NEW YORK — Hundreds of top evangelical leaders walked into a closed-door meeting with Donald Trump here on Tuesday eager to get on board with the GOP nominee. But as they left, many prominent figures indicated that Trump still hasn't sealed the deal.

When eight leading Christian conservatives — including Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Sealy Yates of Trump’s evangelical advisory committee and Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List — lined up for a news conference following a meeting with the candidate, not a single one was ready to fully endorse Trump and grant him access to their extensive networks of grass-roots activists.


What they and other attendees offered instead was qualified encouragement for Trump, as many remarked that he had helped move them closer to an endorsement.

That’s a better take on Trump than many of the same leaders offered during the primary contests, but it still spells trouble. At a stage of the campaign in which candidates are typically working to win over moderates and independents, the presumptive GOP nominee is still working to nail down support from one of his own party’s core constituencies: Christian conservatives.

On Tuesday, Trump made a full-throated appeal to religious Republicans. Hundreds of evangelicals convened at a closed-door session at the cavernous Marriott Marquis in Times Square here for an all-day confab that featured appearances from various Trump representatives, including Ben Carson and Eric Trump, along with Trump himself.

He used the meeting to paper over past differences with evangelicals, many of whom preferred Ted Cruz, Ben Carson or a host of other candidates over the eventual winner, as well as to highlight some areas of common ground, especially regarding his support for anti-abortion Supreme Court justices.

“I’ve been a Christian, and I love Christianity and the evangelicals have been so incredibly supportive,” Trump said in the private session, according to audio obtained by POLITICO. “Don’t forget, when I ran, and all of a sudden I went to states that were highly evangelical, like as an example, South Carolina, and they said, ‘Well, Trump won’t win this state because it’s evangelical’ … not only did I win, I won in a landslide.”

“They really get me,” he continued, of evangelicals. “They understand.”

And certainly, many of the die-hard conservatives here, who have no appetite for supporting Hillary Clinton, want a reason to get behind the GOP nominee. By simply showing up, he moved closer to giving them one — but his work remains cut out for him.

“I certainly liked what I saw today,” said Dr. James Dobson, a veteran social conservative leader and previously vocal Trump critic.

But despite being listed by the campaign as a member of Trump’s evangelical advisory board, he said he wasn’t yet prepared to endorse (endorsements weren’t a requirement for joining the board).

“It’s early in the process, and there’s plenty of time,” Dobson said, less than one month before the Republican National Convention commences. “But again, I’m pleased by what I saw today. That’s about as far as I can go.”

In an interview before the gathering, Perkins — a former Cruz backer — said he hoped to be able to eventually endorse Trump. “Because of the alternative, I would like to be at a point where I find that I can support him,” he said. “If I can support him, I think many other evangelical social conservatives can as well. But it’s going to be difficult because clearly there’s a division right now in the evangelical ranks.”

On Tuesday, Perkins said that the “conversation has begun today” and was complimentary of Trump, but said that he’s still waiting to see whom Trump selects as a running mate, and how he reacts to a potentially very conservative platform at the RNC. "Is he learning in this process? I think he is,” Perkins said. “Now it’s important [to see] who he has around him.”

In addition to giving the main address, Trump also met with about 50 of the country’s most influential Christian conservative leaders, including Penny Nance, the head of Concerned Women for America; Dannenfelser (who later said she would personally support backing Trump, but didn’t know yet what the selection committee of her organization’s political arm would do); and Becki and Jerry Falwell Jr., Nance said. There, Trump railed against a culture of political correctness and stressed his support for defending religious liberty.

There’s more outreach to come. Trump’s campaign on Tuesday unveiled a list of more than two dozen Christian leaders who are members of his evangelical advisory board, including former Rep. Michele Bachmann, Dobson, Falwell and Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition.

Trump needs those efforts to bear fruit. Conservative Christians are an essential part of the GOP base, and turning them out is crucial for Republicans. While Trump did win a significant slice of evangelical voters during the primary, as he noted to the group, many of the key leaders of the movement have stayed on the sidelines, depriving Trump of core activist support and sending a signal to other evangelicals that this election may be worth skipping, even as they remain steadfastly opposed to Clinton.

The real estate mogul’s past more-liberal record on social issues is still of significant concern, as is his history of antagonizing various minority groups, including prisoners of war and people with disabilities. The awkward fit was on full display Tuesday when Trump posed for a photo with the Falwells. In tweeting the photo, Falwell Jr. said he was excited to be introducing Trump, but many pointed out that the trio was posing in front of a framed cover of Playboy magazine.

Tuesday’s events more broadly were aimed at strengthening the ties between Trump and the constituency he hopes to energize.

Both the format and the moderator were sympathetic to that aim. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee struck a reassuring and solicitous tone as he moderated the event. Attendees weren’t looking to elect a pastor, he told Trump, who last summer said he has never asked God for forgiveness. There was no opportunity for follow-up questions or further probing on issues.

Only a handful of questions — about Israel, religious liberty and immigration — were taken, and some attendees were disappointed that time ran out before Trump could be asked about abortion, an issue on which he’s switched positions several times.

“There’s some things I’d like to talk to him about, to hear a little more from him on the specific issue of Planned Parenthood,” Nance said. “But he really didn’t hurt himself today.”

He did, however, stress his commitment to appointing conservative Supreme Court justices, saying that a conservative court would go a long way toward protecting anti-abortion measures, religious liberty and gun rights. Trump repeatedly painted the election as a choice between his conservative court picks and Hillary Clinton’s more reliably liberal ones.

Clergy leaders demonstrate on June 21 in New York where Donald Trump is scheduled to meet evangelical clergy. | AP Photo

“These will be Supreme Court justices that will be intellects, that will be talented men in what they do — and women — and also be pro-life,” he said, noting that in addition to the list of possible Supreme Court justices he has already released, he might have four or five names to add to the list down the road.

“This next president … could have five justices in the Supreme Court,” he said. “Probably three, very possibly four, it could even be five. If Hillary Clinton gets in, we know what she’s going to put in there, we know what’s going to happen. … We’re going to end up being Venezuela, if she gets in, for a lot of different reasons.”

Ultimately, the attendees’ opposition to Clinton may be Trump’s best hope for pulling their enthusiastic support, and he played to that anger Tuesday when he questioned Clinton’s faith and suggested she would be problematic for religious Christians.

But Reed, of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, said that Trump gave attendees reason to be actively excited about him as well.

“I think he had a good day,” he told reporters from POLITICO and National Review, going on to add, “He showed up. He came to a meeting of over a thousand Christian leaders and spent hours hearing their concerns, receiving their wisdom and their counsel, and answering their questions. And the second thing is, he made it very clear on matters of life, religious freedom, support for Israel, he stands with them.”

Trump also suggested that he believes Christianity is under attack, a view shared by many in the room.

“I’ve talked about a temporary ban on Muslims, until we find out what’s going on,” he said. “I was met with … everything. Some people thought, great, some people didn’t think so great. If I said something about Christianity, it would be a whole different ballgame. We can’t let that happen, folks.”

After Trump effectively clinched the nomination in May, many evangelical leaders grappled both with whether to endorse him, and, if they reached that point, whether to activate their extensive grass-roots networks on his behalf. It was a question several top leaders in attendance were still pondering Tuesday as they left.

“The choice isn’t between supporting him and Hillary,” Nance said. “It’s between supporting him, turning out the people they influence, or doing nothing.”

She remains undecided as to her next step, as does Perkins.

For Gary Bauer, a prominent conservative activist, it’s an easier call. Bauer, who was supporting Cruz, said he had to decided both to back Trump and to use his political organization to assist the presumptive GOP nominee. He is planning a more formal endorsement in the coming weeks.

“Look, it’s a binary decision,” he said, going on to add. “We’ll definitely be promoting the ideas that we agree with that he’s standing for.”

Outside the Marriott, a lone figure in a blue suit stood waging his own personal protest.

Eric Teetsel, a Christian activist who ran religious outreach for Marco Rubio, stood by himself with a sign. “Torture is not pro-life,” his sign read. “Racism is not pro-life. Misogyny is not pro-life. Murdering the children of terrorists is not pro-life.”

“I may be standing here by myself, but I know I’m not alone,” Teetsel said, going on to add, “There are millions of Christians who look at the candidates in this race, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and say, ‘I can’t vote for either of them in good conscience.’ And they are wondering what to do.”