(National Catholic Reporter. Jack Jenkins).
A new survey finds that majorities of all major U.S. religious groups believe actions by former President Donald Trump detailed in a recent hush money trial were immoral, but views are more split on whether he broke the law. It also remains unclear whether Trump’s new status as a convicted felon has helped or hurt his campaign to retake the White House. The 19th News/SurveyMonkey poll, which includes religion-related data provided to Religion News Service, was conducted online May 30-31 among a national sample of 5,893 U.S. adults, drawn from more than 2 million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform daily. (The margin of error overall is plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.) It polled Americans immediately after Trump was convicted last week on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The case centered on $130,000 in hush money payments meant to silence adult film star Stormy Daniels regarding what she described as a sexual encounter she had with the then-businessman, a scandal that threatened to derail Trump’s 2016 campaign.