Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg, a breakout star of the 2020 campaign, slammed evangelical Christians on Sunday for their support of President Donald Trump given his payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels.

'I can't believe that somebody that was caught writing hush money checks to adult film actresses is somebody they should be lifting up as the kind of person they want to be leading this nation,' he said on NBC's 'Meet the Press.'

He said Trump's hypocrisy is 'unbelievable.'

Pete Buttigieg, a breakout star of the 2020 campaign, said he can't believe evangelical Christians support President Donald Trump

Buttigieg said he can't believe evangelical Christians support President Donald Trump (left) given his payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels (right)

'Here, you have somebody who not only acts in a way that is not consistent with anything that I hear in scripture or in church, where it's about lifting up the least among us and taking care of strangers, which is another word for immigrants. And making sure that you're focusing your effort on the poor. But also personally, how you're supposed to conduct yourself. Not chest thumping look-at-me-ism, but humbling yourself before others,' he said.

'We see the diametric opposite of that in this presidency. I think there was perhaps a cynical process where he decided to, for example, begin to pretend to be pro-life and govern accordingly. Which was good enough to bring many Evangelicals over to his side,' Buttigieg added.

The South Bend mayor has seen his long shot presidential campaign experience a boom in recent weeks, thanks to his criticism of Trump, who he's criticized before for his payoffs to Daniels.

Buttigieg, 37, is the first openly gay man to run for president

Trump has denied an affair with the actress but his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to campaign violations tied to the $130,000 paid to Daniels in exchange for her signing a nondisclosure form about an affair she said she had with Trump back in 2014.

Buttigieg, a 37-year-old who is the first openly gay man to run for president, has been steadily rising in the polls, overtaking Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Kirsten Gillibrand but not quite outpacing front runners like Sen. Kamala Harris or former Rep. Beto O'Rourke.

But he raised an impressive $7 million in his first quarter of fundraising and plans to formally announce his bid next Sunday in South Bend.

Buttigieg, whose only political experience is as mayor, defended his qualifications for the Oval Office.

'I would stack up my experience against anybody. I know it's not as traditional. I haven't been marinating in Washington here for a very long time and I know I'm not part of that establishment,' he said on 'Meet the Press.' 'I think you can also see pretty clearly that I'm about as different from this president as it gets.'

He also argued while a capitalist, democracy is more importan.

'America is a capitalist society but it has to be a democratic capitalism. That is really important and it is slipping away from us. When capitalism comes into tension with democracy, which is more important?' he said.

'I believe democracy is more important. When you have capitalism capturing democracy, where you have the kind of regulatory capture where powerful corporations can arrange the rules for their benefit, that's not real capitalism,' he added.

He also said this is the time in history when it makes sense for his candidacy.

'If you would have asked me two years ago what would you be doing in 2019, I don't think I would have said this,' Buttigieg noted. 'But here you have this moment, probably the only moment in American history, where it just might make sense for somebody my age, coming from an experience in the industrial Midwest, nonfederal, from different background, bringing something that will actually help Americans.'

Buttigieg and his husband, school teacher Chasten Buttigieg, have become social media stars and embraced by Democrats - particularly the younger crowd - as they hit the campaign trial.

'I really don't mind sharing him on the trail because I'm really enjoying watching people fall in love with him,' Chasten Buttigieg told DailyMail.com at a fundraiser for his husband in Washington D.C. Thursday evening.

On January 23, Pete Buttigieg declared he was looking at forming an exploratory committee to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

A town hall meeting at South by Southwest in March - where he called out Vice President Mike Pence, an evangelic Christian, for serving in the 'porn star presidency' - pushed him into the national spotlight.

It's not the first time he was tough on Trump administration.

When Buttigieg ran for Democratic National Committee chairman in 2017, he called Trump a 'draft-dodging chickenhawk.'

'I'll be damned if we're going to have a draft-dodging chickenhawk president of the United States - who thinks he's too smart to read his own intelligence briefings - ordering the people I served with back into another conflict because he can't be bothered to do his job properly,' he said at a forum in Baltimore.

Buttigieg, who was deployed to Afghanistan while in the Navy Reserves, argued in previous media appearances that hypocrisy needs to be called out.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg (right) is one of the latest Democrats to enter the 2020 presidential fray, but it's his husband Chasten Buttigieg who is leading the race in most popular candidate for 'First Gent'

'I worked hard to make sure when we oppose this president we're not emulating him. But we do need to call out hypocrisy when we see it and when we have people wrapping themselves in the flag who evidently faked a disability in order to get out of serving, when you have somebody seeming to want to impose his religion on others as the vice president has and at the same time teaming up with the presidency that seems to have no regard for at least what I would consider to be Christian values, I do think that hypocrisy needs to be called out forcefully but we need to be factual and we need to be honest and we do in resolving all of this disagreement need to be decent as well,' he told ABC's 'Good Morning America' last week.