Televangelist Paula White Thursday described Donald Trump as "a man that loves God" and who is "much more hungry in his heart for God than what I think people would ever imagine or suspect."
"He would watch Christian television and … would be hungry for the word," White, who is Trump's spiritual adviser, told Erin Burnett on CNN. "Hungry to hear and would ask me so many different questions."
She said those queries about her sermons over the past 14 years showed "really that hunger, which is what God wants out of all of us."
Trump called White out of the blue after hearing one of her messages — and a friendship eventually developed.
"He repeated almost verbatim three of my sermons," she told Burnett. "A friendship formed and a relationship and not just with Donald and with his staff with his family, but with his children and with his friends."
White acknowledged that Trump has made gaffes on religion, but she said they have been overblown by the media because "they want to hold Donald to the letter to the law.
"But what I can absolutely tell you about him is that he's a man that loves God."
Trump, like many people, also questions how to apply biblical principles to real-life situations, White said.
"He's a strong leader," she told Burnett. "He's a very strong leader.
"But at the same time, there are private times — and, my goodness, how much do I share in the public with that?
"But I remember one time he said: 'Paula, when do you turn the other cheek and when do you forgive?'
"That's a strong biblical question, and an interesting one," White observed. "We all at some point ask ourselves — whether we're preachers or whether we're sitting in the pew or whether we're Mr. Trump — 'Do I put on the boxing gloves right now or do I turn the cheek? What did Jesus exactly mean by that?'
"Mr. Trump has those deep-seated faith questions — and, greater, that deep-seated heart and that desire."
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