'The Lord says it is done': White House spiritual adviser Paula White prays for 'angels from Africa' to cement Trump's re-election

Donald Trump looks increasingly likely to lose the US presidential election to challenger Joe Biden, with the Democrat just six Electoral College votes shy of the 270 he needs to claim victory and four states still to declare their results.

The president moved quickly on Wednesday morning to cry “fraud”, baselessly alleging election interference without citing evidence and threatening legal action, even calling on the US Supreme Court to intervene and stop the count.

He has subsequently tweeted conspiratorially about “secretly dumped ballots” — and been censored by Twitter for doing so — and dispatched his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to the pivotal battleground state of Pennsylvania in an attempt to halt the tabulation of votes.

His supporters have meanwhile picketed a ballot-processing facility in Maricopa County, Arizona, echoing the president’s unsubstantiated warnings that the election is being “stolen” by Democrats.

But perhaps the most extraordinary effort to turn the tide back in Mr Trump’s favour has come in Orlando, Florida, where the president’s spiritual adviser, Paula White, led a marathon prayer service at the New Christian Destiny Centre, calling on the almighty for divine intervention in the presidential race.

In a video widely circulated on social media by Right Wing Watch, the “prosperity gospel” pastor can be seen denouncing the “demonic confederacies” working against Mr Trump and declaring that “angels from Africa, from South America” are coming to his aid.

“For every enemy that is aligned against you, let there be, that we would strike the ground,” Ms White intones from the megachurch pulpit.

“You will give us victory. I hear a sound of abundance of rain. I hear a sound of victory. I hear a sound of shouting and singing. I hear a sound of victory. I hear a sound of abundance of rain. I hear a sound of victory. I hear a sound of abundance of rain. I hear a sound of victory.”

She continues: “The Lord says it is done. The Lord says it is done. The Lord says it is done. For I hear victory, victory, victory, victory. In the corners of heaven. In the corners of heaven. Victory, victory, victory, victory, victory, victory.”

Breaking off and apparently speaking in tongues, the evangelist then resumed her prayer in English: “For angels have even dispatched from Africa right now, Africa right now, Africa right now. From Africa right now.

“They’re coming here. They’re coming here. In the name of Jesus. From South America, they’re coming here, they’re coming here, they’re coming here, they’re coming here, they’re coming here.

“From Africa. From South America. Angelic forces. Angelic reinforcement. Angelic reinforcement. Angelic reinforcement. Angelic reinforcement.”

Ms White has been associated with Mr Trump since at least 2002 when he reportedly saw her preaching on television and phoned to congratulate her on her performance.

She served on his Evangelical Advisory Board during the 2016 campaign and has continued to advise him on matters of faith in the White House.

The pastor has form in making extraordinary proclamations on the president’s behalf.

She said during last November’s impeachment hearings that Mr Trump’s political enemies “operate in sorcery and witchcraft” and that “Any persons [or] entities that are aligned against the president will be exposed and dealt with and overturned by the superior blood of Jesus”.

While President Trump has embraced Ms White and other controversial evangelical preachers like Robert Jeffress, notorious for his antisemitic and Islamophobic pronouncements, in a bid to shore up support from conservatve Christians in America’s Bible belt, the sincerity of his own religious convictions is open to question.

He has routinely been unwilling or unable to name his favourite passage from scripture when pressed in interviews and even once declined to state whether he preferred the Old or New Testament, joking instead that he regarded his own, ghost-written business manual The Art of the Deal (1987) as the greatest book ever written.

McKay Coppins of The Atlantic recently reported an anecdote from Mr Trump’s estranged former attorney Michael Cohen, who remembered him speaking admiringly of Atlanta pastor Creflo Dollar in 2015 after learning that he had just bought a new Gulfstream G650 with his congregants’ donations.

“They’re all hustlers,” the president is alleged to have said, speaking admiringly of the “scam”.

In his recent memoir Disloyal, Mr Cohen also records Mr Trump saying to him privately after a meeting with southern evangelists in 2011, in which they prayed for him: “Can you believe that bulls***?”