James Dobson warns that “what happens on Election Day this November will have a profound impact on the future of our country. The sanctity of life, religious liberty, and our children’s future are all at stake. In fact, truth itself is up for a vote.”
The Family Research Council hosted an event decrying the use of the term “Christian nationalism” at which Professor Mark David Hall told people like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to stop “embracing the label of Christian nationalist”: “That’s just imprudent, and it’s handing victories to our critics.”
Speaking of Greene, her former intern Milo Yiannopoulos is longing for a monarchy.
Mike Lee was photographed with racistincel America First streamer Jared Noble (aka “Woozuh”).
Finally, Dennis Prager claims that Deuteronomy was the book “the Founders of the United States cited the most often.” No, it wasn’t.
Public hearings by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection have given Americans a much clearer understanding of all the ways then-President Donald Trump and his allies tried to keep him in power by overturning the results of the presidential election. Another public hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 28, with the committee’s final report expected to be released later this year.
One force driving much of the effort to keep Trump in power, one which has not been explored publicly by the Jan. 6 committee but has drawn the attention of manyjournalists, scholars, and activists, was the political ideology of Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism is grounded in beliefs that the United States was founded by and for Christians, that being a “Christian nation” is central to national identity, and that it’s the job of activists and government officials to keep it that way. Under Trump, this ideology has woven its way into the broader religious-right movement and Republican Party, while far-right and white nationalist activists have made it a cornerstone of their movements.
Ahead of the insurrection, Christian nationalists promoted the belief that Donald Trump was chosen by God and that his opponents were opposing God in a spiritual war between good and evil—providing some insurrectionists with the belief that their storming of the Capitol was a righteous act.
Trump and Christian Nationalism
To understand Christian nationalism’s role in the efforts to overturn the election results, we need to first look at how Trump made it to the White House.
Conservative evangelical Christians are an essential part of the Republican Party’s base. When Trump became the GOP nominee in 2016, he knew he needed to address skepticism about his character and record. Trump allies gathered hundreds of religious-right activists for a meeting at which Trump offered them a deal: If they made him president, he would make them more powerful. And he would give them the Supreme Court of their dreams, one that would let them overturn Roe v. Wade.
Religious-right leaders took the deal. They told their followers that Trump was anointed by God, and that controlling the Supreme Court was more important than any concerns they might have about his character or positions on other issues. And it worked. Conservative white evangelicals turned out in force for Trump in 2016.
As president, Trump gave Christian nationalist leaders more power and access to power than they had ever had before. Federal agencies implemented the religious right’s anti-choice and anti-equality agendas. Trump gave televangelist Paula White a White House job that she used to promote Christian nationalist ideology—and his reelection. He gave them the kind of judges he promised and a Supreme Court that this year overturned Roe.
The 2020 Campaign: Trump’s Reelection Prophesied
Religious-right leaders and right-wing Christian media outlets did everything they could to get Trump reelected. Self-declared prophets announced that God had promised Trump a second term. Trump’s reelection was portrayed as the key to the nation’s spiritual revival. Megachurch pastor Jentezen Franklin said that Trump’s loss would mean the end of freedom in America. Paula White denounced Trump’s opponents as demonic.
When Trump started to rage against state election officials’ plans to increase mail-in voting so that people could vote safely during the COVID-19 pandemic, religious-right leaders joined his attacks on that expanded access. Six months before the election, the leader of the pro-voting-restriction group True the Vote told a group of pro-Trump “prayer warriors” that the push to expand vote-by-mail was “from Satan” and that they were involved in a “spiritual battle” for “control of the free world.”
Millions of dollars were spent to get conservative white evangelicals to turn out for Trump—and they did, in even bigger numbers than in 2016. When he lost anyway, many of them threw themselves into his effort to overturn the election.
In God’s Name: Promoting the Big Lie and Fomenting Insurrection
As soon as it became clear that Trump would not accept his loss and would try to overturn the election results, his religious-right allies signed on to the Big Lie. They told supporters that Trump won the election by a landslide and that corruption, voter fraud, and the forces of Satan were trying to steal it from him.
For two months, Trump Republicans waged a campaign to overturn the election. Inside Trump’s team, lawyers and politicians plotted to sabotage the constitutional process for affirming the will of the voters. Meanwhile, far-right activists waged a “Stop the Steal” campaign to spread Trump’s Big Lie and pressure state officials and members of Congress to betray voters and keep Trump in power. Christian nationalists were at the heart of these interconnected schemes.
The multi-layered legal effort to overturn the election included Jenna Ellis, a Trump attorney and loyalist who once wrote a book arguing that “divine law” is “the only legitimate basis for constitutional authority.” On one of dozens of online prayer calls mobilized on behalf of Trump’s effort to keep power, religious-right author and radio host Eric Metaxas noted that the campaign to reverse the election was being led by “born-again believers” and “serious Christians” like Ellis, “Kraken” attorney Sidney Powell, and Trump team lawyer Lin Wood.
Meanwhile, so-called Stop the Steal events were rife with spiritual warfare rhetoric and threats of physical violence. Less than two weeks after the election, the so-called Stop the Steal campaign brought together members of Congress, conservative movement leaders, and Trump supporters for a large rally in D.C.; at night, violent rhetoric turned into violent skirmishes between far-right groups and counter protesters. The next month, in December, under the banner of Stop the Steal and Jericho March, a “prayer rally” on the National Mall united dominionist evangelicals, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians to promote the Big Lie and demand that Trump stay in power. “We’re marching for God,” declared event organizer Ali Alexander. “We are in a spiritual battle for the heart and soul of this country,” said former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who urged Trump to declare martial law rather than admit defeat. “God gave us Donald Trump,” screamed conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, adding that satanic forces were trying to steal the greatest victory since 1776.
Also in mid-December, the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins and other leaders associated with the secretive Council for National Policy signed a letter urging state legislators to override voters. “There is no doubt President Donald J. Trump is the lawful winner of the presidential election,” the letter declared. “Joe Biden is not president-elect.” We now know, thanks to the Jan. 6 committee, that current and former FRC officials were involved in the effort to get coup-promoting attorney John Eastman an audience with then-Vice President Mike Pence to pressure Pence to stop congressional affirmation of President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.
At Trump’s request, on the eve of the insurrection, as MAGA activists poured into Washington, D.C., Stop the Steal activists and others gathered for an hours-long rally near the White House. There, Christian nationalism mingled with conspiracy theories, threats of violence, and calls for war. “We’re here to serve notice because this is a demonic attack from the gates of Hell!” said South Carolina pastor and current congressional candidate Mark Burns. California pastor Ché Ahn, a leader of the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation, told the crowd that “we’re gonna rule and reign through President Trump and under the lordship of Jesus Christ.”
The Insurrection
On Jan. 6, Christian nationalist pastor and White House aide Paula White opened Trump’s rally near the White House with a prayer, calling for God to give the assembled MAGA activists “holy boldness” and praying that “every adversary” would be “overturned right now in the name of Jesus.”
On the grounds of the Capitol, religious imagery was impossible to ignore, often mingled with fanatical devotion to Trump. “Jesus is my Savior, Trump is my President,” proclaimed one flag. “Trump is President. Christ is King,” read another banner. Proud Boys knelt in prayer before members of the far-right group headed into the Capitol.
After insurrectionists had successfully battled police to break into the Capitol and members of Congress had been evacuated, insurrectionist Jacob Chansley led a prayer from inside the Senate chamber. He concluded:
Thank you for allowing the United States of America to be reborn. Thank you for allowing us to get rid of the communists, the globalists, and the traitors within our government. We love you, and we thank you. In Christ’s holy name we pray! Amen.
The Cover-Up
After the insurrection failed, Christian nationalist leaders and media outlets, including figures like MicheleBachmann and Lance Wallnau and programs like “Flashpoint” on Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Channel, began contributing to the cover-up almost immediately. “Prophet” Mario Murillo claimed on the evening of Jan. 6 that he knew “for a fact” that none of the insurrectionists were Trump supporters. Among the false claims presented to Victory Channel viewers as “confirmed” news: the insurrection was led by antifa activists who had been bused in by the FBI to infiltrate a peaceful rally.
Not everyone was on message: The morning after the insurrection interrupted but failed to stop congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election, the Dove Christian television network’s morning news program featured hard-right activist John Guandolo telling viewers that the insurrectionists showed “restraint” by not executing the “traitors” in Congress.
A month after the insurrection, the conservative American Enterprise Institute released survey data showing that white evangelical Protestants were far more likely to believe QAnon conspiracy theories, Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, and false claims that anti-fascist activists, not Trump supporters, were responsible for the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. About half of white evangelical Protestants “said the antifa claim was completely or mostly true.”
Religious-right leaders supported Trump Republicans’ efforts to prevent a congressional investigation of the events leading up to the insurrection. “What’s the point?” FRC’s Tony Perkins asked last year.
The Big Lie as Excuse and Voter Suppression
Christian nationalists have played an essential role in keeping Trump’s Big Lie alive, claiming in spite of all evidence that he was the legitimate winner of the election as many of them had prophesied. And many have rallied around a wave of voter-suppression legislation pushed by Trump Republicans around the country—legislation that disproportionately targets voters of color—and whose proponents justify it by pointing to the Big Lie’s success at sowing mistrust about election results.
Danger Ahead
By portraying the election as a spiritual war between good and evil, and claiming that the defeat of God’s favored candidate—Trump—would mean the end of religious liberty and the criminalization of Christianity, religious-right leaders fostered the sense that the end justified any means to keep Trump in power. Trump Republican officials, their political allies, and far-right activists from former White House aide Steve Bannon to white nationalist Nick Fuentes, invoked Christian nationalist language to fire up their followers.
This fall, Christian nationalists have rallied around candidates like Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania. The have embraced Dinesh D’Souza’s widely debunked “2000 Mules” movie and its claims to “prove” widespread voter fraud, and they have embraced the voter suppression and intimidation efforts that have been inspired by that propaganda.
Recently, Barton delivered a presentation at Radiant Church in Colorado which provided a helpful example of how he misrepresents history and scripture to create false impressions that support his Christian nationalist political agenda.
In his presentation, Barton focused on a speech delivered on June 28, 1787 by Benjamin Franklin during the Constitutional Convention, in which Franklin suggested that those gathered turn to God in prayer for help in drafting the Constitution:
The small progress we have made after 4 or five weeks close attendance & continual reasonings with each other — our different sentiments on almost every question, several of the last producing as many noes as ays, is methinks a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the Human Understanding. We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, since we have been running about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of government, and examined the different forms of those Republics which having been formed with the seeds of their own dissolution now no longer exist. And we have viewed Modern States all round Europe, but find none of their Constitutions suitable to our circumstances.
In this situation of this Assembly groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine Protection. — Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance.
I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth — that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without [H]is notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without [H]is aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that “except the Lord build they labor in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without [H]is concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall be become a reproach and a bye word down to future age. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human Wisdom, and leave it to chance, war, and conquest.
I therefore beg leave to move — that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service.
In Barton’s telling, “there were 14 Bible verses that [Franklin] quoted” in this one short speech. Barton claims that while Franklin is generally considered to be one of the least religious of the Founding Fathers, he delivered a speech filled with Bible citations, which Barton claims is proof that the Founding Fathers were all deeply religious men who intended to create a Christian nation.
“If that is the least religious, what does the most religious look like?” Barton asked rhetorically, analogously arguing that even in the church audience listening to his presentation, someone is the least religious person there but “maybe that just means you’re 99.6 percent Christian when everyone else is 99.7 [percent].”
Barton’s claim that the Founding Fathers were all so deeply knowledgeable of the Bible that Franklin could simply rise and extemporaneously deliver a speech filled with biblical citations is undercut by fact that “a copy of the speech” exists “among the Franklin Papers in the Library of Congress.” Barton also intentionally fails to mention that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention chose not to heed Franklin’s call to prayer and adjourned without taking any action on his suggestion. As historian Richard Beeman recounts in his book, “Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution“:
At the conclusion of the day’s session in which the delegates rejected his suggestion, [Franklin] scrawled a note on the bottom of the speech he had written expressing his incredulity: “The convention, except three or four persons, thought prayer unnecessary!”
It is also worth taking a closer look at Barton’s claim that there were 14 Bible verses quoted in Franklin’s speech. Helpfully, Barton flashed an image on screen listing all of the verses supposedly quoted by Franklin, making it easy to compare his claims to the actual speech.
Technically only one actual Bible quote appears in Franklin’s speech: “Except the Lord build they labor in vain that build it” is a quote from Psalm 127:1.
Strangely, regarding Franklin’s assertion that “a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice,” Barton credits Franklin as quoting two New Testament passages that basically say the same thing.
Luke 12:6: Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God.
Matthew 10:29: Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.
While it is hard to understand how this one Biblical allusion in Franklin’s speech can count as two quotes from the Bible, it is even harder to understand how Barton justifies crediting Franklin with quoting four Bible verses simply for using the word “byword.”
1 Kings 9:7: I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and the house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight, and Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples
Psalm 44:14: You have made us a byword among the nations; the peoples shake their heads at us.
2 Chronicles 7:20: I will pluck you up from my land that I have given you, and this house that I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples.
Deuteronomy 28:37: And you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the Lord will lead you away.
Barton is on somewhat firmer ground with some of his other citations, such as Franklin’s use of the phrases “Father of lights,” which mirrors James 1:17, “groping as it were in the dark,” which mirrors Job 12:25, and the reference to the Tower of Babel from Genesis 11.
As for the other four Bible verses Barton lists, we can only guess at what passages from Franklin’s speech he is citing.
Daniel 4:17 says that “the sentence is by the decree of the watchers, the decision by the word of the holy ones, to the end that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men,” which perhaps Barton thinks Franklin was referencing by asserting that “God governs in the affairs of men”?
Maybe Barton thinks that Franklin’s statement that God will “illuminate our understandings” is a reference to James 1:5: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him”?
As for “it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another” from Psalm 75:7, and “the Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life” from Psalm 121:7, we don’t really know what parts of Franklin’s speech supposedly quotes this passage.
Regardless, there are nowhere near 14 Bible verses quoted in Franklin’s speech; there was one literal quote, a few allusions, and some language that Barton simply unilaterally decided were Bible quotes because of vague similarities between the two.
The most telling thing about Barton’s misrepresentation of Franklin’s speech is that the speech itself was unmistakably religious, as Franklin was overtly urging the delegates at the Constitutional Convention to turn to God in prayer. But that isn’t enough for Barton, who needlessly exaggerates and misrepresents what actually happened and does so because he is not a historian who is concerned about accuracy, but is instead an ardent religious-right activist who is interested primarily in misusing history and scripture to promote his partisan political worldview.
President Joe Biden delivered a speech last week from Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in which he warned that former President Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters “represent extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
Nick Fuentes, the racist, misogynistic, antisemitic, America-hating, Christian fascist leader of the white nationalist America First movement, is precisely the sort of MAGA activist that Biden was warning about. So naturally, Fuentes reacted to Biden’s speech Thursday night by unleashing an extended rant in which declared that “the United States of America is controlled by Satan” and has been taken over by “the Jews.”
“[Biden] is saying ‘Look, I’m the big gay American empire, and I’m gonna kill all the enemies of liberalism,” Fuentes said. “That’s what he’s saying. Biden is there saying, ‘This is global homo and I’m the puppet face of it. I’m the puppet face of world Jewry and global homo and we’re gonna crush all these fascists.’”
“The whole thing is just a lie,” Fuentes continued. “The whole thing is a sham. Biden is a puppet. The elections are fake. The social media companies are rigged. The elections are rigged. The news couldn’t be more Jewed-up; Jewed-up, moneyed-up, corporate, under the thumb of the Illuminati, whatever. It’s all real man.”
“The devil is in charge of the world,” Fuentes griped. “Satan is in charge of America. If you don’t realize that, you’re not paying attention. And that’s not even an exaggeration. Satan runs America. I’m a patriot, but the United States of America is controlled by Satan right now. The United States is the great Satan in the world. The United States is controlled by Satan. The regime that runs America is controlled by Satan. And the regime that controls America is the empire that casts a shadow over the world. Satan runs the Western world. When you talk about the West, when you talk about democracy, you’re talking about the devil.”
“If you don’t see the hand of the demonic and all of this, you’re not paying attention,” he said. “It’s the porn empire. It’s the gay porno, abortion, feminist, diabolic empire. That’s what America stands for and it’s wrong.”
“Wake up and smell the coffee, this is an evil country,” Fuentes went on. “Until this country stands for God and the godly, this is an evil country. So, that’s just the way it is. And look at who runs it: a lot of Jews. The Jews hate me. The Jews hate me. And do you know else the Jews hate? Jesus Christ. I hate to say it. Nobody wants to say that part. People want to talk about the [Chinese communists] and everything else. I’m sick of it. You know what? It’s Jews.”
“Fuck democracy,” Fuentes proclaimed. “I stand with Jesus Christ. You can have Philadelphia, and you can have democracy. Democracy is the soul of our nation? You can have it. Christ is the soul of this nation. You can have the United States. Christ is the soul of America. We’re going to have a new country; it’s not going to be called the United States, it’s going to be called America [and] it’s going to be a Christian nation.”
We need your help. Every day, Right Wing Watch exposes extremism to help the public, activists, and journalists understand the strategies and tactics of anti-democratic forces—and respond to an increasingly aggressive and authoritarian far-right movement. The threat is growing, but our resources are not. Any size contribution—or a small monthly donation—will help us continue our work and become more effective at disrupting the ideologies, people, and organizations that threaten our freedom and democracy. Please make an investment in Right Wing Watch’s defense of the values we share.
Earlier this month, former Rep. Michele Bachmann spoke at an “Understanding The Times” conference in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, where she declared that “it isn’t even debatable” that the United States was founded to be a Christian nation.
As “evidence” of this claim, Bachmann asserted that “you can find scripture” throughout both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—which, as we have pointedoutcountless times, is entirely untrue.
Bachmann also falsely claimed that “the number one book that was referenced by the Founders, across the board, when they were putting this nation together was the Bible.”
Former Rep. Michele Bachmann claims that the Bible was “the number one book that was referenced” by the Founders when creating this nation, which is why the Declaration and Constitution were based largely on scripture. None of that is true. pic.twitter.com/UVumhiZ1pu
Right-wing broadcaster Glenn Beck made this same claim on his television program a few weeks ago, misrepresenting the findings of a study conducted by a University of Houston professor decades ago.
In an attempt to document the source of the unique ideas that created the longest ongoing constitution in world history, political scientists from the University of Houston analyzed writings from the founding era, covering the years 1760 to 1805. Their goal was to identify the specific political authorities quoted during that period. Selecting 15,000 representative writings, the researchers identified 3,154 direct quotations in the works. They documented the original sources of those quotations. The results showed a singular single source cited far more, far more, above and away: the Bible. Thirty four percent of all of the quotes that [are] in the representative writings of the founding era were taken directly from the Bible.
This false claim, like nearly all of the misinformation the right regularly cites about the supposedly Christian founding of this nation, originated with religious-right pseudo-historian David Barton.
As usual, Barton cherry-picked and misrepresented data from a University of Houston study to bolster his political views, as researcher Chris Rodd explained more than a decade ago. But since Barton and those who rely on his work, like Bachmann and Beck, continue to spread this misinformation in their efforts to chip away at the separation of church and state, it is worth debunking this claim yet again.
In 1984, professor Donald S. Lutz of the University of Houston published a study in The American Political Science Review titled “The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late Eighteenth-Century American Political Thought.” The purpose of the study was to identify which writers and sources of ideas were most cited in “the political writings of Americans published between 1760 and 1805.”
The finding, Lutz reported, was that “there was no one European writer, or one tradition of writers, that dominated American political thought” during that era, but that the Bible was cited most frequently solely because many of the pamphlets included in the research were sermons that had been reprinted for mass distribution.
As Lutz explained:
Anyone familiar with the literature will know that most of these citations come from sermons reprinted as pamphlets; hundreds of sermons were reprinted during the era, amounting to at least 10% of all pamphlets published. These reprinted sermons accounted for almost three-fourths of the biblical citations, making this nonsermon source of biblical citations roughly as important as the Classical or Common Law categories.
As Lutz noted, once the sermon pamphlets were excluded, quotes from the Bible appeared no more frequently in the political writings of the era than citations of the classical or common law.
More importantly, Lutz also noted that when the focus was solely on the public political writings from 1787 to 1788, when the U.S. Constitution was written and ratified, “the Bible’s prominence disappears” almost completely.
Tables 4 and 5 illustrate the pattern of citations surrounding the debate on the U.S. Constitution. The items from which the citations for these two tables are drawn come close to exhausting the literature written by both sides. The Bible’s prominence disappears, which is not surprising since the debate centered upon specific institutions about which the Bible had little to say. The Anti-Federalists do drag it in with respect to basic principles of government, but the Federalists’ inclination to Enlightenment rationalism is most evident here in their failure to consider the Bible relevant.
Not only is the claim that the Bible was the most cited document during the founding era misleading, the very article upon which this claim relies completely debunks the Christian nationalist narrative that the Bible was a key source in crafting the Constitution by demonstrating that the Federalists, who drafted the documented and supported its ratification, did not publicly cite the Bible once during the crucial time period.
Steve Bannon, former President Donald Trump’s onetime chief strategist, appeared on a World Prayer Network prayer call last Wednesday, where he declared that “every congregation in the nation” must mobilize to ensure that Christians control the polling places in the upcoming midterm elections in order to prevent Democrats from “stealing” the election.
Bannon spent most of 2020 fearmongering about election fraud and supporting former President Donald Trump’s baseless stolen-election conspiracy theories. He revealed Trump’s plan to prematurely declared victory to right-wing activists just days before Election Day, reveling in the chaos it would cause, according to leaked audio reported by Mother Jones. Now, as we go into the 2022 midterm elections, it appears Bannon is eager to cause more chaos.
On the prayer call, Bannon repeatedly cited Glenn Youngkin’s election as governor in Virginia in 2021. He said the role that the religious-right organization “Faith Wins” played in mobilizing churchgoers to serve as poll watchers and election workers is a model that needs to be implemented across the country.
Asked how confident he is that “we’re going to have full and fair elections in November,” Bannon replied, “I’m not.”
“We’re going to have to outvote the fraud, and we’re gonna have to outvote the money and we’re gonna have to outvote their stealing,” Bannon said. “Everybody in your congregation, should besides going to precinct strategy meetings and getting involved in the Republican Party as a precinct committeeman, every one [in] your congregation should in addition also sign up to be a poll worker or a judge. If we get in the room and start fighting over the count, that’s where we’re going to win it.”
“Let me be blunt: The Democrats cannot win if they don’t cheat,” Bannon continued. “If we want to win, your congregations are going to have to be in the counting rooms and prepared to have those knife fights … making sure that only legitimate chain of custody legal votes count.”
“You have poll watchers, which we need, but what we really need is poll workers,” Bannon added. “You need to be inside the room, and you need to be an election judge, and there’s still time to do that. We need people of faith. Every congregation in the nation can be all over this. We have to make Virginia a model.”
“If Democrats can’t cheat, they cannot win,” Bannon declared. “They’re going to try to cheat at every level, and that’s why people of faith should be all over being an election judge. We’ve got to get people of faith inside the room for the knife fight.”
By declaring that “Democrats cannot win if they don’t cheat,” Bannon is clearly trying to preemptively undermine the legitimacy of any election won by a Democratic candidate as part of his long-term strategy to create political chaos as a way to set the stage for the implementation of far-right authoritarianism.
We need your help. Every day, Right Wing Watch exposes extremism to help the public, activists, and journalists understand the strategies and tactics of anti-democratic forces—and respond to an increasingly aggressive and authoritarian far-right movement. The threat is growing, but our resources are not. Any size contribution—or a small monthly donation—will help us continue our work and become more effective at disrupting the ideologies, people, and organizations that threaten our freedom and democracy. Please make an investment in Right Wing Watch’s defense of the values we share.
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,” Kirk declared. “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 adamantelectionconspiracy 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.”
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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Members of the Conservative Action Project, a far right-wing network that supported former President Donald Trump’s efforts to stay in office after his 2020 election defeat, are demanding that Congress reject legislation protecting the freedom to marry. So are the anti-equality Alliance Defending Freedom and leaders of dozens of other religious-right groups.
The Respect for Marriage Act passed the House of Representatives on July 19 with the support of about one-quarter of House Republicans, reflecting the reality that more than 70 percent of Americans—including a majority of Republicans—support the freedom of same-sex couples to get married. More than 90 percent of Americans support marriage rights for interracial couples, who are also protected under the legislation.
But religious-right leaders hostile to legal equality for LGBTQ people were angry that the bill received bipartisan support. They have refused to recognize the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling as legitimate, and they have been emboldened by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s call for the court to overturn rulings recognizing and protecting the rights of LGBTQ people and same-sex couples the way it overturned Roe v. Wade.
A group of anti-equality leaders signed a Conservative Action Project letter dated July 26, which claimed that the Respect For Marriage Act would “wrongly marginalize social conservatives” and further “a new era of oppression” that the letter claims was unleashed when the Supreme Court recognized the right of same-sex couples to get married.
In addition, dozens of religious-right leaders signed onto a similar letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, also dated July 26, that was organized by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious-right legal powerhouse that seeks to overturn marriage equality as one of the “generational wins” it is pursuing. ADF’s letter charges that that Respect for Marriage Act is an “attack” on people who want their views that marriage should only be between a man and a woman “recognized in the law.”
The Conservative Action Project letter justifies its fearmongering rhetoric with a reference to Bob Jones University v. United States, in which the Supreme Court ruled in 1983 that the IRS could deny tax-exempt status to schools with racially discriminatory policies, even if those policies were grounded in religious belief. White evangelical leaders’ anger over IRS challenges to segregationist religious schools helped fuel the rise of the modern-day religious-right movement.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins signed both letters. When the Respect for Marriage Act passed the House, Perkins charged Republicans supporting marriage equality with “political cowardice.” FRC was knee-deep in efforts to subvert the 2020 election.
Also urging lawmakers to reject marriage equality is Ralph Drollinger, whose Capitol Ministries uses Bible studies for members of Congress and other public officials to tell Christian lawmakers it is their duty to evangelize their colleagues and enact policies that align with Drollinger’s very conservative interpretation of the Bible. Drollinger devotes this week’s Bible study and a column in the Western Journal to his argument that scripture “crushes the same-sex marriage debate.” Drollinger writes, “It is not the place of the state nor its populace to redefine what God has created”—and suggests that pro-LGBTQ Christian leaders are “Satan’s pawns.” During the Trump administration, Drollinger conducted Bible studies for members of the Cabinet and used Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to open doors for him to expand internationally.
The Conservative Action Project is affiliated with the Council for National Policy, a secretive and influential political network bringing together different strands of the right-wing movement. In December 2020, the Conservative Action Project distributed a letter falsely claiming, “There is no doubt President Donald J. Trump is the lawful winner of the presidential election. Joe Biden is not president-elect.” That December 2020 letter urged legislators in six battleground states to ignore the will of the voters and appoint pro-Trump electors to the Electoral College.
Trump supporters erected a gallows near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Shay Horse/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Analysis
The Jan. 6 hearings closed for the summer last Thursday night with a plea from Republican House Vice Chair Liz Cheney. Citing the conservative heroine British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Cheney called on the public: “Let it never be said that the dedication of those who love freedom is less than the determination of those who would destroy it.”
Cheney may be willing to pursue former President Donald Trump to the gates of Hell in her determination to expose his threat to democracy; her party, on the other hand, appears willing to join him there.
As the House select committee presented damning evidence of Trump’s months-long campaign to overturn the election, crescendoing in the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol that left 7 dead and about 150 police officers injured, right-wing groups are trying to make sure that next time, Trump, or any other wannabe dictator, will be successful.
Around the country, right-wing forces are seeking to control state elections by pursuing secretary of state offices and taking over roles typically held by nonpartisan election workers. They’re spreading voter fraud conspiracy theories, casting doubt on the integrity of the elections. They’re no longer flirting with violent rhetoric but embracing it.
On Thursday night, the committee played tape of former White House strategist Steve Bannon—who was recently convicted of contempt of Congress for failing to comply with the committee’s subpoena—in which he revealed to a room of supporters Trump’s plan and strategy ahead of Election Day.
“What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory, right?” Bannon told associates on Oct. 31, 2020. “He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner. He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.”
“More of our people vote early, that count; theirs vote in mail,” Bannon said. “And so they’re going to have a natural disadvantage. And Trump’s going to take advantage of that. That’s our strategy. He’s going to declare himself a winner.”
Trump knew he lost when he spread baseless claims about a stolen election. Countless aides testified to the select committee that they repeatedly told the former president that his conspiracy theories about the election were just that—conspiracy theories—or, in the words of his attorney general Bill Barr, “complete bullshit.” Trump lost by 7 million votes, lost key battleground states, and lost dozens of lawsuits in which he or his supporters claimed voter fraud.
And yet, Trump persisted. Bannon reveled in the chaos. And the chaos opened the door for others. Last fall, California Republican Larry Elder suggested voter fraud would steal the election from him until the results of the gubernatorial race came in and showed how soundly his bid was crushed. Radical America First candidate Shekinah Hollingsworth received a few hundred votes in her bid to become a member of the Maryland House of Delegates, but that didn’t stop her alleging election fraud. In Georgia, the conspiracy theory-minded, gun-toting Christian nationalist Kandiss Taylor received 3.4 percent of the vote in that state’s GOP gubernatorial primary; she predictably claimed the election was stolen and refused to concede. Rachel Hamm in California played this same game, as did Bianca Garcia in Texas. We could go on.
Kandiss “Jesus, Guns, Babies” Taylor, who received 3.4% of the vote in Georgia’s GOP gubernatorial primary, clams the election was stolen and refuses to concede, praying that those responsible for this “crime” will “feel so guilty [that] they come forward”: “We pray for guilt.” pic.twitter.com/ctTOvYgCAq
With such false claims of fraud, far-right forces and right-wing media have been able to convince a broad swath of the American public that our elections are not safe. They have convinced Trump supporters that poll workers—public servants like Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, who became the focus of Trump’s ire when he baselessly accused her of processing fake ballots—are to blame.
And so they harass them and threaten them—and when they have driven good people away from those posts, they try to take their places.
A month after the failed insurrection, Bannon called for followers to “take this back village by village … precinct by precinct.” According to ProPublica, GOP leaders in 41 of 65 key counties reported an unusual increase in signups since his call to action.
This strategy to attack and replace local election officials with Trump loyalists is one we’re seeing play out from Fulton County, Georgia, to Yavapai County, Arizona, with the full weight of the Republican Party behind it.
The Republican National Committee—which aided Trump in his plot to stay in power—has spent millions on 17 states to recruit more than 14,000 poll workers and 10,000 poll watchers already, according to the Washington Post.
Working with the RNC is Cleta Mitchell, a Trump lawyer who was on the infamous call on which Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 more votes. Mitchell is leading the so-called “election integrity” effort by the Conservative Partnership Institute, which seeks to bring together local right-wing groups with established conservative behemoths like the Heritage Foundation. The Brennan Center describes CPI as such: “The network has published materials and hosted summits across the country with the aim of coordinating a nationwide effort to staff election offices, recruit poll watchers and poll workers, and build teams of local citizens to challenge voter rolls, question postal workers, be ‘ever-present’ in local election offices, and inundate election officials with document requests.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, CPI became home to other Trump allies who had a role in the months-long effort to overturn the election, including Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows (who sat scrolling through his phone when he heard about threats of violence on Jan. 6), Trump’s former social media director Dan Scavino (who spread voter fraud conspiracies on behalf of the tweet-happy president), and Ed Corrigan (who appeared to be busy behind the scenes encouraging Vice President Mike Pence to buck his constitutional duty and overturn the election). CPI enjoyed a $1 million boost from Trump’s Save America PAC.
CPI and organizations like it are finding success. One in 5 local election administrators say they are likely to leave their jobs before the 2024 presidential election, according to a survey by the Brennan Center for Justice. These public servants cite politicians attacking “a system that they know is fair and honest” and the stress of the job as the top two reasons for their planned departures.
Meanwhile, other politicians are running for secretary of state to gain control of their states’ elections. Arizona’s Mark Finchem stood outside the U.S. Capitol’s east steps as the anti-government extremist Oath Keepers—of which Finchem claims to be a member—stormed the building. Three months later, he announced his bid for Arizona’s secretary of state and earned Trump’s endorsement. In Michigan, Kristina Karamano, also blessed with a Trump endorsement for her voter-fraud conspiracy theories, became the Republican nominee in the race for secretary of state. And in Georgia, Rep. Jody Hice tried to best Trump nemesis Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger out of the Republican nomination to no avail.
Added to this stew: a large dose of violent rhetoric. Ahead of Jan. 6, violent rhetoric was widespread on pro-Trump social media and among far-right groups. Today, it no longer remains on the fringes but has been embraced by right-wing politicians.
In Missouri, former governor Eric Greitens—whose ex-wife has accused him of domestic violence—released a campaign ad for his U.S. Senate bid. “Today, we’re going RINO hunting,” Greitens says in the ad, before bursting through a door with a SWAT team, guns raised. “Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country,” he says.
He’s not the only one seeing red. In Oklahoma, state Senate candidate Jarrin Jackson wants to shoot “godless commies.” In February, Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers voiced her desire “to build more gallows” in a video address to white nationalists.
Right-wing activist Jarrin Jackson, who has not been shy about his desire to shoot “godless commies” in the face, is now running for a seat in the Oklahoma state senate: “I’d like to ask for your vote and for you to unleash me.” https://t.co/kkc5EljrqXhttps://t.co/xL4IdQegEOpic.twitter.com/nOkcAPdTAb
When asked by Cheney whether he believed in the peaceful transfer of power, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded the Fifth Amendment, every American’s right against forced self-incrimination. The recorded testimony, which was shown during the sixth hearing, was shocking, and yet, Flynn is not alone. Republicans are more likely than other Americans to say political violence might be necessary, with four in 10 subscribing to that belief, according to a survey conducted by the conservative American Enterprise Institute shortly after the Jan. 6 attack. Perhaps that’s why, after hearing Trump’s suggestion that Mike Pence was a traitor to the country, so many of the Trump supporters storming the Capitol were keen on hanging the former vice president.
Trump, as the hearing Thursday revealed, did nothing for 187 minutes while his supporters rampaged through the Capitol, beat police officers, and hunted for Pence, Pelosi, and other members of Congress, all with the goal of preventing the peaceful transfer of power. As we move into the 2022 elections, Americans have a choice about the future of democracy in our country and whether the coup next time will succeed.
The Family Research Council, a major player in the religious-right political movement, was deeply involved in former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election—a fact made all the more apparent by revelations during the June 23 public hearing of the House select committee investigating the conspiracy that led to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
We had already known that FRC publicly supported Trump’s schemes to unlawfully stay in power. FRC President Tony Perkins and other leaders connected with the secretive Council for National Policy had signed a letter in mid-December 2020 falsely claiming, “There is no doubt President Donald J. Trump is the lawful winner of the presidential election. Joe Biden is not president-elect.” That letter called on state legislatures in six battleground states won by Joe Biden to “appoint clean slates of electors to the Electoral College to support President Trump.” It urged the House and Senate to reject pro-Biden electors from those states.
FRC Executive Vice President Jerry Boykin also signed that letter, as did Kenneth Blackwell, FRC’s senior fellow for human rights and constitutional governance. Blackwell, a notorious voter suppresser who abused the power of his office when he was Ohio’s secretary of state, was all-in on Trump’s election lies from the earliest days of the so-called “Stop the Steal” movement. Just days after the election, Blackwell used wildly false and inflammatory language in support of Trump’s claims, denouncing Pennsylvania’s governor, who defended his state’s election results from false claims of voter fraud, and “his legion of darkness.”
Two days before the insurrection at the Capitol, Blackwell tweeted a video message using the “Stop the Steal” hashtag. “This is not a time for sideline sitters or backbenchers,” he said. “You must do what you can with what you have where you are. Our republic demands it.”
It turns out that Blackwell was busy behind the scenes, too.
At the Jan. 6 committee’s June 23 hearing, Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney revealed the contents of a Dec.28, 2020, email from Blackwell that read in part, “As I stated last week, I believe the VP and his staff would benefit greatly from a briefing by John and Ken.”
“John” would be John Eastman, the far right-wing lawyer who doggedly pushed illegal schemes to keep Trump in power based on false claims of election fraud and bogus theories about the vice president’s power to single-handedly decide who would become the next president. “Ken” referred to Ken Klukowski, a religious-right lawyer and pundit, longtime associate of Blackwell, and former director of FRC’s Center for Religious Liberty.
Klukowski had joined the Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget in the fall of 2019. After the 2020 election, Klukowski was parachuted into the Justice Department office of Jeffrey Clark, who was scheming to drag the DOJ into Trump’s efforts to overturn the election in key battleground states. Blackwell clearly seemed to recognize the bad optics of Klukowski’s involvement, urging in his email, “As I also mentioned, make sure we don’t overexpose Ken given his new position.”
Clark has unwillingly played a starring role in the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation, which has painstakingly exposed his effort to get Trump to name him acting attorney general. Clark and others had originally planned to send a letter to Georgia legislators—a letter that Klukowski helped Clark write—falsely claiming that the DOJ had identified major election problems in the state and encouraging them to convene a special session to consider naming a pro-Trump Electoral College slate. When Clark’s DOJ superiors blocked his scheme, Trump seriously considered making Clark acting attorney general so he could carry it out, abandoning the plan only after other top Justice Department officials threatened a massive leadership resignation that would swamp news of the letter and define Trump’s legacy.
As Rep. Cheney concluded, “This email suggests that Mr. Klukowski was simultaneously working with Jeffrey Clark to draft the proposed letter to Georgia officials to overturn their certified election and working with Dr. Eastman to help pressure the vice president to overturn the election.”
In other words, while a battle raged between principled White House and Justice Department officials who were committed to upholding the election results and facilitating a peaceful transfer of power and the defeated president and his power-at-all-costs supporters, current and former FRC leaders were in the trenches with Trump and the would-be election overthrowers.
Their collusion on Trump’s attempt to overturn the election is far from the first Blackwell-Klukowski collaboration. They co-authored numerous partisan diatribes in the form of op-eds and books, including “Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency” and “Resurgent: How Constitutional Conservatism Can Save America.” In 2016, Klukowksi guest-hosted FRC’s “Washington Watch” radio program and had Blackwell on as a guest.
At FRC’s October 2021 Pray Vote Stand conference—the rechristened activist gathering known for years as the Values Voter Summit—Blackwell slammed federal voting rights legislation and backed new voting restrictions being put in place by Republican state legislators.
The revelations of the Family Research Council’s all-out effort to help Trump stay in power despite his rejection by voters makes it even more appalling to learn from ProPublica that FRC has successfully petitioned the IRS to change its official classification to that of an association of churches, a tactic that Right Wing Watch has reported has been used by other religious-right groups like Focus on the Family and Liberty Counsel to evade public scrutiny and accountability.
Trump supporters erected a gallows near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Shay Horse/NurPhoto via Getty Images)