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Open in TheBrain

metaxas

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trifecta FREQ RWW

merri ok

ANTI-COMMIE

SEE FAILS

see ziklag

crm? air pollut fires cda 7 26

~ BLM george floyd

SEE FLYNN

FRIENDLY ATH SAYS GOT SEMI LEGIT START W/ ANTI-NAZI BK, SO THINKING MAN’S EVANG?

am revo book grift?

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Eric Metaxas Says God Created ‘Unifier’ Trump Out of Mercy to Americans

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08/03/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

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Eric Metaxas is convinced that Barnes & Nobel is not stocking his new book because "they're effectively communist."

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08/12/2026

by

Peter Montgomery

President Donald Trump’s enthusiastic endorsement was not enough to convince Minnesota Republican voters to choose “MyPillow guy” Mike Lindell as their candidate for governor. Lindell lost by more than 10 percentage points to the state’s House Speaker Lisa Demuth, but true to his status as one of the nation’s preeminent election conspiracy theorists, Lindell has so far refused to concede, vowing instead to investigate supposed “anomalies” in the results.

Lindell, whose early lead in the polls had been cut by Demuth, declared himself “very confident” on Election Day. “We can’t reconcile these,” he said as the results came in. “This is mathematically impossible.”

Lindell reportedly spent tens of millions of dollars in a quixotic quest to prove that Trump’s claims about the 2020 election being stolen were true. He made similar claims about the 2022 midterms.

Rep. Ted Lieu mocked Lindell’s claims in a social media post, writing, “Many people say Venezuela rigged the election against Mike Lindell because they don’t like his pillows. Never seen anything like it.”

Lindell has also been a favorite of religious-right figures like podcaster Eric Metaxas, one of the right-wing media figures that benefitted from MyPillow advertising. Last year, Lindell touted his plans to run for governor on FlashPoint, a platform for Christian nationalist and MAGA propaganda, calling Minnesota “a Trojan Horse for a lot of evil.” He has portrayed his promotion of election conspiracy theories as a spiritual crusade, using a Christian nationalist graphic to raise money to support his efforts.

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07/28/2026 rww

by

Kyle Mantyla

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Eric Metaxas Was Outraged By An Air Quality Alert

RECYCLED VID OF HIM BADLY READING THEN MISINTERP BIBLE ~ THE BISH BARBER?

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[Christian Nationalism ## Much-Hyped ‘Rededication’ of U.S. to God Can’t Draw Trump Off the Golf Course

President Trump called for an event "rededicating" America to God, but he couldn't be bothered to show up for it.

https://www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch/much-hyped-rededication-us-god-cant-draw-trump-golf-course

05/18/2026

by

Peter Montgomery

*Commentary

Trump administration officials and Christian nationalist leaders hyped Sunday’s event to “rededicate America as one nation under God” as a historic moment and turning point for the nation, but President Donald Trump skipped it to go golfing.

The same was true for the Saturday evening worship gathering organized by musician and MAGA activist Sean Feucht on the grounds of the Washington Monument; while his followers gathered, Trump went golfing.

The snub was particularly noteworthy because Trump owes his election victories to the overwhelming support he got from conservative Christian voters, thanks in part to religious-right figures telling their audiences over and over again that Trump was anointed by God to lead and save America.

Religious-right figures who helped promote the event made a big deal out of the spiritual importance of Trump as president calling for the nation’s rededication to God. Dominionist anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ activist Lou Engle has organized many prayer events over the years that drew much bigger crowds, but he said that this one was special: “This solemn assembly is different than any other solemn assembly, for the president of the United States has called this day.”

But the president couldn’t even be bothered to make a video greeting for this “historic” moment like Vice President J.D. Vance did. Instead, organizers played a video of Trump reading a scripture passage from a religious-right organized Bible-reading marathon event a few weeks ago. Engle added that when Trump read that passage, “he opened a door for the greatest awakening America has ever seen.” He called it “a hinge of history moment.”

If Trump cared enough to think that a gathering of “prophetic” leaders might call him out the way Old Testament prophets called out unjust political leaders, he needn’t have worried. None of the speakers calling for personal and national repentance suggested that Trump should repent for his cruelty or corruption. As the Religion News Service noted, neither Sen. Tim Scott nor religious-right activist Alevda King, who spoke about the Black church’s central role in the Civil Rights Movement, mentioned the current MAGA assault on the Voting Rights Act.

Even White House Faith Office Director Paula White didn’t attend in person, sending a short video.

:{:{Ben Carson, who was secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the first Trump administration and is now National Advisor for Nutrition, Health, and Housing at the Department of Agriculture, did show up in person. He was one of a few speakers who talked about the need for national unity. There are “forces” that want Americans to think they are one another’s enemies, Carson said. “We are not enemies.” He did not acknowledge Trump’s central role in creating bitter divisions or his ongoing demonization of his political opponents as traitors—or for that matter his religious-right backers’ portrayal of Trump opponents as demonic.}:

And if the organizers of the event were really interested in promoting national unity, or transcending politics as House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed, they would have created an interfaith event that celebrated America’s exceptional religious liberty and religious pluralism. Instead they created an event overwhelmingly dominated by MAGA Christians.}:

MAGA pastor Franklin Graham delivered a video diatribe about the moral state of the country, quoting scriptural warnings about people being lovers of money, arrogant, abusive, heartless, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, and more. While Graham said this list could apply to America today, he ignored the obvious fact that all those traits apply to the president he unwaveringly promotes.

Samuel Rodriguez, a MAGA pastor, New Apostolic Reformation figure, and head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, gave an opening prayer. He spoke for about four minutes, calling for love and justice but failing to utter a single word about the immigrants and other people in their communities who have been terrorized by the Trump administration’s brutal mass deportation efforts. So much for prophets speaking truth to power.

MAGA pundit Eric Metaxas used his time on the platform at the Sunday rally and the Saturday worship service to promote his new book about the American revolution.

At Feucht’s worship on Saturday, Metaxas claimed that every single one of the founding fathers understood that the national narrative of the revolution was, “We are re-establishing the Sinai covenant.” That kind of claim doesn’t bode well for the credibility of his book, but then, there wasn’tmuch hope for that anyway.

On Sunday, Metaxas said God’s hand had guided American leaders beginning with George Washington. After talking about the British burning the White House during the War of 1812, he added jokingly, “It’s hard to believe it that it would take two centuries for the Lord to raise up a great man to bring that ballroom finally to stand where it needs to stand. It’s extraordinary. We only had to wait 200 years.”

The actual “prayer of rededication” was delivered by Speaker Johnson, who invoked God’s support for the MAGA war on wokeness and truth-telling history:

In recent years we’ve seen sinister ideologies sow confusion and discord among our people. We’ve witnessed attacks on our history, on our heroes, and the cherished moral and spiritual identity of this nation. These forces insist to the young and impressionable that our story, the American story, is one of oppression and hypocrisy and failure, and that this story can only be understood through the lens of our sins. Father, we reject that. We rebuke it in your name. … We turn to you once again to save us from these afflictions, to deliver us from the forces of evil, oppression, injustice, and tyranny both within our borders and beyond our shores.

In asking for deliverance from oppression and injustice, Johnson was apparently not thinking of the authoritarian abuses of power that mark the Trump administration, because his only mention of Trump was to pray that God would “continue to bless our president with the wisdom, prudence, and strength to govern our nation in accordance with your will.”

Neither the smaller-than-expected attendance nor Trump’s apparent disinterest in the “rededication” ceremony mean that the rest of us should ignore that the increasingly aggressive Christian nationalism of the administration and the MAGA movement threatens Americans’ religious freedom and the rights of people seen as undeserving by right-wing Christian nationalists.

// RWW

05/18/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

And the public may never know who their money was spent on.

Nine connected Polymarket accounts have raked in more than $2.4 million betting almost exclusively on U.S. military actions in what digital detectives from the data analytics firm Bubblemaps have identified as a potentially egregious case of insider trading.

Speakers cast America as ‘morally rotten’ and sinful while embracing the ‘Christian nationalist’ label.

President Donald Trump's free eight-hour Rededicate 250 prayer event held at the National Mall in D.C. Sunday drew a notably sparse crowd, with Reuters photos capturing numerous empty seats.

The ancestors of today’s Christian nationalists weren’t the leaders of Christian America — they were the heretics.

The Christian worship performance scheduled for the National Mall is a religious show.

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Mike Johnson Says ‘Rededicate 250’ Event ‘Transcends Politics’; So Why Are All the Speakers MAGA Christians?

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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson addressing the 2026 National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance (Image from CBN News coverage)

News & Analysis

05/15/2026

by

Peter Montgomery

A letter from Speaker of the House Mike Johnson promoting this weekend’s Christian nationalist ceremony to “rededicate” America to God was sent out by Freedom 250 Thursday evening.

In the email from Freedom 250, which President Donald Trump set up to wrest control of the national celebrations from the bipartisan and congressionally authorized America 250to promote himself and MAGA ideology, Johnson called Sunday’s day-long event “a unique moment for believers" and “a call for unity, repentance, and hope, and one that truly transcends politics.”

That is classic Trumpian gaslighting.

First of all, an event seeking to unify the actually country might in some way recognize the religious pluralism that is an essential part of what makes America exceptional, along with our Constitution’s protections of religious freedom and prohibitions on government-established religion or religious tests for public office.

Instead, every speaker listed in the schedule sent out by Freedom 250 is a Christian; most are evangelical and Pentecostal Trump boosters, along with a couple of right-wing Catholics and other denominations represented. Earlier speaker lists included a rabbi, perhaps as “Judeo-Christian” window-dressing, but he was not included in Thursday’s Freedom 250 email.

It’s a bad joke for Johnson to claim that Sunday’s event “transcends politics,” given that every speaker listed in the Freedom 250 email is a vocal supporter of President Trump, many of them on record declaring him to be anointed by God and some, like White House Faith Office Director Paula White, claiming that Trump’s opponents are enemies of God or demonic agents of Satan.

In reality, this is another opportunity for Trump to posture as a defender of the faith and bask in the adoration of his most loyal supporters at a time when his public support has hit record lows. And it is an opportunity for Christian nationalists to continue to send the false and exclusionary message that the only “real” Americans are the right kind of Christians, at a time when Christian-right and MAGA officials are trying to claim that Muslims and other non-Christians do not deserve the protection of the First Amendment.

The “moment of rededication” will be led by Johnson, along with former Archbishop of New York City Timothy Dolan, MAGA Pastor Lorenzo Sewell, and dominionist New Apostolic Reformation figure Lou Engle. Engle is a longtime anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ activist who led prayers that God would knock off Supreme Court justices to create vacancies for Trump to fill. In an Engle teaching guide called “The Keys to Dominion,” he preached:

“The church’s vocation is to rule history with God…The same authority that has been given to Christ Jesus for overwhelming conquering and dominion has been given to the saints of the most high….We’re God’s rulers upon the earth…We will govern over kings and judges will have to submit…We’re called to rule! To change history! To be co-regents with God!”

Christians, secularists, and other Americans who reject the MAGA movement’s increasingly aggressiveChristian nationalism are speaking up in opposition to the “rededication.” This week, the Interfaith Alliance projected messages supporting religious freedom for all on the walls of the National Gallery of Art.

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04/13/2026

by

Peter Montgomery

Religious-right leaders have been spent decades trying to get more Christians engaged in politics. So are they excited about a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate who is a Christian and a seminarian who speaks fluently about how his faith informs his politics? Hell no.

From the moment that Texas state legislator and former public school teacher James Talarico won the March 3 Democratic primary—and even before—right-wing Christian nationalists have been attacking Talarico. It’s not hard to understand why. Talarico is an effective speaker who is comfortable talking about his faith while promoting LGBTQ equality and reproductive choice and challenging his Republican colleagues. When Talarico appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast last summer, the host who endorsed Trump in 2024 encouraged him to run for president.

Polls show that Talarico is currently running neck-and-neck with either of the two Republicans who are battling each other in a runoff that will be held in May. That means he is drawing support from millions of Christian Democrats and Independents.

That is unacceptable to Christian-right leaders who have tried to make supporting Donald Trump and voting for Republicans an article of faith. To undermine Talarico’s appeal, they are attacking his faith as well as his politics.

In other words, the same people who are quick to cry “religious persecution” when their political goals or tactics are criticized have no problem denouncing the faith of a fellow Christian who disagrees with their political positions.

Indeed, they take it on themselves to decide who counts as a “real Christian” based on whether a person is aligned with their religious and political worldview. And they viciously smear anyone who isn’t part of the conservative wing of the Republican Party.

The attacks on Talarico are adding to the evidence that Christian nationalists’ religious bigotry and intolerance does not only extend to non-Christians.

Here are just some of the examples we’ve seen in the past month:

Brooks Potteiger, pastor of the church that Christian nationalist Doug Wilson planted in DC to take advantage of his relationship with Pete Hegseth and boost his influence among Christians in the Trump administration, and Joshua Haymes made news in March when they called Talarico’s theology demonic and deceitful. They said they hoped that God would “crucify him” in Christ—a metaphor for a spiritual overhaul. But Haynes added that if that wasn’t part of the plan God should “stop him by any means necessary.”

Wilson, whose vision for a Christian republic includes legal discrimination against non-Christians and liberal Christians, denounced Talarico as “a death angel from Texas,” explaining that “A death cult is any manner of life conducted outside Jesus Christ.”

One of the most Talarico-obsessed Christian-right figures is Gary Bauer, who has been pushing toxic right-wing politics since the days when he urged Ronald Reagan not to let any gay people serve on the first AIDS commission because it would insult conservative Christians. Bauer publishes a daily email newsletter that he has used to repeatedly go after Talarico.

In one of his diatribes, Bauer called Talarico the “poster boy” for “the concerted effort by the Democrat Party to steal the Gospel of Jesus to sell Marxism and moral depravity.” Bauer has called Talarico “far-left” and flat-out lied about Talarico’s position on border security, falsely claiming that he wants “open borders.” Bearing false witness, anyone?

There’s more.

Dominionist James Garlow’s Well Versed newsletter urged people to “beware” of the “heretical” Talarico. The Blaze’s far-right Steve Deace declared “James Talarico is going to be Legion” and called him “an object and a vessel of malevolence.” Anti-Islam author Michael Youssef denounced Talarico and progressive Christianity as “false gospels.”

Texas pastor Daniel Hayworth used the platform of the right-wing Human Events to call Talarico a wicked wolf in sheep’s clothing. Heyworth is married to the daughter of the notoriously corrupt GOP attorney general and is promoting his Senate candidacy.

Even Trump himself couldn’t resist getting in on the Talarico-bashing, charging on social media that Talarico was insulting Jesus. Talarico responded, “You want to know what insults Jesus? Kicking the sick off their healthcare while cutting taxes for billionaires. You know what insults Jesus? Deporting the stranger and separating babies from their mothers. You know what insults Jesus? Bombing innocent schoolchildren in Iran and sending our brave men and women off to die in another forever war.”

MAGA podcaster Eric Metaxas declared Talarico “diabolical” and a “fake Christian” during a conversation with right-wing author Megan Basham. Basham declared that Talarico is “not a Christian,” claiming that it wasn’t enough that Talarico affirms the historic Nicene Creed, saying “Satan could affirm the Nicene creed.” She claimed that Talarico is a “rank heretic” who has “antichrist views” and that “scripture commands us” not to treat him as a Christian brother. Metaxas and Masham bashed Christian journalists and publications that have treated Talarico and his Christian witness respectfully, going so far as to question their Christianity. “Any true Christian,” she claimed would denounce Talarico as a non-Christian heretic.

It is surely a disappointment to Metaxas and Basham that they don’t actually speak for all Christians. As polling suggests, Talarico’s message is resonating with plenty of Christians in Texas and elsewhere, including many who are tired of seeing their faith used to prop up Donald Trump and welcome a strong Christian critique of right-wing Christian nationalism.

David French, for example, wrote a New York Times op ed on Talarico’s appeal. Here’s an excerpt:

This miserable political moment won’t end when the left takes back the government from the right or if the right continues to beat the left. It will end when our politicians — especially Christian politicians — forsake cruelty for compassion and realize that we shall know Christians in politics not by their stridency and ideology, but by their integrity and love, including their love for, as Talarico put it, “all of our neighbors.”

That’s the significance of the Talarico moment — not the old news that a Christian can be progressive, but rather that Christian politicians can actually act like Christians. Kindness still has a place in the public square, even if it doesn’t always seem that way.

Among the Christian journalists whose openness to Talarico engrages Metaxas and Basham is Mike Cosper, a writer and producer who said on a Christianity Today podcast, “As evangelicals, there’s something good about seeing certain aspects of Christianity represented in the public square in the way that I think Talarico is doing it. I’m more encouraged by Talarico’s expression of Christianity in the public square than by a lot of what we’ve seen in MAGA world.”

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02/02/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

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01/29/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

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01/26/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

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01/20/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

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11/24/2025

by

Peter Montgomery

In yet another fundraising pitch in which President Donald Trump tells supporters that God saved him from an assassin’s bullet so Trump could save America, the president enlists supporters in his much-discussed desire to get into heaven.

“I want to try and get to heaven,” starts an email sent to supporters on Sunday. He describes being on stage in Butler, Pennsylvania and “feeling the hand of God tilt my head at the very last millisecond.”

“He didn’t save me for a participation trophy,” the email says. “He saved me because I have a date with Heaven and the only way I earn my place there is by finishing the mission He spared me for: saving America.”

The idea that Trump can only “earn” a place in heaven by successfully enacting his agenda as president is contrary to core Christian teachings about grace, faith, and salvation. But it seems to be a rhetorical advice he deploys to appear spiritually humble and appeal to his conservative Christian supporters.

It also suggests that if Trump can only succeed as president with a continuous flow of contributions, then sending him cash could actually be helping get him into heaven.

Another Trump fundraising email sent earlier in the day on Sunday came with the subject line, “I was born to do this.” It also opens with a religious claim about his assassination attempt: “On July 13th, Faith shielded me from an assassin’s bullet.”

The email denounced the “radical left” that he charged with “trying to block our America-First agenda.”

“They hate our Faith. They mock our values. They want to crush our Freedom,” the email said. “I will NEVER let that happen.”

“This is the moment every patriot has prayed for. This is why he spared me. This is why we won.”

Trump’s email signs off with, “For God. For Family. For Freedom. For America.”

Meanwhile, MAGA zealot and religious-right pundit Eric Metaxas cannot stop talking about Trump’s recent offhand remark at a Mar-a-Lago wedding that Metaxas might be the guy that gets him into heaven. Video of the incident shared on Metaxas’s social media accounts has racked up millions of views.

“Did you hear what President Trump said to me?!?!?!” gushed the subject line of a Metaxas email last Tuesday. He urged supporters to share media coverage of the event.

Later in the week Metaxas devoted part of his show to talking about the video and complaining about people whose response was to criticize Metaxas for not using the moment to give Trump a gospel message. In response to those critics, Metaxas went beyond saying it was noisy and a wedding and not the right time; he accused those critics of not trusting the Lord or the Holy Spirit to take care of Trump’s salvation.

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RWW

10/29/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

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YT PRETTY GOOD ANALYSIS

https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/the-christian-right-tried-to-make

The Christian Right tried to make a late-night talk show—and it bombed spectacularly
Eric Metaxas and his backers spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to copy Fallon and Kimmel. They forgot to hire talent.

Oct 09, 2025

*This newsletter is free and goes out to over 22,000 subscribers, but it’s only able to sustain itself due to the support I receive from a small percentage of regular readers. Would you please consider becoming one of those supporters? You can use the button below to subscribe or use my usual Patreon page!

The ongoing joke about Christian culture is that it’s a sad attempt to replicate everything that’s great about secular culture. Christian movies like God’s Not Dead are bad because they’re more interested in hammering you over the head with a religious message than telling a decent nuanced story (or hiring good actors). Contemporary Christian Music might be catchy but the Jesus-heavy lyrics are so predictable, South Park can spoof it with remarkable accuracy. Even attempts to make overly right-wing sitcoms are embarrassing; it becomes very clear, very quickly, that acting and writing talent are low priorities for the people writing checks.

The bottom line is that when it comes to popular culture, Christianslove to create cheap imitations that are never as good as the real thing.

The same apparently goes for late-night talk shows.

According to The Guardian, a wealthy conservative group spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” developing a late-night talk show hosted by conspiracy theorist Eric Metaxas. At least four pilot episodes were filmed and they were so bad that the show was picked up by literally no one.

As you watch the “highlight” clip below, it becomes glaringly obvious the money was spent on the set and not on hiring joke-writers.

The Guardian sat through nearly four hours of the Talk Show, and found it to be an almost exact copy of existing late-night shows, just worse: with hack jokes about tired issues and has-been, conservative guests. The show was never picked up, presumably to the chagrin of Ziklag and its investors, who had lofty expectations.

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Unfortunately, across the four pilots, Metaxas’s comedic bent was noticeable only by its absence.

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Ziklag claimed the show would welcome “guests who are routinely shadow banned on other talk shows”, and quoted Metaxas as saying: “It’s kind of like Stalin has air-brushed these people out of the culture.”

But the common theme among the guests was that they had been naturally phased out of existing talkshows due to their irrelevance.

…

Ziklag’s pitch to investors had promised big-name guests. It didn’t deliver apart from an interview – heavily touted by Metaxas – with film-maker Ron Howard. The interview turned out to be from a press junket, where directors or actors sit in a room for eight hours and basically anyone with a press pass can schedule time to question them.

The news here is not that Metaxas filmed the talk show. In fact,allfourepisodes areonline and have been available since January of 2023. The news is how much money was spent on this project, who funded it, and how badly it failed.

The project was funded by a group called Ziklag.

In the Bible, the town of Ziklag is where the character David lives for a time while he’s being persecuted. It’s his safe space. It’s a place from which David can plan counterattacks. But as reporting from Andy Kroll of ProPublica and Nick Surgey of Documented showed in 2024, the Christians behind Ziklag had assets of “nearly $12 million” to make sure Republicans were mobilizing their base while also trying to purge Democrats from the voter rolls in swing states.

The Guardian got ahold of “leaked documents” from Ziklag showing that they were seeking up to $500,000 to film episodes of the talk show so that they could pitch the show to “digital distributors, networks and tv ownership groups.”

“Spoiler alert! The secular elites who currently reign over late-night tv are about to find out the joke’s on them!” Ziklag’s pitch email read. It lauded Metaxas, a conservative radio host and author who was an eager proponent of the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, claiming: “His comedic bent has gone largely unnoticed until now that is…”

…

In its email, Ziklag said it was offering the opportunity to invest as part of the “Media Mountain”, a reference to the Seven Mountain Mandate, a theology popular among the Christian right. The theology proposes that Christians should seek to take over seven spheres of influence in public life: religion, the government, the media, education, culture, entertainment and business.

It’s unbelievable that people with this much money couldn’t see that Metaxas is a talentless hack—How much does it cost to buy a clue?—and believed this kind of humorless show would be an alternative for people who can’t handle the razor-sharp political satire of… Jimmy Fallon.

The producer of the show insisted to The Guardian that this whole thing is being mischaracterized. They weren’t trying to create a right-wing talk show or even a Christian one. They were trying to create a universally beloved show rather than one where Republicans were always the butts of the jokes.

Chris Himes, who produced the Talk Show, said the show was not intended to be a “rightwing late-night show”. The aim, Himes said, was “to create a broad, throwback late-night program for the entire country – not just one side”.

“These are not partisan or ‘right-wing’ shows. Think Letterman or Dick Cavett in tone: humor first, with no space for snark or ‘clapter’,” he said in an email.

“Sadly, much of late night over the past decade has shifted from being genuinely funny to becoming a vehicle for tribal signaling – even occasionally straying into messaging far beyond comedy. We believe the country deserves something better.”

Himes added: “To be clear, a ‘right-wing’ late-night show would be a terrible idea. What we’re building is something more essential: a genuinely funny, unifying alternative.”

The problem with that assessment is that the shows they made weren’t funny. Plus, avoiding politics takes away the main reason so many people enjoy late night talk shows; it’s a way of informing them about the news without being so damn boring. A show that allows right-wing guests to talk about their lives and humanize themselves could find an audience, I would think, but bringing on those guests and then ignoring politics is just a waste of everyone’s time. What’s the point of watching a late-night comedy show if it doesn’t tackle current events or ask pointed questions revolving around the guests’ relevance?

It’s also a mark of stupidity for Himes to pretend the problem with current late-night hosts is that they’re too one-sided. When Republicans with power do so much damage to the country, through cruelty and ignorance and their embrace of extremism, they deserve to be ridiculed and condemned for their actions. Anyone who claims to be in the political center, at this point in our history, is someone who doesn’t understand the stakes. They deserve to be ignored.

“The Talk Show” is hardly apolitical, though. You just have to know where to look. In one monologue, when Metaxassets up a joke about Biden possibly dropping out of the presidential race, he says “Yesterday, President—’president’—Biden shocked the nation when he said he might not run for a second term.” Metaxas literally puts air-quotes around the word “president” as if Biden wasn’t legitimately elected.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!F5wb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb5da53a0-913d-40ee-b3af-1bf186924823_1812x1014.png)

Himes is also wrong that there’s currently no “alternative” to liberal late-night hosts. Bill Maher is hardly a liberal ally at this point with his routine demonization of trans people and “wokeness.” And the most popular late-night talk show right now is Gutfeld! on Fox News—not because host Greg Gutfeld is funny but because it’s on Fox. Those shows regularly punch down by mocking the marginalized—something Metaxas has been doing for years—but even they have professional staffs.

No one needed this show. And even if there was room for another late-night host, they picked the wrong guy to helm this particular ship because Metaxas is just unlikeable.We’re talking about a guy who tweeted this in response to a thoughtless comment from Joe Biden:

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!FuL2!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffa479cf0-d4cb-4d4a-b4b0-76830680d246_1182x1130.png)

He sucker-punched a guy on a bike. He’s literally the poster boy for how white evangelicals have lost their damn minds in the age of Trump. He believes so many right-wing conspiracies, it’s hard to keep track at this point.

Which is a long way of saying Ziklag is funded by very foolish people. The sort of people who believe the problem with late-night talk shows is not enough Eric Metaxas and not enough jokes that appeal to nobody. I could have told them that for $100,000 and saved them a lot of hassle.

We shouldn’t be surprised this vanity project failed because it just reveals the rot at the center of white evangelical culture and the cynical machinery that funds it. Christian entertainment has always operated under the delusion that religious sincerity can replace substance. This show, however, exposed something darker: a movement so insulated by ideology and grievance that it no longer understands what art, humor, or relevance even look like. Metaxas’ show is a parody of itself—a joyless imitation of secular creativity, built by people who can’t tell the difference between propaganda and truth. This show is what happens when no one in your life has the decency to tell you that you’re untalented and full of shit.

When late-night comedy is done well, it’s a place to speak truth to power, as we saw with Jimmy Kimmel. But in the hands of Metaxas and his supporters, it’s a place to soothe the powerful with lies, a place where the news doesn’t matter because the producers don’t think there’s anything happening that viewers need to know about.

This project didn’t just fail because the host doesn’t know what he’s doing. It failed because there’s as much heart and soul in it as there is laughter: none. Without that passion, why the hell would anyone waste their time watching it?

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A rightwing late-night show may have bombed – but the funding behind it is no laughing matter | Media | The Guardian

a group of conservative donors spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop a rightwing version of late-night talkshows like the Tonight Show and the Late Show, leaked documents reveal, in a further indication of the right’s ongoing efforts to overhaul American culture.

News of the effort to pump conservative viewpoints into the mainstream comes as entertainment shows and the media at large are under severe threat in the US. In September, Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was taken off the air, under pressure from the Trump administration, after Kimmel’s comments after the killing of Charlie Kirk, while Donald Trump has launched multiple lawsuits against TV networks and news organizations.

Four pilot episodes, each of which has been watched by the Guardian, were made of the rightwing chatshow. It was promoted by the Ziklag group, a secretive Christian nationalist organization, which aims to reshape culture to match its version of Christianity. In an email in 2022, Ziklag – which ProPublica reported spent $12m to elect Trump last year – urged its members to stump up money for the project, called the Talk Show With Eric Metaxas.

“For too long, the late-night talkers on network tv have filled the airwaves with progressive rants and outright mockery of anyone who espouses traditional American values,” the Ziklag email read.

The Talk Show With Eric Metaxas, Ziklag wrote, will “change that forever”. The email said the show needed $400,000 to $500,000 to film five pilot episodes, “which will be presented to digital distributors, networks and tv ownership groups”.

The Guardian sat through nearly four hours of the Talk Show, and found it to be an almost exact copy of existing late-night shows, just worse: with hack jokes about tired issues and has-been, conservative guests. The show was never picked up, presumably to the chagrin of Ziklag and its investors, who had lofty expectations.

Conservative host Eric Metaxas tests first jokes on talkshow audience – video

“Spoiler alert! The secular elites who currently reign over late-night tv are about to find out the joke’s on them!” Ziklag’s pitch email read. It lauded Metaxas, a conservative radio host and author who was an eager proponent of the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, claiming: “His comedic bent has gone largely unnoticed until now that is…”

Unfortunately, across the four pilots, Metaxas’s comedic bent was noticeable only by its absence.

“Big news in the world of show business,” Metaxas began the first episode. “Harrison Ford will be returning for a fifth Indiana Jones movie. Yeah. In this one Harrison will find an ancient artifact … by looking in the mirror.”

There were a few titters from the audience, and scattered applause. Metaxas, appearing nervous, continued with the one-liners:

“Barbie’s longtime companion, Ken, just turned 61 years old. Yeah. And he said the perfect gift for his birthday would be to finally get a prostate.”

This time there were some audible groans. Metaxas stuck at it.

“In India, doctors removed 526 teeth from a seven-year-old boy’s mouth,” he chortled. “The boy is recovering nicely. However, the Tooth Fairy declared bankruptcy.”

Ziklag claimed the show would welcome “guests who are routinely shadow banned on other talk shows”, and quoted Metaxas as saying: “It’s kind of like Stalin has air-brushed these people out of the culture.”

But the common theme among the guests was that they had been naturally phased out of existing talkshows due to their irrelevance.

The first episode featured an exclusive interview with Carrot Top, the 60-year-old prop comedian. Carrot Top showed Metaxas some of his props, including a bottle of Bud Light that had a torch in the bottom of it and a dinner plate that had a hole in it. Carrot Top managed to say absolutely nothing of interest during the three-minute tête-à-tête, before Metaxas cut back to the studio.

“Tonight’s show is loaded with talent,” Metaxas announced to the live audience. The guests included a TikToker – “for our generation, Tic Tac was a breath mint”, Metaxas quipped – Tammy Pescatelli, a comedian who has been absent from the limelight for at least a decade; and Danny Bonaduce, best known for his work on the 1970s sitcom the Partridge Family.

Throughout the episodes – as Metaxas sang a song with a terrified-looking Victoria Jackson, a self-described conservative Christian who was a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1986 to 1992 and has claimed Barack Obama is an “Islamic terrorist” – and as he continued with awful jokes about some scientists who had developed a robot that could build furniture but “cannot promise that the robot won’t swear”, it was hard to see what the point of this was.

In its email, Ziklag said it was offering the opportunity to invest as part of the “Media Mountain”, a reference to the Seven Mountain Mandate, a theology popular among the Christian right. The theology proposes that Christians should seek to take over seven spheres of influence in public life: religion, the government, the media, education, culture, entertainment and business.

Chris Himes, who produced the Talk Show, said the show was not intended to be a “rightwing late-night show”. The aim, Himes said, was “to create a broad, throwback late-night program for the entire country – not just one side”.

“These are not partisan or ‘right-wing’ shows. Think Letterman or Dick Cavett in tone: humor first, with no space for snark or ‘clapter’,” he said in an email.

“Sadly, much of late night over the past decade has shifted from being genuinely funny to becoming a vehicle for tribal signaling – even occasionally straying into messaging far beyond comedy. We believe the country deserves something better.”

Himes added: “To be clear, a ‘right-wing’ late-night show would be a terrible idea. What we’re building is something more essential: a genuinely funny, unifying alternative.”

In the pilot episodes, there were guests who were known for rightwing politics, but Metaxas largely didn’t ask them about those politics. In episode three, he seemed to decide he needed to at least say a bit of something to satisfy the rightwing donors funding this enterprise, but that came in the form of going over well-trodden ground about liberals.

“Botanists have discovered a meat-eating plant in Canada,” Metaxas said in his intro. “Researchers determined that the plant started eating meat because it just got tired of explaining its vegan lifestyle.”

He continued: “Detroit’s sanitation workers – I just read this – they’re threatening to go on strike. Detroit’s mayor said not to worry, because Detroit will continue to look and smell exactly the same.”

Another quip ventured into current affairs: “Gas costs a fortune. It’s insane how much it costs. And who would have thought that the best deal at the Shell station would ever be the $3 microwave burrito?”

Ziklag’s pitch to investors had promised big-name guests. It didn’t deliver apart from an interview – heavily touted by Metaxas – with film-maker Ron Howard. The interview turned out to be from a press junket, where directors or actors sit in a room for eight hours and basically anyone with a press pass can schedule time to question them.

It’s unlikely Howard knew he was appearing on what Ziklag described as a “faith-friendly, late night alternative”, but that’s perhaps irrelevant, given networks clearly passed on what is a confused, drab copy of shows that are actually successful.

But while Metaxas’s effort to shoehorn a conservative show into the mainstream may have been lamentable, the fact that wealthy rightwingers are attempting to do so should be cause for concern, given the threat television is under from Trump.

Earlier this year, CBS scrapped the Late Show with Stephen Colbert – Colbert had repeatedly mocked Trump – weeks after CBS’s parent company settled a lawsuit with Trump. Trump has also called for late-night show hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, who have both criticized the president, to be fired, while the president has overseen NPR and PBS being stripped of funding, having decried “biased media”.

The Talk Show was a terrible product, memorable only for dreadful humor and snooze-inducing interviews. In the current climate, however, it serves as a reminder that the right wing is waging a well-funded war on the media that is unlikely to end soon.

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[### A rightwing late-night show may have bombed

The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com › media › oct › conservat...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/oct/08/conservative-late-night-talkshow)

4 days ago — Conservative donors spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to make a rightwing Stephen Colbert-style talkshow.

[### What happened to that Eric Metaxas talk show?

The Way of Improvement Leads Home

https://thewayofimprovement.blog › 2025/10/09 › what...](https://thewayofimprovement.blog/2025/10/09/what-happened-to-that-eric-metaxas-talk-show/)

3 days ago — A group of conservative donors spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop a rightwing version of late-night talkshows like the Tonight ...

[### Far-right political donors who felt that the late-night comedy ...

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Far-right political donors who felt that the late-night comedy genre has made an “outright mockery” of “traditional American values” dropped ...

[### This Christian Nationalist Late-Night Show Bombed ...

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4 days ago — 'The Talk Show With Eric Metaxas' was supposed to be the 'faith-friendly' alternative to secular late night.

[### 'Audible groans' as Christian nationalist org's late-night ...

NewsBreak: Local News & Alerts

https://www.newsbreak.com › Alternet](https://www.newsbreak.com/alternet-332687158/4280557369271-audible-groans-as-christian-nationalist-org-s-late-night-comedy-show-bombs)

4 days ago — The Guardian reports a group of conservative donors spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a right-wing version of late-night talk ...

[### The Christian Right tried to make a late-night talk show— ...

Friendly Atheist

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3 days ago — Eric Metaxas and his backers spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to copy Fallon and Kimmel. They forgot to hire talent.

[### 'This Christian Nationalist Late- Night Show Bombed ...

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[### How the Christian right is twisting the legacy of an anti-Nazi ...

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Nov 4, 2024 — As the election approaches, experts say a rightwing author is using the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer – executed for resisting Hitler – as ...

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The Guardian reports a group of conservative donors spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a right-wing version of late-night talk shows.

[### Parents Television Council, Scourge of Broadcast ...

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4 days ago — The Parents Television and Media Council has filed for bankruptcy, ending a three-decade run as a media watchdog that fought to rid the ...

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07/24/2025

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07/16/2025

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Kyle Mantyla

The MAGA movement is in disarray as President Donald Trump continues to defend his administration's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case while many of his right-wing supporters are growing increasingly outraged about what they see as cover up.

As Right Wing Watch reported last week:

When Axios reported earlier this week that a memo produced by President Donald Trump's Justice Department and FBI concluded that there is "no evidence that convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein blackmailed powerful figures, kept a 'client list' or was murdered," the MAGA movement went into full meltdown.

For years, MAGA activists have been convinced that the Epstein files contained the key to finally taking down the "deep state" and that Trump was the only politician in America with the courage to release them; a belief that was eagerly fueled by members of Trump's own administration.

Since then, things have only gotten worse as Trump is now lashing out at his own supporters for having "bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker."

Religious-right broadcaster and full-blown Trump cultist Eric Metaxas waded into the maelstrom on his radio program the other day, lamenting that a demonic "spirit of division" is dividing the MAGA movement and urging everyone to trust Trump because his presidency has been "God's mercy to America."

"This is a great administration," Metaxas declared. "This is an administration so great we don't deserve it, and this is God's mercy to America to give us these heroes. From Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, Pete Hegseth, down the line; hero after hero after hero."

Metaxas was agog at "the idea that people would snipe in this way" about anything done by Trump and his administration.

"At some point, you have to really trust that Donald Trump does care about what we care about," Metaxas asserted. "I'll tell you right now folks, if you think Donald Trump would not do everything he possibly could to crush pedophile sex trafficking, I think you're crazy."

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05/20/2025 RWW

by

Kyle Mantyla

The homeland security secretary was asked to define habeas corpus. Her outrageously wrong answer was humiliating — but it was also important.

The Trump administration first approached Qatar to inquire about acquiring a Boeing 747 that could be used as Air Force One by President Donald Trump, four sources familiar with the discussions told CNN. That’s contrary to the narrative from the president that Qatar reached out and offered the jet as a “gift” to him.

In March, news broke that then-National Security Adviser Mike Waltz mistakenly added a journalist to a clandestine Signal chat where attack plans were being discussed. Although Waltz eventually resigned, white Christian nationalist Andrew Isker claimed that something more sinister was afoot, and that Israel was likely involved.

Rep. LaMonica McIver called the charges against her “purely political” and said the administration will not stop her from “standing up for what is right”

Today’s overtly political and unapologetically pro-Trump Eric Metaxas was once a winsome voice in New York City’s evangelical intellectual renaissance.

Shortly after the US government illegally and unconstitutionally transported about 240 Venezuelans to be imprisoned in El Salvador’s horrific “terrorism” prison on March 15, CBS News published their names. A subsequent CBS News investigation found that 75 percent of the men on that list had no criminal record in the United States or abroad. Less attention has been paid to the fact that dozens of these men never violated immigration laws either.

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rww 4 25 sorta random grab

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03/21/2025

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Kyle Mantyla

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02/18/2025

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02/06/2025

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01/31/2025

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Kyle Mantyla

* Finally, it comes as no surprise to see Eric Metaxas defending Calvin Robinson, who was stripped of his license by the Anglican Catholic Church after he mimicked Elon Musk by delivering a "Sieg Heil" salute at an anti-choice event.

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rww

01/27/2025

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Kyle Mantyla

In the immediate aftermath of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 when Trump supporters violently attacked Capitol police and rampaged through the building in an attempt to prevent the certification of Joe Biden's electoral victory, even those on the far-right openly admitted that MAGA activists were responsible.

But shortly thereafter, the MAGA movement set about attempting to shift the blame onto left-wing activists while painting Trump supporters as heroic figures who were merely trying to protect democracy.

When President Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2025, one of his first orders of business was to issue "full, complete and unconditional pardons" to nearly everyone convicted of participating in the Jan. 6 insurrection, which included hundreds of people who had been found guilty of violent criminal acts.

Predictably, this has caused Trump supporters to double down on their efforts to rewrite history, with former Rep. Michele Bachmann claiming that Jan. 6 had been "like a prayer meeting" and Christian nationalist Rick Green hailing as heroic a man who had been convicted of, among other things, punching a Capitol police officer while wearing brass knuckles.

Never one to be outdone, far-right commentator Eric Metaxas delivered a stunningly dishonest and absurdly hypocritical rant on his program last week during which had the gall to claim that the media was lying and "gaslighting" the nation about what really happened on Jan. 6.

It must be remembered that Metaxas was the emcee of a major “Stop the Steal” protest on the National Mall in December 2020 that was billed as a prayer rally but featured violent and extreme rhetoric, including one speaker, the Oath Keepers’ Stewart Rhodes, who demanded that if Trump did not use his powers as commander in chief to stay in power, right-wing militia groups would have to wage a “much more bloody war.” In 2023, Rhodes was found guilty of seditious conspiracy for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection and sentenced to 18 years in prison, only to have his sentence commuted by Trump upon his return to office.

Video URL

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"Folks, in case you didn't already know, CNN is despicable," Metaxas said. "The mainstream media must die. We must starve it and die because they lie. They are foul liars, and they have been lying all day yesterday about the J6 stuff, all these violent protesters. These are lies. We know that on this program but most Americans and most people who watch Fox News, they have this muddled view, 'Oh yeah, but there's some violence.' Yeah, you tell me who the violent insurrectionists were. You tell me who the pro-Trump violent people were; I'll be all for them staying in jail. You tell me who they are. They are like FBI plants."

"This narrative is such a wicked lie, and CNN is pushing this filthy lie," Metaxas fumed. "When you see somebody lying brazenly, you think this is disgusting. Like, this is really gross for your soul to be lying brazenly. It's not just presenting a different. This is now brazen lying. But I want to be clear: There are tons of Americans that believe these lies. They believe these lies. And this is the gaslighting of the mainstream media."

"The FBI was very complicit in this," Metaxas continued. "The elites were complicit in this. It doesn't get bigger in terms of scandal. It does not get bigger. Nancy Pelosi and whoever else was in on this, these are despicable, treasonous figures, and they make Benedict Arnold look like a good guy. I'm not even kidding."

"What they have done is so despicable," Metaxas declared.

The FBI, of course, was not responsible for what happened on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol; that was the work of MAGA activists and Trump supporters and no amount of gaslighting from the likes of Metaxas can hide that fact. [vid]

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September 3, 2024

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Right-Wing Bomb Thrower Eric Metaxas Blames the Left's Rhetoric for Trump Assassination Attempt

July 16, 2024

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former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is promoting “Flynn,” a new film that portrays him as a heroic figure battling persecution by the deep state traitors he claims went after him as a way of bringing down Donald Trump. Flynn, who pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI, then withdrew his plea and was ultimately pardoned by Trump after the 2020 election, touted his movie in an appearance on the radio show of religious-right conspiracy theorist Eric Metaxas this week.

After Trump’s 2020 election defeat, Flynn backed Trump’s lies about the election and urged Trump to declare martial law. He has spent the post-Trump-administration years promoting conspiracy theories, Christian nationalism, and extremist figures as part of the ReAwaken America tour. In 2022, historian and authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat called Flynn “one of the most dangerous individuals in America today.” Last year, Right Wing Watch published “12 Reasons Donald Trump’s Pledge to Hire Michael Flynn is a Five-Alarm Threat to Democracy.”

Flynn told Metaxas and his listeners that what is happening to Trump in the courts is a continuation of a “coup” against Trump and the U.S. that was started by Barack Obama in a January 2017 White House meeting, where he said Obama and his advisers talked about how to get Flynn out of the way so they could go after Trump. It was all designed, he claimed, “to continue to control the levers of power within our government.”

That’s an interesting framing, because the thrust of Project 2025, a massive undertaking by Trump allies across the right-wing movement in the U.S., is to seize the levers of power in government and force civil servants and federal agencies to bend unquestioningly to Trump’s will if he returns to the presidency. Trump and his allies have made clear that he will use that power to seek revenge and retribution against his enemies, something Metaxas and Flynn are clearly looking forward to. Here’s Metaxas:

Trump has to win. The left will do literally anything. They would really love to put a bullet in his head. But they’re not going to be able to do that. But they might try. They’ll do anything. They’ll start World War III. They’ll do anything. Because they do not care whether people die, whether the country goes under, they just want power. That’s all they care about.

They can and will do anything to prevent him getting back in. But if he does get back in by the grace of God, that’s the starting line. We have a lot of work to do.

Metaxas said the “evil” deep state is “at war with we, the people,” and asked Flynn if Trump understands that he needs to put the right people in place to gut the deep state. Yes, Trump realizes it, said Flynn. “He knows what he’s got to do. And he’s fully prepared to do it.” More from Flynn:

I know that he realizes that the people he brings into his inner circle going back into the White House have to be really dedicated patriots who have not only his objectives and what he wants to accomplish, but also people who are prepared and ready to do the necessary functions of government and to hold people accountable. We have to have one standard of justice in this country, and people are going to need to be held accountable.

Flynn portrays Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence as part of the “uniparty establishment” plot against him, and portrays himself as the ultimate honest man, taken down by scheming insiders for being unwilling to lie in the service of power, a mythology that is likely to be swallowed whole by the MAGA faithful. Mother Jones magazine’s Stephanie Mencimer has called Flynn’s new movie “a triumph of revisionist history” and an “example of how good right-wing filmmakers have gotten at making these sorts of propaganda films.” In her review Mencimer wrote, “If Flynn the movie fails to shed much light on the unraveling of Flynn the man, it does succeed as a painful reminder of what the Trump years were like—with all the chaos and corruption—and a foreshadowing of what might happen should he be elected again.”

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mma 4 24

two right-wing media figures with extremist backgrounds and connections are planning a “United For Israel” countermarch on April 25 in response to the reportedly peaceful student-led pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, with one claiming the campus has “been taken over by radical Pro-Hamas protestors,” and the other urging “every Christian who can” to “join us in standing with Israel.”

Christian nationalist media figure Sean Feucht has used a member of the Proud Boys as security at an event he held, while right-wing radio host Eric Metaxas has admitted to punching an anti-Trump protester in the face in 2020.

Other far-right media figures such as Laura Loomer and Andy Ngô have also promoted the march to their hundreds of thousands of social media followers. Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes was also reportedly seen on Columbia University’s campus near the protest the day before the scheduled countermarch.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/eric-metaxas/eric-metaxas-george-floyd-was-not-some-innocent-was-somebody-who-was-essentially

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mma 7 23 overview

eric Metaxas is a prominent voice on the evangelical right who uses his radio show on Salem Media to promote a radical belief in the need for far-right Christians to control the government and enforce religious-based policies. In June 2023 alone, Metaxas repeatedly demonized the LGBTQ community, made deeply inappropriate comparisons to Nazi Germany and the lead up to the Holocaust, and advised his listeners that they must engage in right-wing culture wars or else risk judgment for failing in their Christian duties.

From Veggietales to the Jericho Marches 

Eric Metaxas got his start as a writer of numerous children’s books and the Christian children’s cartoon Veggietales. For much of his career Metaxas worked as a Christian writer, occasionally showing up in major outlets. Despite criticizing — and even mocking — Donald Trump in the past, since officially joining Salem Media Group, Metaxas has become an ardent supporter of the former president, and even punched an anti-Trump protestor at the 2020 Republican National Convention.

As a thought leader and emcee for the far-right Christian Jericho Marches, a religious-based protest movement against nonexistent election fraud, Metaxas called to overturn the results of the 2020 election just weeks before the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021. The group was co-founded by Robert Weaver, the failed Trump nominee for director of the Indian Health Service, and Arina Grossu, a member of the anti-LGBTQ hate group Family Research Council, and it held D.C. marches on December 10, 2020, and January 5, 2021, attracting thousands of estimated participants.

Some have suggested that these marches laid the groundwork for the Capitol insurrection. Many of the figures who played a pivotal role on January 6 were also speakers at the marches, including Stop the Steal founder Ali Alexander and Oath Keepers founder and seditious conspirator Stuart Rhodes.

Metaxas and Salem Media: a recipe for Christian nationalism

Since the January 6 attempted coup, Metaxas has continued to blend far-right ideals with his Christian beliefs, and he has become well-connected in right-wing media. On his Salem Media radio show, he has hosted notable figures like right-wing provocateur Roger Stone, former Trump national security advisor and QAnon supporter Michael Flynn, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO).

He also makes appearances across right-wing outlets like Fox News and Newsmax and even joined fellow Salem Media host Dinesh D’Souza in his heavily debunked election conspiracy film 2000 Mules.

Metaxas also has a growing role in Turning Point USA, founded by fellow Salem Media host Charlie Kirk. Metaxas has attended multiple TPUSA conferences, including the recent TPUSA Pastors Summit in May, which featured speakers who flagrantly espoused Christian nationalist rhetoric.

Salem Media is a long-standing conservative Christian media outlet focused primarily on its radio stations. The network claims to own and operate over 100 radio stations and has 3,200 affiliate stations, reaching over 11 million listeners. Salem also runs an extensive podcasting network and has its own streaming platform. The conservative Christian network pressured its hosts to cover Trump positively and purged those who did not.

Metaxas is a prominent supporter of the ideals of Christian nationalism, the false notion that America is a fundamentally Christian nation and must be governed by right-wing Christian beliefs. By insisting that the success of the conservative movement and Christianity are tied, Metaxas co-opts elements of the Christian faith to promote far-right policy. He weaponizes Christian beliefs to fearmonger against the LGBTQ community and particularly the trans community, directly insisting that for Christians to “be on the sidelines” is to be “deluded” and “helping evil.” By this logic, failure to enact harsh right-wing policies or go after targets of right-wing outrage is to fail God.

In one instance on his show, Metaxas redefined the concepts of church and state to justify pushing policy based on religious beliefs:

ERIC METAXAS (HOST): We're not talking about theocracy. On the contrary, the principles in the Bible lead to freedom, which is to say religious freedom, which is to say everyone is genuinely free to believe as they like, not to believe.

But the point is that the separation of church and state refers to the opposite of what most people think it does. It refers to separating the church and state, to protect the church to be the church, not to protect the state from the infiltration of Christians.

You know what happens when Christians infiltrate? They abolish slavery. They abolish Jim Crow laws. When Christians infiltrate, when Christians get involved, which is utterly constitutional and legal and protected by our founding documents, good things happen for everybody.

…

When the church thinks like, you know what, we're going to be on the sidelines. Folks, if you're on the sidelines, you know who is with you on the sidelines? The devil is with you.

Metaxas used Christianity to scare viewers into political action 

Throughout June, Metaxas instructed his listeners to advocate for right-wing culture war issues, warning that a failure to do so would represent a failure to perform their duty as Christians. Here are a number of examples:

Metaxas demonized the trans community and anyone who would show them support

Metaxas has made repeated attacks on the LGBTQ, and specifically trans, community on his radio show. He described trans people as mentally ill and as going against the will of God. Furthermore, Metaxas attacked those who do not share his views on trans people, claiming that they are part of the problem. Here are some examples of these attacks:

Metaxas regularly relied on offensive comparisons to Nazis in his rhetoric

Metaxas makes comparison to Nazi Germany a staple of his rhetoric. Throughout June, he focused much of his Nazi-connected ire on Pride month.

In an interview with The Atlantic, Metaxas compared January 6 to the burning of the Reichstag in Nazi Germany.

“This event happens, and before the smoke clears, we are using the opportunity—and I’m not talking about the Biden administration; I’m talking about the Democratic establishment and the media—instantly seizing on it to demonize, in the harshest terms, anyone who would support Trump. That just blew my mind. I thought: You don’t do that in America. That’s what the Nazis did with the Reichstag fire. Before the smoke cleared, they had already figured out who they were going to blame.”

Over the course of Pride month he made multiple allusions to Nazi Germany as well, accusing those celebrating of being like the German citizens who did not speak out against death camps during the Holocaust. In one instance, he mockingly accused Bud Light employees of being willing participants in the Holocaust, because the company sent a personalized can of beer to trans TikTok influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Here are a number of examples:

mma 6 23

BOLLING (HOST): The Vatican is promoting a study calling for radical inclusion LGBTQ plus communities. Now, let's bring in host of the Eric Metaxas Radio Show and author of Is Atheism Dead. Eric, you know, every time I have you on I'm bringing you on for a different story and I'll ask you the same question. With these stories -- what we're seeing now in culture and life in America --are we approaching the end of times? I mean, the Vatican. Promoting LGBTQ plus ideology.

ERIC METAXAS (GUEST): That sounds logical, doesn't it? It sounds like the end of time. I'm not joking. When you hear about something like this, you think to yourself, listen, I don't care who you are,I don't care if you're the pope, you do not have the right to change fundamental doctrine. You don't change fundamental doctrine. Any faithful Catholic knows that once somebody says, we're not merely being inclusive -- this is the term they're throwing around -- they're basically blurring the line between what is good and what is evil. And when you start saying that we're promoting -- what's the spirit -- it's the spirit of the age, it's the world in which we live. The job of the church is to stand against the spirit of the age, to speak eternal truth. So when I hear something like this, it's hard not to be shocked, and it's hard not to say what you just said.It sounds like we're in the end times. No joking

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an 12 22

Roger Stone is now spinning a bizarre claim about the existence of a so-called "demonic portal" that opened above the White House after President Joe Biden took office.

Stone even appears to believe the portal is visible to those who are searching for it. During a recent appearance on"The Eric Metaxas Radio Show," conservative radio host Eric Metaxas asked Stone about his thoughts on the existence of the "supernatural."

That's when Stone claimed to have seen the "portal" himself. “I think that… a portal, a demonic portal, opened above the White House around the time that the Bidens moved in,” Stone said.

READ MORE: Mueller alleges Trump campaign official was 'directed' to ask Roger Stone what WikiLeaks had on Clinton

He added, "This was brought to my attention by a Christian who lives in north Florida who sent me a bunch of documents and also a bunch of notations from the Bible about portals.”

Stone admitted that he was initially skeptical before saying:

So, I was skeptical about it but I looked at the photos. Also, there’s a live cam where you can actually see in real-time and there does appear to be something above the White House…At first you say, “Oh, maybe it’s a reflection. Maybe it’s an aerostat balloon. Maybe there’s a logical [explanation.]”

Out of concern, Stone also claims to have called a friend in law enforcement who works for the police department in Arlington, Va. According to Stone, his friend claims he found something.

READ MORE: 'I'm getting ready to start suing people': Roger Stone has a meltdown over Michael Sussman's acquittal

“He called me back about two-and-a-half hours later and said, ‘You’re not going to believe this, but there’s definitely something there. Other people were there photographing it,'” Stone claims he was told.

Per Mediaite, Stone said, "if one zooms in on whatever is floating above the Biden White House, it can be seen 'swirling like a cauldron.'”

READ MORE: At least 3 members of a pro-Roger Stone group are facing charges in connection with Jan. 6 riot

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11 22 rww

Tags: Ali Alexander Donald Trump Eric Metaxas Jarrin Jackson Milo Yiannopoulos Nick Fuentes Shane Vaughn Vincent James Election 2024 Leftovers

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https://www.mediamatters.org/salem-media-group/salems-eric-metaxas-claims-democrats-stole-midterms-and-republicans-need-wild  ppl

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/charlie-kirk-and-eric-metaxas-call-for-retaliatory-raids-on-liberal-groups/

rww 8 22

right-wing commentator and youth organizer Charlie Kirk appeared Thursday on “The Eric Metaxas Show,” where he called on Republican state attorneys general to launch raids on hundreds of liberal organizations without legal justification in retaliation for the FBI’s search of former President Donald Trump Mar-a-Lago residence earlier this week.

Kirk, the Christian nationalist founder of Turning Point USA, declared that GOP attorneys general don’t even need to bother providing a legal pretext or worry about actually arresting people because the raids are simply political payback to show Democrats that “there’s a price” for daring to investigate Trump.

“Raids must be met with raids,” Kirkdeclared. “State attorney generals that are Republican have to authorize raids against Soros groups, BLM, Planned Parenthood, the alphabet mafia, groomers, the chemical castration of children now! Here’s why—a hundred facilities should be raided by next week. Find them. You try to tell me there’s not 100 criminal organizations that are aiding and abetting people across the southern border?La Raza; we know them, they publicized it. I’m not saying you have to arrest them. Just raid them. Find out what you find. Why? That will all of a sudden make [liberal groups] and their internal chatters—’Guys, you were so stupid. You raided Trump, now they’re coming after us.’ Good! Now you know there’s a price to this.”

Metaxas, a Trump sycophant and adamant election conspiracy theorist, loved the idea, declaring that “true leadership” means doing radical things like carrying raids without any legal pretext, adding that such leaders will be judged favorably by history and by God.

“True leadership means doing things that some people will say, ‘Oh, you can’t do that.’ A leader makes that calculation and says, ‘I think I need to do this now, and history will judge me, God will judge me,'” Metaxas said. “Do what is needed, and let God judge you, and let history judge you. We need those kinds of leaders now. Because we are in a war, we need a wartime consigliere.”

Metaxas and Kirk then asserted that their Christian faith requires that such action be taken.

“Both of us are Christians, and we take our orders from Jesus,” Metaxas continued. “God gave us this nation. He gave us liberty, and he gave us the obligation to keep the Republic. We have an obligation. … If you don’t understand that there is a time to fight, there is a time to take dramatic action, and it is not only not a violation of our Christian faith; on the contrary, it is a manifestation of our faith.”

“It’s a matter of justice, which is God’s idea,” Kirk replied. “Our entire system is inspired by the Bible. It is based on God’s will and providence breathing into our life. And if we’re just going to kind of sit idly by and do nothing; this is what drives me nuts, though, Eric, is that only a pampered, comfortable, self-righteous, arrogant, weak, theologically questionable Christian generation could believe such a thing. Our grandfathers and our ancestors were Christian, and they knew if they had to fight evil, they did.”

Metaxas, who emceed a “prayer rally” on the National Mall at which Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes threatened bloody civil war if Trump did not use his role as commander in chief to hang onto power after losing the 2020 election, warned that anyone who opposes such measures will be judged by God.

“If you are not angry about this, if you don’t want to do something about this, you’re part of the problem, folks,” Metaxas declared. “You are in bed with evil if you are not outraged at these things happening in the United States of America. If you just want business as usual to continue, you lack courage, and God will judge you, and history will judge you for this. There were many good Germans [in Nazi Germany] who did exactly this. They looked the other way when God would have said, ‘Please now look at what is happening. Please do a small thing now.’ They said, ‘I’m going to look the other way.’ You will regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t do something right now."[vid

as right-wing media and Republican politicians paint the raid as a deep state attack on the former president, threats against federal agents and the Justice Department have proliferated on pro-Trump social media, with one man taking his threat offline and attacking on an FBI office in Cincinnati, Ohio, Thursday.

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amanda c

https://www.thebulwark.com/dinesh-dsouzas-2000-mules-is-a-hilarious-mockumentary/

dinesh D’Souza’s 2000 Mules is Plandemic for election truthers. For the non-insane, it’s a hilarious mockumentary. Not that D’Souza cares what the non-insane think: He has discovered that there are enough suckers out there to keep him laughing all the way to the bank.

Released by the Salem Media Group,2000 Mules aspires to be a work of serious investigative reporting which will rock the foundations of American democracy. In reality, 2000 Mulesis an investigative documentary in roughly the same way Reno 911 was a hard-hitting look at real-life police work. Though that doesn’t mean that D’Souza’s cash-grab won’t further pollute the political system. For instance, Kari Lake, who can’t wait to get elected governor of Arizona so she can jail her political opponents, is championing the film—which ends with a plea for law enforcement to take up D’Souza’s cause.

Here’s the elevator pitch for 2000 Mules: D’Souza’s buddies at True the Vote spent $2 million on cellphone geotracking data—which he describes as “digital DNA”—that they say proves “mules” were paid to illegally “traffick” thousands of ballots from non-profit “stash houses” into drop-off ballot boxes.

All D’Souza really has—if the cellphone data is real and is really what he represents it as being—is some evidence that some people made frequent trips in areas around ballot drop-off boxes which, by design, were usually placed in heavily-traveled areas for convenience. Putting that aside, who are these mules? Who paid them? Where is the evidence of people making repeated trips to illegally stuff drop-boxes with ballots? What non-profits were involved? These questions are not even asked, let alone answered, in the movie. The theory of the case relies almost entirely on digital maps with dots and squiggles, supposedly demonstrating the questionable movement of the “mules.” Boom-Diggity. All that’s left is for the FBI to take it from here. Or something.

2000 Mules doesn’t survive the most basic fact-checks to support its most important claims. See them here, here, here, and here. But, let’s stipulate that the film’s purpose isn’t really to present facts. Because if it were true that D’Souza had rock-solid evidence of widespread voter fraud in his possession, would a true patriot like him be selling that evidence for $29.99 per download? Bwahahaha. (In defense of D’Souza, that $29.99 was only the premium VOD price. This week he dropped it to $19.99 to buy or just $14.99 to rent. Or you can get the movie free by purchasing an annual subscription to his Rumble channel!)

It’s better to view the film as a performance piece, a comedic triumph where the joke is on the rubes gullible enough to give D’Souza their money.

some quick backstory: The people behind True the Vote—Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips–have been unsuccessfully hunting the Loch Ness Monster of voter fraud for many years. After the 2016 election, Phillips claimed he “verified” that more than 3 million votes were illegally cast by “non-citizens.” Piggybacking on Phillips, Trump launched a “Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity” to pursue this and other claims. Chaired by Vice President Mike Pence and former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the commission ultimately found no evidence of widespread voter fraud and disbanded without ever producing a report. (Since producing such a report would contradict Trump’s kooky allies.)

After the 2020 election, True the Vote sought $7 million to chase down new voter fraud stories and shop them to GOP consultants in hopes of getting some courtroom or member of Congress to take them seriously. But even in the cluster that was the Kraken #StopTheSteal show, they had no takers. It was such a disaster that one of True the Vote’s biggest donors, who gifted the organization $2.5 million, took the group to court to get his money back, citing their failed efforts.

All of which goes to say that True the Vote’s tall tales are too dumb even for its biggest supporters to go along with anymore. D’Souza, however, is happy to scrape up the bullshit and repackage it for the direct-to-consumer market.

some of the film’s funniest moments come when D’Souza summons his fellow Salem Media Group talkers—Dennis Prager, Eric Metaxes, Seb Gorka, and Charlie Kirk—for a meeting of the minds to discuss their thoughts about election fraud before and after viewing D’Souza’s movie.

The “before” meeting amounts to an assortment of pronouncements about how none of these very fine people believe that Biden won. They cite the massive turnout in the election, GOP success down-ballot, Trump’s ability to draw large crowds, and apparent popularity in the face of withering media coverage.

Kirk offers that “millions of Americans know something went wrong, and they have little pieces, and no one’s really put it together.” Prager, somewhat of an outlier in the group, says he wants someone to “show me the proof” of fraud. Which sets the stage for D’Souza to helpfully put the pieces together.

The movie draws heavy suspicions about people who dropped off ballots early in the morning, wore gloves to drop off ballots, and took photos of drop boxes. All this is drummed up as proof of nefarious activity captured on surveillance video. Coupled with the True the Vote’s geotracking data, the viewer is led to believe these were the “mules” making repeat trips to unnamed non-profit offices to collect ballots and “traffick” them to drop boxes. One problem: They have no video showing these individuals making repeat trips to said non-profits or drop locations, or evidence they were paid to do so. Also, one of the so-called “mules” presented in the film has already been investigated by Georgia officials and no evidence of wrongdoing was found.

No matter. Engelbrecht and Phillips make their presentation to the group and the guys jump on the clips accordingly. What Salem wants, Salem gets.

Questioning why someone would drop off ballots late at night or early in the morning is a common refrain, even though drop boxes were implemented precisely so voters could drop off their ballots any time they chose. For this, these unnamed individuals are depicted as dangerous people. Phillips described them as “not grandma out walking her dog.” They have “bad backgrounds, bad reputations, we’ve had encounters with several who are not terribly positive.”

“Violent guys?” D’Souza asked.

“Can be,” Phillips replied. “They are interested in one thing, that’s money.”

But even the Salem hosts seem wise to the game and acknowledge that D’Souza hasn’t, and won’t be able to prove anything.Gorka sums it up with this non sequitur: “It’s the perfect crime because it cannot be curated after it’s committed.”

Kirk says: “I don’t think we will ever know the full story and what makes this crime so compelling and unique is that once the ballot enters the system it’s really hard to reverse engineer it. But when you have the cell phone geolocation data and then the actual footage. . . it explains the sudden spike of Biden support that we saw late at night.”

At this point, all that’s left is for law enforcement to intervene. “There’s an easy way to bust it,” D’Souza says. “Law enforcement has to step in . . . go interview the mules. Who paid you? Where did you get the money?”

Which satisfies Prager enough to bellow:

“They have ruined election day in the United States of America. That’s provable, and that is enough for me to fight the left with every fiber in my body!” This counts as a conversion. But, considering the fact Prager is someone who also believes the left is destroying Western civilization,”:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"/maxresdefault.jpg),” it’s not like he needed any pretext from D’Souza to declare total war on the Democrats. That’s just a regular day at the office for the old man.

the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiroreviewed2000 Mules and said, “my problem with the documentary” is that “there are dots that need filling in.” He said:

You can question all the ballot harvesting; you can take for granted that all the geolocation data that they’re using is actually true . . . that does not mean all those ballots are illegal votes. . . . . What you need is actual evidence of people going to multiple drop boxes that isn’t just the cell phone data moving past the drop boxes. . . I guess what I would say is an answer that’s gonna make nobody happy. I think that the data is really interesting. I think that it’s really suspicious for sure, I don’t think it’s just positive that this alone shifted the election .. . I think the conclusion of the film is not justified by the premises of the film itself. There are a bunch of dots that need to be connected. Maybe they will be connected, but they haven’t been connected in the film.

But I suspect that D’Souza is delighted with even the critical reviews. A hate watch is still a watch. All the people talking and writing about 2000 Mules means more relevance and more downloads and more income. Despite being released only on “non-cancelable” platforms, D’Souza says the film has grossed $10 million.

What burns D’Souza are the people who won’t give him attention—especially those at Fox News and Newsmax. And why shouldn’t he be? The movie’s storyline, complete with a brown menace subplot, is tailor-made for their audiences. At one point in the film, a woman, who keeps her identity hidden, says she worked as a “mule” in Yuma County, Arizona, on behalf of an organization that collected ballots from Hispanic people who were unable for various reasons to get to the polls. “Most of the Hispanics that live in the town are not well educated as far as the law . . . I call it the Mexican mafia, seriously because they work like that.”

How could Fox and Newsmax resist this premium content? Probably because the executives at these infotainment companies are wary of fighting another round of lawsuits for pushing bogus election claims. Dinesh D’Souza is judgment proof. Fox and Newsmax aren’t.

Donald Trump is mad about the Fox blackout, too. He gave the film a glitzy premiere at Mar-a-Lago, and still, no love from Tucker Carlson. Waaaah.

“Fox News is no longer Fox News,” Trump posted on his Truth Social account. “They won’t even show or discuss the greatest & most impactful documentary of our time, ‘2000 Mules.’The Radical Left Democrats are thrilled – They don’t want the TRUTH to get out.”

In a way, the pairing of 2000 Mules and Truth Social is perfect: A pretend social media company doing PR for a fake documentary, with both siphoning off dollars from gullible superfans.

It would be funny if these people weren’t also the past and possible future of the United States government.

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rww January 7, 2022

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/jan-6-christian-nationalism/

In the midst of the invasion of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Jacob Chansley, the bare-chested man in Viking horns who's come to be known as the QAnon Shaman, stopped his fellow marauders in the Senate chamber to pray. "Thank you Heavenly Father for gracing us with this opportunity … to send a message to all the tyrants, the communists and the globalists, that this is our nation, not theirs," he said. "Thank you for filling this chamber with patriots that love you and that love Christ. Thank you for allowing the United States of America to be reborn."

The prayer, caught on _{video}_ by New Yorker reporter Luke Mogelson, was just one moment among hundreds that day illustrating how deeply the insurrection was intertwined with Christian nationalism. Across the sea of protesters in and outside the building, t-shirt and ball-cap slogans proclaimed it: "Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president"; "God, Guns, Trump"; or, on the sweatshirt of a man helping construct the rough _{gallows}_ erected on the Capitol lawn, "Faith, Family, Freedom." (The gallows itself was quickly covered in handwritten notes — "as if it were a yearbook," _{observed}_ lawyer and author Andrew Seidel — reading "Hang them high" and "In God We Trust.")

Elsewhere, protesters carried gigantic portraits of Jesus and replica statues of the Infant of Prague, or chanted about the blood of Jesus washing Congress clean. A long-haired blond man _{sang}_ praise songs into a microphone plugged into a stack of amplifiers he was wheeling on a hand-truck. A Nebraska priest performed an exorcism on the Capitol building to banish the demon Baphomet, who he_{claimed}_ was "dissolving the country" in order to "bring it back as something different." One rioter later indicted for breaking into the Capitol was actually a cast member in a touring production of "Jesus Christ Superstar." Another,_{Leo Brent Bozell IV}_, came from a long line of Christian right activists: His father, L. Brent Bozell III, founded the right-wing Media Research Center and his grandfather, L. Brent Bozell Jr., wrote speeches for Joseph McCarthy and a manifesto for Barry Goldwater.

"It was evident to anyone watching that there was this religious character to what was going on, both in the Trump movement writ large but particularly in the leadership of the 'Stop the Steal' movement," said religious studies scholar Jerome Copulsky, co-director of a new website,_{**Uncivil Religion**}_, dedicated to collecting "digital artifacts" of Jan. 6 religiosityand exploring what it means for, say, violent protesters to dress up like Captain Moroni — a legendary warrior from the Book of Mormon — or sing the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" alongside fellow protesters carrying Confederate flags. "It wasn't just the Stop the Steal rally, then the assault," Copulsky continued. "People really wanted to display their religious commitments, literally wearing them on their sleeves."

The Uncivil Religionproject developed from a Twitter hashtag, #CapitolSiegeReligion, created by author and religious historian Peter Manseau and based on his sense that the _{religious subtext}_ (and text, and blaring headline) were "_{*the* story}_ of what happened" on Jan. 6. In Manseau's view, religion wasn't an incidental element, but had been the driving motivation that had brought many people to the Capitol. Much of that had begun much earlier, with Christian right leaders — both official and self-declared — framing the 2020 election, and the rest of America's polarized conflicts, as an all-or-nothing showdown between good and evil.

Some were national names, like Samaritan's Purse president Franklin Graham, who in August 2020 _{warned}_ in a Christian Broadcasting Network interview that if Trump lost, churches would close down and Christians would be attacked. But that message was echoed so widely, in both religious and secular conservative media and across numerous niche religious right communities, that allegations about the "stolen" election became nearly inseparable from messages of apocalyptic faith.

Much of that was on display on Dec. 12, 2020, in Washington, when a large-scale interfaith prayer protest, the _{Jericho March}_ — widely seen as a forerunner to Jan. 6 — brought together a number of religious right factions to pantomime the biblical Battle of Jericho in praying to "bring down the walls of the Deep State." The carnivalesque full-day rally — organized, as journalist Sarah Posner _{reported}_, by two then-current employees of the federal government — featured anodd fusion of charismatic evangelicalism,Christian Zionism and right-wing Catholicism. There was contemporary Christian praise music and Virgin of Guadalupe iconography; a rendition of "Ave Maria" that concluded with the singer _{whooping "Giddy up"}_; and the female pastor of a New England pro-cannabis church wearing Catholic vestments while blowing on a Jewish shofar.

Emceeing the event was evangelical radio hostEric Metaxas,author of a bestselling biography of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a key figure in building an alliance between conservative evangelicals and Roman Catholics. Metaxas had become increasingly extreme throughout the Trump era. The week of the Jericho March rally, he _{told}_ TurningPoint USA founder Charlie Kirk that the 2020 election was like "somebody is being raped or murdered … times a thousand," and that conservatives would need "to fight to the death, to the last drop of blood" to keep Trump in office.

That December rally featured several notable names on the Catholic right, including a bishop from Texas who _{refused}_ to acknowledge Biden as president-elect, a nun who had_{delivered}_ a fiery pro-Trump address at the 2020 Republican National Convention and, most prominently, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a dissident Catholic figure who had once been the Vatican ambassador to the U.S. but fell into disgrace after calling for Pope Francis' resignation in 2018.Since then, Viganò has turned into a sort of alternative pope for disaffected _{Catholic traditionalists at odds with their more moderate pope}_, and in 2020, he published an _{open letter}_ to Trump warning that a "deep church" was working with the "deep state" to use the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests to undermine his presidency. After Trump tweeted a link to the letter, Viganò attracted so much support on the broader right that when he appeared, via video, at the Jericho March — _{praying}_ "for the conversion of public officials who have become accomplices in public fraud" — an audience largely composed of evangelical Protestants cheered alongside his Catholic fans.

Evangelical speaker Lance Wallnau, who in 2016 famously _{compared}_ Trump to the biblical figure of Cyrus — a "heathen" king who nonetheless served as the instrument of God — also sounded the theme of intra-religious conflict. "This is the beginning of a Christian populist uprising. There is a backlash coming," he said. "And you're going to see this wrecking ball of a reformation hit the church as well … because it's going to divide between those who are awake and those that are asleep. … There is a great awakening coming, and this is the spark that is starting it right now."

Not all speakers at the Jericho March were religious leaders in the traditional sense. Stewart Rhodes, the devoutly Christian founder of the militia group the Oath Keepers, was on hand to urge police and military members to prepare to fight Chinese "proxies" in the U.S., who he claimed were working to install Joe Biden as their "puppet."

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn, freshly pardoned by Trump for lying to federal investigators, appeared in a flag bandana to talk about spiritual war and lead the crowd in an "Our Father." And conspiracy-theory talk-show host Alex Jones delivered a barn-burning near-sermon, proclaiming, "This is the beginning of the great revival before the Antichrist comes. World government, implantable microchips, Satanism — it's out in the open. The Bible is fulfilled, Revelation is fulfilled."...And there was Ali Alexander, the bombastic founder of the Stop the Steal movement, who appeared frequently on stage alongside Metaxas, vowing that if Biden was installed as president, Alexander and his supporters would return to "occupy D.C. full of patriots," adding, "We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us."

In the following weeks, Alexander repeatedly underscored the religious dimensions of his mission. In late December, he...https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/stop-steal-organizer-ali-alexanders-pre-january-6-calls-violence-weve-got...told the Epoch Times-affiliated NTD television network, "We are in a fight of good versus evil, of light versus the darkness, and a global order over sovereign citizens. … I believe that this is ametaphysical fight and we are channeling all energy in heaven and on earth towards a favorable outcome."

On New Year's Eve in 2020, Alexander _{announced}_ on Twitter that he was converting to Catholicism,in part, he explained, because he'd become convinced that the Catholic Church had been "infiltrated" by an "earthy [sic] order that works in concert with Satan himself against the Church," and that he had been personally called to join the battle. And when the Jericho March returned to Washington on Jan. 5, for a slate of protest events leading up to the following day's MAGA march, Alexander spoke again, whipping the crowd into a ...

"The Jericho March put a definite religious imprimatur on Jan. 6," said Posner. "After Jan. 6, the organization put a note on their website that they condemned violence. But they held multiple rallies in which they talked repeatedly about the election being stolen, that God told them they must have the church 'roar,' and that they were going to be like Joshua's army in the Bible and the walls of the Deep State would fall."

**...But no matter how explicit — and violent — the religious rhetoric swirling around Stop the Steal was, it was little recognized before the Jan. 6 attack.** "We have gotten so used to religious language used by evangelicals and other religiously-affiliated officials that the danger that was there — whether at the Jericho March or the Jan. 6 rally that led up to the attack on the Capitol — was really just noise to some people," said :{Anthea Butler,:(style="opacity:1;transition:color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s"):}::{ chair}: of the religious studies department at the University of Pennsylvania. ":{And then it happened, and everyone pretended to be shocked. But that's willful ignorance about the role religion has played in the last 40 or 50 years in the Republican Party. It hasn't just been this alliance of how to get people elected, but has had this element of things that have fed upon each other to create a monster that threatens democracy."}:

**That has remained central to the legacy of Jan. 6, as religious leaders have used the rhetoric of faith to minimize and redirect responsibility for the violence of that day: whether it's people like****:{Wallnau:(style="opacity:1;transition:color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s"):}::{ }:or South Carolina televangelist****:{Mark Burns}: blaming "antifa soldiers" for perpetrating a false-flag operation to smear Trump supporters**;:{ Mike Huckabee }:_{suggesting}_, in email newsletters over the last six months, that Nancy Pelosi may have orchestrated the attack, and casting indicted Jan. 6 protesters as political prisoners; or former Vice President Mike Pence, in a December interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, _{downplaying}_ the very attack in which an angry mob called for his execution.

:{The rest of its legacy is more diffuse, but no less troubling::{Metaxas }_{suggesting}_ that the creation of COVID-19 vaccines is akin to experimenting "with the bodies of Jews we murdered in the concentration camps," or Viganò _{writing}_ that COVID exists merely as a "psycho-pandemic"; Wallnau _{calling}_ "wokeness" the religion of the Antichrist and, on the eve of the Jan. 6 anniversary...that if America is to be one nation under God, it must have only one religion. More systematically, there's the fact that much of the religious organizing energy that went into Stop the Steal has now transferred itself, as Posner... , into:{ mobilizing the Christian right on behalf of voter suppression initiatives}:.}:

A year later, none of the religious fervor that helped drive Jan. 6 has vanished, says Copulsky. "It's built into the fabric of American life. There's a radicality to it, but this didn't come out of thin air. And it's not going to go away. It's incumbent on religious leaders and organizations to think about what that means....

https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/confrontational-christian-nationalists-are-pushing-anti-vaxxer-extremism-report

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1021

devout evangelical Christian friend of mine recently texted to explain why he was not getting the COVID-19 vaccine. “Jesus went around healing lepers and touched them without fear of getting leprosy," he said.

This story that St. Luke tells in his gospel (17:11-19) is not the only Bible verse I have seen and heard evangelical Christians use to justify anti-vaccine convictions. Other popular passages include Psalm 30:2: “Lord, I called to you for help, and you healed me."; 1 Corinthians 6:19: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?"; and Leviticus 17:11: “For the life of a creature is in the blood."

All of these verses have been lifted out of context and repurposed to buttress the anti-vaccine movement. As a historian of the Bible in American life, I can attest that such shallow reading in service of political and cultural agendas has long been a fixture of evangelical Christianity.

Bible in the hands of ordinary people

In the 16th century, Martin Luther and other Protestant reformers translated the Bible from an already existing Greek text into the languages of common people. Prior to this, most men and women in Europe were exposed to the Bible through the Vulgate, a Latin version of the Old and New Testaments that only educated men – mostly Catholic priests – could read.

As people read the Bible – many for the first time – they inevitably began to interpret it as well. Protestant denominations formed around such interpretations. By the time Protestants started forming settlements in North America, there were distinctly Anglican, Presbyterian, Anabaptist, Lutheran and Quaker reading of the Bible.

The English Calvinists who settled the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay built entire colonies around their reading of the Bible, making New England one of the most literate societies in the world. In the 18th century, popular access to the Bible was one way that the British – including the North American colonies – distinguished themselves from Catholic nations that did not provide such access.

American evangelicals

In the early 19th-century United States, biblical interpretation became more free-wheeling and individualistic.

Small differences over how to interpret the Bible often resulted in the creation of new sects such as the Latter Day Saints, the Restorationists (Disciples of Christ and Churches of Christ), Adventists and various evangelical offshoots of more longstanding denominations such as Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists and Quakers.

During this period, the United States also grew more democratic. What the French traveler and diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville described as “individualism" had a profound influence on biblical interpretation and the way laypeople read the sacred text.

The views of the Bible proclaimed from the pulpits of formally educated clergy in established denominations gave way to a more free-wheeling and populist understanding of the scriptures that was often dissociated from such authoritative communities.

But these evangelicals never developed their approach to understanding the Bible in complete isolation. They often followed the interpretations of charismatic leaders such as Joseph Smith (Latter Day Saints), Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell (Restorationist), William Miller (Adventists) and Lorenzo Dow (Methodists).

These preachers built followers around innovative readings of the Scriptures. Without a church hierarchy to reign them in, these evangelical pied pipers had little accountability.

When large numbers of Irish and German immigrants arrived on American shores in the middle decades of the 19th century, evangelicals drew on longstanding anti-Catholic prejudices. They grew anxious that these Catholic newcomers were a threat to their Protestant nation and often based these fears on perceptions of how Catholic bishops and priests kept the Bible from their parishioners.

While this fear of Catholics was mostly rhetorical in nature, there were a few moments of violence. For example, in 1844, nativist Protestants, responding to rumors that Catholics were trying to remove the Bible from Philadelphia public schools, destroyed two of the city's Catholic churches before the Pennsylvania militia stopped the violence.

These so-called “Bible riots" revealed the deep tensions between the individualistic and common-sensical approach to biblical interpretation common among Protestants and a Catholic view of reading the Bible that was always filtered through the historic teachings of the Church and its theologians. Protestants believed that the former approach was more compatible with the spirit of American liberty.

Vaccine opposition and the Bible

Today this American approach to reading and interpreting the Bible is front and center in the arguments made by evangelical Christians seeking religious exemptions to COVID-19 vaccination mandates. When they explain their religious objections to health officials, employers and school administrations, evangelicals select verses, usually out of context, and reference them on exemptions forms.

Like they did in the 19th century, evangelicals who refuse to get vaccinated today tend to follow the spiritual leaders who have built followings by baptizing political or cultural propaganda in a sea of Bible verses.

Megachurch pastors, televangelists, conservative media commentators and social media influencers have far more power over ordinary evangelical Christians than those local pastors who encourage their congregations to consider that God works through science.

When I ask those evangelicals who oppose vaccines how they come to their conclusions, they all seem to cite the same sources: Fox News, or a host of fringe media personalities whom they watch on cable television or Facebook. Some others they cite include Salem Radio host and author Eric Metaxas, the Liberty Counsel and Tennessee megachurch leader Greg Locke, to name a few.

Social media allows these evangelical conspiracy theorists to become influentialthrough their anti-vaccine rants.

From my perspective, the response of some evangelicals to the vaccine reveals the dark side of the Protestant Reformation. When the Bible is placed in the hands of the people, void of any kind of authoritative religious community to guide them in their proper understanding of the text, the people can make it say anything they want it to say.

John Fea, Professor of American History, Messiah College

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Metaxas Says Biden's Presidency Is 'A Waking Nightmare' That Will Bring About Revival

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no lnx twt

Right-wingers erupts after Biden declares Jan. 6 'worst attack on democracy since Civil War'

Zachary Petrizzo and Salon April 29, 2021

President Joe Biden declared Wednesday night that the U.S. Capitol siege by a mob of Trump supporters on Jan. 6 was "the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War," a claim that angered many right-wing and pro-Trump pundits online.

Biden made the statement during his first address in front of a joint session of Congress, noting in his speech the numerous crises facing America as he wraps up his first 100 days in office.

"While the setting tonight is familiar, this gathering is very different – a reminder of the extraordinary times we are in," Biden said, from the same chamber that a pro-Trump mob breached just three months ago.

"As I stand here tonight — just one day shy of the 100th day of my administration. 100 days since I took the oath of office, lifted my hand off our family Bible, and inherited a nation in crisis," Biden continued.

Joe Biden declares Jan. 6 “worst attack on democracy since Civil War"

"The worst pandemic in a century. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. Now, after just 100 days, I can report to the nation: America is on the move again. Turning peril into possibility. Crisis into opportunity. Set back into strength. Life can knock us down. But in America, we never stay down. In America, we always get up. And today, that's what we're doing: America is rising anew. Choosing hope over fear. Truth over lies. Light over darkness."

The "civil war" comment in particular sparked anger among right-wing pundits and Trump allies, who were quick to point out various foreign attacks that have taken place on American soil.

"Biden says the January 6 protest was the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. Surprisingly, the room did not break into uncontrolled laughter at this ridiculous claim," pro-Trump pundit Dinesh D'Souza tweeted, along with a video where he calls the Jan. 6 ransacking of the Capitol a "walk-through."

Right-wing radio host Eric Metaxas responded, "FACT: The "worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War" was when Democrats STOLE AN ELECTION from #WeThePeople--and then dared to pretend WE were the threat to democracy. Shame on them. They will not get away with this. Many are praying. God sees."

Trump campaign flack Steve Cortes added: "So...Pearl Harbor, presidential assassinations, 9-11...all less threatening to our democracy than a bunch of unarmed fur hat hooligans?"

Daily Wire founder and conservative pundit Ben Shapiro snarked, "He should know better than this, considering he's old enough to remember all the intervening events since the Civil War."

"Worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War? Not 9/11? Not Pearl Harbor???" disgraced Trump spokesperson Jason Miller tweeted.

The far-right website Breitbart "fact-checked" the claim as "false." "Not only wasn't it the worst attack on our democracy; it wasn't even the worst attack on the Capitol," the site opined.

One other noteworthy right-wing reaction to Biden's evening address came from American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp, who proudly tweeted about having lead pipes in his home after Biden called for lead pipe replacement:

"I have lead pipes in my 100-year-old house. Some are impossible to take out. Joe Biden is going to replace them? Cool," Schlapp stated, which was quickly blasted by Twitter users who pointed out his attempt to "own the libs" had backfired.

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In his column for the Daily Beast, conservative commentator Matt Lewis expressed exasperation with evangelical leaders who are set to lead what has been dubbed the "Jericho March" in Washington D.C. on Saturday under the belief they can pray God into helping Donald Trump remain in the Oval Office for four more years.

Lewis, who wears his faith on his sleeve, has long condemned members of the Christian community who have attached them to the president who, by his actions and his deeds, has never exemplified any Christian values other than giving them occasional lip service.

As the Daily Beast columnist sees it, the group scheduled to appear are a motley crew who do not exemplify the best the evangelical community has to offer.

Writing that "some prominent members of the Christian church are undermining the church's witness," Lewis added, "For evidence, look no further than this Saturday, when former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn (who recently shared a message calling on Trump to declare 'limited martial law' and hold a new election) will give his first post-pardon speech at something called the Jericho March in Washington, D.C. Aside from Flynn, the roster includes other prominent MAGA names like Mike Lindell (the MyPillow guy), Eric Metaxas (a radio host who punched a protester and recently said, 'I'd be happy to die in this fight'), Ali Alexander (formerly Ali Akbar), and C.J. Pearson. Afterwards, the crowd will converge on the National Mall for the 'ROAR' prayer rally."

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this will be rolled out bigly ~ kamala harris

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Eric Metaxas and Jenna Ellis: Joe Biden is Mentally Unfit and ‘Extremely Leftist’ Kamala Harris Picked for ‘Identity Politics’

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finally, Eric Metaxas thinks that Trump should "have a rotating roster of Press Secretaries" so that he and others can fill in from time to time.

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random grab 920 mma

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Fox host Jesse Watters claimed COVID-19 lockdowns cause an “explosion in cases and deaths."{nl}* Fox anchor Martha MacCallum claimed that “nobody is being supportive” of the Kenosha shooter one day after Trump himself defended the Kenosha shooter.{nl}* TPUSA's Charlie Kirk: “By historical standards, this is not a pandemic."{nl}* Rush Limbaugh claimed that the report of Trump disrespecting fallen troops was a plot to distract from the "Pelosi hair salon story."{nl}* Limbaugh also pushed a new conspiracy theory about mail-in voting, and his plan for Trump to steal the election.{nl}* Tucker Carlsonguest Eric Metaxas compared recognizing “white privilege” in church to having a “swastika on the altar."{nl}* Fox's Tammy Bruce claimed Donald Trump “never said” there were “very fine people on both sides." That's a total lie.{nl}* Fox host Greg Gutfelddismissed violence from right-wing militias as “a lie” and “easily disprovable.”{nl}* Trump encouraged his supporters to commit voter fraud, but too much of the media responded with a shrug.{nl}* Anti-vaccine figure Del Bigtree partnered with Roku after YouTube banned him for sharing dangerous coronavirus misinformation; he's still on Facebook as well.{nl}* After Kenosha shootings, former Sheriff David Clarke advised radio listeners on how to get away with killing protesters.{nl}* Mainstream media are whitewashing Patriot Prayer, a violent far-right group in Portland.{nl}* Facebook's political ad ban before Election Day is little more than a public relations stunt.|

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/eric-metaxas-says-black-lives-matter-is-an-evil-enemy-run-by-mad-marxist-anarchists/

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/far-right-white-evangelicals-despite-impeachment-and-the-ukraine-scandal-still-see-trump-as-the-chosen-one/

no lnx

Far-right white evangelicals — despite impeachment and the Ukraine scandal — still see Trump as ‘the Chosen One’

Written by Alex Henderson November 27, 2019

In the 1980s, the late Sen. Barry Goldwater — who was considered an arch-conservative in his day — famously asserted that the Republican Party was making a huge mistake by embracing the Christian Right, which he described as a “terrible damn problem” for the conservative movement. But President Donald Trump, on the other hand, enthusiastically welcomes the support of far-right white evangelicals — some of whom are declaring that the impeachment inquiry he is facing is against God’s will and that demonic forces are trying to remove the president from office.

On November 21, evangelist Franklin Graham (son of the late Rev. Billy Graham and a strident Trump supporter) discussed impeachment when he appeared on fellow wingnut Eric Metaxas’ radio show. Graham told Metaxas that it’s “almost a demonic power that is trying” to remove Trump from office — to which Metaxas responded, “I would disagree. It’s not almost demonic. You know and I know, at the heart, it’s a spiritual battle.”

When far-right evangelicals speak of a “spiritual battle,” they typically mean one between God and Satan — and clearly, Graham and Metaxas believe that Trump is working for God, while his political opponents are working for Satan.

Republican Rick Perry, secretary of energy in the Trump Administration and former governor of Texas, has also claimed that Trump is on a mission from God. Perry, during a recent appearance on Fox News, described Trump as “the chosen one” and claimed he has been “sent by God to do great things.”

Many of Trump’s critics have had a hard time understanding why he is so popular with the Christian Right, which wanted to see President Bill Clinton impeached in the late 1990s for having an extramarital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Trump, according to his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, had extramarital affairs with a porn star (Stormy Daniels) and a Playboy model (Karen McDougal) and paid them hush money to keep quiet. But the Christian Right is extremist tribalist in its thinking; so, even though Trump has never been especially religious (he’s a non-practicing Presbyterian) and former President Barack Obama has a long history of going to church, far-right white evangelicals view Trump as an ally and Obama as an enemy.

Similarly, white Christian fundamentalists detest South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a churchgoing Episcopalian and Democratic presidential candidate who often talks about his faith. Buttigieg is obviously more religious than Trump, but he is a non-fundamentalist Mainline Protestant — and the Christian Right doesn’t see him as part of their tribe. In fact, the Christian Right view Obama and Buttigieg as infidels, not unlike Islamic fundamentalists who view non-jihadist Muslims as infidels.

Journalist Chris Hedges, a non-fundamentalist Christian who has written a lot about the role that faith can play in left-wing politics, uses the term “Christian fascists” to describe the Christian Right. Hedges considers the Christian Right a dangerous authoritarian movement, often stressing that Trump appeals to the Christian Right’s authoritarian tendencies.

Such tendencies were evident in October after the death of Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, who chaired the House Oversight Committee. Cummings was quite religious: his association with the New Psalmist Baptist Church in Baltimore spanned at least 40 years, and the Maryland Democrat would sing the Christian hymn “This Little Light of Mine” at civil rights marches. Yet some far-right evangelicals celebrated his death, insisting that God struck him down for opposing Trump.

Christian fundamentalist Stacey Shiflett, for example, said of Cummings, “Everything that he’s done has been nothing but trying to take this president out. I believe that God had had enough, and God moved.”

Hanna Selinger, in a November 26 article for The Independent, delves into the Christian Right’s unwavering adoration of Trump and explains why white Christian fundamentalists hold him in such high regard despite his not-so-Christian behavior.

“For evangelicals,” Selinger explains, “Donald Trump offers deliverables. The conservatives who follow the letter of the law when it comes to the Bible count among their most important issues ‘family values’: abortion, gay marriage, and so on. On these issues, Trump has offered a far-right tack. Despite who he actually is as a person, he checks the boxes — enabling evangelicals to look the other way and toward a perceived ‘greater good.’”

Christian Right voters, Selinger observes, “are willing to separate morals in a president from morals in a country. These voters will pull the lever for a man who prevaricates daily, who has had multiple wives and even more affairs. That’s because they believe that those characteristics outweigh the things they want done in Washington.”

Selinger adds, “Rick Perry is no different. He too is willing to overlook gross misconduct, of which he was part, simply because he likes the president’s policies.”

If a Democratic president had asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate a political revival and made that investigation a condition of military aid, far-right theocrats like Graham, Perry, Metaxas and Liberty University’s Jerry Falwell, Jr. would be demanding his impeachment. But because Trump become an honorary member of the Christian Right, he gets a pass.

The Christian Right, Selinger asserts, is unlikely to turn against Trump.

“This is the problem with Trump and his allies, and it begins with religion: what it means to follow God has been lost in a political game that places legislative wins over moral losses,” Selinger writes. “Will evangelicals ever see the light? As Rick Perry demonstrates in his ruthless sycophancy, the odds are slim.”

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**Metaxas: 'It's the End of America' if Investigations Against Trump Don’t Stop**

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http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/eric-metaxas-and-lance-wallnau-talk-about-trumps-circumcision-and-how-globalists-control-the-media-and-the-banking-system/

Lance Wallnau, the author and motivational speaker who “prophesied” before the 2016 election that Donald Trump had been anointed by God, participated in a mutual love-fest with author and radio host Eric Metaxas on Monday. Wallnau, a promoter of Seven Mountains dominionism, published his own book, “God’s Chaos Candidate,” in the weeks before the election. He’s part of a circle of Religious Right leaders allied with the Trump administration; last week he and other right-wing religious leaders met in the White House with the president’s special envoy for the Middle East.

Wallnau bragged about having been the first person to publicly declare that God was using Trump like a modern-day King Cyrus, an ancient Persian king said in the Bible to have been used by God to free the Israelites from captivity. Wallnau jokingly complained that when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compared Trump to Cyrus after the administration moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, neither Right Wing Watch nor other media outlets Wallnau implied had mocked his predictions stepped up with an apology.

Wallnau told Metaxas a story about being in Jerusalem just as his pro-Trump book came out and hearing about the release of the “Access Hollywood” recording on which Trump bragged about getting away with sexually assaulting women. Wallnau says that he started complaining about God having allowed his book, which he says he wrote “as an act of obedience,” to be published when this was about to become public. But, he said, God told him, “You better say something.” He said God assured him, “Open your mouth, I’ll fill it.”

So Wallnau got out his iPhone and did a Facebook live broadcast in which he portrayed the release of that video as God’s way of humbling Trump, so that “now he’ll know if he gets elected, it was an act of God.” Wallnau called this public humbling of Trump “the circumcision he never got.” “Wow!” said Metaxas, “It sounds like the Lord did fill your mouth.”

In a wide-ranging interview, Metaxas and Wallnau wallowed in their admiration for Trump as a kind of “wrecking ball” to the media and political establishment. Metaxas said the president is a “maniac” in the same way Martin Luther was. Metaxas, author of a Luther biography, said the reformer was also a “maniac” who had friends telling him to tone it down. They chuckled at the notion of the cheating-on-his-third-wife-with-a-porn-star Trump beating all those “card-carrying evangelicals” in the Republican primary. In the end, said Wallnau, God chose “the one barbarian in the group”—one who actually had the guts to do things like the embassy move, which others may not have done. A Hillary Clinton presidency, said Metaxas, would have been “the end of America.”

Metaxas said he finds Trump’s biblical ignorance “hilarious” because that’s how most people in the secular New York environment think.

Metaxas and Wallnau portrayed the intense opposition to Trump as a kind of spiritual warfare. “I know this is a spiritual thing because it doesn’t make any human sense, what we’re seeing right now,” said Metaxas. “You know, it’s a little bit like the French Revolution. A kind of madness takes over.”

Metaxas said Trump’s opponents are making him look “more sane” and predicted that “tons of people who didn’t vote for Trump will vote for him in 2020 because they see how he has been treated.”

That goes for the media, too. Metaxas is furious about the way the media treats Trump:

The New York Times is dead. I declare it. They died. They’re dead. They’re gone. Because there was a time when there was a flicker of life and you could read them for some measure of objectivity – maybe you had to read between the lines a little bit. But the reality is that they are now no longer even trying. They have headlines, every single day, that when I read the headline, I say that is not journalism. That is an editorial. They have spun it in a way to make Trump look bad.

Metaxas praised Trump for telling religious leaders during his campaign that he would do away with the Johnson Amendment. Metaxas praised Trump’s recent order denying federal funds to universities that don’t meet his standards for free speech. He called it “one of the greatest acts of leadership,” right up there with Ronald Reagan’s 1981 mass firing of striking air traffic controllers. As an example of his claim that that universities “have no values” and “don’t believe in truth or reason,” Metaxas used the perpetrator of an assault on the University of California Berkeley campus, who punched a conservative activist in the face (and was later arrested for it).

Added Wallnau, “Honestly, when you reject Christianity as the moral glue that holds things together, you lose civilization, and with civilization, you lose civility.”

Metaxas also brought up the subject of Brexit, which gave him a chance to mention one of his other books, a biography of German anti-Nazi activist Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who lived in a time when a kind of hyper-nationalism was the “devil’s vessel.” But that’s not true today, he said:

We are living in a time now when it is not nationalism that is the devil’s vessel, but a kind of anti-nationalist globalism, a globalist bureaucratic elite that are saying to the common man, ‘shut up, we’ll make the decisions.’

Wallnau said that globalists “have the money, the power, the bank systems”—“and the media,” said Metaxas. According to Wallnau, globalists push policies that eradicate the definition of things like marriage, gender and borders because they love to create chaos as a means of empowering an elite to come in and clean up after it. (Chaos is apparently only good when Trump is causing it.)

So, said Metaxas, “open borders is like the Reichstag fire.”

“Precisely,” responded Wallnau.

Wallnau said Brexit was a sign that something was going to happen in the U.S. They praised the rise of European populists, like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who Wallnau also called a Cyrus type. Populism, he said, “scares the daylights out of people on the left,” but it is a “healthy response” to globalism and things like European immigration by Muslims who he said do not assimilate.

Metaxas jumped in on that point:

The problem is that if you’re a Muslim in America who believes in American values, does not believe in Sharia law, does not bup-bup-bup-bup, then we don’t have a problem with that kind of a candidate. But when you have people coming in, not just candidates, but to live in this country, who say, ‘We don’t value your values,’ that person can’t be an American.

Metaxas absolutely gushed over Wallnau, saying at one point, “I feel like I’m sitting here with my soul brother.” Wallnau returned the favor at the end of the interview, saying, “And thank God for what you do. You’re the only man I know that crosses over into every one of those seven mountains, engages conversation, and brings a clear revelation of truth into every one of them.”

Metaxas became a Religious Right folk hero when he publicly questioned then-President Barack Obama’s faith at a National Prayer Breakfast; last year he was honored by Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, which has been designated an anti-Muslim hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  In January, Metaxas hosted conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi and agreed with him that if people like the prosecutors who are working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller had their way, they’d ban the teaching of the Bible.

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