Energy Secretary Rick Perry in an interview with
Fox News over the weekend described President
Donald Trump as the "Chosen One" who was "sent by God."
"God's used imperfect people all through history. King David wasn't perfect. Saul wasn't perfect. Solomon wasn't perfect," Perry said in the interview, which aired Sunday.
"And I actually gave the president a little one-pager on those Old Testament kings about a month ago and I shared it with him," he added. "I said, 'Mr. President, I know there are people that say you said you were the chosen one and I said, 'You were.'"
Perry, who is expected to leave the Cabinet at the end of the year, said he told Trump: "You didn't get here without God's blessing."
The outgoing energy secretary also said: "Barack Obama didn't get to be the president of the United States without being ordained by God. Neither did Donald Trump."
In a "Fox & Friends" segment that offered a preview on the interview, Fox News chief national correspondent Ed Henry said Perry "thinks at this moment and this time, Donald Trump was sent by God to do great things."
Trump controversially referred to himself as the "Chosen One" while discussing the trade war with China in August.
"This is a trade war that should have taken place a long time ago," Trump said at the time.
"Someone had to do it," the president said. "I am the chosen one." The president has also struggled to accurately quote and interpret the Bible. During a campaign event in 2016, for example, he cited a verse from "Second Corinthians" but wrongly referred to the book as "Two Corinthians."
Trump's apparent lack of familiarity with scripture, however, has not hurt his level of support with white Evangelicals.