Gardner defends Trump nominee who wrote that Muslims have a "deficient theology" [View all]

During a congressional hearing yesterday, Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO) defended a Trump nominee who wrote that Islam is a “deficient theology.”

“Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology,” Russell Vought, Trump’s nominee for an OMB post, wrote on a conservative blog last year. “They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont put a series of direct questions to Vought, as reported by Jennifer Bendery at the Huffington Post:

/excerpt
Such a statement is “indefensible, it is hateful and Islamophobic, and an insult to over a billion Muslims throughout the world,” Sanders told the room. He asked Vought, who sat facing him, if he thinks his past comments are Islamophobic.

“Absolutely not,” replied Vought, a former vice president of the conservative Heritage Action for America. “I’m a Christian, and I believe in a Christian set of principles based on my faith. That post … was to defend my alma mater, Wheaton College, a Christian school that has a statement of faith that includes the centrality of Jesus Christ for salvation.”
/end excerpt

Read more: http://www.coloradopols.com/diary/95745/gardner-defends-trump-nominee-who-wrote-that-muslims-have-a-deficient-theology-and-stand-condemned