President Donald Trump told evangelical leaders during a closed-door White House meeting this week that mass "violence" will break out if Republicans lose the upcoming congressional midterms, according to audio recordings.
He also told the conservative Christians _ falsely _ that he had repealed a campaign finance law prohibiting political campaigning by religious groups.
The recordings, obtained by NBC News, provide a rare glimpse of Trump's anxieties and behind-the-scenes rhetoric.
"You're one election away from losing everything that you've got," Trump told the supporters during the private event Monday in the White House's state dining room, the recordings reveal.
If Democrats take control of Congress, Trump said "violent people" will "overturn everything that we've done, and they'll do it quickly and violently."
"There's violence," Trump said. "When you look at Antifa and you look at some of these groups, these are violent people."
The comments echo Trump's infamous comparison of anti-fascist protesters to neo-Nazis in the wake of a deadly rally in Charlottesville, Va., last summer.
A White House spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment from the New York Daily News.
Trump told the conservative crowd he's ecstatic about repealing the Johnson Amendment.
"Now, one of the things I'm most proud of is getting rid of the Johnson Amendment," Trump said. "That was a disaster for you."
Problem is, Trump didn't actually get rid of the law.
The amendment, introduced in 1954 by then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson, bars religious organizations from "directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office."
Trump signed an executive order in May 2017 that sought to undermine the decades-old amendment, but experts and law scholars have contended the order didn't really do anything, since only Congress and the Supreme Court can repeal laws.
The order instructed the Treasury Department to forego "adverse action" against individuals or houses of worship for addressing "moral or political issues from a religious perspective." In practice, that means religious groups are permitted to express their religious views in public. They have always been allowed to do that, but they still can't legally take part in political campaigns.
"Now you're not silenced anymore," Trump told the evangelicals on Monday. "It's gone, and there's no penalty anymore, and if you like somebody you can go out and say, 'This man is going to be great for evangelicals, or for Christianity, or for another religion. This person is somebody that I like, and I'm going to talk about it on Sunday.'"
Contrary to Trump's claims, individuals have never been prohibited from expressing their political leanings from a religious perspective. In addition, the Johnson Amendment has rarely been enforced since its implementation.
