Right-wing pastor Franklin Graham now has $300 million more reasons to continue kissing Donald Trump's butt

One of Donald Trump's biggest defenders over the years has been Pastor Franklin Graham. On many occasions, Graham has either lied about or made excuses for Trump's many excesses (such as when Trump compared himself to Jesus.)  Graham has also anointed Trump as a great defender of Christianity.

 One reason for this could be that Graham enjoys the prominence which comes with being a close ally to the president of the United States. Another reason could be seen as good old-fashioned greed. Trump's Administration gutted the USAID after he came back into office. Now Graham will be benefitting from it.

 From The Bulwark: 

 WITHIN WEEKS OF TAKING OFFICE, the Trump administration fed “USAID into the wood chipper.” And immediately, it had one vocal supporter among international aid groups. 

 One of Trump’s most stalwart evangelical allies, Franklin Graham—son of famed evangelist Billy Graham and founder and CEO of Samaritan’s Purse, one of the largest Christian aid organizations—not only defended the administration’s actions, but repeated, at times verbatim, Elon Musk’s false claims about USAID’s waste, fraud, and abuse, even speculating that its staff’s diversion of funds into ideological “DEI” projects had cost human lives. He said he doubted USAID had “ever” been subject to meaningful oversight. “Ever.” 

 Graham undoubtedly knew better. Before 2025, Samaritan’s Purse received roughly $76 million annually in government funds (though not all of it from USAID). His personnel worked closely with USAID officers on the ground. His own organization had undergone USAID’s rigorous auditing of its grants, as he himself acknowledged. 

 . . . Graham said he trusted Trump’s team to “make good decisions.” 

 Those decisions have at least been good for Samaritan’s Purse. Almost immediately, Secretary of State/USAID undertaker Marco Rubio exempted the organization from the initial aid freeze. 

 Now, a year and a half later, Graham’s aid agency is receiving almost double the government funding it had before: $300 million over two years. And it’s one of a few organizations that form the centerpiece of the administration’s new evangelical-heavy aid regime, the contours of which have come into sharper focus with the administration’s announcement on August 6 of a $2 billion grant that will be disbursed over the next two to five years to mostly evangelical Christian aid organizations.

Editor's note - I've written extensively over the years about Graham's public embracing of Trump. Here are just a few of the posts:

Franklin Graham declares that Donald Trump welcomed God back into the White House 

Pastor publicly blasts Franklin Graham, calling him a 'liar' and 'poster child for Christian nationalism'

Remembering all of the times Franklin Graham and other conservative evangelicals kissed Donald Trump's a$$ 

Franklin Graham shamefully implies that Trump's impeachment is like the betrayal of Jesus Franklin 

Graham debases himself by implying that a vote for Trump = a vote for Jesus.