, church persecution is considered a more critical issue than anything else, and strong measures are bound to be taken.

Pastor Paula White-Cain, who oversees the Faith Office as a Senior Advisor to the White House, has a special relationship with Pastor Lee Young-hoon of Yoido Full Gospel Church, whose church was recently raided by the special prosecutor.

Pastor White is a figure who has previously informed the global Christian community that Trump is a true Christian who has repented. She visited Korea in 2018 at the invitation of Yoido Full Gospel Church and participated as a keynote speaker at the "Prayer Service for Peace on the Korean Peninsula" hosted by Pastor Lee Young-hoon at the then Trump Hotel in Washington D.C. in February 2020.

Pastor Lee Young-hoon was also invited to President Trump's inauguration ceremony and the National Prayer Breakfast in 2025, both reportedly facilitated through his connection with Pastor White.

News and Post previously revealed through NNP News that Pastor Kim Jang-hwan, who leads Far East Broadcasting, served as a civilian channel connecting the Moon Jae-in administration and President Trump in relation to the raid on Far East Broadcasting.

Pastor Kim, nicknamed "Korea's Billy Graham," helped deliver a letter from former President Moon Jae-in to President Trump through Reverend Franklin Graham of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, with whom he has had a decades-long relationship.

Reverend Franklin Graham is also one of the religious leaders President Trump trusts the most.

In an op-ed published in The Washington Times on Wednesday the 27th, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Republican) stated that he had been skeptical and had called the criticisms of Lee Jae-myung by South Korean conservatives exaggerated.

However, he wrote, "What I did not anticipate was how radically the new administration would attack political opponents and defenders of religious freedom. The recent full-scale assault on political and religious freedom is breathtaking. The new administration has demanded church creed lists and lists of ruling party members. It appears to be intended to use the two lists to prosecute churches on political charges."

Gingrich mentioned the raid by over a thousand police and prosecutors on the home and office of a religious leader around 7 a.m., drawing a parallel to the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago.

He noted the South Korean special prosecutor's raid on Osan Air Base without notifying the U.S., writing that "this arrogant act caused Marco Rubio, Acting Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, to cancel his scheduled meeting with South Korean National Security Advisor-designate Cho Tae-yong, and also canceled meetings between the U.S. and South Korean trade negotiation delegations."

He added, "President Trump, who was briefed on the severity of the situation, said on Truth Social, 'What is happening in Korea? It looks like a purge or a revolution. You can’t do business in that environment. I am meeting with the new president at the White House today. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!'"

About two hours before his meeting with Lee Jae-myung, President Trump told reporters at the White House, "Well, I've been hearing over the last few days about the new government in South Korea raiding churches. It was a very brutal raid, and they even went into our military bases and took information. That probably shouldn't have happened, but we've heard bad news. I don't know if it's true or not. I'll be checking it out. As you know, the new president is coming in a few hours. But, we are not going to condone that. We are never going to condone that."

Gingrich stated, "The next few weeks will be critical in determining whether this president fully understands this message (that he is on a path that will be met with strong opposition from the United States) and abandons totalitarian police state tactics (tactics that Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping could empathize with) and returns to the rule of law. The United States has been working for three generations (almost 80 years) to establish the rule of law (in Korea)."

US NNP = Hong Sung-goo, Chief Reporter / Special Correspondent 

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