During the 2016 GOP primary, as Donald Trump battled with Sen. Ted Cruz for the party’s nomination, the eventual president referred to the Texas Republican’s fervently evangelical supporters in Iowa as “so-called Christians” and “real pieces of shit,” a forthcoming book by Atlantic staff writer Tim Alberta claims. According to the book, titled The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, an event gone wrong at Liberty University left Trump upset after he infamously mispronounced a book of the Bible book while allegedly trying to follow the advice of right-wing Family Research Council president Tony Perkins. “The laughter and ridicule were embarrassing enough for Trump,” Alberta wrote, according to The Guardian, which obtained a copy of the book in advance of its December 5 street date. “But the news of Perkins endorsing Ted Cruz, just a few days later, sent him into a spiral. He began to speculate that there was a conspiracy among powerful evangelicals to deny him the GOP nomination.” Trump later reportedly told a Republican official in Iowa: “You know, these so-called Christians hanging around with Ted are some real pieces of shit.’”
