Ex–Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis is part of a chorus of conservative Christian Republicans who are not happy with the GOP, after it abandoned its push for a federal ban on abortion in favor of Donald Trump’s pitch to toss the decision back to the states.
The new platform, which will be voted on at the upcoming Republican National Convention next week, also takes a more moderate position on same-sex marriage. While the Trump campaign’s senior advisers have insisted that the new policies are “concise and digestible,” they’re proving to be unpopular among some of the party’s more religious members.
Ex–Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis was among those who were left disappointed by the new policy, and Ellis took to X (formerly Twitter) to share her furious reaction across several tweets.
“The RNC is trading Lila Rose for Amber Rose. Pro-life for pro-abortion. Live Action for Slut Walk. That’s a reflection of Trumpworld over God’s truth,” she wrote, referring to Amber Rose organizing a 2015 SlutWalk protest in Los Angeles to raise public awareness of gender inequality. Rose is reportedly scheduled to speak at the upcoming Republican National Convention. “Christians and conservatives should not support this,” Ellis added.
Ellis, who pleaded guilty to charges that she attempted to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, was recently barred from practicing law in the state of Colorado for three years. Ellis struck a plea deal with Fulton County prosecutors in October and testified that while Trump knew he lost in 2020, he was adamant on staying in the White House.
The ex–Trump lawyer’s name popped up in a new court filing last week, as another former Trump staffer shared text messages where Ellis allegedly claimed that Trump’s 2016 campaign paid to bury complaints of sexual harassment and discrimination.
While Ellis was already decidedly off the Trump train, her RNC complaints seem to be spreading across Trump’s Christian conservative base.
Chad Connelly, the former chair of the South Carolina GOP, expressed disappointment felt by his Christian constituents. “It is fair to say that over 1,000 pastors have emailed, texted and called me about their disappointment over where they saw the platform going,” he said, according to NBC, claiming that he’d been kept out of the platform committee after being “labeled ‘too pro-life.’”
Connelly is also the president and founder of Faith Wins, a supposedly nonpartisan group that mobilizes faith leaders to “leverage” their influence in government and politics. In the past, Connelly used his religious ties to round up voters for Trump, and now it seems he’s beginning to defect.
“The words I am hearing are shocked, betrayed, trampled, depressed, deflated,” Connelly said. “Most pastors I know don’t want Biden and will still probably vote for Trump, but this hurts the energy needed for those folks to do the things it takes to help elect a president.”
Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council Action, also released a statement expressing his dissatisfaction with the voting committee’s voting procedure and a staunch rejection of the platform’s more moderate abortion stance.
“The right to life transcends other political debates and the interests of any and all political parties and candidates,” he wrote. The FRCA, which Perkins runs, is the legislative affiliate of the Family Research Council, a Southern Poverty Law Center–designated hate group that is included on the advisory board of Project 2025. Perkins said that members of the platform committee hadn’t been given the opportunity to draft and amend the platform.
Perkins and Connelly are staunch Trump allies and were among several signatories of a letter from religious advocacy groups criticizing the FBI’s investigation into the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents. Perkins’s statement was shared by Ellis, as well as Walker Wildmon, the vice president of the American Family Association, another rabidly anti-gay SPLC-designated hate group.
It’s worth noting that in 2020 the Republican Party did not release a new platform, amid rumors that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was hoping to change the platform drafting process and shorten the final product down to a “single card that fits in people’s pockets.” At the time, Trump requested a “short form” platform from the party, which ultimately opted to reuse its 2016 policy slate. Kushner’s plan also reportedly involved shirking incendiary language and policies that catered to far-right activists, pulling Republican policy closer to the center right, likely to widen the platform’s appeal.
It’s not likely that Trump would altogether abandon the conservative Christian base that he’s been courting for years, but it appears that he may have been making moves to knock them out of the party’s decision-making process, starting as far back as 2020.
In any case, they seem more than a little unnerved, and Trump may have to scramble to stay in their good graces.
