The mayor has justified each of his policy proposals as righteous on the authority of God’s Word, calling a failure to endorse his policies “sin” and even going so far as to say Republicans aren’t real Christians.

“So-called conservative Christian senators right now in the Senate are blocking a bill to raise the minimum wage, when Scripture says that whoever oppresses the poor taunts their maker,” he said during the July Democratic debate, ignoring the ample evidence revealing that minimum wage laws hurt low-income workers most, and slandering Christians in the process.

During the same debate and later on Twitter, Buttigieg said of immigration and border security, “For a party that associates itself with Christianity to say it is okay to suggest that God would smile on the division of families at the hands of federal agents, that God would condone putting children in cages, has lost all claim to ever use religious language. … The right doesn’t have a moral monopoly on religion.”

A moral monopoly belongs to nobody — except for God, who has a few things to say about divisive manipulators who serve their own interests and, through “good words and fair speeches[,] deceive the hearts of the simple.”