jerry falwell jr

nepotism like franklin graham? pool boy?

fal-kirk w/ TP?

fail

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/falwell/

THIS FUCKING GUY

10? 25

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massive failure': Conservative Christian shocked by newest revelations on Jerry Falwell Jr scandal

Brad Reed Raw Story January 25, 2022

Conservative Christian David French this week found himself utterly appalled at scandalous new revelations surrounding Jerry Falwell Jr.'s tenure as the president of Liberty U...

an 421

liberty University sues Jerry Falwell, Jr. for 'at least $30 million in damages' over sex scandal: report

Alex Henderson

Before a sex scandal forced his resignation in 2020, former Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr. was among the most prominent White Christian fundamentalist evangelical...

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/jerry-falwell-jr-2649629904/

with the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden less than a month away, the Christian right is in mourning. A major ally of far-right white evangelicals, President Donald Trump, is leaving the White House — and even though Biden is known for being a devout Catholic, he isn't nearly as friendly to the Christian Right's theocratic agenda. Journalist Maggie Severns, in an article published by Politico on December 22, discusses Trump's alliance with former Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. — who, according to Severns, was free to spend millions of dollars on his political activity thanks to an executive order from Trump.

"Former Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr.'s decision to spend millions of university dollars on Republican political causes followed an executive order by President Donald Trump directing the Internal Revenue Service to avoid, whenever possible, investigating religious organizations veering into politics," Severns explains. "Trump issued the order in 2017. The following year, under Falwell's leadership, the university directed more than $3 million to conservative organizations."

Severns' December 22 article follows a December 14 article for Politico in which she discussed the millions of dollars that Falwell Jr. spent promoting Trump and his causes at Liberty University.

Falwell Jr. is the son of the late Jerry Falwell Sr., founder of Liberty University and co-founder of the Moral Majority. The elder Falwell, who died in 2007, was an outspoken segregationist during the 1950s and 1960s and vigorously defended Jim Crow laws from the pulpit — and during the 1980s, he played a major role in the prominence that far-right white evangelicals and the Christian right movement achieved in the Republican Party.

New: Trump discouraged the IRS from investigating religious organizations. Then Jerry Falwell Jr. and Liberty Unive… https://t.co/rO3MQbPucH

— Maggie Severns (@Maggie Severns)1608734488.0

Trump went out of his way to pander to the Christian right when he ran for president in 2016 — and it worked. Trump is wildly popular among Christian right evangelicals, and Falwell Jr. has been among his closest allies.

Severns, in her December 22 article, notes that Falwell, Jr.'s pro-Republican activities "appear to push the boundaries of the university's non-profit status, particularly given that the law explicitly bans nonprofits from assisting political candidates under a provision called the Johnson Amendment, named after former President Lyndon Johnson, who sponsored it in the Senate."

The Politico reporter notes that "under Falwell's leadership, the university directed more than $3 million to conservative organizations" in 2018 — and "in 2019, it created a think tank that purchased Facebook ads featuring Trump's image and the slogan 'Pray For Our President,' produced a podcast that amplified Trump's claims of a stolen election, and recently staged a strategy session for the 2021 elections that featured only Republican politicians."

According to Severns, "Trump's administration furthered the IRS' already hands-off approach to monitoring churches and other religious nonprofits to the point that enforcement now appears to be nearly nonexistent, giving Liberty and other groups new opportunity to test boundaries they couldn't have in the past."

Brendan Fisher, director of the Watchdog group the Campaign Legal Center, told Politico, "For someone like Falwell, who was eager to use tax-exempt resources to engage in politics, it may have given the green light. It's a correlation, but it certainly seems like you can draw a line between the executive order and Liberty ramping up its political activity in the years following it."

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/liberty-universitys-falkirk-center-celebrates-one-year-anniversary-as-fellows-promote-stolen-election-falsehoods-and-covid-19-conspiracy-theories/

liberty University’s Falkirk Center celebrated its one-year anniversary this week. The Center describes its purpose as “educating, inspiring, and mobilizing Christians in the battle to preserve American liberty and rally citizens in an effort to shape government policies, national institutions, and American society through a Biblical worldview.”

Like its bullying co-founders Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Charlie Kirk, the Center takes an aggressive posture in defense of a Christian nationalist vision and in opposition to secularism. “I don’t care what the winds of wokeism tell us,” said Executive Director Ryan Helfenbein in an article on Liberty’s website. “We don’t just want to be an organization that barks; we want to be an organization that bites.”

“The function and the moral mission of the Falkirk Center is to go on the offense in the name of Christian principles and in the name of exceptional, God-given American liberties,” says the Center’s website. “Accomplishing this end requires more than adding noise to the echo chamber. It requires an army of bold ambassadors equipped with Biblical and Constitutional knowledge to speak truth to believers and unbelievers alike in every professional field and public forum.”

The leaders of Falkirk’s “army of bold ambassadors” are its fellows, who include:

Kirk, head of right-wing youth organizing group Turning Point USA and a vocal ally of Christian nationalist and dominionist religious-right leaders. Kirk recently tweeted, “There is more evidence of systemic voter fraud in America than ‘systemic racism’ yet which one do you think Democrats are more worried about?” He has portrayed public health restrictions on church gatherings as a Democratic plot against Christianity.
Sebastian Gorka, a Steve Bannon acolyte, pugnacious right-wing pundit, and former Trump White House aide.
Eric Metaxas, author and pundit and promoter of pro-Trump conspiracy theories who will emcee a right-wing rally on the National Mall Dec. 12.
Jenna Ellis, an attorney for Trump and the Trump campaign who has been joined at the hip with Rudy Giuliani as they press false and unsubstantiated claims that have been tossed out of one court after another; as special counsel to the religious-right Thomas More Law Center, she has represented churches defying COVID-19-related public health restrictions.
David Brat, former member of Congress from Virginia.
Darrell Harrison, a podcaster and dean of social media at Grace to You, a ministry of controversial outspoken evangelist John MacArthur.
Virgil Walker, a pastor and seminary student who co-hosts Harrison’s “Just Thinking” podcast.
David Harris, Jr., a right-wing social media figure who is on the board of Black Voices for Trump and Candace Owens’ BLEXIT.
Erika Frantzve, a model, podcast host, “social entrepreneur,” and Liberty University doctoral student who recently became engaged to Kirk.

Among the first-year accomplishments cited by the Falkirk Center was its day-long “faith summit” called “Get Louder,” which featured Christian Reconstructionist Gary DeMar as a speaker on a panel moderated by Metaxas.

The celebratory post, written by Liberty communications staffer Logan Smith, mentioned that “Falkirk Podcast” guests have included Trump lawyer and national punchline Giuliani and Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis, who teaches that genuine Christians must adhere to a belief in a literal six-day Creation and a universe that is thousands of years old.

It also placed the Falkirk Center firmly on the side of right-wing evangelicals who believe that conversations about social justice and racism within the church are dangerous, evil, and enemies of the Gospel. The article quotes a Liberty University parent praising Falkirk for “drawing attention to leftist thinking that is attacking the Church.”

“The Falkirk Center fills a need deeply felt during this time of increasing wokeness and social justice inside the church, calling Christians and pastors to return to the true doctrine of God’s Word,” said Grant May, one of a growing number of Falkirk Center ambassadors from across the country, according to the Liberty blog post. “The center has inspired and encouraged me during the rising fad of cultural Christianity to truly dive into the Word and remember what Christ’s commands for the Church were, not modern-day pastors’ advice on how to be culturally relevant.”

The post also celebrates that the Falkirk Center “has consistently encouraged churches and pastors to defy” pandemic “lockdown orders.”

The anniversary blog post included no mention of the Falkirk Center’s co-founder Jerry Falwell, Jr., the university’s disgraced former president.The Falkirk moniker is a fusion of Falwell’s name and that of cofounder Charlie Kirk, who heads the right-wing youth organizing project Turning Point USA, as well as a reference to the battle of Falkirk, memorialized in the movie Braveheart.

Tags: Charlie Kirk Darrell Harrison David Brat David Harris Eric Metaxas Erika Frantzve Jenna Ellis Jerry Falwell Jr.Sebastian Gorka Virgil Walker Christian Nation Election 2020 Falkirk Center Liberty University

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/jerry-falwell-jr-2649629904/

Severns' December 22 article follows a December 14 article for Politico in which she discussed the millions of dollars that Falwell Jr. spent promoting Trump and his causes at Liberty University.

New: Trump discouraged the IRS from investigating religious organizations. Then Jerry Falwell Jr. and Liberty Unive… https://t.co/rO3MQbPucH

— Maggie Severns (@Maggie Severns)1608734488.0

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Pool boy’ breaks down Jerry Falwell Jr’s ‘predatory behavior’ in CNN interview

Brad Reed / Raw StoryAugust 31, 2020

Giancarlo Granda, the former pool attendant who earlier this month made explosive allegations against former Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr., opened up about his experience during a CNN interview…

trms

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/too-much-right-sees-conservative-base-marks-n1237637

the conservative group called We Build the Wall presented donors with a relatively straightforward idea: it would collect private donations and use the money to build barriers along the U.S./Mexico border. On the surface, the pitch was effective: the outfit raised $25 million for the venture, and donors were assured that every penny would go toward wall construction.

Below the surface, according to federal prosecutors, the operation was a scam. As part of a broad criminal indictment, which included charges against former White House strategist Steve Bannon, prosecutors alleged money was used to pay for "home renovations, payments towards a boat, a luxury S.U.V., a golf cart, jewelry, cosmetic surgery, personal tax payments and credit card debt."

As jarring as these accusations are, there's also a degree of familiarity to the circumstances. As the New York Times' Michelle Goldberg noted in her new column:

Bannon's arrest comes just two weeks after New York's attorney general sought to dissolve the National Rifle Association, claiming that its leadership "looted" it. On Thursday, Politico reported that Jerry Falwell Jr., recently suspended as president of Liberty University, has "repeatedly used a 164-foot yacht owned by NASCAR mogul Rick Hendrick for family vacations after the university committed to a lucrative sponsorship deal with Hendrick Motorsports."

The trifecta is neatly tied together with a common thread: the NRA, Jerry Falwell, and We Build The Wall each stand accused of, among other things, swindling unsuspecting conservatives who put their trust in powerful political voices on the right.

But if the allegations prove true, the perpetrators are hardly the first to try to fleece their own base. It was seven years ago when MSNBC's Chris Hayes wrote, "Much of movement conservatism is a con and the base are the marks."

The observation was true at the time, but it's even more important now.

As regular readers know, many prominent Republican voices --Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, et al. -- have created lucrative mailing lists used for highly dubious purposes. Similarly, the rise of the Tea Party in the Obama era led to the creation of "**scam PAC**s" that targeted conservative donors, but existed "mostly to pad the pockets" of the consultants who ran them.

Donald Trump, not surprisingly, was similarly eager to separate those he perceived as fools from their money, running a fraudulent charitable foundation and creating a fraudulent "university," which was designed to do little more than rip off its "students."

If the latest criminal indictments are accurate, groups like the NRA and We Build The Wall also saw conservatives as suckers.

The Washington Post's Paul Waldman added yesterday, "Conservative operatives such as Bannon have always viewed the right's rank-and-file with utter contempt, as little more than a collection of fools to be taken advantage of."

Similarly, Amanda Carpenter, a conservative who's worked with GOP leaders such as Jim DeMint and Ted Cruz, delivered an important message to the right yesterday: "Conservatives should be very angry. You got used.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/the-true-face-of-white-evangelicalism-has-been-exposed

One has to imagine that for Jerry Falwell Jr., things feel very unfair right about now. For more than four years, the world of right-wing American Christianity has not only lined up behind Donald Trump — a thrice-married chronic adulterer who bragged on tape how he likes to “grab ’em by the pussy” — but has embraced him as if he were the second coming.

White evangelicals’ devotion to Trump didn’t wane after he became president, even in the face of stories about Trump paying off a porn actress and a centerfold model to stay quiet about his compulsive cheating on his third wife. Nor was there any angst on the Christian right over Trump’s relentless grifting or his efforts to blackmail the Ukrainian president into bolstering lies about former Vice President Joe Biden.

On the contrary, the Christian right’s worshipful attitude toward Trump has only increased over the years, with pastors comparing Trump to Jesus himself and calling Trump “God’s chosen one.” The president’s approval with white evangelicals remains strong, at 72%, and 82% say they plan to vote for him.

With all this Christian love for a president who makes all ordinary sinners look like amateurs, it’s no wonder that Falwell — the president of Liberty University, which was founded by his dad, the legendary Southern Baptist pastor and televangelist — thought it was no big deal to unbutton his pants a little. But when Falwell posted a photo on social media of himself partying on a yacht with those literally unbuttoned pants, holding something that resembled an alcoholic beverage and with his arm around the waist of a pregnant female acquaintance with her shirt rolled up, he did not get the Trump treatment.

Instead, Falwell was asked to take an indefinite leave of absence from his job at Liberty University, the right-wing evangelical institution in Lynchburg, Virginia, that his father, Jerry Falwell Sr., founded in 1971. On Tuesday, the school announced that Jerry Prevo, chairman of its board of trustees, would replace Falwell as acting president.

the photo itself, if we’re being honest, was hardly “racy,” as some outlets called it. It looked no different from any other photo of people at a social gathering acting goofy after a few drinks. Still, this was apparently the last straw, after a year of reports that Falwell was getting up to precisely the kind of antics for which Trump apparently gets a permanent pass.

Last summer, a series of titillating stories about the Liberty president, including a report that Falwell and his wife had lavished financial favors on a “pool boy” half their age they met while partying in Florida. Falwell also reportedly emailed photos of his wife in a French maid costume to an employee, later claiming that was an accident and he’d meant to send the photos to her personal trainer. This raised more eyebrows, however, since the personal trainer is another good-looking younger man whom the Falwells have helped financially. Other photos of the Falwells partying in a Miami nightclub in 2014 were published last year.

Giving Falwell the boot only after he embarrassed the evangelical community in public only reinforces the main takeaway from this story: The supposed morality of white evangelicals is largely a facade, propped up in order to justify the Christian right’s real purpose, which is to defend white supremacy and male dominance. It’s worth asking why anyone would bother to keep up the facade, now that Trump has proved right-wing America doesn’t need to hide behind the Bible and the cross to defend its true agenda.

Before Trump, it was actually a pretty good racket that white evangelicals had going. As Robert P. Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute writes in “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity,” his book on the racist history of much of American Christianity, “most white Christian churches have protected white supremacy by dressing it in theological garb, giving it a home in a respected institution, and calibrating it to local cultural sensibilities.”

Piety can give cover to racism by positioning white evangelicals as morally superior. By policing sex and prohibiting the pleasures of gambling, partying, drinking or even dancing, white evangelicals can craft a narrative where they are upright guardians of virtue, rather than mean-spirited racists who organize — in distinctly un-Christ-like fashion — to preserve their privileges at the expense of people of color. Indeed, the more white evangelicals defended a racist social order, the more effort they put into portraying themselves as “virtuous” by the way of strict rules governing individual behavior.

It’s the same story with white evangelicals and sexism. The prohibitions on premarital sex, contraception, abortion and divorce mainly serve to control girls and women, channeling them away from living independent lives and keeping them under the thumb of one man or another, first a father and then a husband, for their entire lives. Whenever feminists criticized evangelical misogyny, the Christian right defended itself by claiming that its sexist ideology flowed from “faith,” when in reality, it was the other way around: Male supremacy was the core belief, and religious faith was used to rationalize and justify it.

One of the remarkable developments in the age of Trump has the collapse of any meaningful need for all this Bible-hugging to defend bigotry against people of color, women and LGBTQ people.

Oh, Trump sometimes loves to wave a Bible around, though always with an awkwardness that suggests he’s afraid it may burn his fingers. But it’s unclear that anyone is fooled. With his ham-fisted and sloppy fake piety — and his obvious ignorance about all religious or theological questions — Trump illuminates a fundamental truth about right-wing Christianity, which is that it’s largely a cover story used to defend the otherwise indefensible.

As I argue in my book, “Troll Nation,” the true innovation of Trumpism is a kind of asshole pride, the collective conservative realization that there’s no longer any need to pretend to be moral or virtuous or even to care about other people. It’s become a time to embrace playing the role of the villain.

For the modern conservative, “triggering the liberals” by being a jerk is the highest calling, and “political correctness” is the slur directed at anyone who tries to harsh their vibe by suggesting that overt racism and sexism is uncool.Their president is a witless wannabe insult comic, and the more that Trump resorts to flinging childish insults, the more his supporters love him. Ours is an era where conservatives deliberately go to the grocery store without masks and film themselves harassing minimum-wage workers who are trying to enforce basic public health rules, so they can glory in what massive jerks they are. Their entertainment comes from crude right-wing shock jocks in the Rush Limbaugh tradition. Trolling liberals — for example, by awarding the odious Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom — has replaced pious posturing as the lingua franca of American conservatives.

In other words, the American right no longer feels any need to justify their will to power with over-the-top moralizing. Dominance has become its own justification.

So it’s not surprising that Falwell got a little lackadaisical about pretending to believe all that crap he’s been preaching about the virtues of sobriety and chastity. And more than a little dopey that the board of Liberty University is trying to act offended and going through the ritual of asking him to step aside. The notion that the religious right is motivated by “morality” and “faith” was blown to bits the second they bet their future on Donald Trump. Their massive hypocrisy has been permanently exposed, and dumping one prominent figure to save face won’t change that.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/jerry-falwell-jr-s-warrant-for-journalists-came-from-liberty-universitys-own-police/

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Jerry Falwell Jr.’s warrant for journalists came from Liberty University’s own police

Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead

Written by Sarah K. Burris / Raw Story April 9, 2020

A right-wing commentator interviewed Jerry Falwell Jr. during his show Wednesday, where Falwell said that there were two arrest warrants open for reporters who came onto Liberty University’s campus.

Upon further examination of the warrant, the police officer who signed the warrant was Detective/Sgt. A.B. Wilkins 206 LUPD. The LUPD is not the Lynchburg Police Department nor is there a Sgt. or Detective A.B. Wilkins. It’s the police department under the authority of Liberty University.

Warrants are typically issued by a judge who directs an arresting officer to execute the warrant. No judge appears to have signed the warrant nor is there a judge mentioned, though the warrant does cite the Lynchburg, Virginia courthouse. The warrant also doesn’t appear to be certified by the clerk that it was submitted to the court. Clerks generally stamp documents when received.

The accused reporters, ProPublica reporter Alec MacGillis and a New York Times photographer Julia Rendleman were accused of trespassing on the campus. The warrant called it a “class 1 misdemeanor,” which, according to Virginia law “is punishable by up to 12 months in jail, a fine of up to $2,500, or both.”

The Liberty University Police Department boasts eight officers. It’s unknown if the Lynchburg Police Department would have been willing to issue a similar warrant for the arrest of the reporters.

You can see the public documents below:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/the-christian-rights-perverse-hostility-to-science-is-definitely-going-to-get-people-killed/

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The Christian right’s perverse hostility to science is definitely going to get people killed

Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon March 26, 2020

Scientists and health experts largely agree on the steps needed to fight COVID-19, the rapidly spreading new coronavirus: Widespread testing, if possible. Widespread and often stringent social distancing protocols in communities where it’s taken root, to slow the spread. Hygienic practices like frequent hand-washing and sterilizing commonly touched surfaces. Protective gear, like masks in medical settings, to keep health care professionals from catching it and spreading it.

But when it comes to conservative evangelical Christians, who are already hostile to science on many levels, advice from health experts is all too often being treated as something that can be dismissed out of hand, if it threatens the political or theological goals of their movement.

To be clear, Christian right leaders aren’t denying that coronavirus is a real problem (at least not anymore). If anything, the bevy of snake oil salesman who call themselves ministers sees the panic around the virus as a marketing opportunity to make money from selling dangerous supplements, to declare the virus can be beaten with the power of prayer and to declare that the pandemic is a divine punishment inflicted on sinners.

But Christian right leaders are also not about to let medical science supersede their authority, much less get in the way of their quest for power and cold, hard cash. Because of this, the Christian right has become a vector of bad advice, misinformation and dreadful business decisions that are directly threatening the health not just of their followers, but the public at large.

Jerry Falwell Jr., the shamelessly greedy president of Liberty University, has spent weeks downplaying the coronavirus threat, accusing the media of wildly exaggerating it to “destroy the American economy” and of course to damage Donald Trump. While nearly every university and college in the country has shut down their campuses and moved to online teaching to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Falwell seems determined to keep Liberty open.

Falwell is already allowing students back on campus, claiming it’s more imporant “to give [students] the ability to be with their friends, to continue their studies, enjoy the room and board they’ve already paid for and to not interrupt their college life.”

Roy Moore, the Christian right figurehead and twice-failed Senate candidate brought low by multiple accusations of sexual misconduct, is similarly defiant of the calls for social distancing that threaten to disrupt in-person church activities.

“I am writing a letter to pastors on the duty to continue church assemblies, even in the midst of these trying times,” Moore wrote in an open letter, adding on Twitter that “churches are closed by tyrants who pander fear in the place of faith in God.”

Moore invoked the example of Dr. Benjamin Rush, the Declaration of Independence signer who stayed in Philadelphia and caught yellow fever during an epidemic in the 1790s. Of course, Rush risked his life to save people with his medical expertise, an entirely different situation than a pastor insisting that people must come to church.

To be clear, most churches, especially mainline Protestant and Catholic churches, are prioritizing the health of members and closing their doors for the duration the crisis, often pointing believers to online services. But the pressure to keep the doors open, when it comes from someone like Moore, is no small thing. He may seem like an offensive joke to many liberals, but Moore has immense influence in the world of evangelical Christianity, which often favors megachurches that gather hundreds or even thousands of people at once, and whose pastors have been reluctant to close their doors. Reports suggest many of these churches are defiantly refusing to cancel services.

Along with pastors who want those collection plates to keep flowing, at least one wealthy and prominent Christian right family is determined to keep its business open to the public. David Green, the owner of Hobby Lobby, is keeping most of his stores open during the pandemic, except those actually forced to shut down by local governments.

His reason? His wife, Barbara Green, prayed about it and decided to focus instead on “profound words to remind us that He’s in control.” Those words were “Guide, Guard and Groom,” though the P-word, “profit,” may also play a role.

The Green family, let’s remember, was behind a recent lawsuit in which the Supreme Court granted privately held corporations the right to block their employees from using health insurance plans to pay for contraception. The case was presented by the Greens and their religious right allies as a relatively minor question of balancing reproductive rights against religious freedom. In reality, the case was about opening the door, both legally and culturally, to Christian right demands that arbitrary religious beliefs should trump human rights, public health, science and government authority.

The presumption undergirding the Hobby Lobby case — that Christian conservatives should be able to defy the laws that the rest of us are bound by — wasn’t taken seriously by many people in mainstream politics at the time, perhaps because the victims were low-income female employees who wanted access to contraception. But post-Hobby Lobby, the Christian conservative belief that they’re entitled to exempt themselves from any laws or public health regulations they disagree with is shaping the reaction to the coronavirus — and threatening the health of everyone in the country.

Ilyse Hogue of NARAL pointed this out on Twitter Wednesday night, writing that Republicans have been co-opted by “a radical right for whom fundamentalism [has] completely supplanted any rational thought or science and data-based policy approaches.”

“We’ve seen them use disinformation” to block access to contraception, suppress LGBT rights and close abortion clinics, she noted, adding that “now they’re doing it at a national scale during a global pandemic.”

Indeed, the power the religious right now wields through the White House only amplifies the dangerous impact of its anti-science views on the coronavirus response. Vice President Mike Pence — a Christian conservative with a long history of anti-science views, including both denying that condoms are safe and cigarettes are dangerous — is running the White House coronavirus task force, which is no doubt one of the big reasons the U.S. has one of the worst responses to the pandemic in the world. Pence is also wasting time on conference calls with religious right leaders who are more interested in exploiting this crisis to force women to give birth against their will than in preventing thousands or millions of people from dying.

Trump himself has surrounded himself with a phalanx of Christian right pastors who are eager to lie to their flocks about what a great leader he is and to amplify his relentless drumbeat of lies and misinformation. This includes Dave Kubal, the head of Intercessors for America, who told an audience on a prayer call last week that coronavirus “testing has limited value.” This is flat-out untrue — testing has been a critical element in every country that’s been able to get the virus under control — but it suits Trump’s approach to the disease, which has been to minimize testing access in hopes of keeping the official number of cases artificially low.

The Christian right has always been a threat to public health. They were a threat during the AIDS crisis, when they successfully exerted pressure on Republican leaders to minimize the disease, which conservative Christians saw as a punishment for sinful behavior. They have contributed to the spread of all manner of STIs, in fact, by convincing schools to replace sex education with programs meant to discourage the use of condoms. They’ve encouraged fear of vaccinations, especially the HPV vaccine that prevents cervical and other forms of cancer, for no other reason except that HPV is an STI and therefore viewed, sigh, as punishment for sinners. They’ve blocked access to contraception and abortion to punish women for having sex, even though unwanted childbirth is linked to poorer health outcomes for women and children.

But this renegade right-wing movement has been allowed to run rampant because their cruelty and hostility to science primarily affected marginalized people, especially low-income women and LGBTQ people. Now their attitudes are a threat to everyone, rich or poor, of every race or gender or faith (including no faith). But the sad truth is that as long as Christian right leaders keep on shilling for Republicans, the party will close its eyes and embrace them, no matter how many people have to die.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/liberty-university-professor-warns-lives-are-at-stake-after-jerry-falwell-jr-welcomes-students-back-to-school/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/yale-psychiatrist-explains-why-the-coronavirus-pandemic-and-donald-trumps-irrational-cult-is-a-deadly-combination/

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It's Time to Stop Televising Trump's Briefings]

Fox News Is Still Peddling Coronavirus Misinformation to Its Extremely At-Risk Viewers

The network's audience skews older. When will it stop doubling down on the propaganda that could put viewers in mortal danger?

image

BY JACK HOLMES

MAR 13, 2020

The people most at risk in the novel coronavirus pandemic are the elderly and those with immunodeficiency. That's why we all have a duty to practice social distancing, even if we are younger and unlikely to bear the brunt of all this. We owe it to people in gravest danger. In America, many of those at-risk older folks watch a lot of Fox News. In some cases, it's their main or only source of information. But even over the last day or so, the network has scarcely changed the tune on its opinion shows, even as Fox employees are now starting to work from home.

The morning and primetime shows are still downplaying the threat of the virus, occasionally suggesting it's some sort of plot orchestrated against the president. (By the Deep State? In coordination with, uh, 60 million Italians? And the first lady of Canada?) The network is offering people misinformation or even outright conspiracies, often by booking guests who have zero expertise in any field beyond kissing Donald Trump's ass. In short, the Fox News Channel is an enterprise that seems determined to place its core customer base in mortal danger. Beyond the sociopathy, this seems bad for business.

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It's Not 'Politicizing the Crisis,' It's Your Duty]

We had one example last night on the television program hosted by Sean Hannity, just the man you want serving up fact-like objects regarding a global pandemic. The superstar peddler of resentment and paranoia hosted a succession of people who know nothing about pandemic disease to yell at each other about who's peddling "Chinese propaganda." Then he had on Tom Cotton, United States Senator from Arkansas, and one of the most brazenly irresponsible people in elected office today.

.@SenTomCotton on the Bidens' coziness w/ China: "In light of how China's unleashed this plague on the entire world ... it's even more urgent that we examine Joe Biden's decade long record of being wrong on China" and Hunter's biz dealings. pic.twitter.com/PZZVZ4GYaJ

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 13, 2020

They are conspiracizing about Hunter Biden after weeks of completely failing their viewers on the actual defining issue of the day. Not only that, Cotton was determined to hit every insane note. He had a fair-enough critique of Joe Biden's comments on China—they were, indeed, stupid—but then it was on to vague insinuation of Biden corruption; unproven claims about the effectiveness of Trump's travel ban on China; framing the pandemic, without evidence, as an attack on America by "the Chinese Communist Party." Using smoke and mirrors that fans of The Emails (2016) will recognize, Cotton attempted to tie Hunter Biden's overseas business connections to coronavirus.

Then Hannity jumped in with some (nonsense) Ukraine talk before a brief discussion of how hard he, Sean Hannity, has worked for his money.

Then Cotton was back on, suggesting there are "fishy circumstances" and calling for an investigation into the Bidens. Again, this is amid a global pandemic Fox has downplayed for weeks. (Cotton, for his part, has been making a lot of noise about it.) Then Cotton reiterated the notion, citing zero evidence, that this is some sort of bioweapon attack orchestrated by China on the whole world. If there is an elected official hornier for international conflict than Tom Cotton, his first name is Lindsey.

Cotton: China is "not going to get away with infecting the world with this Chinese Coronavirus” pic.twitter.com/DbFN48h5H9

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 13, 2020

Yes, the Chinese government lied and distorted the issue for months and punished whistleblowers in totalitarian fashion. We still had months to prepare and did nothing. The President of the United States himself distorted and downplayed the threat constantly. He said people were going to work while sick, no big deal. He said it would go away miraculously. He said we were on the brink of having a vaccine available. All of this was complete bullshit, excavated from his ass and served up to the public at a juncture when we actually could have done something.

And just last night, we learned via NPR this public posture completely reflected what was going on behind the scenes. Trump rejected pleas from Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar that coronavirus represented a serious threat that required action in January. Up until this week, the president has resisted widespread testing—one of the keys to South Korea's success in mitigating the problem—for a simple reason: "The president had made clear—the lower the numbers on coronavirus, the better for the president, the better for his potential reelection this fall."

Throughout all this, the president and his allies have believed they can will this thing away like every other scandal that has struck his presidency. If they just keep doubling down on unreality, eventually enough people will believe it that it will be true, just like all their other scams. Except the virus is impervious to bullshit. Cotton's deployment of the term "Chinese coronavirus" is a signal they are going to try to racism their way out of this now, but it's not going to work when Fox News viewers start contracting the virus in large numbers. Which, as it stands, is going to happen. Earlier this week, a congressional doctor estimated 75 to 150 million Americans will get this thing. But this is what Fox served up to viewers this morning.

On Fox & Friends, Jerry Falwell Jr claims people are "overreacting" to coronavirus, the national response is "their next attempt to get Trump," and the virus itself is a North Korean bioweapon. pic.twitter.com/2JPuNBW7C3

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) March 13, 2020

What the fuck, man? Why are you hosting Trump's pastor-adjacent amigo—who has intricate ties to former Trump fixer Michael Cohen—to talk about a public-health threat? What value does Jerry Falwell offer if you actually want to inform your viewers, who again are often in the most at-risk demographic group, about the situation with COVID-19? (Later, he called for various counties to secede from Virginia. To reiterate: what the fuck?) Falwell even took Cotton's bioweapon conspiracy-mongering to a new level, suggesting this was the result of North Korea's (??) work in cahoots with China. Also, he said it's an impeachment hoax. Again: 60 million Italians are quarantined in their homes, singing together out their windows to feel they're not alone for days on end, as part of a plan to remove the American president from office?

This is just more doubling down, even as these people surely know that some of the people watching are going to die from this thing. That is just a fact. Fox News viewers who've been told for weeks that this thing is not a big deal, that the media is blowing it out of proportion to hurt the president, that it's some bioweapon-slash-hoax, are going to die. Eventually, everyone will agree that this was not some Liberal Fake News Anti-Trump Hoax. Eventually, it will surely be clear, even to Fox News viewers, that Fox News has been lying about it in conjunction with the president. Will this change how people evaluate what constitutes a good source of information? Don't hold your breath.

JACK HOLMES Politics Editor

Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/jerry-falwell-jr-just-unmasked-conservatism-and-we-should-seriously-thank-him-for-it/

no lnx

Jerry Falwell Jr. just unmasked conservatism — and we should seriously thank him for it

Written by John Stoehr, The Editorial Board March 15, 2020

I suppose we owe Jerry Falwell Jr. a debt of gratitude. I’m serious.

Falwell is the son of the late Jerry Falwell, the man most responsible for bringing fundamentalist Christianity out of the political wilderness during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Junior, along with Franklin Graham, himself a scion of a religious dynasty, is perhaps the president’s greatest champion among white evangelical Christians.

He appeared on “Fox & Friends” yesterday.Among other things, he accused Donald Trump’s enemies, including the press, of hyping COVID-19, the new strain of the coronavirus spreading around the world, panicking global markets and closing down entertainment and cultural events here and elsewhere. He, like Tom Cotton, the fascist senator from Arkansas, believes the disease outbreak can be blamed on totalitarian regimes in the east. For Cotton, that’s China. For Falwell, that’s North Korea. (While Falwell was on air, the president announced a state of national emergency related to the outbreak, undermining his and Cotton’s search for a scapegoat for his sake.)

Falwell’s demagoguery isn’t what we should be thankful for. What we should be thankful for is his confessing, without appearing to know it, that a pillar of “principled conservatism” in the United States is no pillar at all. Not in practice. Once you see that this pillar rests on a bed of sand, rather than constitutional bedrock, you start seeing other “conservative principles” do, too. “States’ rights,” “gun rights,” “the right to life” and even “religious freedom” are nearly always about something other than what they seem to be. Falwell and his ideological confederates can’t be honest about it, though. If they were, they’d lose. Dishonesty, fraudulence and bad faith are central to their aims.

What would Jesus do? Not that.

Here’s some context, courtesy of the Christian Science Monitor (my italics):

“As in many states, residents in parts of rural, conservative Virginia say they seem to inhabit an increasingly different daily reality than that of urban and suburban districts. That feeling of separation was compounded by last November’s Democratic sweep of the state’s elected offices. Now residents in Frederick County are mulling a radical proposal: seceding from Virginia and joining neighboring West Virginia.”

Apparently Falwell is part of the effort. He’s the head of something called “Vaxit,” according to Fox & Friends. Whether that’s a real organization I have no idea, but that’s not what I’m most interested in. I’m most interested in expressing gratitude to the good reverend for admitting that “states’ rights” have nothing to do with conservatism.

Think about it.

If the principle of “states’ rights” meant what conservatives have said it meant to them, not one of them, not Jerry Falwell Jr. nor anyone calling him or herself a “principled conservative,” would dare suggest that a county secede from a state. If states are sovereign, as conservatives have alleged since Strom Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat in 1948, calling for a county to secede from a state is traitorous. If “states’ rights” are as sacred as conservatives have said they are, the idea of secession is an abomination.

In saying counties should leave the state as casually as ordering unsweet tea with his burger and fries, the Rev. Falwell told us without knowing he was telling us that conservatism in theory is authoritarianism in practice. It cannot and will not tolerate democratic change, despite change coming with the blessing of the majority. If the majority rules, Falwell and his confederates will abandon commitments to democracy.

Once you abandon democracy—once you open the door to treason—there’s no end in sight. Once it seceded, “the Confederacy began to deny states’ rights,” wrote James W. Loewen in Lies My Teacher Told Me. “Jefferson Davis denounced states’ rights as destructive to the Confederacy. The mountainous counties in western Virginia bolted to the Union. Confederate troops had to occupy east Tennessee to keep it from emulating West Virginia. Winn Parish, Louisiana, refused to secede from the Union. Winston County, Alabama, declared itself the Free State of Winston. Unionist farmers and woodsmen in Jones County, Mississippi, declared the Free State of Jones.”

By February 1864, Davis despaired: “Public meetings of treasonable character, in the name of state sovereignty, are being held.” Thus states’ rights as an ideology was contradictory and could not mobilize the white South for the long haul.

What mobilized the white South was the defense of slavery. Falwell and his new breed of confederate aren’t doing that, of course, but the spirit of treason, if not the act of treason, is the same. Conservatives tell us they prefer slow and gradual change, and stand united against radical attempts to bring it swiftly. But that’s not their true face. Conservatism in practice is a radical ideology reserving the right to betray its stated principles, and to betray community and brotherhood, if it doesn’t get what it wants.

Thanks to Jerry Falwell Jr., that’s now easy to see.

3/13 bunch of xian wacko neglected eg

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/jerry-falwell-jr-floats-conspiracy-theory-that-coronavirus-is-north-korean-bioweapon/

leaks about Jerry Falwell Jr suggest Liberty University insiders want him out as president: Conservative columnist

Tana Ganeva / Raw Story

Jerry Falwell Jr., took over the evangelical Liberty University when his father died in 2007. Today, his myriad controversies—from his embrace of Donald Trump to the bizarre tale involving him,…

No lnx

Jerry Falwell Jr’s claim sharing his damaging emails is a ‘criminal conspiracy’ is ‘totally insane’: legal expert

Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead

Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement September 13, 2019

Jerry Falwell, Jr. is going to have a hard time convincing federal law enforcement authorities to investigate his latest embarrassing scandal, what he is calling the “theft” of his emails. The Liberty University and Liberty School of Law president is labeling the sharing of emails he has not explicitly denied writing a “criminal conspiracy.” Some of those emails, published in the press, are proving increasingly embarrassing.

The incriminating documents show Falwell has made derogatory comments about faculty and staff, including calling one student “emotionally imbalanced and physically retarded,” a group of students who opted to work out at an off-campus gym “social misfits,” and his school’s police chief a “a half-wit” who is “easy to manipulate,” according to an article in Reuters.

That’s in addition to a damaging article Monday in Politico, which detailed Falwell’s “culture of fear” at Liberty, some racy photos, Falwell allegedly partying with his son Trey at a Miami nightclub, and the Christian university president allegedly bragging about the size of his penis to at least one school official.

Falwell on Tuesday, claiming he was the target of an “attempted coup,” said the FBI would be investigating the “theft” of his emails.

“Liberty owns every single one of those emails,” Falwell told the Associated Press in a phone interview. “It’s our property. They were working for us when they used our server. And our policies make it clear every email sent on our server is owned by Liberty and if anybody shares it with anybody outside Liberty, it is theft. And so that’s the underlying crime.”

“The emails are stolen property,” Falwell told CNN, as Talking Points Memo reported, “and the fact that all these people in different states are joining together and sharing stolen emails with the press makes it a criminal conspiracy.”

Former federal prosecutor disagrees

Reuters, which published excerpts of some of Falwell, Jr.’s emails, notes the ones they were given access to were sent from an Earthlink email domain.

The AP reports the FBI is not commenting, but cybercrime expert and former federal prosecutor Nick Akerman is.

Ackerman “said Falwell’s assertion of a criminal conspiracy is ‘totally insane,’” the AP notes. “Akerman said the ex-board members and employees can share emails with reporters as long as they had authorized access to them and didn’t hack into someone else’s account. He said trade secrets are also protected under the law, but Liberty wouldn’t be able to make a case there either.”

“I don’t think any law enforcement agency is going to be interested in this one,” said Akerman, a partner at Dorsey & Whitney.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/liberty-university-insiders-blow-the-lid-off-jerry-falwell-jrs-shady-dealings-somebodys-gotta-tell-the-freaking-truth/

no lnx

Liberty University insiders blow the lid off Jerry Falwell Jr’s shady dealings: ‘Somebody’s gotta tell the freaking truth’

Written by Travis Gettys / Raw Story September 9, 2019

More than two dozen current and former Liberty University officials revealed their growing disenchantment with president Jerry Falwell Jr. — whose leadership they described as a “dictatorship.”

The school uses nondisclosure agreements to silence university employees and board members, but many of them agreed to speak anonymously to reporter Brandon Ambrosino, a Liberty graduate, for an article published by Politico.

“I feel like I’m betraying them in some way,” said one longtime current employee with ties to the Falwells. “But someone’s gotta tell the freakin’ truth.”

Liberty sources revealed that Falwell partied at nightclubs and graphically discussed his sex life with employees, and they said he and his wife had been consolidating power and directing university resources to projects and real estate deals for himself and his friends.

“We’re not a school, we’re a real estate hedge fund,” said a senior university official with knowledge of Liberty’s finances. “We’re not educating, we’re buying real estate every year and taking students’ money to do it.”

Falwell took over the university in 2007, after his namesake father’s death, and his brother Jonathan took over Jerry Falwell Sr.’s Thomas Road Baptist Church.

The nonprofit university had listed assets of just over $259 million at that time, but its IRS filing in 2017 showed assets surpassing $2.5 billion, driven by a surge in online students — but many close to Falwell expressed concerns about where tuition money goes.

“We’re talking about the difference between right and wrong,” a current high-ranking university official said. “Not even ‘being a Christian,’ but being a good person, versus people who manipulate the system.”

spox trump on campus free sp eg pbs newshour

AN 519

Trump is grappling with the end of the Mueller investigation, and it’s getting scary. One minute Trump is insisting that he was completely exonerated by the Mueller report, and the next he’s showing just how terrified he is of Robert Mueller testifying before Congress. But the really worrying part is when Trump suggests he should get two extra years in the White House to make up for the time he was under investigation. Because “Oh, just give me a couple of extra unconstitutional years and then I’ll go peacefully” is pretty much the script for an aspiring dictator.

The “two more years” idea originated with Jerry Falwell Jr., who described it as “reparations,” but Trump took it up enthusiastically, retweeting Falwell and then himself tweeting about the “stolen two years of my (our) Presidency (Collusion Delusion) that we will never be able to get back…..”

Almost as disturbing as Trump embracing this idea is The Washington Post as “perhaps tongue-in-cheek” and “raised playfully.” Donald Trump does not have a playful bone in his body. Any time Donald Trump attempts to appear playful, you know he is running the bully’s gambit of testing what he can get away with. Remember that Michael Cohen, his former personal lawyer and fixer, told Congress that “I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, that there will never be a peaceful transition of power.”

Even if Trump is not actively laying plans for a military coup in November 2020, he is sending a strong message to his supporters about how they should respond if and when he loses. And don’t expect Trump’s message on that front to get any more friendly to democracy between now and then, let alone in the moment of loss. Trump is—again—telling us who he is, and we should believe him, not downplay his wannabe-dictator moves as “playful.”

Pentagon agreed to buy nearly $900,000 in jet fuel from the conservative university owned by Jerry Falwell Jr., just months after President Donald Trump took office.

The Department of Defense signed the contract with Freedom Aviation, which is wholly owned by Liberty University, on May 9, 2017, and had since purchased more than $400,000 in turbine fuel from the same company, reported The Daily Beast.

Falwell endorsed Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination early in 2016, as his candidacy gained momentum during the primary process, and has been one of the president’s more outspoken supporters, sometimes placing him at odds with other evangelical leaders.

Freedom Aviation owns six planes, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, and maintains them at the university’s flight school at the Lynchburg, Virginia, campus.

The company provides charter flights to the public, and Falwell travels on the aircraft for his private use.

The Trump campaign paid Freedom Aviation more than $19,000 in air travel expenses about a week after Falwell endorsed the former reality TV star.

Neither Freedom nor C&C Aviation, another university-owned company, had ever won a federal fuel contract before Trump was elected president.

ref

https://www.wpxi.com/news/national-news/ap-top-news/proposed-order-on-campus-speech-follows-wave-of-complaints-1/927649130

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump's proposed executive order to protect free speech on college campuses follows a growing chorus of complaints from conservatives that the nation's universities are attempting to silence their voices when they're heckled, disinvited or their presence on campus is otherwise discouraged.

Critics counter that conservatives are turning the shared goal of protecting free speech into a partisan fight.

It's unclear what Trump's order will contain, but the administration has been laying the groundwork for it for months.

The Justice Department has filed statements in various lawsuits siding with students who had alleged that schools had infringed on their right to freedom of speech. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions opined at a forum last fall that the issue had reached a pivotal point, saying "it is time to stand up to the bullies on campus and in our culture."

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made a similar assessment, saying "administrators too often attempt to shield students from ideas they subjectively decide are hateful or offensive or injurious, or ones they just don't like."

Trump's proposed executive order, unveiled Saturday during a speech to conservative activists, has drawn criticism from some higher education leaders including President Robert Zimmer of the University of Chicago, a frequent champion of free speech. In a campus email, Zimmer said new regulation would be "a grave error" and would give federal officials dangerous authority to interfere in campus speech issues.

"This opens the door to any number of troubling policies over time that the federal government, whatever the political party involved, might adopt on such matters," he said. "It makes the government, with all its power and authority, a party to defining the very nature of discussion on campus."

In his speech Saturday, Trump highlighted the case of Hayden Williams, who was recruiting on Feb. 19 at the University of California, Berkeley, for the conservative group Talking Points USA when two men approached and one punched Williams during a confrontation captured on student cellphones. Neither Williams nor the man arrested for the attack are affiliated with UC Berkeley.

Trump told the conservatives in the audience that Williams "took a hard punch in the face for all of us."

"If they want our dollars, and we give it to them by the billions, they've got to allow people like Hayden and many other great young people, and old people, to speak," Trump said. "And if they don't, it will be very costly."

The University of California system issued a statement Monday calling Trump's proposal "misguided and unnecessary."

"Free speech is a fundamental value of the University of California and we already have strong policies in place that protect the free expression of ideas, regardless of political persuasion," said Janet Napolitano, the system's president. "We do not need the federal government to mandate free speech on college campuses - that tradition is alive and thriving."

There were multiple hearings on campus free speech during the past two years when Republicans were in control of both chambers of Congress, though an attempt to legislate on the matter made little headway. A bill from former Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, that would have banned universities from restricting students' political speeches to certain outdoor areas on campus if that activity is lawful, did not make it through committee.

The hearings followed conservative commentator Ann Coulter canceling a speech at the University of California, Berkeley, amid fears of violent student protests. Texas Southern University in Houston canceled a speech from Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in the face of student opposition.

Democratic lawmakers have said free speech infringement is just as likely to come from the political right as from the political left. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., encouraged the administration during a congressional hearing last fall to take action on what he called a troubling rise in hate speech on campuses.

"We have seen active investigation of claims of campus free speech violations at public universities brought by conservative activists, but nothing investigating the explosion in incidences of racially motivated hate speech or actions on campus," Scott said.

Terry Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education, called the proposed order a "solution in search of a problem," adding that free speech is already a core value in American higher education.

"I understand it's sort of a red meat issue for conservative political organizations, but in the real world it's not as big a deal as they would like to believe," he said.

Hartle worries an executive order would empower provocateurs who seek to roil campus audiences, and if campus events threaten to become violent, it could force schools to choose between preserving their federal funding and ensuring campus safety.

Debates over free speech have flared up at colleges across the country in recent years, often sparked by speakers with widely polarizing views. Protesters have shut down events featuring conservative speakers at schools including Berkeley, Middlebury College and several others.

In some cases, schools have canceled events over fears of violence. Several took that step following a 2017 white supremacist rally that started at the University of Virginia and later became violent. Days later, Texas A&M canceled a campus event billed as a follow-up to the Virginia march.

Danny Pugh, Texas A&M's vice president for student affairs, said the school is "in good shape" to handle any executive order, but he added that safety will continue be a priority when weighing free-speech questions. Still, he noted that the vast majority of campus events, even those featuring controversial speakers, go smoothly.

"We sort of get blinded by the provocative piece," he said. "For every one of those, there are thousands plus on our campus that happen without fanfare."

Some observers have raised concerns that an executive order could force religious institutions to host speakers with views that run counter to the school's values. But some prominent religious colleges said they support Trump's proposal, including leaders at Liberty University, a Christian school in Virginia.

"Not only do we encourage speakers with views conflicting with the university's to come, we pester them to come," said Scott Lamb, vice president at the school, adding that recent speakers have included former Democratic President Jimmy Carter and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent.

The school's president, Jerry Falwell Jr., said in an opinion piece for Fox News that the "silencing of conservatives on college campuses is serious problem that has spread across our nation."

"Even when administrators don't actively prevent conservatives from speaking on campus, individual extremists sometimes take matters into their own hands by physically assaulting the speakers," he said.

salon

...

Trump lapdogs fetched and rolled over on command recently at CPAC— a gathering of the American right under the sponsorship of the American Conservative Union, or in the words of former Trump official, Count Seb Gorka, “The biggest conclave of conservatives in the United States.”

A dedicated masochist, perhaps bored with the kinkier elements of internet pornography, might want to watch some of the speeches and panel discussions from CPAC, all of them now on YouTube. More than depraved thrills, they offer insight into the modern right wing. Charlie Kirk, the leader of Turning Point USA, an organization committed to Trumpian evangelical work on college campuses, told an approving audience that “liberals have always hated America.” Kirk’s consigliere, Candice Owens, a black Republican who recently told an audience that Hitler would have been fine if he “just wanted to make Germany great,” cited as evidence that racism no longer exists in America the fact that she “has never been a slave.” Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA, advocated arming everyone but toddlers as the solution for every social ill. And speaking of guns, Jerry Falwell Jr., a nut that did not fall far from the family tree, implied that his sons would shoot Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez if she tries to take their cows.

The main event, of course, was President Donald Trump. The emperor made his entrance to the blaring mawkishness of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” and actually hugged a large American flag, while grinning ear to ear. The audience roared as Trump made it to first base with the Stars and Stripes. It was one of many times they would rise to their feet in ecstatic displays of devotion. Trump’s speech combined megalomania with right-wing observational comedy. It was almost a combination of Fidel Castro and Jerry Seinfeld, if both men were incoherent.

The most alarming aspect of the speech was not that Trump lied about easily verifiable matters. For example, he claimed that when he took office the stock market was “headed down toward disaster.” (In reality, it finished 2016 with a 13.6 percent gain.) It wasn’t even that Trump lied about matters that might result in the eradication of women’s rights and violence toward elected officials. He repeated the slander, now popular in right-wing circles, that Democrats want to rewrite laws so that doctors can execute live babies after birth. The most disturbing part of the horror show was that no matter how absurd, narcissistic or psychotic Trump became — bragging about his inaugural crowd, inventing stories about conversations with a military general named “Raisin Cane,” mocking concerns about climate change — the audience dutifully and enthusiastically stood at attention, cheering, laughing and applauding. CPAC’s own internal survey showed that 91 percent of attendees “strongly approve” of Trump’s performance as president.

The giddiness of the crowd makes other polling numbers seem rather banal when they indicate that 45 percent of Trump supporters believe that white people are the most oppressed group in the United States, and that 45 percent also believe Jefferson Davis would make a better president than Barack Obama. During the 2016 campaign, majorities of Trump voters believed that his run for the presidency represented America’s “last chance for survival,” and that Obama was born outside the United States.

Fox News has become the bastion of far-right conspiracy theory, which amounts to little more than good business, considering that 46 percent of Trump voters believe that Hillary Clinton’s emails include details regarding “Pizzagate” — the theory that the former secretary of state and first lady was running a pedophile sex ring from the back room of a Washington pizza parlor. Sixty-two percent of Trump voters believe that “millions of illegal immigrants” cast votes, presumably for Clinton, in the 2016 race. Brett Kavanaugh, some might recall, during his testimony in front of the Senate asserted that Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations that he had sexually assaulted her was orchestrated as “revenge for the Clintons.”

Trump’s base does not represent a political movement as much as it constitutes a nervous breakdown in motion. Like any psychotic detachment from reality, it will not happen without painful consequences. Two-thirds of terrorist attacks in the United States are now tied to right-wing extremist groups, the ADL reports a staggering increase in right-wing incidents of anti-Semitism, and everything from white supremacist organizations to state militias continue to show an increase in membership as “conservative” Americans are becoming radicalized to believe anything, and adopt hostility toward the very idea of multicultural democracy....