Temple Square, Salt Lake City Utah
Credit: visitutah.com

President Trump’s visit to Salt Lake City Monday to sign two orders slashing the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments also included a meeting with Mormon religious leaders who shared “Church doctrine” with the president before he signed the controversial proclamations.

Trump’s unprecedented, two-million-acre cut in public land protection was spurred by Mormon political leaders, including Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, and supported by the entire Utah congressional delegation, Utah governor and Utah legislature.

It remains unknown what was discussed when Trump met with the top leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during the closed meeting.

But if Trump had also chosen to sit down with experts such as Thomas Murphy and Angelo Baca, two scholars of American Indian descent who were raised Mormon, he surely would have heard a different perspective on Mormon doctrine from the one offered by church leaders.

Trump would have heard how latent racism, a history of grave robbery […]