For all you reporters covering the Rev. Paula White’s ascension to a paying job at the White House (which just got announced), there’s a few facts you might want to know.
The most important one is that little is going to change in terms of White’s job duties. She’s unofficially been part of the White House staff for three years now. Maybe it’s about time she went official and got paid. It is also time for her to get more respect from the media as a government appointee than she now enjoys as a mere megachurch pastor.
In the story that ran Thursday in the New York Times (and repeated by other outlets), the lead sentence was the headline and the opening paragraph simply refers to her as “Ms. White.” Technically, she is Paula White-Cain, a name she’s been increasingly using since her 2014 marriage to songwriter Jonathan Cain.
Then again, she is ordained. Does the Times believe in the ordination of women on the left, but not the Pentecostal-charismatic right?
Ms. White, a controversial figure even among evangelical Christians, will be overseeing a White House division that conducts outreach to key parts of the president’s base.
Paula White, a televangelist based in Florida and personal pastor to President Trump whom he has known since 2002, has joined the Trump administration in an official capacity, according to a White House official.
Ms. White will work in the Office of Public Liaison, the official said, which is the division of the White House overseeing outreach to groups and coalitions organizing key parts of the president’s base. Her role will be to advise the administration’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative, which Mr. Trump established last year by executive order and which aims to give religious groups more of a voice in government programs devoted to issues like defending religious liberty and fighting poverty.
This isn’t super-new, folks. In the lengthy profile I did on White for the Washington Post back in November 2017, it was clear even then that she was going to be given some sort of official role. She’s been commuting to the White House from her home in central Florida more than once a week at her own expense.
For those of you hoping to find out more about White’s role, here’s a few questions to ask.
(1) White is going to advise the year-old Faith and Opportunity Initiative, which was Trump’s way of replacing the Obama administration’s Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives. I’ve not seen any reporting on the former and it’s unclear if both initiatives do the same thing or radically differ from each other. Are her job duties going to change or will she continue doing the same things she’s always done around the White House?
(2) What will her salary be? When I talked with her, she was very proud of paying her own way to and from DC and having “never received a dime from anything” she’s done for Trump. Will the White House be picking up her transportation expenses from Florida or will she temporarily move to DC?
(3) White has been heading up an unofficial evangelical advisory council that consists of evangelical and charismatic Christian leaders meeting with White House officials about various concerns. These, White told me, were “Supreme Court justices, economy, religious liberty, Israel, lower courts, human trafficking and abortion.” How will this council relate to White’s new role?
(4) White’s new placement will give more credibility to the Faith and Opportunity Initiative, but the question is how. Does this initiative have office staff? Does it include more religious groups than Christians and Jews? And what will White’s job description be?
(5) White is traveling about the country promoting her new book and getting really bad press for her recent appearance on the Jim Bakker Show where she said folks who don’t support Trump will answer to God. Now that she’s on staff, will she be able to say such things? How will being employed by the government change her tone?
I sense she was asked many times before this to come on staff, but she demurred, saying she is a pastor first and foremost and that her government experience was nil. But three years have passed and she’s clearly found her groove. She turned her pastoring duties at her New Destiny Christian Center in Florida church over to her son, Bradley Knight, back in May and she now has a grip on how the White House functions.
I knew in the summer of 2017 she would be quitting her church, but she asked me not to print that information because she had not prepared the congregation for the move. And I’m not sure anything will really change in the White House after this promotion except for the fact she’ll be getting paid for her work.
I know she’s long felt that God has a lot more in store for her than just leading a church, so we’ll see where she’ll end up if/when Trump is not reelected. She is certain he will be reelected, so she’s already planned out her next five years as being at Trump’s side.
There is much more about White that can be reported. I’d love to ask her what she feels she has accomplished in her three years with Trump.
What more does she want? Is her interest merely in Trump itself or would she stay in politics after he’s gone? I’m hoping that reporters go deeper in finding out answers to these questions and get to know White while they’re at it.
Paula White as government appointee only formalizes what’s been on the ground for awhile. Can reporters can find out what Is mew about the mew job for Paula and tell us what that might be?
ybvdadminuser
