Mark Robin­son is a demon­stra­bly tal­ent­ed politi­cian. Or at least that’s one way of inter­pret­ing his mete­oric rise. After all, he only won his first polit­i­cal office, Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor of North Car­oli­na, in 2020. And here he is in 2024 as the GOP’s guber­na­to­r­i­al nom­i­nee. And, of course, he’s the dar­ling of the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, focused on recruit­ing pas­tors to run for office. The “Some Folks Need Killing!” guy is great for recruit­ing pas­tors. Now you know.

But it’s worth keep­ing in mind that it could be argued Robin­son’s polit­i­cal career start­ed long before that. As TPM doc­u­ment­ed, Robin­son had been a pro­lif­ic pur­vey­or of far right con­tent on social media for over a decade and effec­tive­ly became a right-wing star after a pro-gun speech he gave at a city coun­cil meet­ing in 2018 went viral. And as we also saw, it was 2019 when Robin­son appeared for an extend­ed con­ver­sa­tion with Sean Moon, son of Rev­erend Sun Myung Moon who now runs his own church in Penn­syl­va­nia that treats AR-15 rifles as divine tools for God’s cho­sen peo­ple. The next year, he goes on to win his first polit­i­cal race. Weeks lat­er, the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion tran­spires, with Sean Moon there at the Capi­tol among the pro-Trump mob. And where do we find Don­ald Trump on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2021, the 20th Anniver­sary of the 9/11 attacks? At a Uni­fi­ca­tion Church event. The CNP may be the dom­i­nant theo­crat­ic enti­ty in the US, but the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church is no slouch. It still has clout.

And that brings us to the fol­low Covert Action Intel­li­gence Bul­letin from back in the Spring of 1987 about the fas­ci­nat­ing ties between the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and the domin­ion­ist forces behind the CNP. Ties that were on full dis­play at the time. The piece, by Fred Clark­son (who cov­ered David Lane’s open calls from a vio­lent domin­ion­ist rev­o­lu­tion in 2013), cov­ers the his­to­ry of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church’s then-decades-long invest­ments in acquir­ing pow­er and influ­ence inside the Unit­ed States. A his­to­ry that obvi­ous­ly cen­ters around snug­gling up to the Repub­li­can Par­ty. But as we’re going to see, Moon had some major allies in this effort. Allies who made their affil­i­a­tion with Moon’s agen­da abun­dant­ly clear after Moon was sen­tenced to an 18-month prison sen­tence in 1984 over sys­tem­at­ic tax fraud. And as we’re going to see, these allies were more or less the same net­work of evan­gel­i­cal reli­gious lead­ers who ral­lied around Ronald Rea­gan in 1980 and went on to form the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) the fol­low­ing year.

The sup­port for Moon pri­mar­i­ly man­i­fest­ed through the DC-based Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom (CRF), itself formed in 1984 as a project by the Asso­ci­a­tion of Con­cerned Tax­pay­ers, head­ed by Repub­li­can rep­re­sen­ta­tive George Hansen. On the board of the CRF was a list of now famil­iar names: Tim LaHaye, Jer­ry Fal­well, James Robi­son, Rex Hum­bard, D. James Kennedy, and Jim­my Swag­gart. As we saw, it was James Robi­son who played a key role in 1979 bring­ing togeth­er the group of evan­gel­i­cal domin­ion­ists who ral­lied behind Ronald Rea­gan’s cam­paign the fol­low­ing year. Includ­ing Tim LaHaye, one went on to become one of the CNP’s found­ing mem­bers in 1981 and group’s first pres­i­dent.

Also note that, not only do Fal­well and Dr. D. James Kennedy also show up on the CNP list, but so does William T. Allen (Chair­man of the Board, D. James Kennedy Min­istries) and Dr. Frank Wright (Pres­i­dent & CEO, D. James Kennedy Min­istries). In oth­er words, CRF board was stacked with CNP heavy­weights. And that’s the group that was wag­ing

Moon’s legal plight was­n’t the only issue the CRF and Hansen were upset about that year. The loss of tax-exempt sta­tus for Bob Jones Uni­ver­si­ty over its racist poli­cies out­raged Hansen. Keep in mind that Bob Jones III is anoth­er promi­nent CNP mem­ber.

But the CRF’s ties to Moon aren’t just found in their vocif­er­ous defense of Moon fol­low­ing his sen­tenc­ing. CRF pres­i­dent Don Sills took $500,000 from Moon sources. Beyond that, CRF spokesper­son and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber Joseph Paige was active in key Uni­fi­ca­tion Church enti­ty CAUSA.

Anoth­er exam­ple the ties between Moon and this pow­er­ful net­work of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers can be found in the right-wing lob­by Chris­t­ian Voice, found­ed in 1978 by CNP mem­ber Robert Grant. While Chris­t­ian Voice char­ac­ter­izes itself as a lob­by for all evan­gel­i­cals, that was a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion that did­n’t sit well with then-direc­tor of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals Robert P. Dugan, who described Chris­t­ian Voice as “not con­struct­ed to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive orga­ni­za­tion and its polit­i­cal posi­tions may well be deter­mined by a hand­ful of activists meet­ing over lunch. They are account­able to no one but them­selves.” Even Paul Weyrich anoth­er CNP founder — described the group as “con­ser­v­a­tive first and Chris­t­ian inci­den­tal­ly, as opposed to oth­er groups that are Chris­t­ian first, and con­ser­v­a­tive inci­den­tal­ly.”

What are the ties between Chris­t­ian Voice and the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church? Well, it turns out the group’s leg­isla­tive direc­tor, Gary Jarmin, was a long-time Uni­fi­ca­tion Church activist in the 1970s. And while Jarmin claimed to have left the group after join­ing the CRF, it also turns out he helped to orga­nize the first CAUSA North Amer­i­ca con­fer­ence in 1983, along with Chris­t­ian Voice Advi­so­ry Board mem­bers W. Steuart McBir­ney and Ray Allen. Jarmin and Grant went on to attend CAUSA’s 1985 con­fer­ence too.

So that’s the very inter­est piece of his­to­ry to keep in mind when we’re look­ing at this his­toric arc of how the same net­work behind rise of the ‘Reli­gious Right’ in the 1980s and the for­ma­tion of the CNP has grown to the point where its on the cusp on imple­ment­ing that long sought theoc­ra­cy. On the cusp of win­ning that pow­er demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly or on the cusp of a vio­lent rev­o­lu­tion. Either way, they are on the cusp. Which means their fel­low trav­el­ers, like the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and its AR-15-wor­ship­ping off­shoots, are on the cusp too:

Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin
No 27, Spring 1987

“Moon’s Law: God Is Phas­ing Out Democ­ra­cy”

by Fred Clark­son

Over the years, Rev­erend Sun Myung Moon, the founder, spir­i­tu­al leader, and tit­u­lar head of the vast Uni­fi­ca­tion Church con­glom­er­ate, has repeat­ed­ly declared that his goal is glob­al theoc­ra­cy. He has expressed his desire for polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic con­trol orig­i­nat­ing from cen­tral­ized reli­gious pow­er. Moon and his orga­ni­za­tion have been con­sis­tent in their efforts to car­ry out this vision. They are not always suc­cess­ful, but they per­sist. What is essen­tial to under­stand about the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and its relat­ed oper­a­tions is that its reli­gion and its pol­i­tics are vir­tu­al­ly insep­a­ra­ble. Equal­ly impor­tant to under­stand is that the Moon orga­ni­za­tion [see note 1 below] is an inte­gral part of the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League (WACL), which in turn has played a piv­otal role in the devel­op­ment and activ­i­ties of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church.

In the U.S. the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has sought allies on many fronts, notably the New Right, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the reli­gious Right. These efforts have met with mixed suc­cess, but there is no doubt that it has made deep inroads into Amer­i­can polit­i­cal life. Where they intend going may be gauged by Moon’s ser­mons. In 1973, for exam­ple, he declared, “My dream is to orga­nize a Chris­t­ian polit­i­cal par­ty, includ­ing the Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions and Catholics, and all the oth­er reli­gious sects.2

The pur­pose of this arti­cle is to detail the reli­gious and polit­i­cal ori­gins of the Moon phe­nom­e­non in the U.S. in order to clar­i­fy the more con­fus­ing elements.3

Inside the League

The World Anti-Com­mu­nist League (WACL) is an inter­na­tion­al coali­tion of fas­cist and con­ser­v­a­tive groups and polit­i­cal par­ties found­ed in 1966 by agents of the gov­ern­ments of Tai­wan and South Korea.4 One of the orig­i­nal groups was the Asian People’s Anti-Com­mu­nist League (APACL). Its Japan­ese affil­i­ate, Shokyo Ren­go, became a WACL chap­ter in 1968. Shokyo Ren­go (Vic­to­ry Over Com­mu­nism) began after a 1967 meet­ing between Sun Myung Moon, Ryoichi Sasakawa, Yoshio Kodama, and two of his lieu­tenants. Kodama was the head of Japan­ese orga­nized crime, the Yakuza. One of [Moon’s] lieu­tenants, Osa­mi Kubo­ki, became head of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church in Japan, as well as a leader in WACL. Soon after­ward, WACL began indoc­tri­nat­ing young Yakuza gang mem­bers in anti­com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy sim­i­lar to what the Moon orga­ni­za­tion was already doing in Korea with gov­ern­ment offi­cials. Sasakawa, an impor­tant World War II Japan­ese fas­cist leader, became the head of Shokyo Ren­go, and Kodama its chief advi­sor.

Sasakawa’s rela­tion­ship to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion, which dates back to 1958, con­tin­ues to this day, includ­ing ongo­ing financ­ing of both the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and Shokyo Ren­go, which is con­trolled by the Church.

Sasakawa, Kodama, and oth­er impor­tant “Class A” war crim­i­nals were mys­te­ri­ous­ly released from Sug­amo prison only a year and a half after World War II. They went on to found the rul­ing Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and have played promi­nent roles since. One fel­low inmate, Nobusuke Kishi, became a prime min­is­ter. In 1959, Kishi helped estab­lish a qua­si-gov­em­men­tal, boat-rac­ing/gam­bling fran­chise, which he gave to Sasakawa, who grew fan­tas­ti­cal­ly rich from the pro­ceeds. Kishi was also the prime mover in estab­lish­ing APACL in Japan and remained active in WACL through­out the 1960s, serv­ing as chair­man of the plan­ning com­mit­tee in 1970.

Sasakawa was described by U.S. Army intel­li­gence as “one of the most active fas­cist orga­niz­ers pri­or to the war.” In the 1930s both Sasakawa and Kodama were jailed: Sasakawa for plot­ting the mur­der of a for­mer pre­mier, and Kodama for plot­ting the mur­der of a prime min­is­ter. Kodama was a noto­ri­ous war prof­i­teer and Japan­ese intel­li­gence agent in Chi­na. “His long and fanat­ic involve­ment in ultra-nation­al­ist activ­i­ties, vio­lence includ­ed, and his skill in appeal­ing to youth make him a man who, if released from intern­ment, would sure­ly be a grave secu­ri­ty risk.”5

Mean­while, the first Moon mis­sion­ar­ies arrived in the U.S. in 1959. By the ear­ly 1960s, Moon fronts had been estab­lished and were work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Kore­an Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency (KCIA). Indeed, short­ly after the mil­i­tary coup which ele­vat­ed Park Chung Hee to pow­er in 1961, his KCIA direc­tor (and founder), Kim Jong Pil, stat­ed that he intend­ed to “orga­nize and uti­lize” the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church as a “polit­i­cal tool” (see side­bar), accord­ing to the Octo­ber 31, 1978 Report of the Sub­com­mit­tee on Inter­na­tion­al Orga­ni­za­tions of the House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee, known as the Fras­er Report.6

The Fras­er Report, a House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives inves­ti­ga­tion into Kore­an covert oper­a­tions in the U.S., chaired by Don­ald Fras­er (Dem.-Minn.), reveals that one of the ear­ly KCIA/Moon projects was the Kore­an Cul­tur­al Free­dom Foun­da­tion (KCFF). The osten­si­bly non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion quick­ly turned from a “cul­tur­al” to a polit­i­cal oper­a­tion under the influ­ence of “Hon­orary Chair­man” Kim Jong Pil, who want­ed the “Free­dom Cen­ter” in Seoul, South Korea to be its prin­ci­pal project. Thus, by the spring of 1964, KCFF was rais­ing funds from Amer­i­cans for the Free­dom Cen­ter, which was, in fact, an APACL project pro­mot­ed and sub­si­dized by the Kore­an gov­ern­ment with at least $796,231.,7 The Free­dom Cen­ter serves as the “sec­re­tari­at” of WACL to this day.

In 1966, KCFF launched anoth­er KCIA project, Radio Of Free Asia (ROFA), which broad­cast anti­com­mu­nist pro­gram­ming to the region. The Kore­an gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ed the broad­cast facil­i­ties, and the KCIA con­trolled the pro­gram­ming through their psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare sec­tion, called the “7th Bureau.”8 Dur­ing its peri­od of orga­ni­za­tion, Lt. Col. Bo Hi Pak, a mil­i­tary attaché at the Kore­an Embassy in Wash­ing­ton, actu­al­ly ran KCFF, despite a series of Amer­i­can fig­ure­heads fronting the Free­dom Cen­ter and ROFA fundrais­ing cam­paigns. Pak had been giv­en a spe­cial dis­charge from the Kore­an Army, appar­ent­ly to devote full time to KCFF in Wash­ing­ton. He was among Moon’s prin­ci­pal oper­a­tives as well, and used KCFF for Church pur­pos­es. KCFF hood­winked a num­ber of promi­nent Amer­i­cans, includ­ing for­mer pres­i­dents Eisen­how­er and Tru­man to serve on its advi­so­ry board. Using their names, KCFF raised funds for their projects and some mon­ey was appar­ent­ly skimmed to fund the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church.9

The Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion for Vic­to­ry Over Com­mu­nism (IFVC) was formed in 1968 in Seoul. This was Moon’s prin­ci­pal polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion. Shokyo Ren­go, the Japan­ese affil­i­ate, was also formed in 1968. The Amer­i­can affil­i­ate was incor­po­rat­ed in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. in 1969 as the Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion (FLF). Shokyo Ren­go host­ed the 1970 WACL Con­fer­ence in Tokyo, for which Moon claimed to have raised $1.4 million.10 FLF Pres­i­dent Allen Tate Wood attend­ed as a “youth del­e­gate” with sev­er­al Amer­i­can Moonies. He lat­er broke with Moon, gave press con­fer­ences denounc­ing Moon, and tes­ti­fied before the Fras­er Com­mit­tee. While vis­it­ing Korea on the same trip, Wood was instruct­ed by Moon to “win the pow­er cen­ters” of the U.S. for him, begin­ning with academia.11 Moon also told him that “part of our strat­e­gy in the U.S. must be to make friends in the FBI, the CIA and police forces, the mil­i­tary and busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty… as a means of enter­ing the polit­i­cal are­na, influ­enc­ing for­eign pol­i­cy, and ulti­mate­ly of estab­lish­ing absolute domin­ion over the Amer­i­can peo­ple.”12

Accord­ing to the Fras­er Report, polit­i­cal oper­a­tions in the U.S. were at first opposed by reli­gious “purists” in the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. How­ev­er it was “point­ed out to them that the Church in Japan and Korea car­ried exten­sive anti­com­mu­nist polit­i­cal pro­grams. They were told it was Master’s expressed desire to begin polit­i­cal work in the Unit­ed States. There­after, a member’s objec­tion to polit­i­cal activ­i­ties was con­sid­ered infi­deli­ty to Mas­ter and was like being dis­obe­di­ent to God.”13 In 1971, Moon came to the U.S. after his immi­gra­tion dif­fi­cul­ties were over­come through the inter­ven­tion of Sen­a­tor Strom Thur­mond (Rep.-S.C.), who had spo­ken at Moon’s 1970 WACL con­fer­ence in Tokyo. Based on inter­views with ex-Moonies, Robert Boettch­er, the staff direc­tor of the Fras­er Com­mit­tee, wrote that Moon was “appalled” by Amer­i­can indi­vid­u­al­ism, and he con­sid­ered relo­cat­ing to Ger­many, where peo­ple “were trained in total­ism.” Some for­mer mem­bers recall that Nazi films on orga­niz­ing Hitler Youth were shown as exam­ples to Moonie lead­ers. Noth­ing was more impor­tant than devel­op­ing a cadre of strong lead­ers total­ly sub­servient to his will.”14

Wood has said that “[u]nder the aegis of Amer­i­can Youth for a Just Peace (AYJP)…set up by myself and a man named Charles Stephens, the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church car­ried out exten­sive lob­by­ing in the spring of 1970. This lob­by­ing was car­ried out by church mem­bers under orders from their superiors…to try to indi­cate to Congress…strong grass­roots sup­port for a hard line in Viet­nam.” He also empha­sized that because “the church’s tax exempt sta­tus would be threat­ened if we car­ried out our polit­i­cal activ­i­ties open­ly, we were care­ful to hide our real iden­ti­ty behind the guise of AYJP. Dur­ing this time, AYJP received ‘anony­mous’ dona­tions from ‘friends of the Pres­i­dent’ [Nixon] through con­nec­tions with Charles Col­son and Jeb Magrud­er. So the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church in the 1970s was the recip­i­ent of mon­ey to car­ry out the pro­grams of the gov­ern­ment.”

“Mr. Moon has said,” con­tin­ued Wood, “that ‘God is phas­ing out democ­ra­cy.’ Well, whether or not God is doing it, it is clear that Sun Myung Moon wants to do this… so right now, the Unit­ed States is act­ing as a seedbed for fas­cist reli­gious cults whose objec­tive is in the end to destroy the Con­sti­tu­tion, and remake Amer­i­ca in the image of an auto­crat­ic hier­ar­chi­cal fas­cist state.”15

In 1975, Moon pub­licly denounced WACL as “fas­cist” and pur­port­ed­ly with­drew; how­ev­er, this was most like­ly sim­ply an effort to keep a low­er pro­file. The Wash­ing­ton Post, cov­er­ing the 1978 WACL con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton, report­ed that the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church was absent and no longer involved.16 How­ev­er, a Uni­fi­ca­tion Church min­is­ter hired bus­es for CIA-con­nect­ed Cuban exiles to attend, accord­ing to inter­views with the Cubans by Jeff Stein, writ­ing in New York mag­a­zine.17 It is clear that the Moon orga­ni­za­tion nev­er real­ly left WACL. Osa­mi Kubo­ki has been a mem­ber of the WACL exec­u­tive board for many years, and even host­ed the 1982 WACL con­fer­ence in Japan.

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the youth sec­tion of WACL, cur­rent­ly head­ed by David Finzer18 of the Wash­ing­ton-based Con­ser­v­a­tive Action Foun­da­tion, has report­ed­ly received a grant from the South Kore­an WACL chapter.19 Finzer’s group is pro­vid­ing sem­i­nars on “polit­i­cal tech­nol­o­gy” for WACL Youth, and orig­i­nat­ed the Chevron/Gulf boycott—a cam­paign which received sup­port from the RAMBO Coali­tion (see side­bar in “Shep­herd­ing,” in this issue)—designed to high­light the efforts of Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA to over­throw the gov­ern­ment of Ango­la.

“An Auto­mat­ic Theoc­ra­cy”

While WACL gen­er­al­ly pro­motes fas­cist polit­i­cal pro­grams, when the Moon orga­ni­za­tion is involved, the mes­sages released are more explic­it­ly theo­crat­ic. Essen­tial­ly, Moon’s fol­low­ers believe he is the new Mes­si­ah, the sec­ond com­ing, not of Jesus but of the Mes­si­ah. Moon says that God told him: “You are the son I have been seek­ing, the one who can begin my eter­nal history.”20 He says that God has revealed his plan to him and that he has spo­ken with Jesus, Moses, and oth­er great his­tor­i­cal reli­gious fig­ures.

Moon intends to bend the U.S. to “God’s will,” which will lead to a final war with Sovi­et com­mu­nism, and final­ly to the King­dom of Heav­en on Earth. Accord­ing to The Divine Prin­ci­ple, the basic the­o­log­i­cal work of Uni­fi­ca­tion­ism, World War III is “inevitable”. This war may be fought with weapons, or with “ide­ol­o­gy,” in order to “sub­ju­gate and uni­fy the Satan­ic world.” The orga­ni­za­tion cre­at­ed to refine and pro­mote this ide­ol­o­gy appears to be CAUSA (see side­bar) which the Uni­fi­ca­tion News describes as an “ide­o­log­i­cal move­ment,” which “unites all reli­gious peo­ple as a God-accept­ing force against the God-deny­ing forces such as communism.”21

The Divine Prin­ci­ple denounces the tri­par­tite con­sti­tu­tion­al sys­tem of west­ern democ­ra­cies, stat­ing that “Since the Con­sti­tu­tion is not made of God’s words” the three branch­es of gov­ern­ment “can­not help oppos­ing and con­flict­ing with one anoth­er, and lack mutu­al har­mo­ny and order.”

More­over, in 1973, Moon said that “Amer­i­can style democ­ra­cy” is ‘‘a good nurs­ery for the growth of communism.”22 Ten years lat­er he told his annu­al Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence for the Uni­ty of the Sci­ences (ICUS) that ‘‘nei­ther Democ­ra­cy nor Com­mu­nism pro­vides the means to cure the ills of soci­ety…. Not only has Democ­ra­cy been unsuc­cess­ful at this task, but it has proved itself unable to resist and over­come the destruc­tive­ness of Com­mu­nism…. What is need­ed is a third alter­na­tive, a move­ment based on a new under­stand­ing of truth…this is the Uni­fi­ca­tion Move­ment, with Uni­fi­ca­tion ideology.”23

...

Thus the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has been con­sis­tent over the years, from their basic book through the speech­es of the Mas­ter and his most promi­nent dis­ci­ple. One for­mer mem­ber observed that Moon’s teach­ings “were often referred to by oth­er mem­bers as an ‘ide­ol­o­gy’ that would change the polit­i­cal sys­tems of the world. It was made clear to me that so long as the church-relat­ed aspects of the group were empha­sized, Moon’s fol­low­ers would be in a pro­tect­ed posi­tion as far as first amend­ment reli­gious free­dom was con­cerned, and be able to take advan­tage of the tax laws as well.”24

Moon’s theo­crat­ic aspi­ra­tions are well doc­u­ment­ed in a series of speech­es and ser­mons from the 1970s, com­piled under the title Mas­ter Speaks. In 1973, for exam­ple, Moon declared that “[w]hen it comes to our age, we must have an auto­mat­ic theoc­ra­cy to rule the world. So we can­not sep­a­rate the polit­i­cal field from the reli­gious…. Sep­a­ra­tion between reli­gion and pol­i­tics is what Satan likes most.” In Moon’s king­dom, Korea would be the cen­tral nation; the Rome of a new Empire. What is more, “In the ide­al world cen­tered upon God, every­one will speak only Kore­an, so no inter­preter will be necessary.”25

Moon’s reli­gion-is-every­thing ide­ol­o­gy includes the econ­o­my. He says that under his sys­tem, “even in Japan and Ger­many, the peo­ple will not buy prod­ucts from their own coun­try, but will buy accord­ing to cen­tral­ized instruc­tions. What kind of sys­tem of thought or econ­o­my can func­tion to give these cen­tral­ized instruc­tions? Reli­gion is the only sys­tem that can do that.”26

...

“A Move­ment Like Le Pen’s”

Moon’s polit­i­cal oper­a­tions have tak­en many forms. In Brazil, for exam­ple, CAUSA/Brazil has orga­nized a long-term cam­paign to col­lect eight mil­lion sig­na­tures on an “anti­com­mu­nist man­i­festo.” They plan to use these peti­tions to pres­sure the Brazil­ian Congress.28 At stake is the Brazil­ian Con­sti­tu­tion, which is to be draft­ed by the new Con­gress. The head of CAUSA/Brazil says 57 can­di­dates received “logis­ti­cal but not finan­cial sup­port.” He said “we are form­ing the future base for a large par­ty, though at present we are still apo­lit­i­cal” and “we want­ed to form a move­ment like Le Pen’s in France.”29

Le Pen is the leader of the fas­cist Nation­al Front which, accord­ing to the British jour­nal Search­light, has close ties to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion. Search­light report­ed that “accord­ing to Le Pen’s estranged wife, CAUSA is an impor­tant financier of the Nation­al Front.” The head of CAUSA in France was a mem­ber of the French del­e­ga­tion to the 1986 WACL con­fer­ence in Luxembourg.30

...

The Moon orga­ni­za­tion has a long his­to­ry of elec­toral activism. The Fras­er Report not­ed that they, in alliance with “pow­er­ful rightwing fig­ures in Japan, such as Ryoichi Sasakawa,…openly par­tic­i­pat­ed in elec­tion cam­paigns there.”33 Even before Moon came to the U.S., he had high ambi­tions. Allen Tate Wood told the Fras­er com­mit­tee that the Moon orga­ni­za­tion sought to gain enough influ­ence in the U.S. to be able to “dic­tate pol­i­cy on major issues, to influ­ence leg­is­la­tion, and to move into elec­toral politics.”34

After Amer­i­can Youth for a Just Peace was dis­band­ed in 1971, its co-founder Charles Stephens moved to New York, and ran (unsuc­cess­ful­ly), first for the State leg­is­la­ture in 1972, and for Con­gress in 1974. In both cam­paigns, FLF pro­vid­ed “vol­un­teers.” Also in 1974, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion pro­vid­ed con­sid­er­able sup­port for Repub­li­can Louis Wyman in his unsuc­cess­ful bid for the U.S. Sen­ate seat from New Hamp­shire. Wyman report­ed­ly promised to hire a church mem­ber for his staff if he won.35 Venge­ful Moonies con­verged on Min­neso­ta in 1978 in a suc­cess­ful effort to defeat Rep. Don Fras­er, the spon­sor of the con­gres­sion­al inves­tiga­tive report on Kore­a­gate, in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate primary.36 Moon called Fraser’s defeat an “act of God.”

The Moon organization’s par­ty of choice has always been the Repub­li­cans, and the New Right of the GOP in par­tic­u­lar. This rela­tion­ship, epit­o­mized by Moon’s VIP seat at the first Rea­gan inau­gur­al, has been denounced repeat­ed­ly by the mod­er­ate Repub­li­can Ripon Soci­ety. Ripon pres­i­dent Rep. Jim Leach (Rep.-Iowa) wrote that the “ties between the New Right and Moon under­cut the New Right’s rai­son d’être. A polit­i­cal move­ment bas­ing its appeal on old-fash­ioned patri­o­tism and fam­i­ly val­ues sim­ply can­not jus­ti­fy alliance with a cult that preys on the dis­in­te­gra­tion of the Amer­i­can fam­i­ly and advo­cates alle­giance to an inter­na­tion­al social order oper­at­ing with cell-like secrecy.”37

The FLF, though appar­ent­ly sup­plant­ed by CAUSA as Moon’s U.S. polit­i­cal arm, is still occa­sion­al­ly active. In May 1984 FLF paid for three Repub­li­can Sen­ate staff mem­bers, rep­re­sent­ing Sen­a­tors Robert Kas­ten (Rep.-Wisc.), Steve Symms (Rep.-Idaho), and William Arm­strong (Rep.-Colo.), to “fly to Cen­tral Amer­i­ca where they met with gov­ern­ment lead­ers and U.S. Embassy offi­cials in Hon­duras and Guatemala and joined the offi­cial U.S. observ­er del­e­ga­tion to the Sal­vado­ran election.”38

Con­vict­ed Felons

In 1984, Moon entered Dan­bury Fed­er­al Prison to serve an 18-month sen­tence for con­spir­a­cy to file false tax returns, to obstruct jus­tice, and to com­mit perjury.39 The Moon orga­ni­za­tion claims that Moon and his co-defen­dant Takeru Kamiya­ma were unfair­ly pros­e­cut­ed due to racial and reli­gious intol­er­ance on the part of the U.S. gov­ern­ment. Remark­ably, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has used the dis­as­ter of Moon’s impris­on­ment to ben­e­fit its pub­lic image. Across the polit­i­cal spec­trum, many peo­ple offered grudg­ing sup­port for Moon because they believed he was mis­treat­ed by the judi­cial sys­tem. The Moon orga­ni­za­tion has skill­ful­ly exploit­ed these sen­ti­ments, and indeed, had a major role in cre­at­ing them. What began as a cam­paign for “reli­gious free­dom” has become a mul­ti-faceted strat­e­gy to fur­ther the Moon­ist agen­da. In 1984, Bo Hi Pak said that “free­dom of reli­gion has become a major issue in Amer­i­ca, and Rev­erend Moon is the ral­ly­ing point.”40 Echo­ing this theme. New York Uni­fi­ca­tion Church leader Ken Sudo told fel­low Moonie lead­ers in May 1985 that, “Father went to Dan­bury as the leader of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, but when he comes out, he must be the leader of the Free World.”41

If Moon had only failed to pay income tax on $160,000 he would not ordi­nar­i­ly have been pros­e­cut­ed on crim­i­nal charges. But evi­dence of will­ful vio­la­tion of the law made crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion inevitable. In 1973, tax lawyers and accoun­tants told Moon’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives to keep his per­son­al assets sep­a­rate from those of the Church. Kamiya­ma ignored this advice and pre­pared Moon’s tax­es under Master’s per­son­al super­vi­sion. They forged and back­dat­ed ledgers to hide Moon’s assets with­in the Church’s. The pros­e­cu­tion proved, among oth­er things, that the paper used to fal­si­fy the 1973 records was not even man­u­fac­tured until 1974.42

Moon’s defense on appeal, (known as the “Mes­si­ah defense”) is con­sis­tent with his theo­crat­ic ambi­tions. Moon claimed that some of his fol­low­ers believed he is “poten­tial­ly the new Mes­si­ah,” the “embod­i­ment” of the Church, and thus exempt from per­son­al income tax­es. The court held, how­ev­er, that even Mes­si­ahs are not exempt from tax­es, and have a sta­tus as an indi­vid­ual dis­tinct from the church. Free­dom of reli­gion is “sub­or­di­nate to the crim­i­nal laws of the coun­try.” The court ruled that “To allow oth­er­wise would be to per­mit church lead­ers to stand above the law.”

Moon as Mar­tyr

The Moon-as-mar­tyr cam­paign has been orches­trat­ed by the Moon orga­ni­za­tion, pub­lic rela­tions firms, and grantees. The most promi­nent exam­ple is the Wash­ing­ton-based Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom (CRF) which, accord­ing to CRF pres­i­dent Don Sills, has received at least $500,000 from Moon sources.43 A promi­nent CRF spokesper­son and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber is Joseph Paige. As Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of the Black Bap­tist Shaw Divin­i­ty School, Paige received $60,000 from the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church for his school, which in turn gave Moon a much pub­li­cized hon­orary doc­tor­ate. Paige is also active in CAUSA.44

In 1984, the Asso­ci­a­tion of Con­cerned Tax­pay­ers, head­ed by then Rep. George Hansen (Rep.-Idaho), start­ed CRF.45 A CRF fundrais­ing let­ter signed by Hansen declared that “a dead­ly gov­ern­ment assault against reli­gion has erupt­ed in Amer­i­ca [and] pow­er­ful gov­ern­ment forces are mov­ing quick­ly to smash the great con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tees pro­tect­ing the free­dom of reli­gion.” Hansen strong­ly object­ed when the IRS with­drew tax-exempt sta­tus from Bob Jones Uni­ver­si­ty because of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and poli­cies against inter­ra­cial dat­ing. He also con­demned the state of Nebras­ka for arrest­ing fun­da­men­tal­ist Everett Sileven after Sileven refused to allow teach­ers at his pri­vate school to be cer­ti­fied by the state as required by state law.46

The obsta­cle to “reli­gious free­dom” as defined by Moon and much of the Chris­t­ian Right, is “sec­u­lar” gov­ern­ment, which they see as a step­ping stone to “Satan­ic, athe­is­tic, Com­mu­nism.” Bo Hi Pak declared that the world is a bat­tle­ground between “God and no God.”47 CRF claims that the Moon pros­e­cu­tion and the alleged attack on reli­gion by gov­ern­ment “is large­ly the result of the ungod­ly sec­u­lar human­ist phi­los­o­phy that has con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed our schools, the media, and the var­i­ous lev­els of gov­ern­ment.” The 1985 CAUSA Lec­ture Man­u­al stat­ed that “in the Unit­ed States, an inter­me­di­ary stage pri­or to com­mu­nism may be sec­u­lar humanism.”48

The CRF exec­u­tive com­mit­tee has devel­oped rapid­ly since 1984, to include most of the major tel­e­van­ge­lists, such as Tim LaHaye, Jer­ry Fal­well, James Robi­son, Rex Hum­bard, D. James Kennedy, and Jim­my Swag­gart. Recent­ly, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion opened an inter­na­tion­al front in its “reli­gious free­dom” cam­paign. Accord­ing to Moon’s New York City Tri­bune, the World Coun­cil on Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (WCRL) was found­ed in Decem­ber 1986 at a con­fer­ence in Gene­va, Switzer­land. The Chair­man of WRCL is Joseph Paige, and its “Chair­man of the North Amer­i­can Cau­cus” is Don Sills. They have recruit­ed Dr. Robert G. Muller, assis­tant Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Nations, as chair­man of the Council’s Inter­na­tion­al Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee. The Council’s head­quar­ters are in Raleigh, North Car­oli­na, which is also home to Paige’s Shaw Divin­i­ty School.49

Gray Areas

While “Father” Moon served time, his fol­low­ers orga­nized an elab­o­rate pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign which includ­ed the reli­gious free­dom cam­paign, efforts to get Supreme Court review of the Moon case, and final­ly a cam­paign to get Moon par­doned. The Moon orga­ni­za­tion hired, among oth­ers, the pub­lic rela­tions firm of Gray and Co., head­ed by Robert Kei­th Gray, a for­mer Rea­gan cam­paign offi­cial. In ear­ly 1984, accord­ing to sources famil­iar with the inci­dent, Gray and Co. direc­tor Robert B. Ander­son solicit­ed the sig­na­ture of promi­nent Wash­ing­ton Rab­bi Joshua Haber­man for Hansen’s reli­gious free­dom peti­tion to Pres­i­dent Rea­gan. The peti­tion was gen­er­al in nature, but was then used in CRF’s direct mail blitz. Haber­man with­drew, say­ing he had been deceived and that his name was being used to advance caus­es which he did not sup­port.

Robert Ander­son, a for­mer Trea­sury Sec­re­tary in the Eisen­how­er admin­is­tra­tion, was already involved with the Moon orga­ni­za­tion at the time. He spoke at the found­ing con­fer­ence of CAUSA North Amer­i­ca in Mon­tego Bay, Jamaica in 1983. He also head­ed a Moon-fund­ed front known as the Glob­al Eco­nom­ic Action Insti­tute from 1983 to 1986. He was suc­ceed­ed in this post by for­mer Sen­a­tor Eugene McCarthy.

Gray, who co-chaired the 1981 Rea­gan Inau­gur­al Com­mit­tee, was the first Pres­i­dent of the George­town Club, an elite social club financed by his friend, KCIA oper­a­tive Tong­sun Park (see side­bar). Accord­ing to a for­mer KCIA direc­tor, the George­town Club was a KCIA front used by Park to facil­i­tate “lob­by­ing activ­i­ties” in the 1970s.50 For at least the past few years, Gray and Co. has been reg­is­tered as a for­eign agent for Japan and South Korea.

The par­don cam­paign failed. How­ev­er, four months after his release from prison, Moon vis­it­ed Korea where, in the Olympic sta­di­um, a ral­ly of about 30,000 peo­ple was host­ed by his orig­i­nal polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion (still a part of WACL), the Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion for Vic­to­ry over Com­mu­nism (IFVC). Accord­ing to the Lon­don Times, no senior Kore­an gov­ern­ment offi­cials were present. How­ev­er, Osa­mi Kubo­ki read a mes­sage of sup­port from Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter Naka­sone. Kubo­ki said both Naka­sone and for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Kishi had “inter­ced­ed on Moon’s behalf with Pres­i­dent Rea­gan.” Accord­ing to the Times of Lon­don, Naka­sone “tele­phoned the Pres­i­dent because of Mr. Moon’s sta­tus as an inter­na­tion­al leader, while Mr. Kishi, a sup­port­er of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church in Japan, had writ­ten to the Pres­i­dent three times.”51

Kishi, who was a WACL leader in the late 1960s, is also involved with CAUSA’s Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil (ISC). ISC’s pur­pose includes orga­niz­ing retired mil­i­tary offi­cers of the West­ern Alliance, and hold­ing anti­com­mu­nist con­fer­ences. Kishi also co-chaired Moon’s 1984 World Media Con­fer­ence in Tokyo.

Kishi’s involve­ment under­scores the impor­tance of Japan to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion. Despite its Kore­an roots and the his­tor­i­cal ani­mos­i­ty between Korea and Japan, the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church has had a lim­it­ed pop­u­lar fol­low­ing in Korea and very large sup­port in Japan. Indeed, its pre­dom­i­nant source of fund­ing has been Japan. The Wash­ing­ton Post, quot­ing a for­mer rank­ing Japan­ese Moon offi­cial, report­ed that some $800 mil­lion had flowed from Japan to the U.S. Uni­fi­ca­tion Church over the pre­ced­ing nine years (1975–1984).52 Where the mon­ey went is a mat­ter of intense spec­u­la­tion. Some was invest­ed in busi­ness­es and real estate. Hun­dreds of mil­lions have by now spent on Moon’s major pub­li­ca­tions, notably the Wash­ing­ton Times, the New York City Tri­bune, and the newsweek­ly Insight mag­a­zine. But clear­ly too, Moon mon­ey has been invest­ed in domes­tic Amer­i­can pol­i­tics; and the funds doc­u­ment­ed here are but the tip of the ice­berg. (See side­bar.)

Inside the New Right

Part of Moon’s U.S. strat­e­gy has been to seek alliances with the reli­gious Right. How­ev­er, the rela­tion­ship has been high­ly con­tro­ver­sial with­in the move­ment. While Moon mon­ey is wide­ly rumored to be a major finan­cial under­pin­ning of the New Right, it is often kept secret because so many con­ser­v­a­tives find the Moon orga­ni­za­tion repug­nant.

Jer­ry Fal­well of the Moral Major­i­ty, and one of the founders and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers of the Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom, dropped his sup­port for Moon in ear­ly 1984. His spokesper­son, Ron God­win, denounced as “pecu­liar” those who take mon­ey from a church whose “founder believes he’s divine…. They’re tak­ing mon­ey from a cult whose doc­trines are 180 degrees opposed. It’s a lit­tle like the Jew­ish Nation­al Fund accept­ing mon­ey from Arafat.”53

But by August 1985, Fal­well had cut short a tour of South Africa to appear at a press con­fer­ence at Moon’s God and Free­dom Ban­quet. Both events were orga­nized by CRF. God­win lat­er became the busi­ness man­ag­er of Insight.

In a let­ter to Bo Hi Pak, taped onto a cas­sette by Rev. Tim LaHaye of the Amer­i­can Coali­tion for Tra­di­tion­al Val­ues (ACTV is a polit­i­cal coali­tion of tel­e­van­ge­lists), LaHaye thanked Pak for pro­vid­ing “time­ly” and “gen­er­ous help” in con­nec­tion with an “extreme­ly expen­sive” move of ACTV’s head­quar­ters from Cal­i­for­nia to Wash­ing­ton, DC.54 Like Fal­well, LaHaye was one of the founders and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers of CRF. LaHaye lat­er denied receiv­ing mon­ey from the Moon orga­ni­za­tion.

Whose Voice Is Chris­t­ian Voice?

The rightwing Chris­t­ian Voice claims 350,000 mem­bers, includ­ing 40,000 min­is­ters who become mem­bers by virtue of hav­ing respond­ed to direct mail fund­ing appeals. The orga­ni­za­tion, which employs 17 field orga­niz­ers, stepped into the void left by the depar­ture of the Moral Major­i­ty and ACTV from sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal activ­i­ty. How­ev­er, they may have over­stepped their posi­tion.

Chris­t­ian Voice has come under fire recent­ly for mis­rep­re­sent­ing itself, and for its ties to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion. Its claim to rep­re­sent 45 mil­lion Chris­t­ian evan­gel­i­cals has been chal­lenged, notably by Robert P. Dugan of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals. He told Chris­tian­i­ty Today mag­a­zine that Chris­t­ian Voice is “not con­struct­ed to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive orga­ni­za­tion and its polit­i­cal posi­tions may well be deter­mined by a hand­ful of activists meet­ing over lunch. They are account­able to no one but them­selves.” New Right leader Paul Weyrich char­ac­ter­ized Chris­t­ian Voice as “con­ser­v­a­tive first and Chris­t­ian inci­den­tal­ly, as opposed to oth­er groups that are Chris­t­ian first, and con­ser­v­a­tive inci­den­tal­ly.”55

The rela­tion­ship between Chris­t­ian Voice and the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has plagued them for some time. At the cen­ter of this con­tro­ver­sy is lob­by­ist Gary Jarmin, a Moonie from 1967–1973 who was active in Moon’s Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion and who many sus­pect may be a Moon agent in the New Right. A May 1981 arti­cle in Moth­er Jones raised this ques­tion. Jarmin, who was the leg­isla­tive direc­tor of Chris­t­ian Voice at the time, insist­ed, ‘Tm no longer affil­i­at­ed with the church; I’m not a mem­ber of it and I don’t con­sult with their peo­ple. This orga­ni­za­tion, [Chris­t­ian Voice] is run by a board of direc­tors for whom I work, which is not in any way affil­i­at­ed with or con­trolled by the church. I think my actions speak loud­er than my words.”56 Nev­er­the­less, by Feb­ru­ary 1983 Jarmin had helped orga­nize the first CAUSA North Amer­i­ca con­fer­ence, held in Jamaica. Also in atten­dance were Chris­t­ian Voice chair­man Robert Grant and Advi­so­ry Board mem­bers W. Steuart McBir­ney and Ray Allen, and polit­i­cal strate­gist Colonel V. Don­er.

The rela­tion­ships go even deep­er. The three-mem­ber board of Chris­t­ian Voice’s polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee is chaired by Jarmin, and includes Rev. Don Sills of the Moon-fund­ed Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom. In August of 1985, Jarmin helped orga­nize CRF’s God and Free­dom Ban­quet held in cel­e­bra­tion of Moon’s release from jail. He also led leg­isla­tive work­shops at secre­tive CAUSA indoc­tri­na­tion ses­sions for Amer­i­can state leg­is­la­tors dur­ing 1986. These events drew about 100 con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tors from both par­ties to all-expense-paid jun­kets, osten­si­bly to dis­cuss the Con­sti­tu­tion. A more elite ver­sion of these meet­ings is the CAUSA-spon­sored Amer­i­can Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence, where Jarmin has also spo­ken. Jarmin has been joined at oth­er CAUSA events by Robert Grant, who addressed the 1985 CAUSA Nation­al Con­fer­ence in San Fran­cis­co. Grant cur­rent­ly chairs the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom.

Although CRF declares its inde­pen­dence from the Moon orga­ni­za­tion (despite the Moon fund­ing), the cur­rent exec­u­tive direc­tor of CRF is Dan Hold­grei­we, a long­time Moon oper­a­tive who worked for Moon’s Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion from the late 1970s to the ear­ly 1980s.57

The Moon rela­tion­ship with Chris­t­ian Voice sur­faced as a last-minute issue in the 1986 Col­orado Sen­ate race between Rep. Ken Kramer (Rep.) and Rep. Tim Wirth (Dem.). Kramer, who is a mem­ber of the Chris­t­ian Voice Con­gres­sion­al Advi­so­ry Board, claimed not to know of the Moon con­nec­tion. He told the Den­ver Post, “I’m not a Moonie,”58 and assert­ed to the Rocky Moun­tain News that the Moon con­nec­tion, if proven, would “be a mat­ter of great con­cern to me, and I would have to take a new look at the sit­u­a­tion…. I do not sup­port the Moonies in any way.”59 Nev­er­the­less, Wirth won the race.

CAUSA and the Catholic Church

While best known for its grow­ing rela­tion­ship with Protes­tant fun­da­men­tal­ism, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has active­ly sought close links with the Catholic Church, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Latin America.60 Their suc­cess has been decid­ed­ly mixed. The Bish­ops of Hon­duras, El Sal­vador, Pana­ma, and Japan have all denounced the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church in pas­toral let­ters. While this has put a crimp in their oper­a­tions, Moon­ism is not with­out allies. The Arch­bish­op of La Pla­ta, Argenti­na, spon­sored the first CAUSA sem­i­nar in that coun­try, and lat­er award­ed an hon­orary doc­tor­ate to Moon from the Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty, while he was in jail.

Accord­ing to an inter­nal strat­e­gy doc­u­ment dat­ed Jan­u­ary 1985, CAUSA views its rela­tion­ship with the Catholic Church as “extreme­ly impor­tant…. One [pas­toral] let­ter of the Bish­ops in any coun­try will con­sid­er­ably dam­age our activ­i­ties. If it hap­pens in a Third World coun­try, all the faith­ful Catholics will go away, leav­ing us with ‘non-faith­ful’ ones, mak­ing our sit­u­a­tion even more miserable.”61

Indeed, the Hon­duran Bish­ops denounced CAUSA as “anti-Chris­t­ian” and declared that the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church “cre­ates a species of mate­r­i­al and spir­i­tu­al slav­ery” that pos­es “seri­ous dan­gers to the psy­cho­log­i­cal, reli­gious, and civic integri­ty of any­one who yields to its influence.”62 The Japan­ese Bish­ops, not­ing major the­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences with the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, also “dis­cour­age all Catholics from any col­lab­o­ra­tion with it. While the Holy See is con­trary to any par­tic­i­pa­tion by the faith­ful, it is even more opposed to what­so­ev­er [sic] atten­dance and col­lab­o­ra­tion on the part of Catholic priests.”63

The prin­ci­pal Moon advo­cate with­in the Church appears to be Father Sebas­t­ian Matczak, a Pol­ish priest who has spo­ken fre­quent­ly at CAUSA con­fer­ences, and who teach­es phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­fi­ca­tion Sem­i­nary in Bar­ry­town, New York. The CAUSA paper notes that “Dr. Matczak, in his lat­est vis­it to Rome the past Jan­u­ary [1984] could ver­i­fy that the bad rep­u­ta­tion of our move­ment is main­ly com­ing from Latin Amer­i­ca, while there they say that offi­cial doc­u­ments from the Vat­i­can pre­vent them from any rela­tion with us.”64

Despite seri­ous obsta­cles to Moon­ist advances on the Catholic Church, the orga­ni­za­tion claims that CAUSA has a “strong con­nect­ing point” with the Church in most Latin coun­tries. The inter­nal report notes, how­ev­er, that the strat­e­gy of seek­ing rela­tion­ships with the hier­ar­chy, and invit­ing priests to CAUSA con­fer­ences, has gen­er­al­ly failed. As a result, “it seems that we have to open two fronts, one in Rome, one in Latin Amer­i­ca.” The lat­ter option empha­sized secret and high­ly selec­tive CAUSA con­fer­ences with priests as a way to build a core of sup­port­ers, whose favor­able reports would per­co­late up to the Vat­i­can. Dr. Matczak report­ed­ly “finds this strategy…the only way and an absolute neces­si­ty.” The twin goals of this plan were to “STOP THE NEGATIVITY FROM WITHIN” (the Catholic Church) and to “Declare war to the Lib­er­a­tion theology.”65

It is pos­si­ble that the Rome option is still viable. A new Moon unit called AULA (Asso­ci­a­tion for the Uni­fi­ca­tion of Latin Amer­i­ca) was formed in Rome in Decem­ber 1984.66 AULA’s sec­ond annu­al con­fer­ence, in Decem­ber 1985 in Rome, was attend­ed by a dozen for­mer pres­i­dents of Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries and was received by the Pope. The Moon orga­ni­za­tion is skilled at using the pres­tige of out-of-pow­er politi­cians. Two weeks lat­er three for­mer pres­i­dents of Colom­bia, and two of Cos­ta Rica rep­re­sent­ed AULA at Moon’s wel­come home ral­ly in Seoul, South Korea.67

Accord­ing to Uni­fi­ca­tion News, AULA is draft­ing a pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion for a “Unit­ed States of Latin America.”68 AULA’s con­sti­tu­tion­al spe­cial­ist is Cleon Skousen, head of the Nation­al Cen­ter for Con­sti­tu­tion­al Stud­ies, who worked close­ly with CAUSA in 1986, orga­niz­ing con­fer­ences of con­ser­v­a­tive U.S. state leg­is­la­tors. Accord­ing to Church and State mag­a­zine, Skousen is not only far-right but “believes Amer­i­ca is a ful­fill­ment of Mor­mon proph­esy regard­ing the pre-mil­len­ni­al prepa­ra­tion of the Earth.”69

Pri­or to becom­ing the cur­rent “prophet” of the Mor­mon church, Ezra Taft Ben­son endorsed Skousen’s work as hav­ing “the Lord’s approval” and appeared at many Skousen events. Benson’s son Mark, is on Skousen’s board of direc­tors. Skousen is the most vis­i­ble link in an appar­ent Moon/Mormon alliance. Anoth­er impor­tant link is U.S. Sen­a­tor Orrin Hatch (Rep.-Utah), who is a Mor­mon Bish­op and has spo­ken at sev­er­al CAUSA/Skousen con­fer­ences in the past year which have had a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of Mor­mon politi­cians from Utah and Ida­ho in atten­dance.

...

————

“Moon’s Law: God Is Phas­ing Out Democ­ra­cy” by Fred Clark­son; Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin; No 27, Spring 1987

“Accord­ing to the Fras­er Report, polit­i­cal oper­a­tions in the U.S. were at first opposed by reli­gious “purists” in the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. How­ev­er it was “point­ed out to them that the Church in Japan and Korea car­ried exten­sive anti­com­mu­nist polit­i­cal pro­grams. They were told it was Master’s expressed desire to begin polit­i­cal work in the Unit­ed States. There­after, a member’s objec­tion to polit­i­cal activ­i­ties was con­sid­ered infi­deli­ty to Mas­ter and was like being dis­obe­di­ent to God.”13 In 1971, Moon came to the U.S. after his immi­gra­tion dif­fi­cul­ties were over­come through the inter­ven­tion of Sen­a­tor Strom Thur­mond (Rep.-S.C.), who had spo­ken at Moon’s 1970 WACL con­fer­ence in Tokyo. Based on inter­views with ex-Moonies, Robert Boettch­er, the staff direc­tor of the Fras­er Com­mit­tee, wrote that Moon was “appalled” by Amer­i­can indi­vid­u­al­ism, and he con­sid­ered relo­cat­ing to Ger­many, where peo­ple “were trained in total­ism.” Some for­mer mem­bers recall that Nazi films on orga­niz­ing Hitler Youth were shown as exam­ples to Moonie lead­ers. Noth­ing was more impor­tant than devel­op­ing a cadre of strong lead­ers total­ly sub­servient to his will.”14″

Rev­erend Moon final­ly arrived in the US in 1971, thanks to the inter­ven­tion Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Strom Thur­mond. Five years after the found­ing of the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League and three years after Moon’s Shokyo Ren­go orga­ni­za­tion was made a WACL chap­ter. And while Moon’s plans for the US had a large ‘anti-Com­mu­nist’ com­po­nent, it went much fur­ther. In a theo­crat­ic direc­tion. Accord­ing to The Divine Prin­ci­ple — the basic the­o­log­i­cal work of Uni­fi­ca­tion­ism — “Since the Con­sti­tu­tion is not made of God’s words,” the US’s sys­tem of sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers, “can­not help oppos­ing and con­flict­ing with one anoth­er, and lack mutu­al har­mo­ny and order”:

...
The World Anti-Com­mu­nist League (WACL) is an inter­na­tion­al coali­tion of fas­cist and con­ser­v­a­tive groups and polit­i­cal par­ties found­ed in 1966 by agents of the gov­ern­ments of Tai­wan and South Korea.4 One of the orig­i­nal groups was the Asian People’s Anti-Com­mu­nist League (APACL). Its Japan­ese affil­i­ate, Shokyo Ren­go, became a WACL chap­ter in 1968. Shokyo Ren­go (Vic­to­ry Over Com­mu­nism) began after a 1967 meet­ing between Sun Myung Moon, Ryoichi Sasakawa, Yoshio Kodama, and two of his lieu­tenants. Kodama was the head of Japan­ese orga­nized crime, the Yakuza. One of [Moon’s] lieu­tenants, Osa­mi Kubo­ki, became head of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church in Japan, as well as a leader in WACL. Soon after­ward, WACL began indoc­tri­nat­ing young Yakuza gang mem­bers in anti­com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy sim­i­lar to what the Moon orga­ni­za­tion was already doing in Korea with gov­ern­ment offi­cials. Sasakawa, an impor­tant World War II Japan­ese fas­cist leader, became the head of Shokyo Ren­go, and Kodama its chief advi­sor.

Sasakawa’s rela­tion­ship to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion, which dates back to 1958, con­tin­ues to this day, includ­ing ongo­ing financ­ing of both the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and Shokyo Ren­go, which is con­trolled by the Church.

Sasakawa, Kodama, and oth­er impor­tant “Class A” war crim­i­nals were mys­te­ri­ous­ly released from Sug­amo prison only a year and a half after World War II. They went on to found the rul­ing Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and have played promi­nent roles since. One fel­low inmate, Nobusuke Kishi, became a prime min­is­ter. In 1959, Kishi helped estab­lish a qua­si-gov­em­men­tal, boat-rac­ing/gam­bling fran­chise, which he gave to Sasakawa, who grew fan­tas­ti­cal­ly rich from the pro­ceeds. Kishi was also the prime mover in estab­lish­ing APACL in Japan and remained active in WACL through­out the 1960s, serv­ing as chair­man of the plan­ning com­mit­tee in 1970.

Sasakawa was described by U.S. Army intel­li­gence as “one of the most active fas­cist orga­niz­ers pri­or to the war.” In the 1930s both Sasakawa and Kodama were jailed: Sasakawa for plot­ting the mur­der of a for­mer pre­mier, and Kodama for plot­ting the mur­der of a prime min­is­ter. Kodama was a noto­ri­ous war prof­i­teer and Japan­ese intel­li­gence agent in Chi­na. “His long and fanat­ic involve­ment in ultra-nation­al­ist activ­i­ties, vio­lence includ­ed, and his skill in appeal­ing to youth make him a man who, if released from intern­ment, would sure­ly be a grave secu­ri­ty risk.”5

...

In 1975, Moon pub­licly denounced WACL as “fas­cist” and pur­port­ed­ly with­drew; how­ev­er, this was most like­ly sim­ply an effort to keep a low­er pro­file. The Wash­ing­ton Post, cov­er­ing the 1978 WACL con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton, report­ed that the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church was absent and no longer involved.16 How­ev­er, a Uni­fi­ca­tion Church min­is­ter hired bus­es for CIA-con­nect­ed Cuban exiles to attend, accord­ing to inter­views with the Cubans by Jeff Stein, writ­ing in New York mag­a­zine.17 It is clear that the Moon orga­ni­za­tion nev­er real­ly left WACL. Osa­mi Kubo­ki has been a mem­ber of the WACL exec­u­tive board for many years, and even host­ed the 1982 WACL con­fer­ence in Japan.

...

While WACL gen­er­al­ly pro­motes fas­cist polit­i­cal pro­grams, when the Moon orga­ni­za­tion is involved, the mes­sages released are more explic­it­ly theo­crat­ic. Essen­tial­ly, Moon’s fol­low­ers believe he is the new Mes­si­ah, the sec­ond com­ing, not of Jesus but of the Mes­si­ah. Moon says that God told him: “You are the son I have been seek­ing, the one who can begin my eter­nal history.”20 He says that God has revealed his plan to him and that he has spo­ken with Jesus, Moses, and oth­er great his­tor­i­cal reli­gious fig­ures.

Moon intends to bend the U.S. to “God’s will,” which will lead to a final war with Sovi­et com­mu­nism, and final­ly to the King­dom of Heav­en on Earth. Accord­ing to The Divine Prin­ci­ple, the basic the­o­log­i­cal work of Uni­fi­ca­tion­ism, World War III is “inevitable”. This war may be fought with weapons, or with “ide­ol­o­gy,” in order to “sub­ju­gate and uni­fy the Satan­ic world.” The orga­ni­za­tion cre­at­ed to refine and pro­mote this ide­ol­o­gy appears to be CAUSA (see side­bar) which the Uni­fi­ca­tion News describes as an “ide­o­log­i­cal move­ment,” which “unites all reli­gious peo­ple as a God-accept­ing force against the God-deny­ing forces such as communism.”21

The Divine Prin­ci­ple denounces the tri­par­tite con­sti­tu­tion­al sys­tem of west­ern democ­ra­cies, stat­ing that “Since the Con­sti­tu­tion is not made of God’s words” the three branch­es of gov­ern­ment “can­not help oppos­ing and con­flict­ing with one anoth­er, and lack mutu­al har­mo­ny and order.”

More­over, in 1973, Moon said that “Amer­i­can style democ­ra­cy” is ‘‘a good nurs­ery for the growth of communism.”22 Ten years lat­er he told his annu­al Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence for the Uni­ty of the Sci­ences (ICUS) that ‘‘nei­ther Democ­ra­cy nor Com­mu­nism pro­vides the means to cure the ills of soci­ety…. Not only has Democ­ra­cy been unsuc­cess­ful at this task, but it has proved itself unable to resist and over­come the destruc­tive­ness of Com­mu­nism…. What is need­ed is a third alter­na­tive, a move­ment based on a new under­stand­ing of truth…this is the Uni­fi­ca­tion Move­ment, with Uni­fi­ca­tion ideology.”23
...

But Moon’s orga­niz­ing in the US did­n’t start with his arrival in 1971. The Amer­i­can affil­i­ate of Shokyo Ren­go, the Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion, was incor­po­rat­ed in 1969 in Wash­ing­ton DC, with the mis­sion of win­ning the “pow­er cen­ters” and guid­ed by the advice from Moon, “part of our strat­e­gy in the U.S. must be to make friends in the FBI, the CIA and police forces, the mil­i­tary and busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty… as a means of enter­ing the polit­i­cal are­na, influ­enc­ing for­eign pol­i­cy, and ulti­mate­ly of estab­lish­ing absolute domin­ion over the Amer­i­can peo­ple”. Absolute domin­ion is a com­mon theme in this milieu:

...
The Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion for Vic­to­ry Over Com­mu­nism (IFVC) was formed in 1968 in Seoul. This was Moon’s prin­ci­pal polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion. Shokyo Ren­go, the Japan­ese affil­i­ate, was also formed in 1968. The Amer­i­can affil­i­ate was incor­po­rat­ed in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. in 1969 as the Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion (FLF). Shokyo Ren­go host­ed the 1970 WACL Con­fer­ence in Tokyo, for which Moon claimed to have raised $1.4 million.10 FLF Pres­i­dent Allen Tate Wood attend­ed as a “youth del­e­gate” with sev­er­al Amer­i­can Moonies. He lat­er broke with Moon, gave press con­fer­ences denounc­ing Moon, and tes­ti­fied before the Fras­er Com­mit­tee. While vis­it­ing Korea on the same trip, Wood was instruct­ed by Moon to “win the pow­er cen­ters” of the U.S. for him, begin­ning with academia.11 Moon also told him that “part of our strat­e­gy in the U.S. must be to make friends in the FBI, the CIA and police forces, the mil­i­tary and busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty… as a means of enter­ing the polit­i­cal are­na, influ­enc­ing for­eign pol­i­cy, and ulti­mate­ly of estab­lish­ing absolute domin­ion over the Amer­i­can peo­ple.”12

...

The Moon orga­ni­za­tion has a long his­to­ry of elec­toral activism. The Fras­er Report not­ed that they, in alliance with “pow­er­ful rightwing fig­ures in Japan, such as Ryoichi Sasakawa,…openly par­tic­i­pat­ed in elec­tion cam­paigns there.”33 Even before Moon came to the U.S., he had high ambi­tions. Allen Tate Wood told the Fras­er com­mit­tee that the Moon orga­ni­za­tion sought to gain enough influ­ence in the U.S. to be able to “dic­tate pol­i­cy on major issues, to influ­ence leg­is­la­tion, and to move into elec­toral politics.”34

After Amer­i­can Youth for a Just Peace was dis­band­ed in 1971, its co-founder Charles Stephens moved to New York, and ran (unsuc­cess­ful­ly), first for the State leg­is­la­ture in 1972, and for Con­gress in 1974. In both cam­paigns, FLF pro­vid­ed “vol­un­teers.” Also in 1974, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion pro­vid­ed con­sid­er­able sup­port for Repub­li­can Louis Wyman in his unsuc­cess­ful bid for the U.S. Sen­ate seat from New Hamp­shire. Wyman report­ed­ly promised to hire a church mem­ber for his staff if he won.35 Venge­ful Moonies con­verged on Min­neso­ta in 1978 in a suc­cess­ful effort to defeat Rep. Don Fras­er, the spon­sor of the con­gres­sion­al inves­tiga­tive report on Kore­a­gate, in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate primary.36 Moon called Fraser’s defeat an “act of God.”

The Moon organization’s par­ty of choice has always been the Repub­li­cans, and the New Right of the GOP in par­tic­u­lar. This rela­tion­ship, epit­o­mized by Moon’s VIP seat at the first Rea­gan inau­gur­al, has been denounced repeat­ed­ly by the mod­er­ate Repub­li­can Ripon Soci­ety. Ripon pres­i­dent Rep. Jim Leach (Rep.-Iowa) wrote that the “ties between the New Right and Moon under­cut the New Right’s rai­son d’être. A polit­i­cal move­ment bas­ing its appeal on old-fash­ioned patri­o­tism and fam­i­ly val­ues sim­ply can­not jus­ti­fy alliance with a cult that preys on the dis­in­te­gra­tion of the Amer­i­can fam­i­ly and advo­cates alle­giance to an inter­na­tion­al social order oper­at­ing with cell-like secrecy.”37

The FLF, though appar­ent­ly sup­plant­ed by CAUSA as Moon’s U.S. polit­i­cal arm, is still occa­sion­al­ly active. In May 1984 FLF paid for three Repub­li­can Sen­ate staff mem­bers, rep­re­sent­ing Sen­a­tors Robert Kas­ten (Rep.-Wisc.), Steve Symms (Rep.-Idaho), and William Arm­strong (Rep.-Colo.), to “fly to Cen­tral Amer­i­ca where they met with gov­ern­ment lead­ers and U.S. Embassy offi­cials in Hon­duras and Guatemala and joined the offi­cial U.S. observ­er del­e­ga­tion to the Sal­vado­ran election.”38
...

But by 1984, Moon’s US activ­i­ties man­aged to land him an 18-month prison sen­tence over tax fraud. Some­how, Moon’s defense team did­n’t find suc­cess with their “Mes­si­ah defense”:

...
In 1984, Moon entered Dan­bury Fed­er­al Prison to serve an 18-month sen­tence for con­spir­a­cy to file false tax returns, to obstruct jus­tice, and to com­mit perjury.39 The Moon orga­ni­za­tion claims that Moon and his co-defen­dant Takeru Kamiya­ma were unfair­ly pros­e­cut­ed due to racial and reli­gious intol­er­ance on the part of the U.S. gov­ern­ment. Remark­ably, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has used the dis­as­ter of Moon’s impris­on­ment to ben­e­fit its pub­lic image. Across the polit­i­cal spec­trum, many peo­ple offered grudg­ing sup­port for Moon because they believed he was mis­treat­ed by the judi­cial sys­tem. The Moon orga­ni­za­tion has skill­ful­ly exploit­ed these sen­ti­ments, and indeed, had a major role in cre­at­ing them. What began as a cam­paign for “reli­gious free­dom” has become a mul­ti-faceted strat­e­gy to fur­ther the Moon­ist agen­da. In 1984, Bo Hi Pak said that “free­dom of reli­gion has become a major issue in Amer­i­ca, and Rev­erend Moon is the ral­ly­ing point.”40 Echo­ing this theme. New York Uni­fi­ca­tion Church leader Ken Sudo told fel­low Moonie lead­ers in May 1985 that, “Father went to Dan­bury as the leader of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, but when he comes out, he must be the leader of the Free World.”41

If Moon had only failed to pay income tax on $160,000 he would not ordi­nar­i­ly have been pros­e­cut­ed on crim­i­nal charges. But evi­dence of will­ful vio­la­tion of the law made crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion inevitable. In 1973, tax lawyers and accoun­tants told Moon’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives to keep his per­son­al assets sep­a­rate from those of the Church. Kamiya­ma ignored this advice and pre­pared Moon’s tax­es under Master’s per­son­al super­vi­sion. They forged and back­dat­ed ledgers to hide Moon’s assets with­in the Church’s. The pros­e­cu­tion proved, among oth­er things, that the paper used to fal­si­fy the 1973 records was not even man­u­fac­tured until 1974.42

Moon’s defense on appeal, (known as the “Mes­si­ah defense”) is con­sis­tent with his theo­crat­ic ambi­tions. Moon claimed that some of his fol­low­ers believed he is “poten­tial­ly the new Mes­si­ah,” the “embod­i­ment” of the Church, and thus exempt from per­son­al income tax­es. The court held, how­ev­er, that even Mes­si­ahs are not exempt from tax­es, and have a sta­tus as an indi­vid­ual dis­tinct from the church. Free­dom of reli­gion is “sub­or­di­nate to the crim­i­nal laws of the coun­try.” The court ruled that “To allow oth­er­wise would be to per­mit church lead­ers to stand above the law.”
...

And it was dur­ing Moon’s prison sen­tence when we got to see the fruits of Moon’s years of cul­ti­vat­ing influ­ence inside US cen­ters of pow­er. In par­tic­u­lar, theo­crat­ic cen­ters of pow­er, with the DC-based Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom (CRF) play­ing a lead­ing role. Only formed in 1984 itself, the CRF was an off­shoot of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Con­cerned Tax­pay­ers, head­ed by Repub­li­can rep­re­sen­ta­tive George Hansen. But Moon’s legal plight was­n’t the CRF’s only ral­ly­ing cry. Hansen was also out­raged over loss of tax-exempt sta­tus by Bob Jones Uni­ver­si­ty over its racial dis­crim­i­na­tion poli­cies. And yes, as we should expect, Bob Jones III is a CNP mem­ber. But the CRF was­n’t just Hansen’s pet project. Its board host­ed most of major tel­e­van­ge­lists at the time, includ­ing Tim LaHaye, Jer­ry Fal­well, James Robi­son, Rex Hum­bard, D. James Kennedy, and Jim­my Swag­gart. As we saw, it was James Robi­son who played a key role in 1979 bring­ing togeth­er the group of evan­gel­i­cal domin­ion­ists who ral­lied behind Ronald Rea­gan’s cam­paign the fol­low­ing year. Includ­ing Tim LaHaye, one went on to become one of the CNP’s found­ing mem­bers in 1981 and group’s first pres­i­dent. Also note that, not only do Fal­well and Dr. D. James Kennedy also show up on the CNP list, but so does William T. Allen (Chair­man of the Board, D. James Kennedy Min­istries) and Dr. Frank Wright (Pres­i­dent & CEO, D. James Kennedy Min­istries). In oth­er words, CRF board is stacked with CNP heavy­weights. So when we find how, not only did the CRF jump to Moon’s defense, but that CRF pres­i­dent Don Sills was tak­ing large dona­tions from Moon sources and promi­nent CRF spokesper­son and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber Joseph Paige was active in CAUSA, it’s pret­ty unam­bigu­ous that the CRF viewed Moon as an impor­tant ally. And why not? This is a net­work of theocrats with a shared goal:

...
Moon as Mar­tyr

The Moon-as-mar­tyr cam­paign has been orches­trat­ed by the Moon orga­ni­za­tion, pub­lic rela­tions firms, and grantees. The most promi­nent exam­ple is the Wash­ing­ton-based Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom (CRF) which, accord­ing to CRF pres­i­dent Don Sills, has received at least $500,000 from Moon sources.43 A promi­nent CRF spokesper­son and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber is Joseph Paige. As Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of the Black Bap­tist Shaw Divin­i­ty School, Paige received $60,000 from the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church for his school, which in turn gave Moon a much pub­li­cized hon­orary doc­tor­ate. Paige is also active in CAUSA.44

In 1984, the Asso­ci­a­tion of Con­cerned Tax­pay­ers, head­ed by then Rep. George Hansen (Rep.-Idaho), start­ed CRF.45 A CRF fundrais­ing let­ter signed by Hansen declared that “a dead­ly gov­ern­ment assault against reli­gion has erupt­ed in Amer­i­ca [and] pow­er­ful gov­ern­ment forces are mov­ing quick­ly to smash the great con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tees pro­tect­ing the free­dom of reli­gion.” Hansen strong­ly object­ed when the IRS with­drew tax-exempt sta­tus from Bob Jones Uni­ver­si­ty because of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and poli­cies against inter­ra­cial dat­ing. He also con­demned the state of Nebras­ka for arrest­ing fun­da­men­tal­ist Everett Sileven after Sileven refused to allow teach­ers at his pri­vate school to be cer­ti­fied by the state as required by state law.46

The obsta­cle to “reli­gious free­dom” as defined by Moon and much of the Chris­t­ian Right, is “sec­u­lar” gov­ern­ment, which they see as a step­ping stone to “Satan­ic, athe­is­tic, Com­mu­nism.” Bo Hi Pak declared that the world is a bat­tle­ground between “God and no God.”47 CRF claims that the Moon pros­e­cu­tion and the alleged attack on reli­gion by gov­ern­ment “is large­ly the result of the ungod­ly sec­u­lar human­ist phi­los­o­phy that has con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed our schools, the media, and the var­i­ous lev­els of gov­ern­ment.” The 1985 CAUSA Lec­ture Man­u­al stat­ed that “in the Unit­ed States, an inter­me­di­ary stage pri­or to com­mu­nism may be sec­u­lar humanism.”48

The CRF exec­u­tive com­mit­tee has devel­oped rapid­ly since 1984, to include most of the major tel­e­van­ge­lists, such as Tim LaHaye, Jer­ry Fal­well, James Robi­son, Rex Hum­bard, D. James Kennedy, and Jim­my Swag­gart. Recent­ly, the Moon orga­ni­za­tion opened an inter­na­tion­al front in its “reli­gious free­dom” cam­paign. Accord­ing to Moon’s New York City Tri­bune, the World Coun­cil on Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (WCRL) was found­ed in Decem­ber 1986 at a con­fer­ence in Gene­va, Switzer­land. The Chair­man of WRCL is Joseph Paige, and its “Chair­man of the North Amer­i­can Cau­cus” is Don Sills. They have recruit­ed Dr. Robert G. Muller, assis­tant Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Nations, as chair­man of the Council’s Inter­na­tion­al Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee. The Council’s head­quar­ters are in Raleigh, North Car­oli­na, which is also home to Paige’s Shaw Divin­i­ty School.49

...

Inside the New Right

Part of Moon’s U.S. strat­e­gy has been to seek alliances with the reli­gious Right. How­ev­er, the rela­tion­ship has been high­ly con­tro­ver­sial with­in the move­ment. While Moon mon­ey is wide­ly rumored to be a major finan­cial under­pin­ning of the New Right, it is often kept secret because so many con­ser­v­a­tives find the Moon orga­ni­za­tion repug­nant.

Jer­ry Fal­well of the Moral Major­i­ty, and one of the founders and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers of the Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom, dropped his sup­port for Moon in ear­ly 1984. His spokesper­son, Ron God­win, denounced as “pecu­liar” those who take mon­ey from a church whose “founder believes he’s divine…. They’re tak­ing mon­ey from a cult whose doc­trines are 180 degrees opposed. It’s a lit­tle like the Jew­ish Nation­al Fund accept­ing mon­ey from Arafat.”53

But by August 1985, Fal­well had cut short a tour of South Africa to appear at a press con­fer­ence at Moon’s God and Free­dom Ban­quet. Both events were orga­nized by CRF. God­win lat­er became the busi­ness man­ag­er of Insight.

In a let­ter to Bo Hi Pak, taped onto a cas­sette by Rev. Tim LaHaye of the Amer­i­can Coali­tion for Tra­di­tion­al Val­ues (ACTV is a polit­i­cal coali­tion of tel­e­van­ge­lists), LaHaye thanked Pak for pro­vid­ing “time­ly” and “gen­er­ous help” in con­nec­tion with an “extreme­ly expen­sive” move of ACTV’s head­quar­ters from Cal­i­for­nia to Wash­ing­ton, DC.54 Like Fal­well, LaHaye was one of the founders and exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers of CRF. LaHaye lat­er denied receiv­ing mon­ey from the Moon orga­ni­za­tion.
...

And then there’s the ties between Moon and Chris­t­ian Voice, a rightwing group that claims to be Chris­t­ian lob­by for all evan­gel­i­cals. It was a self-char­ac­ter­i­za­tion that faced some push­back from fig­ures like Robert P. Dugan of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals, who described the group as “not con­struct­ed to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive orga­ni­za­tion and its polit­i­cal posi­tions may well be deter­mined by a hand­ful of activists meet­ing over lunch. They are account­able to no one but them­selves.” Inter­est­ing­ly, Paul Weyrich — anoth­er CNP founder — described the group as “con­ser­v­a­tive first and Chris­t­ian inci­den­tal­ly, as opposed to oth­er groups that are Chris­t­ian first, and con­ser­v­a­tive inci­den­tal­ly.” And as we can see, Gary Jarmin — a for­mer Moonie activist — was Chris­t­ian Voice’s leg­isla­tive direc­tor. Jarmin even helped to orga­nize the first CAUSA North Amer­i­ca con­fer­ence in 1983 while serv­ing in that role. Also in atten­dance at the CAUSA con­fer­ence were Chris­t­ian Voice chair­man (and CNP mem­ber) Robert Grant and Advi­so­ry Board mem­bers W. Steuart McBir­ney and Ray Allen. Grant and Jarmin also addressed the 1985 CAUSA con­fer­ence. Grant was, at the time of this 1987 piece, chair­ing the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the CRF. It’s quite a tight net­work:

...
Whose Voice Is Chris­t­ian Voice?

The rightwing Chris­t­ian Voice claims 350,000 mem­bers, includ­ing 40,000 min­is­ters who become mem­bers by virtue of hav­ing respond­ed to direct mail fund­ing appeals. The orga­ni­za­tion, which employs 17 field orga­niz­ers, stepped into the void left by the depar­ture of the Moral Major­i­ty and ACTV from sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal activ­i­ty. How­ev­er, they may have over­stepped their posi­tion.

Chris­t­ian Voice has come under fire recent­ly for mis­rep­re­sent­ing itself, and for its ties to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion. Its claim to rep­re­sent 45 mil­lion Chris­t­ian evan­gel­i­cals has been chal­lenged, notably by Robert P. Dugan of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals. He told Chris­tian­i­ty Today mag­a­zine that Chris­t­ian Voice is “not con­struct­ed to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive orga­ni­za­tion and its polit­i­cal posi­tions may well be deter­mined by a hand­ful of activists meet­ing over lunch. They are account­able to no one but them­selves.” New Right leader Paul Weyrich char­ac­ter­ized Chris­t­ian Voice as “con­ser­v­a­tive first and Chris­t­ian inci­den­tal­ly, as opposed to oth­er groups that are Chris­t­ian first, and con­ser­v­a­tive inci­den­tal­ly.”55

The rela­tion­ship between Chris­t­ian Voice and the Moon orga­ni­za­tion has plagued them for some time. At the cen­ter of this con­tro­ver­sy is lob­by­ist Gary Jarmin, a Moonie from 1967–1973 who was active in Moon’s Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion and who many sus­pect may be a Moon agent in the New Right. A May 1981 arti­cle in Moth­er Jones raised this ques­tion. Jarmin, who was the leg­isla­tive direc­tor of Chris­t­ian Voice at the time, insist­ed, ‘Tm no longer affil­i­at­ed with the church; I’m not a mem­ber of it and I don’t con­sult with their peo­ple. This orga­ni­za­tion, [Chris­t­ian Voice] is run by a board of direc­tors for whom I work, which is not in any way affil­i­at­ed with or con­trolled by the church. I think my actions speak loud­er than my words.”56 Nev­er­the­less, by Feb­ru­ary 1983 Jarmin had helped orga­nize the first CAUSA North Amer­i­ca con­fer­ence, held in Jamaica. Also in atten­dance were Chris­t­ian Voice chair­man Robert Grant and Advi­so­ry Board mem­bers W. Steuart McBir­ney and Ray Allen, and polit­i­cal strate­gist Colonel V. Don­er.

The rela­tion­ships go even deep­er. The three-mem­ber board of Chris­t­ian Voice’s polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee is chaired by Jarmin, and includes Rev. Don Sills of the Moon-fund­ed Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom. In August of 1985, Jarmin helped orga­nize CRF’s God and Free­dom Ban­quet held in cel­e­bra­tion of Moon’s release from jail. He also led leg­isla­tive work­shops at secre­tive CAUSA indoc­tri­na­tion ses­sions for Amer­i­can state leg­is­la­tors dur­ing 1986. These events drew about 100 con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tors from both par­ties to all-expense-paid jun­kets, osten­si­bly to dis­cuss the Con­sti­tu­tion. A more elite ver­sion of these meet­ings is the CAUSA-spon­sored Amer­i­can Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence, where Jarmin has also spo­ken. Jarmin has been joined at oth­er CAUSA events by Robert Grant, who addressed the 1985 CAUSA Nation­al Con­fer­ence in San Fran­cis­co. Grant cur­rent­ly chairs the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the Coali­tion for Reli­gious Free­dom.

Although CRF declares its inde­pen­dence from the Moon orga­ni­za­tion (despite the Moon fund­ing), the cur­rent exec­u­tive direc­tor of CRF is Dan Hold­grei­we, a long­time Moon oper­a­tive who worked for Moon’s Free­dom Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion from the late 1970s to the ear­ly 1980s.57
...

How deep does the rela­tion­ship between the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and this CNP net­work of domin­ion­ists go? Well, as we can see, it was quite deep in the 1980s. Open­ly so, despite the denials. And that deep rela­tion­ship has had four decades to fes­ter. So, you know, ‘way too deep’ is the like­ly answer. We’ll pre­sum­ably find out more about this ongo­ing rela­tion­sh­iop after the theoc­ra­cy gets imposed. Or rather, those not killed dur­ing the theo­crat­ic rev­o­lu­tion will get to find out more.

As we’ve seen, the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project is mas­sive mul­ti-state effort that’s been oper­at­ing for years now. Since 2005. And as we’ve also seen, the project has a num­ber of state-based spin offs — the Texas Renew­al Project, the Iowas Renew­al Project, etc — with major financ­ing com­ing from the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion (AFA) run by CNP mem­bers Don and Tim Wild­mon. But as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing report from Novem­ber 2011, there’s anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant enti­ty behind the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project: The Niemoller Foun­da­tion.

Found­ed in 2005 by San Anto­nio tycoon James Leininger, the Niemoller Foun­da­tion was formed as a 501(c)(3) tax exempt non-prof­it enti­ty. As part of that tax-exempt sta­tus, the foun­da­tion was sup­posed to avoid par­tic­i­pat­ing in direct sup­port of, or attacks against, an par­tic­u­lar can­di­dates for office. As we’ll see, it was the Niemoller Foun­da­tion that was financ­ing an ear­ly iter­a­tion of the Texas Renew­al Project — then known as the Texas Restora­tion Project — that was effec­tive­ly oper­at­ing as a sophis­ti­cat­ed get-out-the-vote effort tar­get­ing church­es in sup­port of then-Texas Gov­er­nor Rick Per­ry’s 2006 re-elec­tion cam­paign.

As we should expect, Leininger hap­pens to be an ardent theo­crat. He’s also described as Rick Per­ry’s Sven­gali. And As we’ve seen, Leininger isn’t just a major con­ser­v­a­tive donor in Texas. He’s the founder of a Texas enti­ty that has repeat­ed­ly popped up in rela­tion to theo­crat­ic ini­tia­tives not just in Texas but nation­al­ly: the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion (TPPF). Yep.

This is the same ‘think tank’ where where fel­low Texas theo­crat­ic bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn has served as a board mem­ber since 1998. Dunn still serves as the TPPF’s Vice Chair­man. As we also saw, for­mer TPPF pres­i­dent and CNP mem­ber Kevin Roberts went on to become the cur­rent pres­i­dent of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion. This is the same Kevin Roberts who leads the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project 2025 scheme and recent­ly declared the Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion is under­way and will remain blood­less “if the left allows it to be.” Also recall how the TPPF and the Clare­mont Insti­tute ran the “79 Days Report ‘sim­u­la­tions in 2020 imag­in­ing con­test­ed elec­tion sce­nar­ios. Kevin Roberts, John East­man, and fas­cist busi­ness­man Charles Hay­wood all par­tic­i­pat­ed in the sim­u­la­tions.

And, of course, Leininger is a mem­ber of the CNP, as we should expect giv­en Leininger’s clear theo­crat­ic ambi­tions. But he’s not the only CNP mem­ber cit­ed as a major fun­der. Wealthy busi­ness­man Bob J. Per­ry — also a financier of the “Swift Boat Vet­er­ans for Truth” smear cam­paign — was also an ear­ly donor Niemoller foun­da­tion donor as the group was financ­ing the Texas Restora­tion Project to oper­ate as a Rick Per­ry get-out-the-vote oper­a­tion. In addi­tion, key CNP mem­bers Kel­ly Shack­elford and David Bar­ton were orga­niz­ing pro-Per­ry events in asso­ci­a­tion with the project. Recall how not only did Mike John­son call Shack­elford his men­tor but Shack­elford served as the CNP’s vice pres­i­dent in 2020. He was also part of the del­e­ga­tion of CNP mem­bers who met with Don­ald Trump back in June of 2016 to give the Trump cam­paign their bless­ing.

It’s also note­wor­thy how Leininger and his fel­low theocrats eager­ly viewed the Great Reces­sion that was still play­ing out back in 2011 as an incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty to return the US to God. Gov­ern­ment could not be part of the solu­tion for the Great Reces­sion. Only God. Evan­ge­list James Robi­son was a cham­pi­on of this view and had been search­ing for a politi­cian to push this idea with the pub­lic. Rick Per­ry — the first major politi­cian to embrace the then-nascent Tea Par­ty move­ment — was Robison’s choice.

That’s all part of the con­text, and rel­e­vance, of the now infa­mous 2011 domin­ion­ist orga­niz­ing in asso­ci­a­tion with the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project around Rick Per­ry’s 2011 pres­i­den­tial run: The whole ‘Renew­al’ ini­tia­tive effec­tive­ly start­ed off as a 2006 Rick Per­ry guber­na­to­r­i­al re-elec­tion effort with exten­sive fund­ing from one of Tim Dun­n’s long-time fel­low theocrats:

The Amer­i­can Prospect

God Help Us

Will Rick Perry’s blend of Chris­t­ian-right, small-gov­ern­ment, and pro-cor­po­rate fer­vor land him in the White House?

by Bob Moser
Novem­ber 28, 2011

In April, Rick Per­ry trav­eled to North Texas for a tap­ing of tel­e­van­ge­list James Robison’s TV show, Life Today. For six months, start­ing as soon as he was re-elect­ed Texas gov­er­nor in Novem­ber 2010, Per­ry had been criss­cross­ing the coun­try to pro­mote his sec­ond book, Fed Up!, while test­ing the pres­i­den­tial waters with poten­tial donors and con­ser­v­a­tive activists. His vis­it with Robi­son, a hell­fire-breath­ing pas­tor known as “God’s hit man” (for “giv­ing ’em so much hell nobody will ever want to go there”), had the poten­tial to pay seri­ous div­i­dends. Robi­son had led the Chris­t­ian-right cam­paign that helped lift Ronald Rea­gan to the White House in 1980, and he was re-emerg­ing as the chief insti­ga­tor of a nation­al effort to mobi­lize evan­gel­i­cals to defeat Barack Oba­ma in 2012. With for­mer Arkansas Gov­er­nor Mike Huck­abee-who left divin­i­ty school in 1976 to work for Robi­son-hav­ing for­gone the race, the pas­tor was search­ing for a can­di­date the resur­gent evan­gel­i­cal right could anoint.

Per­ry, who has spent more time evan­ge­liz­ing about his faith than any gov­er­nor in the his­to­ry of Texas, was ready for his audi­tion. Beam­ing, he gazed up into the stu­dio lights. “I think we’re in a time of great revival­ness in this world,” he declared.

“I think it’s an awak­en­ing,” Robi­son agreed.

“I know there’s a lot of con­cern,” Per­ry said. “I think in Amer­i­ca, that from time to time, we have to go through some dif­fi­cult times, and I think we’re going through those dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic times for a pur­pose-and that’s to bring us back to those bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples … not spend­ing all of our mon­ey, not ask­ing for Pharaoh to give every­thing to every­body and to take care of folks, because at the end of the day, it’s slav­ery. And we become slaves to gov­ern­ment.”

The idea that the reces­sion was a blessed oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn Amer­i­cans against gov­ern­ment and toward “bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples” was already a famil­iar one for Robison’s fol­low­ers. It was a mes­sage that Per­ry was poised to car­ry into the main­stream. Robi­son had been look­ing for a promi­nent pub­lic offi­cial to con­vene a large-scale prayer and fast­ing ral­ly to spread the word. Per­ry took up the call. He would soon be invit­ing Chris­tians and polit­i­cal lead­ers to a Hous­ton sta­di­um ral­ly, The Response, explain­ing that while the coun­try was fac­ing grim eco­nom­ic times, “There is hope for Amer­i­ca. It lies in heav­en, and we will find it on our knees.”

Only God, not gov­ern­ment, could heal the bro­ken econ­o­my. It was a theme that knit togeth­er all three of Per­ry’s core con­stituen­cies: right-wing evan­gel­i­cals, who had mobi­lized behind Per­ry’s 2006 re-elec­tion; anti-tax Tea Partiers, who had helped him to a third term as gov­er­nor in 2010; and cor­po­rate con­ser­v­a­tives, who have bankrolled his rise from the begin­ning. Per­ry’s mes­sage was a nat­ur­al out­growth of the resur­gence in recent years of “bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism,” an idea that first sprung up in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry as a coun­ter­weight to the social gospel, which used scrip­ture to sup­port labor reforms and pro­gres­sive tax­a­tion. In recent years, the tenets of bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism have been spread most famous­ly by David Bar­ton, for­mer vice chair­man of the Texas GOP and the reli­gious right’s favorite his­to­ri­an. Bar­ton, a long­time Per­ry ally whom Glenn Beck calls “the most impor­tant man in Amer­i­ca,” has been tour­ing the coun­try for years, not only preach­ing that the Unit­ed States was found­ed by and for Chris­tians but also cher­ry-pick­ing scrip­ture to assert that the Bible oppos­es capital–gains and estate tax­es, unions and min­i­mum-wage laws.

For Robi­son and Bar­ton, the reces­sion offered the ide­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to spread that word and argue that big gov­ern­ment had caused the eco­nom­ic calami­ty because it was “against God.” “Depend­ing on the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is idol­a­try,” as Robi­son put it in June. “We must con­trol it, or it will con­trol us. Stop the mad­ness! Hitler believed that Ger­many need­ed a gov­ern­ment over the peo­ple, not of the peo­ple. God deliv­er us from that kind of insan­i­ty.” Get­ting more spe­cif­ic, Robi­son inveighed against “intru­sive reg­u­la­tion,” while call­ing for the tax code to be revised “so we can rejoice togeth­er because it would stim­u­late eco­nom­ic growth.”

In May, meet­ing with Robi­son, Bar­ton, and a large group of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to orga­nize The Response, Per­ry echoed the mes­sage. Amer­i­cans’ “pur­suit of hap­pi­ness” was “in jeop­ardy,” he said. “It’s in jeop­ardy because of tax­es. It’s in jeop­ardy because of reg­u­la­tion. It’s in jeop­ardy because of a legal sys­tem that’s run amok. And I think it’s time for us to just hand it over to God and say, ‘God, you’re going to have to fix this.’ ”

While Per­ry insist­ed that The Response was an “apo­lit­i­cal” event, its orga­niz­ers were dozens of evan­gel­i­cal heavy­weights whom Robi­son brought togeth­er, in the spring and sum­mer, for a series of meet­ings to mobi­lize for 2012. Pub­licly, they claimed to be strate­giz­ing to defeat Oba­ma-to use the polit­i­cal moment to “help inspire … a restora­tion of free­dom’s foun­da­tion,” as Robi­son explained. “I don’t think we’re ever going to solve the eco­nom­ic cri­sis with­out hav­ing a king­dom men­tal­i­ty.”

As Per­ry moved toward announc­ing his can­di­da­cy, the evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers decid­ed that he had the “king­dom men­tal­i­ty” they were look­ing for-and, unlike Michele Bach­mann, a chance to win. It was­n’t just that Per­ry was the only major politi­cian in Amer­i­ca auda­cious and faith­ful enough to con­vene his own mega-prayer ral­ly. It was­n’t just that he claimed to be “called” by God to run. It was­n’t just that he slashed bud­gets and stripped reg­u­la­tions. It was­n’t just that he had pro­mot­ed absti­nence-only sex edu­ca­tion, cam­paigned suc­cess­ful­ly for a gay-mar­riage ban, defund­ed Planned Par­ent­hood, and signed some of the coun­try’s most restric­tive abor­tion laws. It was that he did all this while he called for “restor­ing Amer­i­ca to its Chris­t­ian prin­ci­ples.”

The Response drew 30,000 peo­ple to Hous­ton’s Reliant Sta­di­um on the first Sat­ur­day in August. Per­ry ser­mo­nized along with John Hagee, the Chris­t­ian Zion­ist mega­pas­tor who blamed gays for Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na and once called Catholi­cism a “god­less the­ol­o­gy.” While Per­ry’s mes­sage most­ly con­sist­ed of long pas­sages of scrip­ture, his clos­ing prayer rein­forced the idea that only God, not gov­ern­ment, could solve the nation’s woes: “Lord, you are the source of every good thing. You are our only hope. … Father, our heart breaks for Amer­i­ca. We see dis­cord at home. We see fear in the mar­ket­place. We see anger in the halls of gov­ern­ment. As a nation, we have for­got­ten who made us, who pro­tects us, who bless­es us. And for that, we cry out for your for­give­ness.”

Ten days lat­er, Per­ry announced his pres­i­den­tial bid in South Car­oli­na, promis­ing to “make Wash­ing­ton, D.C., as incon­se­quen­tial in your life as I can.” Almost overnight, he emerged as the Repub­li­can right’s lead­ing alter­na­tive to for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov­er­nor Mitt Rom­ney. Just as quick­ly, he became the most mis­un­der­stood con­tender for the White House.

...

In ear­ly debates-includ­ing his dis­as­trous per­for­mance in Orlan­do that led to a sec­ond-place fin­ish well behind Her­man Cain in the straw poll-Per­ry’s oppo­nents took aim at his few con­ser­v­a­tive here­sies, most notably sign­ing a bill to allow in-state col­lege tuition for some undoc­u­ment­ed stu­dents. Per­ry’s fum­bling retort-accus­ing those who dis­agreed with his posi­tion of not hav­ing “a heart”-made mat­ters worse. As nation­al reporters rushed to knock out pro­files of the mete­or ris­ing on the Repub­li­can right, a nar­ra­tive was emerg­ing: Per­ry was paint­ed as a say-any­thing sort who had shift­ed with the polit­i­cal winds to win eight elec­tions in Texas with­out suf­fer­ing a defeat. The new meme was summed up by a Politi­co head­line: “Rick Per­ry’s non-ide­ol­o­gy.”

It is an easy but mis­lead­ing sto­ry to tell. Per­ry was first elect­ed to the Texas House in 1984 as a Demo­c­rat. He switched par­ties in 1989, as Repub­li­cans began to chip away at Democ­rats’ cen­tu­ry-old dom­i­na­tion of Texas pol­i­tics, in order to run against lib­er­al pop­ulist Agri­cul­ture Com­mis­sion­er Jim High­tow­er. Hand­picked by Karl Rove, Per­ry rode Gov­er­nor George W. Bush’s coat­tails to become lieu­tenant gov­er­nor in 1998, suc­ceed­ing to the gov­er­nor’s office when Bush left for Wash­ing­ton in Decem­ber 2000. When Bush and Rove man­u­fac­tured a revival of evan­gel­i­cal pol­i­tics, Per­ry became a “faith-based” politi­cian when he ran for gov­er­nor in 2002 and 2006. Then, fac­ing a tough re-elec­tion chal­lenge in 2010 from Sen­a­tor Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son, he embraced the Tea Par­ty.

This nar­ra­tive makes a good yarn-yet anoth­er sto­ry of yet anoth­er politi­cian who pre­tends to stand for some­thing but only cares about win­ning elec­tions. But it miss­es the heart, and the threat, of Per­ry’s pol­i­tics. While it’s true that he has cal­i­brat­ed his cam­paigns to fit the moment, Per­ry is an ide­o­logue. Indeed, he is the bold­est cham­pi­on of a new con­ser­vatism that draws its pow­er from blend­ing the most rad­i­cal wings of the GOP: those who believe that Chris­tians are Amer­i­ca’s cho­sen lead­ers, that cor­po­ra­tions should be unfet­tered, and that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment should shrink and cede pow­er back to the states. His pol­i­tics have indeed evolved-in con­cert with that of the Repub­li­can right, as it’s hard­ened from a move­ment that saw gov­ern­ment as “the prob­lem,” in Rea­gan’s words, to one that views gov­ern­ment as the ene­my. Per­ry, far from being a fol­low­er in that shift to the hard right, has long been one of its prime insti­ga­tors.

When Per­ry first mate­ri­al­ized in Austin in the mid-’80s, he imme­di­ate­ly estab­lished what kind of politi­cian he was. The swag­ger­ing, glad-hand­ing ten­ant farmer’s son from West Texas became part of a bud­get-cut­ting gang on the Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee, deemed the “Pit Bulls” because they sat on the low­er dais in the hear­ing room as they pushed for aus­ter­i­ty in Tex­as­’s state gov­ern­ment. “Then and there,” says long­time Demo­c­ra­t­ic state Sen­a­tor Eliot Shap­leigh, “he and his band of Pit Bulls put Texas on a path toward his lega­cy project of cut­ting tax­es for the wealthy and mak­ing gov­ern­ment work only for a select few.”

...

As agri­cul­ture com­mis­sion­er, Per­ry’s main accom­plish­ment was in line with Rea­gan Repub­li­can­ism-fight­ing and gut­ting reg­u­la­tions on farms and agribusi­ness. In the months after he became gov­er­nor, Per­ry behaved in some respects like his pre­de­ces­sor, who was known for work­ing cor­dial­ly with Texas Democ­rats and for court­ing the state’s ris­ing Lati­no vote. Per­ry signed the now-con­tro­ver­sial tuition bill. But at the end of the 2001 leg­isla­tive ses­sion, he threw down a gaunt­let; in one day in June, in what became known as “the Father’s Day Mas­sacre,” he vetoed 78 bills, includ­ing a ban on exe­cut­ing the men­tal­ly retard­ed and a num­ber of non­con­tro­ver­sial appro­pri­a­tions. It was a loud and star­tling rebuke, and it set a pat­tern. Per­ry’s goal as gov­er­nor would be to do what he now says he’d do as pres­i­dent: make gov­ern­ment “incon­se­quen­tial.”

In late August, two weeks after he launched his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, Per­ry was back in Texas, 70 miles west of Austin on a ranch owned by San Anto­nio tycoon James Leininger. Known in Texas as Per­ry’s Sven­gali, Leininger made a for­tune sell­ing hos­pi­tal beds. Their rela­tion­ship dates back at least to the 1990s, when Leininger helped Per­ry buy his first cam­paign plane. In 1998, Per­ry ran for lieu­tenant gov­er­nor against pop­u­lar Demo­c­ra­t­ic state comp­trol­ler John Sharp; Per­ry looked like a like­ly los­er in a tight race-until Leininger stepped up and helped guar­an­tee a $1.1 mil­lion loan that fund­ed a last-minute media blitz for the cam­paign. “I con­grat­u­late Leininger,” Sharp said after Per­ry edged him out with 50.04 per­cent of the vote. “He want­ed to buy the reins of state gov­ern­ment, and by God, he got them.”

An evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian, Leininger was then the largest sin­gle donor to con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans in Texas and a major con­trib­u­tor to the nation­al par­ty. He embod­ied a new kind of Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment fig­ure. Like Domi­no’s Piz­za founder Tom Mon­aghan and Home Depot founder Bernie Mar­cus, Leininger gives huge sums to can­di­dates not just in exchange for favors but also to advance right-wing social and eco­nom­ic poli­cies. Leininger was the Koch broth­ers before the Koch broth­ers. In Per­ry’s three guber­na­to­r­i­al races, Leininger has donat­ed near­ly $250,000. In 2004, he sub­si­dized a trip to the Bahamas that brought Per­ry togeth­er with his oth­er great polit­i­cal influ­ence, anti-gov­ern­ment cru­sad­er Grover Norquist of Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform.

In a pat­tern that has char­ac­ter­ized his polit­i­cal career, Per­ry has more than repaid Leininger’s gen­eros­i­ty. Two “eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment” funds con­trolled by Per­ry have giv­en near­ly $6 mil­lion to two biotech­nol­o­gy firms in which Leininger holds a sig­nif­i­cant share. Per­ry has suc­cess­ful­ly pushed one of Leininger’s pet projects, tort reform-an inter­est spurred by a spate of law­suits brought against his com­pa­ny, which has been repeat­ed­ly accused of man­u­fac­tur­ing hos­pi­tal beds that dropped and injured nurs­es and patients. Ear­li­er this year, Per­ry capped off a series of tort-reform mea­sures with a “los­er pays” bill that forces lit­i­gants who lose a law­suit to pay the legal expens­es of the com­pa­nies they’ve sued.

That kind of give-and-take between Per­ry and big-mon­ey Repub­li­cans has not been lim­it­ed to Leininger. Near­ly half of the cor­po­ra­tions Per­ry has reward­ed from his eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment funds have been owned by major donors to his cam­paigns. Per­ry’s two largest con­trib­u­tors-Bob Per­ry (no rela­tion to the gov­er­nor) and Harold Sim­mons-have seen their gen­eros­i­ty repaid. In 2006, when Per­ry ran for re–election, Bob Per­ry, a home­build­ing mag­nate whose pet issue is dereg­u­la­tion, gave the gov­er­nor $275,000; he also donat­ed $2 mil­lion to the Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion-which, in turn, gave Per­ry $1 mil­lion in the clos­ing weeks of the cam­paign. Dur­ing his tenure, Per­ry has stripped numer­ous envi­ron­men­tal, finan­cial, and work­place rules from the books. The gov­er­nor’s sec­ond-largest bene­fac­tor is Sim­mons, known in Texas as the “buy­out king” and best known nation­al­ly for help­ing fund the Swift Boat Vet­er­ans for Truth cam­paign against Sen­a­tor John Ker­ry in the 2004 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion (Bob Per­ry was the oth­er major fun­der). He has con­tributed $1.2 mil­lion to the gov­er­nor over the years. Sim­mons stands to make mil­lions by build­ing a mas­sive waste dump in West Texas to house the coun­try’s radioac­tive trash‑a project approved by Per­ry-appoint­ed reg­u­la­tors, though state sci­en­tists have deter­mined the site is unsafe.

Per­ry’s rela­tion­ship with Leininger is of a dif­fer­ent order. The gov­er­nor has lent his full weight to the San Anto­ni­an’s social cru­sades. Leininger chipped in the bulk of funds for a cam­paign to enact an anti-gay-mar­riage amend­ment in Texas, backed by Per­ry. But Leininger’s over­whelm­ing inter­est has been in fight­ing “sec­u­lar” pub­lic edu­ca­tion, pour­ing mil­lions into pri­ma­ry chal­lenges to Repub­li­cans who oppose school vouch­ers and putting mil­lions more behind state school-board can­di­dates who sup­port the teach­ing of cre­ation­ism, absti­nence-only sex edu­ca­tion, and a ver­sion of Amer­i­can his­to­ry that pro­motes Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. Per­ry has appoint­ed three state edu­ca­tion-board chairs backed by Leininger.

Now, as Per­ry seeks the pres­i­den­cy, Leininger is doing his part again. On the week­end of August 27, he brought togeth­er some 200 evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers and pas­tors for a pri­vate retreat-and anoth­er major audi­tion for Per­ry. Accord­ing to the Los Ange­les Times, the atten­dees includ­ed David Bar­ton, James Robi­son, Richard Land of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, Tony Perkins of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, and James Dob­son of Focus on the Fam­i­ly. “The Texas gov­er­nor … was grilled about his beliefs and his record in extra­or­di­nar­i­ly frank ses­sions,” the Times report­ed. “He respond­ed by describ­ing his rela­tion­ship with Jesus and pledg­ing to pur­sue the anti-abor­tion and anti-gay mar­riage agen­da cham­pi­oned by the evan­gel­i­cal right.”

An effort to mobi­lize the nation’s pas­tors behind Per­ry was already under way, mod­eled on a Leininger-fund­ed project that helped the gov­er­nor win re-elec­tion in 2006. That year in the gen­er­al elec­tion, Per­ry faced a dif­fi­cult four-way field that includ­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress­man Chris Bell, cig­ar-chomp­ing satirist Kinky Fried­man, and Car­olyn Kee­ton Stray­horn, the Repub­li­can state comp­trol­ler who ran as an inde­pen­dent. With both Fried­man and Stray­horn appeal­ing to inde­pen­dents and mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans, the cam­paign was sure to be a tough one-Per­ry’s clos­est since 1998. But Leininger had the answer. Along with sev­er­al oth­er wealthy con­ser­v­a­tives, he helped cre­ate the Texas Restora­tion Project.

The Restora­tion Project invit­ed thou­sands of Texas min­is­ters to six “Pas­tors’ Pol­i­cy Brief­in­gs,” closed-door events fund­ed by the Niemoller Foun­da­tion, a Hous­ton non­prof­it bankrolled by Leininger and friends. The pas­tors and their spous­es were urged to orga­nize their church­es behind Per­ry; lat­er, as the cam­paign revved up, they were called upon to get out the vote. “The mis­sion is the mobi­liza­tion of pas­tors and pews as a way to restore Texas and Amer­i­ca to our Judeo-Chris­t­ian her­itage,” said David Lane, chief orga­niz­er of the events and one of Per­ry’s most ardent allies on the evan­gel­i­cal right. At the end of each brief­ing, Per­ry offered a ser­mon. “This I know,” he told atten­dees at one gath­er­ing. “He who counts every hair on our heads and every drop in the oceans; He who knows the num­ber of our days and every thought before it enters our heads; this all-know­ing, all-pow­er­ful Cre­ator loves us so much that there is not a mat­ter so triv­ial or so small that we can’t sur­ren­der it to Him and say, ‘Father, your will be done!’ I cer­tain­ly know this to be the heart­felt prayer of a gov­er­nor.”

“For us, it seemed like clas­sic machine pol­i­tics,” says Dan Quinn of the Texas Free­dom Net­work, a non­prof­it that sup­ports church-state sep­a­ra­tion. “Some of Per­ry’s biggest donors gave mon­ey to a non­prof­it that then fun­neled it into these events around the state where pas­tors attend­ed for free and heard one speak­er after anoth­er speak in praise of the gov­er­nor-and then the gov­er­nor comes out at the end. It seemed naked­ly par­ti­san and polit­i­cal.” An Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice com­plaint filed by Quin­n’s group went nowhere, with the agency say­ing it did not have suf­fi­cient evi­dence that the mon­ey was being chan­neled direct­ly into Per­ry’s cam­paign.

Per­ry’s cam­paign sent Christ­mas cards to the pas­tors who’d attend­ed the Texas “brief­in­gs,” using the Restora­tion Pro­jec­t’s list. A week before the 2006 elec­tion, David Bar­ton and oth­ers made calls to the thou­sands who’d attend­ed, encour­ag­ing them to mar­shal their flocks behind Per­ry. It worked. Per­ry nar­row­ly won re-elec­tion with 39 per­cent of the vote.

In 2008, Lane, with finan­cial back­ing from Leininger and the anti-gay evan­gel­i­cal group Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion, began to expand the Restora­tion Project into polit­i­cal­ly impor­tant states around the coun­try. Near­ly 10,000 pas­tors have attend­ed all-expens­es-paid two-day “brief­in­gs” in Neva­da, New Hamp­shire, Ohio, South Car­oli­na, Col­orado, Ten­nessee, Cal­i­for­nia, Flori­da, and Iowa. Speak­ers have includ­ed sev­er­al poten­tial pres­i­den­tial con­tenders and can­di­dates such as Michele Bach­mann, Haley Bar­bour, Newt Gin­grich, and Mike Huck­abee. This year in Flori­da, Per­ry was the fea­tured speak­er.

“Per­ry and Lane have tru­ly mas­tered the tac­tic that Rove used for W. in Ohio in 2004,” Quinn says. “They’ve tak­en that strat­e­gy and real­ly honed it in Texas, more so than I’ve seen any­where else, and now they’ve export­ed that mod­el to most of the pres­i­den­tial bat­tle­ground states.”

On April 15, 2009, the typ­i­cal­ly dap­per gov­er­nor of Texas strode onto a makeshift stage out­side Austin City Hall wear­ing an unfa­mil­iar cos­tume-hunt­ing jack­et, jeans, boots, and base­ball cap-and deliv­ered the most impor­tant speech of his life. “I got­ta say it gives me that thrill up my leg when I see all these peo­ple stand­ing out here,” he told the 1,000 plac­ard-wav­ing cit­i­zens who’d come out on a blus­tery morn­ing to rail at Oba­ma and stim­u­lus spend­ing and to wit­ness Rick Per­ry’s Tea Par­ty debut. He’d been viewed with sus­pi­cion by some small-gov­ern­ment purists in Texas, not only for his exec­u­tive order to man­date HPV vac­cines but also for his ambi­tious (and unsuc­cess­ful) pro­pos­al to launch a mas­sive infra­struc­ture project called the Trans-Texas Cor­ri­dor. One Tea Parti­er car­ried a sign that read “Big Gov­ern­ment Per­ry,” hand­ing out leaflets on the theme.

But as the gov­er­nor blast­ed Oba­ma’s “social­ism” and railed at the main­stream medi­a’s deroga­to­ry cov­er­age of “tea bag­gers,” his recep­tion went from warm to hot. “I’m just not sure you’re a bunch of right-wing extrem­ists,” he hollered. “But if you are, I’m with you! ‘Cause you are a true patri­ot today in this coun­try. And I might add, you’re sur­round­ed by fel­low patri­ots-indi­vid­u­als who embrace the con­cepts like low­er tax­es and small­er gov­ern­ment and free­dom for every indi­vid­ual. I’m talk­ing about states’ rights! States’ rights! States’ rights!”

“Secede!” one hoarse voice called out over the clam­or of whoops and cheers. “Seceeeeede!” Per­ry nev­er used the word him­self but did say: “Since the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion was first rat­i­fied, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has slow­ly, steadi­ly, and suc­cess­ful­ly erod­ed the notion of states’ rights. … I hap­pen to agree with the sev­enth gov­er­nor of this great state, Sam Hous­ton. He once said, ‘Texas has yet to learn sub­mis­sion to any oppres­sion, come from what source it may!’ ”

As Per­ry left the stage, bask­ing in his foot-stomp­ing recep­tion, ral­ly orga­niz­er Jason Moore, a local talk-radio host, hal­looed, “Maybe it’s Per­ry for pres­i­dent now!”

As the first major Amer­i­can politi­cian to embrace the nascent Tea Par­ty, Per­ry had found a way to over­come a dan­ger­ous chal­lenger, three-term Sen­a­tor Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son, in the 2010 Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry-and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly to launch him­self into the nation­al spot­light. Soon he was writ­ing op-eds in The Wall Street Jour­nal, get­ting glow­ing reviews from Glenn Beck and Rush Lim­baugh, and tour­ing the coun­try non­stop to preach about the virtues of the “Texas mod­el”: low tax­es, light reg­u­la­tions, and a fron­tier men­tal­i­ty of self-depen­dence. “There is still a land of oppor­tu­ni­ty, friends-it’s called Texas,” Per­ry said. “We’re cre­at­ing more jobs than any oth­er state in the nation.” He then pro­vid­ed one more rea­son for Tex­as­’s suc­cess: “Would you rather live in a state like this or in a state where a man can mar­ry a man?”

Rail­ing at Wash­ing­ton was noth­ing new for him; the gov­er­nor had built his career on oppos­ing gov­ern­ment spend­ing. In 2003, when Texas faced a $10 bil­lion short­fall, he seized the moment. With help from Grover Norquist, who came to Texas to per­suade waf­fling Repub­li­cans to bal­ance the bud­get with cuts alone, Per­ry held the line on tax­es-even though it meant drop­ping more than 200,000 chil­dren from the Chil­dren’s Health Insur­ance Pro­gram and anoth­er 500,000 from Med­ic­aid. He also pushed the nation’s most aggres­sive round of dereg­u­la­tion and tort reform. “Texas is open for busi­ness,” he pro­claimed.

Ear­ly this year, per­fect­ly timed to suit his pres­i­den­tial ambi­tions, came anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to show small-gov­ern­ment con­ser­v­a­tives he was the real deal. In Jan­u­ary, the state comp­trol­ler announced that Texas had a $27 bil­lion bud­get hole for the next two years-rep­re­sent­ing near­ly one-quar­ter of the state’s already-lean spend­ing. The deficit was the direct result of a mas­sive prop­er­ty-tax cut Per­ry cham­pi­oned in 2006. It was Norquist’s favorite strat­e­gy: Cut tax­es, and spend­ing reduc­tions will have to fol­low.

“Now is not the time to get wob­bly,” Norquist said as he toured the state with Per­ry in March, urg­ing the gov­er­nor and leg­is­la­tors to stand firm against grow­ing anx­i­eties about huge cuts to schools and social pro­grams. “Do more tort reform, more tax reduc­tion, more spend­ing restraint.” Invok­ing “polit­i­cal philoso­pher Rahm Emanuel,” Norquist told an audi­ence that includ­ed Per­ry, “Some­times the only way to get the bureau­cra­cy to rethink what it’s doing is to tell them there’s a cri­sis.”

Per­ry insist­ed that the leg­is­la­ture close the bud­get gap with no new rev­enues-and with­out touch­ing the state’s $9 bil­lion Rainy Day Fund. He sup­port­ed a bud­get that cut $4 bil­lion from pub­lic schools and $2 bil­lion from Med­ic­aid. “I don’t think there is any­thing that is so impor­tant that [it] can­not be cut,” he said.

The only large pro­gram that did not fall vic­tim to the bud­getary blood­let­ting was Per­ry’s most cher­ished ini­tia­tive: the Texas Enter­prise Fund and the Emerg­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Fund, which have doled out more than $600 mil­lion in tax­pay­er mon­ey to cor­po­ra­tions of his choos­ing. “He takes from us so that he can play with his cor­po­rate slush fund and award his friends’ busi­ness­es,” Debra Med­i­na, Per­ry’s lib­er­tar­i­an chal­lenger in the 2010 Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry, said in a debate.

When asked about his gov­ern­ing prin­ci­ples in an inter­view last year, Per­ry respond­ed: “I’m a big believ­er in wealth first. You can­not have expand­ed edu­ca­tion pro­grams, you can­not take care of health and human ser­vice needs of those who can’t take care of them­selves, you can­not have the infra­struc­ture in your state that will dri­ve your econ­o­my, unless you have wealth to pay for it.”

Per­ry’s eco­nom­ic approach is the purest ver­sion of trick­le-down that the Unit­ed States has ever seen. That’s made Texas a case study of what hap­pens when wealth is first. Despite the nation’s high­est rate of job cre­ation, more than one-quar­ter of Tex­ans have no health insur­ance, a high­er per­cent­age than in any state. Home­own­ers’ insur­ance pre­mi­ums are the nation’s high­est. Texas ties with Mis­sis­sip­pi for the top per­cent­age of min­i­mum-wage jobs. Under Per­ry, Texas school fund­ing and achieve­ment have plum­met­ed to near the bot­tom of nation­al rank­ings; the state has the coun­try’s high­est per­cent­age of cit­i­zens with­out high-school diplo­mas. Tex­as­’s Med­ic­aid reim­burse­ments are the sec­ond low­est in the coun­try. Child pover­ty and hunger, along with incar­cer­a­tion rates, are among the high­est.

While his Tea Par­ty rhetoric made Per­ry famous, his lead­er­ship of an often over­looked orga­ni­za­tion-the Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion (RGA)-made him a major play­er in nation­al Repub­li­can cir­cles. He has been both its finance chair and chair. The RGA’s stat­ed pur­pose is to elect Repub­li­can gov­er­nors. But under Per­ry and Mis­sis­sip­pi Gov­er­nor Haley Bar­bour, the group has become a pow­er­ful force tug­ging Repub­li­cans toward the far right. Its ide­o­log­i­cal mis­sion is reflect­ed in the agen­das of its most gen­er­ous donors: Koch Indus­tries, which gave $1.1 mil­lion in 2010; Bob Per­ry, who gave $6 mil­lion; and Rupert Mur­doch’s News Cor­po­ra­tion sub­sidiary News Amer­i­ca, which donat­ed $1.25 mil­lion.

...

The Repub­li­can right has been a fick­le beast in 2011, first swoon­ing over Michele Bach­mann before dis­card­ing her, day­dream­ing in vain of Paul Ryan and Mar­co Rubio, and-when the ear­ly debates kept Per­ry from cement­ing his posi­tion as Mitt Rom­ney’s only viable foe-tak­ing up with Her­man Cain and chant­i­ng “9–9‑9.” But no pres­i­den­tial can­di­date is bet­ter suit­ed to the cur­rent Repub­li­can moment than Rick Per­ry. He has always spe­cial­ized in anger and out­rage. He exem­pli­fies a move­ment that sees no gray areas. Almost every­where he goes, Per­ry quotes Ronald Rea­gan: “We need bold col­ors, not pale pas­tels.” At a stop in New Hamp­shire, Per­ry made sure the point was­n’t missed: “I am that bright col­or.”

If he can regain his foot­ing and ham­mer home the con­sid­er­able gray areas in Rom­ney’s record, Per­ry may yet prove the Bar­ry Gold­wa­ter of 2012. After all, as he told a packed house of 10,000 at Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty in mid-Sep­tem­ber, God “does­n’t require per­fect peo­ple to exe­cute his per­fect plan. Moses was this hot­head­ed mur­der­er who was afraid to speak in pub­lic. God used him to lead the Israelites to free­dom. ... Paul was a per­se­cu­tor of Chris­tians; God used him to spread the gospel to the ends of the uni­verse.”

Now, Per­ry implied, God was using him to bring his mes­sage to ear­ly-21st-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca. The stakes, he said, were clear: “Amer­i­ca is going to be guid­ed by some set of val­ues. The ques­tion is gonna be, whose val­ues?”

Dur­ing the fall, as Per­ry floun­dered, it was easy to for­get how many times he has risen from the grave. He was giv­en lit­tle chance of win­ning his first statewide race, against the beloved cow­boy pop­ulist Jim High­tow­er; in 1998, run­ning for lieu­tenant gov­er­nor, Per­ry was tied in the polls up to Elec­tion Day; a year before his re-elec­tion as gov­er­nor in 2010, Repub­li­cans pre­ferred Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son by a seem­ing­ly insur­mount­able mar­gin, 56 per­cent to 31 per­cent. He won them all. One rea­son: his pugilis­tic cam­paign style, which Per­ry intro­duced to the coun­try in the late-Octo­ber Las Vegas debate and which left Rom­ney’s aides call­ing him a “bul­ly.” Per­ry does not defeat his oppo­nents; he oblit­er­ates them.

Per­ry also wins because of his fundrais­ing abil­i­ties and con­nec­tions to ide­o­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven big donors, which he devel­oped at the Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion. His evan­gel­i­cal net­work has been instru­men­tal in his vic­to­ries, and clear­ly Per­ry hopes the orga­niz­ing efforts of James Robi­son and David Lane will boost his chances in the pri­maries. While he has infused his cam­paign mes­sage with bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism, he has also avoid­ed alien­at­ing the Chris­t­ian right by reject­ing calls to dis­as­so­ci­ate him­self from Texas pas­tor Robert Jef­fress, who called Mor­monism a “cult” at the Val­ues Vot­ers Sum­mit in Octo­ber. Although his debat­ing skills have nev­er been sharp-he’s avoid­ed debates in Texas as much as pos­si­ble-Per­ry is a retail politi­cian of the first order. As Iowans and New Hamp­shirites are dis­cov­er­ing, he small-talks, back-slaps, and baby-kiss­es his way through a crowd with relish‑a qual­i­ty that will help in the small ear­ly-pri­ma­ry states, includ­ing South Car­oli­na and Neva­da.

...

The debate in Orlan­do was Per­ry’s low­est moment-the nation­al press was soon writ­ing him off-but ear­li­er that same day, he dis­played all the qual­i­ties that make him a for­mi­da­ble cam­paign­er. He bound­ed onto the stage at a ral­ly for Ralph Reed’s Faith & Free­dom Coali­tion, wear­ing an open ging­ham shirt and jack­et, wife Ani­ta on his arm. Per­ry has long been lam­pooned back home for an antic, arm-flap­ping style of tel­e­van­ge­lis­tic speechi­fy­ing, but he’s calmed down his style con­sid­er­ably. Stand­ing still at the podi­um, Per­ry clinched his hands prayer­ful­ly. As always, his words had the old evan­gel­i­cal fer­vor.

“I’m cam­paign­ing the only way I know how,” he said. “That’s as a true believ­er.” The crowd whooped and cheered and sur­round­ed the stage six deep, as Per­ry moved seam­less­ly into his mes­sage, mix­ing small-gov­ern­ment and Chris­t­ian-right ortho­doxy. “Our founders did­n’t need a nan­ny state to carve out the great­est civ­i­liza­tion known to man. We did­n’t need a nan­ny state to win the Sec­ond World War and then the Cold War. And we did­n’t need a nan­ny state to revive our econ­o­my, to cre­ate jobs, and to renew our nation’s promise.” In clos­ing, to wild cheers and amens, Per­ry invoked Abra­ham Lin­coln: “My con­cern is not whether God is on my side. My great­est con­cern is to be on God’s side.”

———–

“God Help Us” by Bob Moser; The Amer­i­can Prospect; 11/28/2011

“The idea that the reces­sion was a blessed oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn Amer­i­cans against gov­ern­ment and toward “bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples” was already a famil­iar one for Robison’s fol­low­ers. It was a mes­sage that Per­ry was poised to car­ry into the main­stream. Robi­son had been look­ing for a promi­nent pub­lic offi­cial to con­vene a large-scale prayer and fast­ing ral­ly to spread the word. Per­ry took up the call. He would soon be invit­ing Chris­tians and polit­i­cal lead­ers to a Hous­ton sta­di­um ral­ly, The Response, explain­ing that while the coun­try was fac­ing grim eco­nom­ic times, “There is hope for Amer­i­ca. It lies in heav­en, and we will find it on our knees.””

The Great Reces­sion was a blessed oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn Amer­i­cans against gov­ern­ment and towards “bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples”. That was the great hope of pow­er­ful pas­tors like James Robi­son as the finan­cial cri­sis was play­ing out. And oppor­tu­ni­ty to show­case the prin­ci­ples of the kind of ‘Bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism’ pro­mot­ed by fig­ures like Glenn Beck and David Bar­ton. Two of Rick Per­ry’s long-time key allies. Only God could heal the econ­o­my. Slash­ing the size of gov­ern­ment was a bib­li­cal­ly ordained response to the cri­sis. A cri­sis caused by a gov­ern­ment that was “against God”:

...
Only God, not gov­ern­ment, could heal the bro­ken econ­o­my. It was a theme that knit togeth­er all three of Per­ry’s core con­stituen­cies: right-wing evan­gel­i­cals, who had mobi­lized behind Per­ry’s 2006 re-elec­tion; anti-tax Tea Partiers, who had helped him to a third term as gov­er­nor in 2010; and cor­po­rate con­ser­v­a­tives, who have bankrolled his rise from the begin­ning. Per­ry’s mes­sage was a nat­ur­al out­growth of the resur­gence in recent years of “bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism,” an idea that first sprung up in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry as a coun­ter­weight to the social gospel, which used scrip­ture to sup­port labor reforms and pro­gres­sive tax­a­tion. In recent years, the tenets of bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism have been spread most famous­ly by David Bar­ton, for­mer vice chair­man of the Texas GOP and the reli­gious right’s favorite his­to­ri­an. Bar­ton, a long­time Per­ry ally whom Glenn Beck calls “the most impor­tant man in Amer­i­ca,” has been tour­ing the coun­try for years, not only preach­ing that the Unit­ed States was found­ed by and for Chris­tians but also cher­ry-pick­ing scrip­ture to assert that the Bible oppos­es capital–gains and estate tax­es, unions and min­i­mum-wage laws.

For Robi­son and Bar­ton, the reces­sion offered the ide­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to spread that word and argue that big gov­ern­ment had caused the eco­nom­ic calami­ty because it was “against God.” “Depend­ing on the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is idol­a­try,” as Robi­son put it in June. “We must con­trol it, or it will con­trol us. Stop the mad­ness! Hitler believed that Ger­many need­ed a gov­ern­ment over the peo­ple, not of the peo­ple. God deliv­er us from that kind of insan­i­ty.” Get­ting more spe­cif­ic, Robi­son inveighed against “intru­sive reg­u­la­tion,” while call­ing for the tax code to be revised “so we can rejoice togeth­er because it would stim­u­late eco­nom­ic growth.”

In May, meet­ing with Robi­son, Bar­ton, and a large group of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to orga­nize The Response, Per­ry echoed the mes­sage. Amer­i­cans’ “pur­suit of hap­pi­ness” was “in jeop­ardy,” he said. “It’s in jeop­ardy because of tax­es. It’s in jeop­ardy because of reg­u­la­tion. It’s in jeop­ardy because of a legal sys­tem that’s run amok. And I think it’s time for us to just hand it over to God and say, ‘God, you’re going to have to fix this.’ ”

While Per­ry insist­ed that The Response was an “apo­lit­i­cal” event, its orga­niz­ers were dozens of evan­gel­i­cal heavy­weights whom Robi­son brought togeth­er, in the spring and sum­mer, for a series of meet­ings to mobi­lize for 2012. Pub­licly, they claimed to be strate­giz­ing to defeat Oba­ma-to use the polit­i­cal moment to “help inspire … a restora­tion of free­dom’s foun­da­tion,” as Robi­son explained. “I don’t think we’re ever going to solve the eco­nom­ic cri­sis with­out hav­ing a king­dom men­tal­i­ty.”

...

Per­ry also wins because of his fundrais­ing abil­i­ties and con­nec­tions to ide­o­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven big donors, which he devel­oped at the Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion. His evan­gel­i­cal net­work has been instru­men­tal in his vic­to­ries, and clear­ly Per­ry hopes the orga­niz­ing efforts of James Robi­son and David Lane will boost his chances in the pri­maries. While he has infused his cam­paign mes­sage with bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism, he has also avoid­ed alien­at­ing the Chris­t­ian right by reject­ing calls to dis­as­so­ci­ate him­self from Texas pas­tor Robert Jef­fress, who called Mor­monism a “cult” at the Val­ues Vot­ers Sum­mit in Octo­ber. Although his debat­ing skills have nev­er been sharp-he’s avoid­ed debates in Texas as much as pos­si­ble-Per­ry is a retail politi­cian of the first order. As Iowans and New Hamp­shirites are dis­cov­er­ing, he small-talks, back-slaps, and baby-kiss­es his way through a crowd with relish‑a qual­i­ty that will help in the small ear­ly-pri­ma­ry states, includ­ing South Car­oli­na and Neva­da.
...

That ded­i­ca­tion to “Bib­li­cal cap­i­tal­ism” and shrink­ing the size of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is a big part of con­text of Rick Per­ry emerg­ing as the polit­i­cal avatar of this net­work: Per­ry was­n’t just an advo­cate of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism. He’s a “wealth first” ide­o­logue and he’s not afraid of admit­ting it:

...
The only large pro­gram that did not fall vic­tim to the bud­getary blood­let­ting was Per­ry’s most cher­ished ini­tia­tive: the Texas Enter­prise Fund and the Emerg­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Fund, which have doled out more than $600 mil­lion in tax­pay­er mon­ey to cor­po­ra­tions of his choos­ing. “He takes from us so that he can play with his cor­po­rate slush fund and award his friends’ busi­ness­es,” Debra Med­i­na, Per­ry’s lib­er­tar­i­an chal­lenger in the 2010 Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry, said in a debate.

When asked about his gov­ern­ing prin­ci­ples in an inter­view last year, Per­ry respond­ed: “I’m a big believ­er in wealth first. You can­not have expand­ed edu­ca­tion pro­grams, you can­not take care of health and human ser­vice needs of those who can’t take care of them­selves, you can­not have the infra­struc­ture in your state that will dri­ve your econ­o­my, unless you have wealth to pay for it.”

Per­ry’s eco­nom­ic approach is the purest ver­sion of trick­le-down that the Unit­ed States has ever seen. That’s made Texas a case study of what hap­pens when wealth is first. Despite the nation’s high­est rate of job cre­ation, more than one-quar­ter of Tex­ans have no health insur­ance, a high­er per­cent­age than in any state. Home­own­ers’ insur­ance pre­mi­ums are the nation’s high­est. Texas ties with Mis­sis­sip­pi for the top per­cent­age of min­i­mum-wage jobs. Under Per­ry, Texas school fund­ing and achieve­ment have plum­met­ed to near the bot­tom of nation­al rank­ings; the state has the coun­try’s high­est per­cent­age of cit­i­zens with­out high-school diplo­mas. Tex­as­’s Med­ic­aid reim­burse­ments are the sec­ond low­est in the coun­try. Child pover­ty and hunger, along with incar­cer­a­tion rates, are among the high­est.
...

So it should come as no sur­prise to see how Rick Per­ry was effec­tive­ly the first major politi­cian to embrace the Tea Par­ty. His ide­ol­o­gy was effec­tive­ly a theo­crat­ic ver­sion of Grover Norquist’s ide­ol­o­gy:

...
As the first major Amer­i­can politi­cian to embrace the nascent Tea Par­ty, Per­ry had found a way to over­come a dan­ger­ous chal­lenger, three-term Sen­a­tor Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son, in the 2010 Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry-and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly to launch him­self into the nation­al spot­light. Soon he was writ­ing op-eds in The Wall Street Jour­nal, get­ting glow­ing reviews from Glenn Beck and Rush Lim­baugh, and tour­ing the coun­try non­stop to preach about the virtues of the “Texas mod­el”: low tax­es, light reg­u­la­tions, and a fron­tier men­tal­i­ty of self-depen­dence. “There is still a land of oppor­tu­ni­ty, friends-it’s called Texas,” Per­ry said. “We’re cre­at­ing more jobs than any oth­er state in the nation.” He then pro­vid­ed one more rea­son for Tex­as­’s suc­cess: “Would you rather live in a state like this or in a state where a man can mar­ry a man?”

Rail­ing at Wash­ing­ton was noth­ing new for him; the gov­er­nor had built his career on oppos­ing gov­ern­ment spend­ing. In 2003, when Texas faced a $10 bil­lion short­fall, he seized the moment. With help from Grover Norquist, who came to Texas to per­suade waf­fling Repub­li­cans to bal­ance the bud­get with cuts alone, Per­ry held the line on tax­es-even though it meant drop­ping more than 200,000 chil­dren from the Chil­dren’s Health Insur­ance Pro­gram and anoth­er 500,000 from Med­ic­aid. He also pushed the nation’s most aggres­sive round of dereg­u­la­tion and tort reform. “Texas is open for busi­ness,” he pro­claimed.

Ear­ly this year, per­fect­ly timed to suit his pres­i­den­tial ambi­tions, came anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to show small-gov­ern­ment con­ser­v­a­tives he was the real deal. In Jan­u­ary, the state comp­trol­ler announced that Texas had a $27 bil­lion bud­get hole for the next two years-rep­re­sent­ing near­ly one-quar­ter of the state’s already-lean spend­ing. The deficit was the direct result of a mas­sive prop­er­ty-tax cut Per­ry cham­pi­oned in 2006. It was Norquist’s favorite strat­e­gy: Cut tax­es, and spend­ing reduc­tions will have to fol­low.

“Now is not the time to get wob­bly,” Norquist said as he toured the state with Per­ry in March, urg­ing the gov­er­nor and leg­is­la­tors to stand firm against grow­ing anx­i­eties about huge cuts to schools and social pro­grams. “Do more tort reform, more tax reduc­tion, more spend­ing restraint.” Invok­ing “polit­i­cal philoso­pher Rahm Emanuel,” Norquist told an audi­ence that includ­ed Per­ry, “Some­times the only way to get the bureau­cra­cy to rethink what it’s doing is to tell them there’s a cri­sis.”

Per­ry insist­ed that the leg­is­la­ture close the bud­get gap with no new rev­enues-and with­out touch­ing the state’s $9 bil­lion Rainy Day Fund. He sup­port­ed a bud­get that cut $4 bil­lion from pub­lic schools and $2 bil­lion from Med­ic­aid. “I don’t think there is any­thing that is so impor­tant that [it] can­not be cut,” he said.
...

And that all brings us to the key role of San Anto­nio tycoon James Leininger, described as Rick Per­ry’s Sven­gali. As we’ve seen, Leininger isn’t just a major con­ser­v­a­tive donor in Texas. Leininger found­ed the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion (TPPF), the ‘think tank’ where fel­low Texas theo­crat­ic bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn has served as a board mem­ber since 1998. Dunn still serves as the TPPF’s Vice Chair­man. As we also saw, for­mer TPPF pres­i­dent and CNP mem­ber Kevin Roberts went on to become the cur­rent pres­i­dent of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion. This is the same Kevin Roberts who leads the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project 2025 scheme and recent­ly declared the Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion is under­way and will remain blood­less “if the left allows it to be.” Also recall how the TPPF and the Clare­mont Insti­tute ran the “79 Days Report ‘sim­u­la­tions in 2020 imag­in­ing con­test­ed elec­tion sce­nar­ios. Kevin Roberts, John East­man, and fas­cist busi­ness­man Charles Hay­wood all par­tic­i­pat­ed in the sim­u­la­tions. And, of course, Leininger is a mem­ber of the CNP, as we should expect giv­en Leininger’s clear theo­crat­ic ambi­tions:

...
In late August, two weeks after he launched his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, Per­ry was back in Texas, 70 miles west of Austin on a ranch owned by San Anto­nio tycoon James Leininger. Known in Texas as Per­ry’s Sven­gali, Leininger made a for­tune sell­ing hos­pi­tal beds. Their rela­tion­ship dates back at least to the 1990s, when Leininger helped Per­ry buy his first cam­paign plane. In 1998, Per­ry ran for lieu­tenant gov­er­nor against pop­u­lar Demo­c­ra­t­ic state comp­trol­ler John Sharp; Per­ry looked like a like­ly los­er in a tight race-until Leininger stepped up and helped guar­an­tee a $1.1 mil­lion loan that fund­ed a last-minute media blitz for the cam­paign. “I con­grat­u­late Leininger,” Sharp said after Per­ry edged him out with 50.04 per­cent of the vote. “He want­ed to buy the reins of state gov­ern­ment, and by God, he got them.”

An evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian, Leininger was then the largest sin­gle donor to con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans in Texas and a major con­trib­u­tor to the nation­al par­ty. He embod­ied a new kind of Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment fig­ure. Like Domi­no’s Piz­za founder Tom Mon­aghan and Home Depot founder Bernie Mar­cus, Leininger gives huge sums to can­di­dates not just in exchange for favors but also to advance right-wing social and eco­nom­ic poli­cies. Leininger was the Koch broth­ers before the Koch broth­ers. In Per­ry’s three guber­na­to­r­i­al races, Leininger has donat­ed near­ly $250,000. In 2004, he sub­si­dized a trip to the Bahamas that brought Per­ry togeth­er with his oth­er great polit­i­cal influ­ence, anti-gov­ern­ment cru­sad­er Grover Norquist of Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform.

In a pat­tern that has char­ac­ter­ized his polit­i­cal career, Per­ry has more than repaid Leininger’s gen­eros­i­ty. Two “eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment” funds con­trolled by Per­ry have giv­en near­ly $6 mil­lion to two biotech­nol­o­gy firms in which Leininger holds a sig­nif­i­cant share. Per­ry has suc­cess­ful­ly pushed one of Leininger’s pet projects, tort reform-an inter­est spurred by a spate of law­suits brought against his com­pa­ny, which has been repeat­ed­ly accused of man­u­fac­tur­ing hos­pi­tal beds that dropped and injured nurs­es and patients. Ear­li­er this year, Per­ry capped off a series of tort-reform mea­sures with a “los­er pays” bill that forces lit­i­gants who lose a law­suit to pay the legal expens­es of the com­pa­nies they’ve sued.

That kind of give-and-take between Per­ry and big-mon­ey Repub­li­cans has not been lim­it­ed to Leininger. Near­ly half of the cor­po­ra­tions Per­ry has reward­ed from his eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment funds have been owned by major donors to his cam­paigns. Per­ry’s two largest con­trib­u­tors-Bob Per­ry (no rela­tion to the gov­er­nor) and Harold Sim­mons-have seen their gen­eros­i­ty repaid. In 2006, when Per­ry ran for re–election, Bob Per­ry, a home­build­ing mag­nate whose pet issue is dereg­u­la­tion, gave the gov­er­nor $275,000; he also donat­ed $2 mil­lion to the Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion-which, in turn, gave Per­ry $1 mil­lion in the clos­ing weeks of the cam­paign. Dur­ing his tenure, Per­ry has stripped numer­ous envi­ron­men­tal, finan­cial, and work­place rules from the books. The gov­er­nor’s sec­ond-largest bene­fac­tor is Sim­mons, known in Texas as the “buy­out king” and best known nation­al­ly for help­ing fund the Swift Boat Vet­er­ans for Truth cam­paign against Sen­a­tor John Ker­ry in the 2004 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion (Bob Per­ry was the oth­er major fun­der). He has con­tributed $1.2 mil­lion to the gov­er­nor over the years. Sim­mons stands to make mil­lions by build­ing a mas­sive waste dump in West Texas to house the coun­try’s radioac­tive trash‑a project approved by Per­ry-appoint­ed reg­u­la­tors, though state sci­en­tists have deter­mined the site is unsafe.

Per­ry’s rela­tion­ship with Leininger is of a dif­fer­ent order. The gov­er­nor has lent his full weight to the San Anto­ni­an’s social cru­sades. Leininger chipped in the bulk of funds for a cam­paign to enact an anti-gay-mar­riage amend­ment in Texas, backed by Per­ry. But Leininger’s over­whelm­ing inter­est has been in fight­ing “sec­u­lar” pub­lic edu­ca­tion, pour­ing mil­lions into pri­ma­ry chal­lenges to Repub­li­cans who oppose school vouch­ers and putting mil­lions more behind state school-board can­di­dates who sup­port the teach­ing of cre­ation­ism, absti­nence-only sex edu­ca­tion, and a ver­sion of Amer­i­can his­to­ry that pro­motes Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. Per­ry has appoint­ed three state edu­ca­tion-board chairs backed by Leininger.
...

And as we can see, it was James Leininger’s Niemoller Foun­da­tion that helped launch the ini­tial “Texas Restora­tion Project” (even­tu­al­ly renamed the Texas Renew­al Project), with an ini­tial goal of help­ing Rick Per­ry’s 2006 re-elec­tion cam­paign. So while the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion (AFA) may be the enti­ty that has long housed the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, it sounds like a lot of the mon­ey for the effort came for Leininger’s Niemoller Foun­da­tion. Also note how the goal of the Texas Restora­tion Project was­n’t real­ly to encour­age pas­tors to run for office them­selves. The mis­sion was get­ting those pas­tors to ral­ly their con­gre­ga­tions around Rick Per­ry. It’s a reminder that, while the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project claims to be focused on recruit­ing pas­tors to run for office, the orga­ni­za­tion dou­bles as as church-based get-out-the-vote oper­a­tion:

...
Now, as Per­ry seeks the pres­i­den­cy, Leininger is doing his part again. On the week­end of August 27, he brought togeth­er some 200 evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers and pas­tors for a pri­vate retreat-and anoth­er major audi­tion for Per­ry. Accord­ing to the Los Ange­les Times, the atten­dees includ­ed David Bar­ton, James Robi­son, Richard Land of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, Tony Perkins of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, and James Dob­son of Focus on the Fam­i­ly. “The Texas gov­er­nor … was grilled about his beliefs and his record in extra­or­di­nar­i­ly frank ses­sions,” the Times report­ed. “He respond­ed by describ­ing his rela­tion­ship with Jesus and pledg­ing to pur­sue the anti-abor­tion and anti-gay mar­riage agen­da cham­pi­oned by the evan­gel­i­cal right.”

An effort to mobi­lize the nation’s pas­tors behind Per­ry was already under way, mod­eled on a Leininger-fund­ed project that helped the gov­er­nor win re-elec­tion in 2006. That year in the gen­er­al elec­tion, Per­ry faced a dif­fi­cult four-way field that includ­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress­man Chris Bell, cig­ar-chomp­ing satirist Kinky Fried­man, and Car­olyn Kee­ton Stray­horn, the Repub­li­can state comp­trol­ler who ran as an inde­pen­dent. With both Fried­man and Stray­horn appeal­ing to inde­pen­dents and mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans, the cam­paign was sure to be a tough one-Per­ry’s clos­est since 1998. But Leininger had the answer. Along with sev­er­al oth­er wealthy con­ser­v­a­tives, he helped cre­ate the Texas Restora­tion Project.

The Restora­tion Project invit­ed thou­sands of Texas min­is­ters to six “Pas­tors’ Pol­i­cy Brief­in­gs,” closed-door events fund­ed by the Niemoller Foun­da­tion, a Hous­ton non­prof­it bankrolled by Leininger and friends. The pas­tors and their spous­es were urged to orga­nize their church­es behind Per­ry; lat­er, as the cam­paign revved up, they were called upon to get out the vote. “The mis­sion is the mobi­liza­tion of pas­tors and pews as a way to restore Texas and Amer­i­ca to our Judeo-Chris­t­ian her­itage,” said David Lane, chief orga­niz­er of the events and one of Per­ry’s most ardent allies on the evan­gel­i­cal right. At the end of each brief­ing, Per­ry offered a ser­mon. “This I know,” he told atten­dees at one gath­er­ing. “He who counts every hair on our heads and every drop in the oceans; He who knows the num­ber of our days and every thought before it enters our heads; this all-know­ing, all-pow­er­ful Cre­ator loves us so much that there is not a mat­ter so triv­ial or so small that we can’t sur­ren­der it to Him and say, ‘Father, your will be done!’ I cer­tain­ly know this to be the heart­felt prayer of a gov­er­nor.”
...

By 2008, the “Texas Restora­tion Project” had expand­ed to oth­er states like Neva­da, New Hamp­shire, Ohio, South Car­oli­na, Col­orado, Ten­nessee, Cal­i­for­nia, Flori­da, and Iowa, thanks to fund­ing from the Niemoller Foun­da­tion and the AFA. And as Dan Quinn of the Texas Free­dom Net­work reminds us, the Niemoller Foun­da­tion is osten­si­bly a non-par­ti­san non-prof­it group that engages in bla­tant par­ti­san­ship like putting on pro-Rick Per­ry events. That was mod­el expand­ed to oth­er states thanks to all that Niemoller/AFA fund­ing and David Lane’s orga­niz­ing efforts:

...
“For us, it seemed like clas­sic machine pol­i­tics,” says Dan Quinn of the Texas Free­dom Net­work, a non­prof­it that sup­ports church-state sep­a­ra­tion. “Some of Per­ry’s biggest donors gave mon­ey to a non­prof­it that then fun­neled it into these events around the state where pas­tors attend­ed for free and heard one speak­er after anoth­er speak in praise of the gov­er­nor-and then the gov­er­nor comes out at the end. It seemed naked­ly par­ti­san and polit­i­cal.” An Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice com­plaint filed by Quin­n’s group went nowhere, with the agency say­ing it did not have suf­fi­cient evi­dence that the mon­ey was being chan­neled direct­ly into Per­ry’s cam­paign.

Per­ry’s cam­paign sent Christ­mas cards to the pas­tors who’d attend­ed the Texas “brief­in­gs,” using the Restora­tion Pro­jec­t’s list. A week before the 2006 elec­tion, David Bar­ton and oth­ers made calls to the thou­sands who’d attend­ed, encour­ag­ing them to mar­shal their flocks behind Per­ry. It worked. Per­ry nar­row­ly won re-elec­tion with 39 per­cent of the vote.

In 2008, Lane, with finan­cial back­ing from Leininger and the anti-gay evan­gel­i­cal group Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion, began to expand the Restora­tion Project into polit­i­cal­ly impor­tant states around the coun­try. Near­ly 10,000 pas­tors have attend­ed all-expens­es-paid two-day “brief­in­gs” in Neva­da, New Hamp­shire, Ohio, South Car­oli­na, Col­orado, Ten­nessee, Cal­i­for­nia, Flori­da, and Iowa. Speak­ers have includ­ed sev­er­al poten­tial pres­i­den­tial con­tenders and can­di­dates such as Michele Bach­mann, Haley Bar­bour, Newt Gin­grich, and Mike Huck­abee. This year in Flori­da, Per­ry was the fea­tured speak­er.

“Per­ry and Lane have tru­ly mas­tered the tac­tic that Rove used for W. in Ohio in 2004,” Quinn says. “They’ve tak­en that strat­e­gy and real­ly honed it in Texas, more so than I’ve seen any­where else, and now they’ve export­ed that mod­el to most of the pres­i­den­tial bat­tle­ground states.”
...

Now let’s take a clos­er look at the non-prof­it fraud the TFN accused the Niemoller Foun­da­tion of per­pe­trat­ing under the guise of ‘non-par­ti­san’ activ­i­ties. AS the TFN described, the Texas Restora­tion Project masked a sophis­ti­cat­ed vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and mobi­liza­tion strat­e­gy intend­ed to ben­e­fit the Per­ry cam­paign in 2006. A strat­e­gy with the CNP’s fin­ger­prints all over it: In addi­tion to Leininger, CNP mem­ber Bob Per­ry also made major dona­tions to the effort, with CNP mem­bers Kel­ly Shack­elford and David Bar­ton help­ing to orga­nize the oper­a­tion:

Texas Free­dom Net­work

TFN Asks IRS to Inves­ti­gate Foun­da­tion Linked to Texas Restora­tion Project

Uncov­ered Tax Records Show Major Fun­ders Were Also Rick Per­ry Back­ers; Sim­i­lar Groups Back­ing Mike Huckabee’s GOP Pres­i­den­tial Bid

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jan­u­ary 10, 2008

The Texas Free­dom Net­work is ask­ing the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice to inves­ti­gate whether a Hous­ton-based non­prof­it foun­da­tion and its back­ers improp­er­ly sought to drag church­es into Gov. Rick Perry’s reelec­tion cam­paign in 2006.

“It’s bad enough when politi­cians and their finan­cial back­ers mis­use faith by drag­ging our hous­es of wor­ship into par­ti­san cam­paigns,” TFN Pres­i­dent Kathy Miller said today. “It’s even worse if they break the law to do so. It now appears that the orga­niz­ers of the Texas Restora­tion Project may have done both to sup­port Gov. Perry’s reelec­tion, and by fun­nel­ing the mon­ey through a pri­vate foun­da­tion hid the source of its financ­ing from vot­ers.”

Tax records just uncov­ered by TFN indi­cate that a Hous­ton-based 501(c)(3) non­prof­it called the Niemoller Foun­da­tion, cre­at­ed in May 2005, spent about $1.26 mil­lion in 2005 to fund the activ­i­ties of the Texas Restora­tion Project. The foundation’s list of four “sub­stan­tial con­trib­u­tors” includ­ed three major donors to Rick Perry’s polit­i­cal cam­paigns over the years: San Anto­nio busi­ness­man Jim Leininger, Hous­ton home­builder Bob Per­ry, and East Texas chick­en tycoon Bo Pil­grim. The fourth donor list­ed by the foun­da­tion, beer and wine dis­trib­u­tor Don O’Neal of Col­leyville, has also giv­en small­er amounts to Per­ry cam­paigns.

The Texas Restora­tion Project host­ed thou­sands of pas­tors and their spous­es at six “Pas­tors’ Pol­i­cy Brief­in­gs” in 2005, at a time when Repub­li­cans Sen. Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son and state Comp­trol­ler Car­ole Stray­horn were con­sid­er­ing seek­ing their party’s nom­i­na­tion for gov­er­nor. They spon­sored a sev­enth event to cel­e­brate Gov. Perry’s inau­gu­ra­tion in 2007. Gov. Per­ry spoke at all sev­en “brief­in­gs.” No oth­er can­di­dates or poten­tial can­di­dates for gov­er­nor in 2006 received invi­ta­tions to speak.

Orga­ni­za­tions sim­i­lar to the Texas Restora­tion Project have cropped up in oth­er states. The South Car­oli­na Renew­al Project and Iowa Renew­al Project have host­ed speech­es by Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mike Huck­abee. Speak­ers at those have includ­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Texas group. The Amer­i­can Prospect is report­ing that new pas­tors’ brief­in­gs have been set for this month in advance of pri­ma­ry elec­tions in South Car­oli­na, Cal­i­for­nia and Flori­da.

In Texas, speak­ers and orga­niz­ers were enthu­si­as­tic in their praise for Gov. Per­ry at each of the events. They also encour­aged pas­tors at the gath­er­ings to mount vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves and turn con­gre­gants out at the polls. The group’s osten­si­ble goal was to win vot­er approval in Novem­ber 2005 for a state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment bar­ring same-sex mar­riage and civ­il unions. Those efforts, how­ev­er, appear to have masked a sophis­ti­cat­ed vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and mobi­liza­tion strat­e­gy intend­ed to ben­e­fit the Per­ry cam­paign in 2006, Miller said.

...

To qual­i­fy for tax exemp­tion under the fed­er­al tax code, a 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tion like the Niemoller Foun­da­tion must not par­tic­i­pate or inter­vene in any polit­i­cal cam­paign on behalf of or in oppo­si­tion to any can­di­date for pub­lic office. In a 2006 speech, the IRS com­mis­sion­er said his agency had found nine non­prof­its, includ­ing church­es, had bro­ken the law by “giv­ing improp­er pref­er­en­tial treat­ment to cer­tain can­di­dates by per­mit­ting them to speak at func­tions.”

The Rev. Lau­rence White and his wife are two of three direc­tors on the Niemoller Foundation’s gov­ern­ing board. White is also chair­man of the Texas Restora­tion Project. The foun­da­tion report­ed income of about $1.3 mil­lion in 2005 and spent all but about $29,000 in that year. Expen­di­tures cov­ered Texas Restora­tion Project activ­i­ties includ­ing more than $700,000 for the six pas­tors’ events and pay­ments to orga­ni­za­tions tied to the Texas Restora­tion Project.

Oth­er ties between the Per­ry cam­paign and the Niemoller Foundation/Texas Restora­tion Project include the fol­low­ing:

* The Niemoller Foundation’s expen­di­tures in 2005 includ­ed near­ly $475,000 paid to San Jac­in­to Pub­lic Affairs, an Austin-based firm that orga­nized the Texas Restora­tion Project’s events. The firm earned at least $4 mil­lion from work for the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Texas and elec­toral can­di­dates between July 2003 and Novem­ber 2007.
* The Per­ry cam­paign sub­se­quent­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed direct­ly with thou­sands of pas­tors recruit­ed by the Texas Restora­tion Project, sug­gest­ing coor­di­na­tion between the cam­paign and the Restora­tion Project.
* Press reports in 2005 indi­cat­ed at least one of Gov. Perry’s pas­tors’ brief­ing speech­es was con­sid­ered a cam­paign event, with the Per­ry cam­paign releas­ing the tran­script of his speech. (“Per­ry mobi­lizes evan­gel­i­cals as gov’s race heats up,” Matt Cur­ry, Asso­ci­at­ed Press, June 11, 2005)
* The Niemoller Foun­da­tion doled out $200,000 to Plano-based Free Mar­ket Foun­da­tion and San Anto­nio-based Jus­tice at the Gates in 2005. The two groups helped recruit pas­tors to Texas Restora­tion Project events. Free Mar­ket Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent Kel­ly Shack­elford and Jus­tice at the Gate direc­tor Susan Wed­ding­ton served on Gov. Perry’s reelec­tion steer­ing com­mit­tee.
* Days before the guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion in Novem­ber 2006, the Texas Restora­tion Project sent e‑mails to pas­tors on its mail­ing list, encour­ag­ing them to par­tic­i­pate in a statewide con­fer­ence call (which took place the fol­low­ing week) to “dis­cuss what we can do this elec­tion cycle to moti­vate our pews to vote their val­ues.” Shack­elford and David Bar­ton, who until June 2006 had served as vice chair of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty, were among the orga­niz­ers and promi­nent speak­ers on the call.

...

———

“TFN Asks IRS to Inves­ti­gate Foun­da­tion Linked to Texas Restora­tion Project” ; Texas Free­dom Net­work; 01/10/2008

“To qual­i­fy for tax exemp­tion under the fed­er­al tax code, a 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tion like the Niemoller Foun­da­tion must not par­tic­i­pate or inter­vene in any polit­i­cal cam­paign on behalf of or in oppo­si­tion to any can­di­date for pub­lic office. In a 2006 speech, the IRS com­mis­sion­er said his agency had found nine non­prof­its, includ­ing church­es, had bro­ken the law by “giv­ing improp­er pref­er­en­tial treat­ment to cer­tain can­di­dates by per­mit­ting them to speak at func­tions.””

As the TFN found, the Niemoller Foun­da­tion claims to be a 501(c)(3) non-prof­it, mean­ing it could­n’t engage in any polit­i­cal cam­paign direct­ly on behalf or against a can­di­date while main­tain­ing its tax-exempt sta­tus. As the TFN describes it, those ear­ly pas­tor events of the “Texas Restora­tion Project” were effec­tive­ly mask­ing a sophis­ti­cat­ed vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and mobi­liza­tion strat­e­gy intend­ed to ben­e­fit the Per­ry cam­paign in 2006. That’s the mod­el that was expand­ed to oth­er states:

...
The Texas Restora­tion Project host­ed thou­sands of pas­tors and their spous­es at six “Pas­tors’ Pol­i­cy Brief­in­gs” in 2005, at a time when Repub­li­cans Sen. Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son and state Comp­trol­ler Car­ole Stray­horn were con­sid­er­ing seek­ing their party’s nom­i­na­tion for gov­er­nor. They spon­sored a sev­enth event to cel­e­brate Gov. Perry’s inau­gu­ra­tion in 2007. Gov. Per­ry spoke at all sev­en “brief­in­gs.” No oth­er can­di­dates or poten­tial can­di­dates for gov­er­nor in 2006 received invi­ta­tions to speak.

...

In Texas, speak­ers and orga­niz­ers were enthu­si­as­tic in their praise for Gov. Per­ry at each of the events. They also encour­aged pas­tors at the gath­er­ings to mount vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves and turn con­gre­gants out at the polls. The group’s osten­si­ble goal was to win vot­er approval in Novem­ber 2005 for a state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment bar­ring same-sex mar­riage and civ­il unions. Those efforts, how­ev­er, appear to have masked a sophis­ti­cat­ed vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and mobi­liza­tion strat­e­gy intend­ed to ben­e­fit the Per­ry cam­paign in 2006, Miller said.
...

And as we should expect, the list fig­ures involved with the those 2006 efforts to re-elec­tion Rick Per­ry includes a num­ber of CNP mem­bers. On top of Jim Leininger, we find “Swift Vote Vet­er­ans for Truth” financier Bob Per­ry serv­ing as a major donor and Kel­ly Shack­elford and David Bar­ton help­ing to orga­nize pro-Per­ry events. Recall how not only did Mike John­son call Shack­elford his men­tor but Shack­elford served as the CNP’s vice pres­i­dent in 2020. He was also part of the del­e­ga­tion of CNP mem­bers who met with Don­ald Trump back in June of 2016 to give the Trump cam­paign their bless­ing. In oth­er words, Rick Per­ry’s 2006 re-elec­tion effort was effec­tive­ly a CNP Rick Per­ry re-elec­tion effort. Before it became a tem­plate to export to oth­er states:

...
Tax records just uncov­ered by TFN indi­cate that a Hous­ton-based 501(c)(3) non­prof­it called the Niemoller Foun­da­tion, cre­at­ed in May 2005, spent about $1.26 mil­lion in 2005 to fund the activ­i­ties of the Texas Restora­tion Project. The foundation’s list of four “sub­stan­tial con­trib­u­tors” includ­ed three major donors to Rick Perry’s polit­i­cal cam­paigns over the years: San Anto­nio busi­ness­man Jim Leininger, Hous­ton home­builder Bob Per­ry, and East Texas chick­en tycoon Bo Pil­grim. The fourth donor list­ed by the foun­da­tion, beer and wine dis­trib­u­tor Don O’Neal of Col­leyville, has also giv­en small­er amounts to Per­ry cam­paigns.

...

The Rev. Lau­rence White and his wife are two of three direc­tors on the Niemoller Foundation’s gov­ern­ing board. White is also chair­man of the Texas Restora­tion Project. The foun­da­tion report­ed income of about $1.3 mil­lion in 2005 and spent all but about $29,000 in that year. Expen­di­tures cov­ered Texas Restora­tion Project activ­i­ties includ­ing more than $700,000 for the six pas­tors’ events and pay­ments to orga­ni­za­tions tied to the Texas Restora­tion Project.

Oth­er ties between the Per­ry cam­paign and the Niemoller Foundation/Texas Restora­tion Project include the fol­low­ing:

* The Niemoller Foundation’s expen­di­tures in 2005 includ­ed near­ly $475,000 paid to San Jac­in­to Pub­lic Affairs, an Austin-based firm that orga­nized the Texas Restora­tion Project’s events. The firm earned at least $4 mil­lion from work for the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Texas and elec­toral can­di­dates between July 2003 and Novem­ber 2007.
* The Per­ry cam­paign sub­se­quent­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed direct­ly with thou­sands of pas­tors recruit­ed by the Texas Restora­tion Project, sug­gest­ing coor­di­na­tion between the cam­paign and the Restora­tion Project.
* Press reports in 2005 indi­cat­ed at least one of Gov. Perry’s pas­tors’ brief­ing speech­es was con­sid­ered a cam­paign event, with the Per­ry cam­paign releas­ing the tran­script of his speech. (“Per­ry mobi­lizes evan­gel­i­cals as gov’s race heats up,” Matt Cur­ry, Asso­ci­at­ed Press, June 11, 2005)
* The Niemoller Foun­da­tion doled out $200,000 to Plano-based Free Mar­ket Foun­da­tion and San Anto­nio-based Jus­tice at the Gates in 2005. The two groups helped recruit pas­tors to Texas Restora­tion Project events. Free Mar­ket Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent Kel­ly Shack­elford and Jus­tice at the Gate direc­tor Susan Wed­ding­ton served on Gov. Perry’s reelec­tion steer­ing com­mit­tee.
* Days before the guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion in Novem­ber 2006, the Texas Restora­tion Project sent e‑mails to pas­tors on its mail­ing list, encour­ag­ing them to par­tic­i­pate in a statewide con­fer­ence call (which took place the fol­low­ing week) to “dis­cuss what we can do this elec­tion cycle to moti­vate our pews to vote their val­ues.” Shack­elford and David Bar­ton, who until June 2006 had served as vice chair of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty, were among the orga­niz­ers and promi­nent speak­ers on the call.
...

And what hap­pened to the TFN’s calls for the IRS to revoke the Niemoller Foun­da­tion’s tax-exempt sta­tus? The IRS ruled in the Niemoller Foun­da­tion’s favor in 2009. That’s also part of the con­text of the broad­er Amer­i­can Renew­al Project active today. This church-focused get-out-the-vote mod­el may have start­ed as a Rick Per­ry re-elec­tion effort but it was the kind of mod­el these theocrats were eager to export to one state after anoth­er. Which is exact­ly what they’ve done, thanks, in part to the IRS’s unwill­ing­ness to address this bla­tant abuse of tax exempt non-prof­it sta­tus. But also thanks to the seem­ing­ly end­less financ­ing finances from peo­ple with more mon­ey than God and plans to reshape soci­ety to ensure they get even more.

Oh look, the CNP had anoth­er group exposed. This time it was ProP­ub­li­ca, report­ing on a new domin­ion­ist mega-donor orga­niz­ing enti­ty: The Zik­lag group. It’s anoth­er 501(c)(3) tax-exempt ‘char­i­ty’ that in real­i­ty exists to help Repub­li­cans win elec­tions. As the founder of the group, Ken Eldred, puts it, he want­ed to want­ed to cre­ate a donor net­work like the one cre­at­ed by Charles and David Koch but for Chris­tians. Real­ly wealthy Chris­tians. Aspir­ing mem­bers need a net worth of $25 mil­lion to even apply. And if they aren’t Domin­ion­ist evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians they prob­a­bly aren’t going to want to apply any­way. The Zik­lag group is like the Koch net­work but specif­i­cal­ly for Domin­ion­ists.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen reports on a ‘Zik­lag’ domin­ion­ist ini­tia­tive in recent years. As we’ve seen, Eldred also found­ed Unit­ed in Pur­pose, an orga­ni­za­tion that appears to large­ly exist to pro­mote domin­ion­ist projects. Recall how Unit­ed in Pur­pose’s for­mer direc­tor, CNP Mem­ber Bill Dal­las, co-orga­nized the big gath­er­ing of evan­gel­i­cals in New York City in June of 2016 to effec­tive­ly give their bless­ings to the then-nom­i­nat­ed Don­ald Trump. Then, in Feb­ru­ary of 2020, Eldred played a key role in orga­niz­ingthe for­mu­la­tion of CNP plans to deal with the results of the 2020 elec­tion in the event of an pop­u­lar or elec­toral vote loss. They devel­oped a three-pronged strat­e­gy: The first prong was an expan­sion of the use of vot­er data to turn out the GOP vote and sup­press the Demo­c­ra­t­ic vote. The sec­ond was to mobi­lize sup­port­ers in swing states to ignite Tea Par­ty-like protests against COVID lock­downs. The third was find­ing physi­cians will­ing to pub­licly dis­miss the dan­gers of COVID in a media blitz. Unit­ed in Pur­pose called the cam­paign “Oper­a­tion Zik­lag”.

We’ve also seen Eldred’s Unit­ed in Pur­pose show in rela­tion to a num­ber of oth­er key CNP orga­niz­ers, like Ralph Reed and Gin­ni Thomas. For exam­ple, Unit­ed in Pur­pose part­ners with Ralph Reed’s Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion in GOTV efforts. And then there’s the fact that Gin­ni Thomas start­ed emcee­ing an annu­al Impact Awards awards cer­e­mo­ny cel­e­brat­ing some of the best-known Trump allies, put on in con­junc­tion with Unit­ed in Pur­pose. Plus, when Gin­ni Thomas tried to per­suade state leg­is­la­tors in her efforts to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion results uti­liz­ing the web­site everylegalvote.com to reach out to the leg­is­la­tors, she was using a web­site built by Unit­ed in Pur­pose. And then there’s the fact that Unit­ed in Pur­pose’s board mem­bers include CNP exec­u­tive direc­tor Bob McEwen and has a net­work of allies and clients that include the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ciate, the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, and Reed’s Faith & Free­dom Coali­tion. And as we’ll see in the fol­low­ing ProP­ub­li­ca report, it was CNP mem­ber Char­lie Kirk who was invit­ed to the 2023 Zik­lag gath­er­ing where he made the pitch that Zik­lag was the counter to George Soros and oth­er lib­er­al bil­lion­aires. Kirk, McEwen, Reed, and Thomas all very active CNP orga­niz­ers, which is what Unit­ed in Pur­pose appears to be designed to facil­i­tate. Inter­est­ing­ly, Eldred, the osten­si­ble leader of the group, stands out for not show­ing up on the leaked CNP mem­bers lists. Almost every­one else involved with this sto­ry is a CNP mem­ber.

The group appears to made copi­ous use of the ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ domin­ion­ist ter­mi­nol­o­gy. The chair of the ‘edu­ca­tion moun­tain’ is CNP mem­ber Peter Bohlinger. As we’re going to see, whip­ping up hys­ter­ics over edu­ca­tion is one of the prongs in the groups three-pronged strat­e­gy for 2024. Specif­i­cal­ly, whip­ping up hys­ter­ics over trans­gen­der chil­dren. That ini­tia­tive is dubbed “Watch­tow­er”, along with the “Check­mate” prong — focused on ‘elec­tion integri­ty’ efforts — and the “Steeple­chase” prong ded­i­cat­ed to polit­i­cal­ly mobi­liz­ing con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tors. While there’s no indi­ca­tion David Lane’s Amer­i­can Renew­al Project is involved with the Steeple­chase efforts, it’s hard not to notice the enor­mous over­lap.

As we should prob­a­bly expect, the ‘Check­mate’ ini­tia­tive cen­ters around anoth­er major CNP fig­ure: Cle­ta Mitchell. As we’ve seen, it was Mitchell who played a key orga­niz­ing role in the CNP efforts to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion, cul­mi­nat­ing in the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. An insur­rec­tion with the CNP’s fin­ger­prints all over it. Notably, the sup­port from Zik­lag for Mitchell appears to have been chan­neled through a $600,000 dona­tion in 2022 to the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute (CPI). Recall how the CPI serves as a kind of CNP orga­ni­za­tion­al moth­er­ship, spin­ning off all sorts of new groups and deeply involved with the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot. It’s a reminder that, while this Zik­lag Group is por­trayed as a kind of inde­pen­dent domin­ion­ist orga­niz­ing enti­ty, it’s real­ly just anoth­er CNP front group. Albeit one that is more explic­it­ly ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ ori­ent­ed than usu­al.

Fit­ting­ly, it sounds like one of the lead­ing fig­ures in the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of the Sev­en Moun­tains man­date, Lance Wall­nau, is also play­ing a lead­ing role in this Zik­lag Group. In 2013, Wall­nau co-authored the book Invad­ing Baby­lon: The 7 Moun­tain Man­date. And as we also saw, Wall­nau was push­ing the idea that Don­ald Trump is a God-ordained change agent anal­o­gous to the Bib­li­cal fig­ure King Cyrus in the first year of Trump’s pres­i­den­cy. Wall­nau sits on the board of the Truth and Lib­er­ty Coali­tion, along­side David Bar­ton. The group tar­gets pub­lic schools and col­lab­o­rates with the CNP’s Moms for Lib­er­ty. In March 2022, Wall­nau bragged that “we” had “flood­ed” South­lake, Texas with “one thou­sand peo­ple” who “took over the school boards… the city coun­cil… the mayor’s office.” He added that, “The media doesn’t know it because we nev­er said it was a church ini­tia­tive. We called it a com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tive.”

And yes, the Zik­lag Group claims to be a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-par­ti­san char­i­ty despite hav­ing three major ini­tia­tives focused on par­ti­san elec­tion results. As mul­ti­ple tax experts tell ProP­ub­li­ca, this appears to be a gross mis­rep­re­se­n­a­tion for an enti­ty blant­ly engaged in par­ti­san orga­niz­ing. But as we’ve also seen, trolling the IRS with bla­tant­ly fraud­u­lent claims of non-par­ti­san­ship is a long-stand­ing pas­time of this domin­ion­ist net­work. As the ProP­ub­lic report points out, while con­fi­den­tial donor net­works reg­u­lar­ly chan­nel hun­dreds of mil­lionos of dol­lars into polit­i­cal and char­i­ta­ble groups — like the lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy Alliance to the Koch-affil­i­at­ed Stand Togeth­er orga­ni­za­tion — those groups don’t claim to be 501(c)(3) char­i­ties like this Zik­lag is claim­ing. As experts describe, Zik­lag appears to be the first coor­di­nat­ed effort to get wealthy donors to fund an overt­ly Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist agen­da. This is also a good time to recall how two of the key enti­ties back­ing the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project — the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion and the Niemoller Foun­da­tion — bothclaim to be and 501(c)(3) char­i­ties. In oth­er words, Zik­lag isn’t the first domin­ion­ist 501(c)(3). But it does appear to be nov­el in its focus on mega-donors-only for domin­ion­ist orga­niz­ing.

So that’s all part of the back­ground of this seem­ing­ly ‘new’ domin­ion­ist net­work ProP­ub­li­ca report­ed on last month. And in a tech­ni­cal sense it is rel­a­tive­ly new. Or new-ish. And yet, it’s also obvi­ous­ly just one more enti­ty in this same old CNP domin­ion­ist net­work that has been accru­ing pow­er, and ambi­tion, for decades. For char­i­ty, of course:

ProP­ub­li­ca

Inside Zik­lag, the Secret Orga­ni­za­tion of Wealthy Chris­tians Try­ing to Sway the Elec­tion and Change the Coun­try

The lit­tle-known char­i­ty is backed by famous con­ser­v­a­tive donors, includ­ing the fam­i­lies behind Hob­by Lob­by and Uline. It’s spend­ing mil­lions to make a big polit­i­cal push for this elec­tion — but it may be vio­lat­ing the law.

by Andy Kroll, ProP­ub­li­ca, and Nick Surgey, Doc­u­ment­ed
July 13, 5 a.m. EDT

A net­work of ultra­wealthy Chris­t­ian donors is spend­ing near­ly $12 mil­lion to mobi­lize Repub­li­can-lean­ing vot­ers and purge more than a mil­lion peo­ple from the rolls in key swing states, aim­ing to tilt the 2024 elec­tion in favor of for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

These pre­vi­ous­ly unre­port­ed plans are the work of a group named Zik­lag, a lit­tle-known char­i­ty whose donors have includ­ed some of the wealth­i­est con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies in the nation, includ­ing the bil­lion­aire Uih­lein fam­i­ly, who made a for­tune in office sup­plies, the Greens, who run Hob­by Lob­by, and the Wallers, who own the Jock­ey appar­el cor­po­ra­tion. Recip­i­ents of Ziklag’s largesse include Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, which is the Chris­t­ian legal group that led the over­turn­ing of Roe v. Wade, plus the nation­al pro-Trump group Turn­ing Point USA and a con­stel­la­tion of right-of-cen­ter advo­ca­cy groups.

ProP­ub­li­ca and Doc­u­ment­ed obtained thou­sands of Ziklag’s mem­bers-only email newslet­ters, inter­nal videos, strat­e­gy doc­u­ments and fundrais­ing pitch­es, none of which has been pre­vi­ous­ly made pub­lic. They reveal the group’s 2024 plans and its long-term goal to under­pin every major sphere of influ­ence in Amer­i­can soci­ety with Chris­tian­i­ty. In the Bible, the city of Zik­lag was where David and his sol­diers found refuge dur­ing their war with King Saul.

...

Ziklag’s 2024 agen­da reads like the work of a polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion. It plans to pour mon­ey into mobi­liz­ing vot­ers in Ari­zona who are “sym­pa­thet­ic to Repub­li­cans” in order to secure “10,640 addi­tion­al unique votes” — almost the exact mar­gin of Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s win there in 2020. The group also intends to use con­tro­ver­sial AI soft­ware to enable mass chal­lenges to the eli­gi­bil­i­ty of hun­dreds of thou­sands of vot­ers in com­pet­i­tive states.

In a record­ing of a 2023 inter­nal strat­e­gy dis­cus­sion, a Zik­lag offi­cial stressed that the objec­tive was the same in oth­er swing states. “The goal is to win,” the offi­cial said. “If 75,000 peo­ple wins the White House, then how do we get 150,000 peo­ple so we make sure we win?”

Accord­ing to the Zik­lag files, the group has divid­ed its 2024 activ­i­ties into three dif­fer­ent oper­a­tions tar­get­ing vot­ers in bat­tle­ground states: Check­mate, focused on fund­ing so-called elec­tion integri­ty groups; Steeple­chase, con­cen­trat­ed on using church­es and pas­tors to get out the vote; and Watch­tow­er, aimed at gal­va­niz­ing vot­ers around the issues of “parental rights” and oppo­si­tion to trans­gen­der rights and poli­cies sup­port­ing health care for trans peo­ple.

...

But Zik­lag is not a polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion: It is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt char­i­ty, the same legal des­ig­na­tion as the Unit­ed Way or Boys and Girls Club. Such orga­ni­za­tions do not have to pub­licly dis­close their fun­ders, and dona­tions are tax deductible. In exchange, they are “absolute­ly pro­hib­it­ed from direct­ly or indi­rect­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in, or inter­ven­ing in, any polit­i­cal cam­paign on behalf of (or in oppo­si­tion to) any can­di­date for elec­tive pub­lic office,”accord­ing to the IRS.

ProP­ub­li­ca and Doc­u­ment­ed pre­sent­ed the find­ings of their inves­ti­ga­tion to six non­par­ti­san lawyers and legal experts. All expressed con­cern that Zik­lag was test­ing or vio­lat­ing the law.

The report­ing by ProP­ub­li­ca and Doc­u­ment­ed “casts seri­ous doubt on this organization’s sta­tus as a 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tion,” said Roger Col­in­vaux, a pro­fes­sor at Catholic University’s Colum­bus School of Law.

“I think it’s across the line with­out a ques­tion,” said Lloyd Hitoshi May­er, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame law pro­fes­sor.

Zik­lag offi­cials did not respond to a detailed list of ques­tions. Mar­tin Nuss­baum, an attor­ney who said he was the group’s gen­er­al coun­sel, said in a writ­ten response that “some of the state­ments in your email are cor­rect. Oth­ers are not,” but he then did not respond to a request to spec­i­fy what was erro­neous. The group is seek­ing to “align” the cul­ture “with Bib­li­cal val­ues and the Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion, and that they will serve the com­mon good,” he wrote. Using the offi­cial tax name for Zik­lag, he wrote that “USATrans­Form does not endorse can­di­dates for pub­lic office.” He declined to com­ment on the group’s mem­bers.

There are no bright lines or mag­ic words that the IRS might look for when it inves­ti­gates a char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion for engag­ing in polit­i­cal inter­ven­tion, said May­er. Instead, the agency exam­ines the facts and cir­cum­stances of a group’s activ­i­ties and makes a con­clu­sion about whether the group vio­lat­ed the law.

The biggest risk for char­i­ties that inter­vene in polit­i­cal cam­paigns, May­er said, is loss of their tax-exempt sta­tus. Donors’ abil­i­ty to deduct their dona­tions can be a major sell, not to men­tion it can cre­ate “a halo effect” for the group, May­er added.

“They may be able to get more mon­ey this way,” he said, adding, “It boils down to tax eva­sion at the end of the day.”

“Domin­ion Over the Sev­en Moun­tains”

Zik­lag has large­ly escaped scruti­ny until now. The group describes itself as a “pri­vate, con­fi­den­tial, invi­ta­tion-only com­mu­ni­ty of high-net-worth Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies.”

Accord­ing to inter­nal doc­u­ments, it boasts more than 125 mem­bers that include busi­ness exec­u­tives, pas­tors, media lead­ers and oth­er promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians. Poten­tial new mem­bers, one doc­u­ment says, should have a “con­cern for cul­ture” demon­strat­ed by past dona­tions to faith-based or polit­i­cal caus­es, as well as a net worth of $25 mil­lion or more. None of the donors respond­ed to requests for com­ment.

Tax records show rapid growth in the group’s finances in recent years. Its annu­al rev­enue climbed from $1.3 mil­lion in 2018 to $6 mil­lion in 2019 and near­ly $12 mil­lion in 2022, which is the lat­est fil­ing avail­able.

The group’s spend­ing is not on the scale of major con­ser­v­a­tive fun­ders such as Miri­am Adel­son or Barre Seid, the elec­tron­ics mag­nate who gave $1.6 bil­lion to a group led by con­ser­v­a­tive legal activist Leonard Leo. But its fund­ing and strat­e­gy rep­re­sent one of the clear­est links yet between the Chris­t­ian right and the “elec­tion integri­ty” move­ment fueled by Trump’s base­less claims about vot­ing fraud. Even sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars fund­ing mass chal­lenges to vot­ers in swing coun­ties can make an impact, legal and elec­tion experts say.

Zik­lag was the brain­child of a Sil­i­con Val­ley entre­pre­neur named Ken Eldred. It emerged from a pre­vi­ous orga­ni­za­tion found­ed by Eldred called Unit­ed In Pur­pose, which aimed to get more Chris­tians active in the civic are­na, accord­ing to Bill Dal­las, the group’s for­mer direc­tor. Unit­ed In Pur­pose gen­er­at­ed atten­tion in June 2016 when it orga­nized a major meet­ing between then-can­di­date Trump and hun­dreds of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers.

After Trump was elect­ed in 2016, Eldred had an idea, accord­ing to Dal­las. “He says, ‘I want all the wealthy Chris­t­ian peo­ple to come togeth­er,’” Dal­las recalled in an inter­view. Eldred told Dal­las that he want­ed to cre­ate a donor net­work like the one cre­at­ed by Charles and David Koch but for Chris­tians. He pro­posed nam­ing it David’s Mighty Men, Dal­las said. Female mem­bers balked. Dal­las found the pas­sage in Chron­i­cles that ref­er­ences David’s sol­diers and read that they met in the city of Zik­lag, and so they chose the name Zik­lag.

The group’s stature grew after Trump took office. Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence appeared at a Zik­lag event, as did for­mer Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment Sec­re­tary Ben Car­son, Sen. Ted Cruz, then-Rep. Mark Mead­ows and oth­er mem­bers of Con­gress. In its pri­vate newslet­ter, Zik­lag claims that a coali­tion of groups it assem­bled played “a huge­ly sig­nif­i­cant role in the selec­tion, hear­ings and con­fir­ma­tion process” of Amy Coney Bar­rett for a Supreme Court seat in late 2020.

Con­fi­den­tial donor net­works reg­u­lar­ly invest hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars into polit­i­cal and char­i­ta­ble groups, from the lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy Alliance to the Koch-affil­i­at­ed Stand Togeth­er orga­ni­za­tion on the right. But unlike Zik­lag, nei­ther of those orga­ni­za­tions is legal­ly set up as a true char­i­ty.

Zik­lag appears to be the first coor­di­nat­ed effort to get wealthy donors to fund an overt­ly Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist agen­da, accord­ing to his­to­ri­ans, legal experts and oth­er peo­ple famil­iar with the group. “It shows that this idea isn’t being dis­missed as fringe in the way that it might have been in the past,” said Mary Ziegler, a legal his­to­ri­an and Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis law pro­fes­sor.

...

One the­ol­o­gy pro­mot­ed by Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist lead­ers is the Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date. Each moun­tain rep­re­sents a major indus­try or a sphere of pub­lic life: arts and media, busi­ness, church, edu­ca­tion, fam­i­ly, gov­ern­ment, and sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. Ziklag’s goal, the doc­u­ments say, is to “take domin­ion over the Sev­en Moun­tains,” fund­ing Chris­t­ian projects or installing devout Chris­tians in lead­er­ship posi­tions to reshape each moun­tain in a god­ly way.

To address their con­cerns about edu­ca­tion, Ziklag’s lead­ers and allies have focused on the pub­lic-school sys­tem. In a 2021 Zik­lag meet­ing, Ziklag’s edu­ca­tion moun­tain chair, Peter Bohlinger, said that Ziklag’s goal “is to take down the edu­ca­tion sys­tem as we know it today.” The pro­duc­ers of the film “Sound of Free­dom,” fea­tur­ing Jim Caviezel as an anti-sex-traf­fick­ing activist, screened an ear­ly cut of the film at a Zik­lag con­fer­ence and asked for funds, accord­ing to Dal­las.

The Sev­en Moun­tains the­ol­o­gy sig­nals a break from Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ists such as Jer­ry Fal­well Sr. and Pat Robert­son. In the 1980s and ’90s, Falwell’s Moral Major­i­ty focused on work­ing with­in the demo­c­ra­t­ic process to mobi­lize evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers and elect politi­cians with a Chris­t­ian world­view.

The Sev­en Moun­tains the­ol­o­gy embraces a dif­fer­ent, less demo­c­ra­t­ic approach to gain­ing pow­er. “If the Moral Major­i­ty is about gal­va­niz­ing the vot­ers, the Sev­en Moun­tains is a rev­o­lu­tion­ary mod­el: You need to con­quer these moun­tains and let change flow down from the top,” said Matthew Tay­lor, a senior schol­ar at the Insti­tute for Islam­ic, Chris­t­ian and Jew­ish Stud­ies and an expert on Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. “It’s an out­lined pro­gram for Chris­t­ian suprema­cy.”

“The Amor­phous, Tumul­tuous Wild West”

The Chris­t­ian right has had com­pelling spokes­peo­ple and fierce com­mit­ment to its caus­es, whether they were end­ing abor­tion rights, allow­ing prayer in schools or dis­play­ing the Ten Com­mand­ments out­side of pub­lic build­ings. What the move­ment has often lacked, its lead­ers argue, is suf­fi­cient fund­ing.

...

Speak­ing late last year to an invi­ta­tion-only gath­er­ing of Zik­lag­gers, as mem­bers are known, Char­lie Kirk, who leads the pro-Trump Turn­ing Point USA orga­ni­za­tion, named left-lean­ing phil­an­thropists who were, in his view, fund­ing the destruc­tion of the nation: MacKen­zie Scott, ex-wife of Ama­zon founder Jeff Bezos; bil­lion­aire investor and lib­er­al phil­an­thropist George Soros; and the two founders of Google, Lar­ry Page and Sergey Brin.

“Why are sec­u­lar peo­ple giv­ing more gen­er­ous­ly than Chris­tians?” Kirk asked, accord­ing to a record­ing of his remarks. “It would be a tragedy,” he added, “if peo­ple who hate life, hate our coun­try, hate beau­ty and hate God want­ed it more than us.”

“Zik­lag is the place,” Kirk told the donors. “Zik­lag is the counter.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, Pence, in a 2021 appear­ance at a pri­vate Zik­lag event, praised the group for its role in “chang­ing lives, and it’s advanced the cause, it’s advanced the king­dom.”

A dri­ving force behind Ziklag’s efforts is Lance Wall­nau, a promi­nent Chris­t­ian evan­ge­list and influ­encer based in Texas who is described by Zik­lag as a “Sev­en Moun­tains vision­ary & advi­sor.” The fiery preach­er is one of the most influ­en­tial fig­ures on the Chris­t­ian right, experts say, a bridge between Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism and Trump. He was one of the ear­li­est evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to endorse Trump in 2015 and lat­er pub­lished a book titled “God’s Chaos Can­di­date: Don­ald J. Trump and the Amer­i­can Unrav­el­ing.” More than 1 mil­lion peo­ple fol­low him on Face­book. He doesn’t try to hide his views: “Yes, I am a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist,” he said dur­ing one of his livestreams in 2021. (Wall­nau did not respond to requests for com­ment.)

Wall­nau has remained a Trump ally. He called Trump’s time in office a “spir­i­tu­al war­fare pres­i­den­cy” and pop­u­lar­ized the idea that Trump was a “mod­ern-day Cyrus,” refer­ring to the Per­sian king who defeat­ed the Baby­lo­ni­ans and allowed the Jew­ish peo­ple to return to Jerusalem. Wall­nau has vis­it­ed with Trump at the White House and Trump Tow­er; last Novem­ber, he livestreamed from a black-tie gala at Mar-a-Lago where Trump spoke.

Wall­nau did not come up with the notion that Chris­tians should try to take con­trol of key areas of Amer­i­can soci­ety. But he improved on the idea by intro­duc­ing the con­cept of the sev­en moun­tains and urged Chris­tians to set about con­quer­ing them. The con­cept caught on, said Tay­lor, because it empow­ered Chris­tians with a sense of pur­pose in every sphere of life.

As a preach­er in the inde­pen­dent charis­mat­ic tra­di­tion, a fast-grow­ing off­shoot of Pen­te­costal­ism that is unaf­fil­i­at­ed with any major denom­i­na­tion, Wall­nau and his acolytes believe that God speaks to and through mod­ern-day apos­tles and prophets — a ver­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty that Tay­lor, in his forth­com­ing book “The Vio­lent Take It By Force,” describes as “the amor­phous, tumul­tuous Wild West of the mod­ern church.” Wall­nau and his ideas lin­gered at the fringes of Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty for years, until the boost from the Trump pres­i­den­cy.

The Zik­lag files detail not only what Chris­tians should do to con­quer all sev­en moun­tains, but also what their goals will be once they’ve tak­en the sum­mit. For the gov­ern­ment moun­tain, one key doc­u­ment says that “the bib­li­cal role of gov­ern­ment is to pro­mote good and pun­ish evil” and that “the word of God and prayer play a sig­nif­i­cant role in pol­i­cy deci­sions.”

For the arts and enter­tain­ment moun­tain, goals include that 80% of the movies pro­duced be rat­ed G or PG “with a moral sto­ry,” and that many peo­ple who work in the indus­try “oper­ate under a biblical/moral world­view.” The edu­ca­tion sec­tion says that home­school­ing should be a “fun­da­men­tal right” and the gov­ern­ment “must not favor one form of edu­ca­tion over anoth­er.”

Oth­er inter­nal Zik­lag doc­u­ments voice strong oppo­si­tion to same-sex mar­riage and trans­gen­der rights. One reads: “trans­gen­der accep­tance = Final sign before immi­nent col­lapse.”

Head­ing into the 2024 elec­tion year, Zik­lag exec­u­tive direc­tor Drew Hiss warned mem­bers in an inter­nal video that “loom­ing above and beyond those sev­en moun­tains is this evil force that’s been man­i­fest­ing itself.” He described it as “a con­trol­ling, evil, dia­bol­i­cal pres­ence, real­ly, with tyran­ny in mind.” That pres­ence was con­cen­trat­ed in the gov­ern­ment moun­tain, he said. If Zik­lag­gers want­ed to save their coun­try from “the pow­ers of dark­ness,” they need­ed to focus their ener­gies on that gov­ern­ment moun­tain or else none of their work in any oth­er area would suc­ceed.

“Oper­a­tion Check­mate”

In the fall of 2023, Wall­nau sat in a gray arm­chair in his TV stu­dio. A large TV screen behind him flashed a sin­gle word: “ZIKLAG.”

“You almost hate to put it out this clear­ly,” he said as he detailed Ziklag’s elec­toral strat­e­gy, “because if some­body else gets ahold of this, they’ll freak out.”

He was joined on set by Hiss, who had just become the group’s new day-to-day leader. The two men were there to record a spe­cial mes­sage to Zik­lag mem­bers that laid out the group’s ambi­tious plans for the upcom­ing elec­tion year.

The forces arrayed against Chris­tians were many, accord­ing to the con­fi­den­tial video. They were locked in a “spir­i­tu­al bat­tle,” Hiss said, against Democ­rats who were a “rad­i­cal left Marx­ist force.” Biden, Wall­nau said, was a senile old man and “an emp­ty suit with an agen­da that’s writ­ten and man­aged by some­body else.”

In the files, Zik­lag says it plans to give out near­ly $12 mil­lion to a con­stel­la­tion of groups work­ing on the ground to shift the 2024 elec­torate in favor of Trump and oth­er Repub­li­cans.

A promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive get­ting mon­ey from Zik­lag is Cle­ta Mitchell, a lawyer and Trump ally who joined the the Jan­u­ary 2021 phone call when then-Pres­i­dent Trump asked Georgia’s sec­re­tary of state to “find” enough votes to flip Geor­gia in Trump’s favor.

Mitchell now leads a net­work of “elec­tion integri­ty” coali­tions in swing states that have spent the last three years advo­cat­ing for changes to vot­ing rules and how elec­tions are run. Accord­ing to one inter­nal newslet­ter, Zik­lag was an ear­ly fun­der of Mitchell’s post-2020 “elec­tion integri­ty” activism, which vot­ing-rights experts have crit­i­cized for stok­ing unfound­ed fears about vot­er fraud and seek­ing to unfair­ly remove peo­ple from vot­ing rolls. In 2022, Zik­lag donat­ed $600,000 to the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute, which in turn funds Mitchell’s elec­tion-integri­ty work. Inter­nal Zik­lag doc­u­ments show that it pro­vid­ed fund­ing to enable Mitchell to set up elec­tion integri­ty infra­struc­ture in Flori­da, North Car­oli­na and Wis­con­sin.

Now Mitchell is pro­mot­ing a tool called EagleAI, which has claimed to use arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to auto­mate and speed up the process of chal­leng­ing inel­i­gi­ble vot­ers. EagleAI is already being used to mount mass chal­lenges to the eli­gi­bil­i­ty of hun­dreds of thou­sands of vot­ers in com­pet­i­tive states, and, with Ziklag’s help, the group plans to ramp up those efforts.

Accord­ing to an inter­nal video, Zik­lag plans to invest $800,000 in “EagleAI’s clean the rolls project,” which would be one of the largest known dona­tions to the group.

Zik­lag lists two key objec­tives for Oper­a­tion Check­mate: “Secure 10,640 addi­tion­al unique votes in Ari­zona (mir­ror­ing the 2020 mar­gin of 10,447 votes), and remove up to one mil­lion inel­i­gi­ble reg­is­tra­tions and around 280,000 inel­i­gi­ble vot­ers in Ari­zona, Neva­da, Geor­gia, and Wis­con­sin.”

In a record­ing of an inter­nal Zoom call, Ziklag’s Mark Bour­geois stressed the elec­toral val­ue of tar­get­ing Ari­zona. “I care about Mari­co­pa Coun­ty,” Bour­geois said at one point, refer­ring to Arizona’s largest coun­ty, which Biden won four years ago. “That’s how we win.”

For Oper­a­tion Watch­tow­er, Wall­nau explained in a mem­bers-only video that trans­gen­der pol­i­cy was a “wedge issue” that could be deci­sive in turn­ing out vot­ers tired of hear­ing about Trump.

The left had won the bat­tle over the “homo­sex­u­al issue,” Wall­nau said. “But on trans­gen­derism, there’s a prob­lem and they know it.” He con­tin­ued: “They’re gonna wan­na talk about Trump, Trump, Trump. … Mean­while, if we talk about ‘It’s not about Trump. It’s about par­ents and their chil­dren, and the state is a threat,’” that could be the “tar­get on the fore­head of Goliath.”

The Zik­lag files describe tac­tics the group plans to use around parental rights — poli­cies that make it eas­i­er for par­ents to con­trol what’s taught in pub­lic schools — to turn out con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ers. In a fundrais­ing video, the group says it plans to under­write a “mes­sag­ing and data lab” focused on parental rights that will sup­ply “win­ning mes­sag­ing to all our part­ner groups to cre­ate uni­fied focus among all on the right.” The goal, the video says, is to make parental rights “the dif­fer­ence-mak­er in the 2024 elec­tion.”

Accord­ing to Wall­nau, Zik­lag also plans to fund bal­lot ini­tia­tives in sev­en key states — Ari­zona, Col­orado, Flori­da, Michi­gan, Mon­tana, Neva­da and Ohio — that take aim at the trans­gen­der com­mu­ni­ty by seek­ing to ban “gen­i­tal muti­la­tion.” The sev­en states tar­get­ed are either pres­i­den­tial bat­tle­grounds or have com­pet­i­tive U.S. Sen­ate races. None of the ini­tia­tives is on a state bal­lot yet.

...

The last prong of Ziklag’s 2024 strat­e­gy is Oper­a­tion Steeple­chase, which urges con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tors to mobi­lize their con­gre­gants to vote in this year’s elec­tion. This project will work in coor­di­na­tion with sev­er­al promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive groups that sup­port for­mer pres­i­dent Trump’s reelec­tion, such as Turn­ing Point USA’s faith-based group, the Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion run by con­ser­v­a­tive oper­a­tive Ralph Reed and the Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, one of sev­er­al groups close­ly allied with Trump.

Zik­lag says in a 2023 inter­nal video that it and its allies will “coor­di­nate exten­sive pas­tor and church out­reach through pas­tor sum­mits, church-focused mes­sag­ing and events and the cre­ation of pas­tor resources.” As preach­er and activist John Amanchuk­wu said at a Zik­lag event, “We need a church that’s will­ing to do any­thing and every­thing to get to the point where we reclaim that which was stolen from us.”

Six tax experts reviewed the elec­tion-relat­ed strat­e­gy dis­cus­sions and tac­tics report­ed in this sto­ry. All of them said the activ­i­ties test­ed or ran afoul of the law gov­ern­ing 501(c)(3) char­i­ties. The IRS and the Texas attor­ney gen­er­al, which would over­see the South­lake, Texas, char­i­ty, did not respond to ques­tions.

While not all of its polit­i­cal efforts appeared to be clear-cut vio­la­tions, the experts said, oth­ers may be: The stat­ed plan to mobi­lize vot­ers “sym­pa­thet­ic to Repub­li­cans,” Zik­lag offi­cials open­ly dis­cussing the goal to win the elec­tion, and Wallnau’s call to fund bal­lot ini­tia­tives that would “deliv­er swing states” while at the same time voic­ing explic­it crit­i­cism of Biden all raised red flags, the experts said.

“I am trou­bled about a tax-exempt char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion that’s set up and its main oper­a­tion seems to be to get peo­ple to win office,” said Phil Hack­ney, a pro­fes­sor of law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh and an expert on tax-exempt orga­ni­za­tions.

“They’re plan­ning an elec­tion effort,” said Mar­cus Owens, a tax lawyer at Loeb and Loeb and a for­mer direc­tor of the IRS’ exempt orga­ni­za­tions divi­sion. “That’s not a 501(c)(3) activ­i­ty.”

———–

“Inside Zik­lag, the Secret Orga­ni­za­tion of Wealthy Chris­tians Try­ing to Sway the Elec­tion and Change the Coun­try” by Andy Kroll and Nick Surgey; ProP­ub­li­ca; 07/13/2024

“Accord­ing to the Zik­lag files, the group has divid­ed its 2024 activ­i­ties into three dif­fer­ent oper­a­tions tar­get­ing vot­ers in bat­tle­ground states: Check­mate, focused on fund­ing so-called elec­tion integri­ty groups; Steeple­chase, con­cen­trat­ed on using church­es and pas­tors to get out the vote; and Watch­tow­er, aimed at gal­va­niz­ing vot­ers around the issues of “parental rights” and oppo­si­tion to trans­gen­der rights and poli­cies sup­port­ing health care for trans peo­ple.”

A triple-pronged strat­e­gy for win­ning elec­tions in 2024: Watch­tow­er, Check­mate, and Steeple­chase. In oth­er words, mon­ster­ing trans­gen­der kids, deny­ing elec­tions in the same man­ner that result­ed in the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion, and engag­ing in Amer­i­can Renew­al Project-style ‘pas­tor out­reach’ efforts. And it’s about as unpop­ulist a move­ment as one can imag­ine: only Domion­in­sts ded­i­cat­ed to the “Sev­en Moun­tains” Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist cap­ture of soci­ety, and worth at east $25 mil­lion, need apply. So of course we’re see­ing CNP mem­ber Peter Bohlinger serv­ing as Zik­lag’s ‘edu­ca­tion moun­tain’ chair. Zik­lag has all the hall­marks of a clas­sic CNP oper­a­tion. And while it’s fair to char­ac­ter­ize the ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ the­ol­o­gy as a ‘break’ from the kind of Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ism as a ‘break’, rhetor­i­cal­ly speak­ing, from the kind of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism ped­dled by CNP founders like Pat Robert­son and Jer­ry Fall­well in the 1980s, as Sarah Pos­ner has point­ed out, the under­ly­ing theo­crat­ic ambi­tions aren’t real­ly dif­fer­ent. ‘Sev­en Moun­tains’ is more of drop­ping of the mask for the same move­ment than a real change in ambi­tions:

...
Zik­lag has large­ly escaped scruti­ny until now. The group describes itself as a “pri­vate, con­fi­den­tial, invi­ta­tion-only com­mu­ni­ty of high-net-worth Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies.”

Accord­ing to inter­nal doc­u­ments, it boasts more than 125 mem­bers that include busi­ness exec­u­tives, pas­tors, media lead­ers and oth­er promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians. Poten­tial new mem­bers, one doc­u­ment says, should have a “con­cern for cul­ture” demon­strat­ed by past dona­tions to faith-based or polit­i­cal caus­es, as well as a net worth of $25 mil­lion or more. None of the donors respond­ed to requests for com­ment.

Tax records show rapid growth in the group’s finances in recent years. Its annu­al rev­enue climbed from $1.3 mil­lion in 2018 to $6 mil­lion in 2019 and near­ly $12 mil­lion in 2022, which is the lat­est fil­ing avail­able.

The group’s spend­ing is not on the scale of major con­ser­v­a­tive fun­ders such as Miri­am Adel­son or Barre Seid, the elec­tron­ics mag­nate who gave $1.6 bil­lion to a group led by con­ser­v­a­tive legal activist Leonard Leo. But its fund­ing and strat­e­gy rep­re­sent one of the clear­est links yet between the Chris­t­ian right and the “elec­tion integri­ty” move­ment fueled by Trump’s base­less claims about vot­ing fraud. Even sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars fund­ing mass chal­lenges to vot­ers in swing coun­ties can make an impact, legal and elec­tion experts say.

...

One the­ol­o­gy pro­mot­ed by Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist lead­ers is the Sev­en Moun­tain Man­date. Each moun­tain rep­re­sents a major indus­try or a sphere of pub­lic life: arts and media, busi­ness, church, edu­ca­tion, fam­i­ly, gov­ern­ment, and sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. Ziklag’s goal, the doc­u­ments say, is to “take domin­ion over the Sev­en Moun­tains,” fund­ing Chris­t­ian projects or installing devout Chris­tians in lead­er­ship posi­tions to reshape each moun­tain in a god­ly way.

To address their con­cerns about edu­ca­tion, Ziklag’s lead­ers and allies have focused on the pub­lic-school sys­tem. In a 2021 Zik­lag meet­ing, Ziklag’s edu­ca­tion moun­tain chair, Peter Bohlinger, said that Ziklag’s goal “is to take down the edu­ca­tion sys­tem as we know it today.” The pro­duc­ers of the film “Sound of Free­dom,” fea­tur­ing Jim Caviezel as an anti-sex-traf­fick­ing activist, screened an ear­ly cut of the film at a Zik­lag con­fer­ence and asked for funds, accord­ing to Dal­las.

The Sev­en Moun­tains the­ol­o­gy sig­nals a break from Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ists such as Jer­ry Fal­well Sr. and Pat Robert­son. In the 1980s and ’90s, Falwell’s Moral Major­i­ty focused on work­ing with­in the demo­c­ra­t­ic process to mobi­lize evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers and elect politi­cians with a Chris­t­ian world­view.

The Sev­en Moun­tains the­ol­o­gy embraces a dif­fer­ent, less demo­c­ra­t­ic approach to gain­ing pow­er. “If the Moral Major­i­ty is about gal­va­niz­ing the vot­ers, the Sev­en Moun­tains is a rev­o­lu­tion­ary mod­el: You need to con­quer these moun­tains and let change flow down from the top,” said Matthew Tay­lor, a senior schol­ar at the Insti­tute for Islam­ic, Chris­t­ian and Jew­ish Stud­ies and an expert on Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism. “It’s an out­lined pro­gram for Chris­t­ian suprema­cy.”
...

And Bol­hinger being just the first of string of CNP fig­ures run­ning or coor­di­nat­ing with Zik­lag, with for­mer Unit­ed in Pur­pose direc­tor Bill Dal­las being a notable exam­ple. It’s Unit­ed in Pur­pose’s founder, Ken Eldred, who appar­ent­ly found­ed Zik­lag in the spir­it of ‘like the Koch Broth­ers’ influ­ence net­work but just for super-rich Domion­ists’ fol­low­ing Trump’s win in 2016. Recall how it was Unit­ed in Pur­pose’s then-direc­tor and CNP Mem­ber Bill Dal­las who co-orga­nized the big gath­er­ing of evan­gel­i­cals in New York City in June of 2016 to give their bless­ings to the then-nom­i­nat­ed Don­ald Trump. Eldred went on to orga­nize the for­mu­la­tion of CNP plans in Feb­ru­ary of 2020 to deal with the results of the 2020 elec­tion in the event of an pop­u­lar or elec­toral vote loss. They devel­oped a three-pronged strat­e­gy: The first prong was an expan­sion of the use of vot­er data to turn out the GOP vote and sup­press the Demo­c­ra­t­ic vote. The sec­ond was to mobi­lize sup­port­ers in swing states to ignite Tea Par­ty-like protests against COVID lock­downs. The third was find­ing physi­cians will­ing to pub­licly dis­miss the dan­gers of COVID in a media blitz. Unit­ed in Pur­pose called the cam­paign “Oper­a­tion Zik­lag”.

And then there’s all the CNP mem­bers we’ve seen pop up in rela­tion to Unit­ed in Pur­pose activ­i­ties. For exam­ple, Unit­ed in Pur­pose part­ners with Ralph Reed’s Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion in GOTV efforts. Also recall how Gin­ni Thomas start­ed emcee­ing an annu­al Impact Awards awards cer­e­mo­ny cel­e­brat­ing some of the best-known Trump allies, put on in con­junc­tion with Unit­ed in Pur­pose. Plus, when Gin­ni Thomas tried to per­suade state leg­is­la­tors in her efforts to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion results uti­liz­ing the web­site everylegalvote.com to reach out to the leg­is­la­tors, she was using a web­site built by Unit­ed in Pur­pose. And then there’s the fact that Unit­ed in Pur­pose’s board mem­bers include CNP exec­u­tive direc­tor Bob McEwen and has a net­work of allies and clients that include the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ciate, the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, and Reed’s Faith & Free­dom Coali­tion. And as we can see, it was CNP mem­ber Char­lie Kirk who was invit­ed to the 2023 Zik­lag gath­er­ing where he made the pitch that Zik­lag was the counter to George Soros and Google bil­lion­aires. Kirk, McEwen, Reed, and Thomas all very active CNP orga­niz­ers, which is what Unit­ed in Pur­pose appears to be designed to facil­i­tate. It’s anoth­er CNP ini­tia­tive, found­ed by Eldred, who stands outs in this group by not show­ing up on the leaked CNP mem­ber­ship lists:

...
Zik­lag was the brain­child of a Sil­i­con Val­ley entre­pre­neur named Ken Eldred. It emerged from a pre­vi­ous orga­ni­za­tion found­ed by Eldred called Unit­ed In Pur­pose, which aimed to get more Chris­tians active in the civic are­na, accord­ing to Bill Dal­las, the group’s for­mer direc­tor. Unit­ed In Pur­pose gen­er­at­ed atten­tion in June 2016 when it orga­nized a major meet­ing between then-can­di­date Trump and hun­dreds of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers.

After Trump was elect­ed in 2016, Eldred had an idea, accord­ing to Dal­las. “He says, ‘I want all the wealthy Chris­t­ian peo­ple to come togeth­er,’” Dal­las recalled in an inter­view. Eldred told Dal­las that he want­ed to cre­ate a donor net­work like the one cre­at­ed by Charles and David Koch but for Chris­tians. He pro­posed nam­ing it David’s Mighty Men, Dal­las said. Female mem­bers balked. Dal­las found the pas­sage in Chron­i­cles that ref­er­ences David’s sol­diers and read that they met in the city of Zik­lag, and so they chose the name Zik­lag.

The group’s stature grew after Trump took office. Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence appeared at a Zik­lag event, as did for­mer Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment Sec­re­tary Ben Car­son, Sen. Ted Cruz, then-Rep. Mark Mead­ows and oth­er mem­bers of Con­gress. In its pri­vate newslet­ter, Zik­lag claims that a coali­tion of groups it assem­bled played “a huge­ly sig­nif­i­cant role in the selec­tion, hear­ings and con­fir­ma­tion process” of Amy Coney Bar­rett for a Supreme Court seat in late 2020.

...

Speak­ing late last year to an invi­ta­tion-only gath­er­ing of Zik­lag­gers, as mem­bers are known, Char­lie Kirk, who leads the pro-Trump Turn­ing Point USA orga­ni­za­tion, named left-lean­ing phil­an­thropists who were, in his view, fund­ing the destruc­tion of the nation: MacKen­zie Scott, ex-wife of Ama­zon founder Jeff Bezos; bil­lion­aire investor and lib­er­al phil­an­thropist George Soros; and the two founders of Google, Lar­ry Page and Sergey Brin.

“Why are sec­u­lar peo­ple giv­ing more gen­er­ous­ly than Chris­tians?” Kirk asked, accord­ing to a record­ing of his remarks. “It would be a tragedy,” he added, “if peo­ple who hate life, hate our coun­try, hate beau­ty and hate God want­ed it more than us.”

“Zik­lag is the place,” Kirk told the donors. “Zik­lag is the counter.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, Pence, in a 2021 appear­ance at a pri­vate Zik­lag event, praised the group for its role in “chang­ing lives, and it’s advanced the cause, it’s advanced the king­dom...
...

And then we get to /lance Wall­nau, described as as dri­ving force behind the Zik­lag efforts. As we’ve seen, Wall­nau is an NAR leader who has played a big role in pop­u­lar­iz­ing the ‘Sev­en Moun­tains Man­date’ Domin­ion­ist the­ol­o­gy. In 2013, Wall­nau co-authored the book Invad­ing Baby­lon: The 7 Moun­tain Man­date. And as we also saw, Wall­nau was push­ing the idea that Don­ald Trump is a God-ordained change agent anal­o­gous to the Bib­li­cal fig­ure King Cyrus in the first year of Trump’s pres­i­den­cy. Wall­nau sits on the board of the Truth and Lib­er­ty Coali­tion, along­side David Bar­ton. The group tar­gets pub­lic schools and col­lab­o­rates with the CNP’s Moms for Lib­er­ty. In March 2022, Wall­nau bragged that “we” had “flood­ed” South­lake, Texas with “one thou­sand peo­ple” who “took over the school boards… the city coun­cil… the mayor’s office.” He added that, “The media doesn’t know it because we nev­er said it was a church ini­tia­tive. We called it a com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tive.” Wall­nau is a lead­ing domin­ion­ist and Zik­lag is a domin­ion­ist effort, like the most of the CNP does:

...
A dri­ving force behind Ziklag’s efforts is Lance Wall­nau, a promi­nent Chris­t­ian evan­ge­list and influ­encer based in Texas who is described by Zik­lag as a “Sev­en Moun­tains vision­ary & advi­sor.” The fiery preach­er is one of the most influ­en­tial fig­ures on the Chris­t­ian right, experts say, a bridge between Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism and Trump. He was one of the ear­li­est evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to endorse Trump in 2015 and lat­er pub­lished a book titled “God’s Chaos Can­di­date: Don­ald J. Trump and the Amer­i­can Unrav­el­ing.” More than 1 mil­lion peo­ple fol­low him on Face­book. He doesn’t try to hide his views: “Yes, I am a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist,” he said dur­ing one of his livestreams in 2021. (Wall­nau did not respond to requests for com­ment.)

Wall­nau has remained a Trump ally. He called Trump’s time in office a “spir­i­tu­al war­fare pres­i­den­cy” and pop­u­lar­ized the idea that Trump was a “mod­ern-day Cyrus,” refer­ring to the Per­sian king who defeat­ed the Baby­lo­ni­ans and allowed the Jew­ish peo­ple to return to Jerusalem. Wall­nau has vis­it­ed with Trump at the White House and Trump Tow­er; last Novem­ber, he livestreamed from a black-tie gala at Mar-a-Lago where Trump spoke.

Wall­nau did not come up with the notion that Chris­tians should try to take con­trol of key areas of Amer­i­can soci­ety. But he improved on the idea by intro­duc­ing the con­cept of the sev­en moun­tains and urged Chris­tians to set about con­quer­ing them. The con­cept caught on, said Tay­lor, because it empow­ered Chris­tians with a sense of pur­pose in every sphere of life.

As a preach­er in the inde­pen­dent charis­mat­ic tra­di­tion, a fast-grow­ing off­shoot of Pen­te­costal­ism that is unaf­fil­i­at­ed with any major denom­i­na­tion, Wall­nau and his acolytes believe that God speaks to and through mod­ern-day apos­tles and prophets — a ver­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty that Tay­lor, in his forth­com­ing book “The Vio­lent Take It By Force,” describes as “the amor­phous, tumul­tuous Wild West of the mod­ern church.” Wall­nau and his ideas lin­gered at the fringes of Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty for years, until the boost from the Trump pres­i­den­cy.

...

In the fall of 2023, Wall­nau sat in a gray arm­chair in his TV stu­dio. A large TV screen behind him flashed a sin­gle word: “ZIKLAG.”

“You almost hate to put it out this clear­ly,” he said as he detailed Ziklag’s elec­toral strat­e­gy, “because if some­body else gets ahold of this, they’ll freak out.”

He was joined on set by Hiss, who had just become the group’s new day-to-day leader. The two men were there to record a spe­cial mes­sage to Zik­lag mem­bers that laid out the group’s ambi­tious plans for the upcom­ing elec­tion year.

The forces arrayed against Chris­tians were many, accord­ing to the con­fi­den­tial video. They were locked in a “spir­i­tu­al bat­tle,” Hiss said, against Democ­rats who were a “rad­i­cal left Marx­ist force.” Biden, Wall­nau said, was a senile old man and “an emp­ty suit with an agen­da that’s writ­ten and man­aged by some­body else.”

In the files, Zik­lag says it plans to give out near­ly $12 mil­lion to a con­stel­la­tion of groups work­ing on the ground to shift the 2024 elec­torate in favor of Trump and oth­er Repub­li­cans.

...

And as evi­dence of the Zik­lag group’s ongo­ing focus on over­turn­ing unfa­vor­able elec­tion results through any means nec­es­sary, here’s show­ing as a recip­i­ent of the Zik­lag group’s giv­ing. The same elec­tion refut­ing spe­cial­ist Cle­ta Mithell who played a key orga­niz­ing role in the large-scale CNP effort to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion, cul­mi­nat­ing in the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. It’s worth not­ing how that sup­port from Zik­lag for Mitchell appears to have been chan­neled through a $600,000 dona­tion in 2022 to the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute (CPI). Recall how the CPI serves as a kind of CNP orga­ni­za­tion­al moth­er­ship, spin­ning off all sorts of new groups and deeply involved with the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot. So when we see large dona­tions from a Domin­ion­ist group like Zik­lag get­ting chan­neled to Mitchel­l’s elec­tion-over­turn­ing efforts via the CPI, it’s a reminder that the CPI isn’t just a tool of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­men­t’s mega-donors. It’s a tool of the domion­in­ist mega-donors who helped orga­nize Jan­u­ary 6, as is the Zik­lag group:

...
A promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive get­ting mon­ey from Zik­lag is Cle­ta Mitchell, a lawyer and Trump ally who joined the the Jan­u­ary 2021 phone call when then-Pres­i­dent Trump asked Georgia’s sec­re­tary of state to “find” enough votes to flip Geor­gia in Trump’s favor.

Mitchell now leads a net­work of “elec­tion integri­ty” coali­tions in swing states that have spent the last three years advo­cat­ing for changes to vot­ing rules and how elec­tions are run. Accord­ing to one inter­nal newslet­ter, Zik­lag was an ear­ly fun­der of Mitchell’s post-2020 “elec­tion integri­ty” activism, which vot­ing-rights experts have crit­i­cized for stok­ing unfound­ed fears about vot­er fraud and seek­ing to unfair­ly remove peo­ple from vot­ing rolls. In 2022, Zik­lag donat­ed $600,000 to the Con­ser­v­a­tive Part­ner­ship Insti­tute, which in turn funds Mitchell’s elec­tion-integri­ty work. Inter­nal Zik­lag doc­u­ments show that it pro­vid­ed fund­ing to enable Mitchell to set up elec­tion integri­ty infra­struc­ture in Flori­da, North Car­oli­na and Wis­con­sin.

Now Mitchell is pro­mot­ing a tool called EagleAI, which has claimed to use arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to auto­mate and speed up the process of chal­leng­ing inel­i­gi­ble vot­ers. EagleAI is already being used to mount mass chal­lenges to the eli­gi­bil­i­ty of hun­dreds of thou­sands of vot­ers in com­pet­i­tive states, and, with Ziklag’s help, the group plans to ramp up those efforts.

Accord­ing to an inter­nal video, Zik­lag plans to invest $800,000 in “EagleAI’s clean the rolls project,” which would be one of the largest known dona­tions to the group.

Zik­lag lists two key objec­tives for Oper­a­tion Check­mate: “Secure 10,640 addi­tion­al unique votes in Ari­zona (mir­ror­ing the 2020 mar­gin of 10,447 votes), and remove up to one mil­lion inel­i­gi­ble reg­is­tra­tions and around 280,000 inel­i­gi­ble vot­ers in Ari­zona, Neva­da, Geor­gia, and Wis­con­sin.”

In a record­ing of an inter­nal Zoom call, Ziklag’s Mark Bour­geois stressed the elec­toral val­ue of tar­get­ing Ari­zona. “I care about Mari­co­pa Coun­ty,” Bour­geois said at one point, refer­ring to Arizona’s largest coun­ty, which Biden won four years ago. “That’s how we win.”
...

So giv­en the domin­ion­ist nature of this group’s ambi­tions, we should­n’t be sur­prised the third prong in the Zik­lag group’s strat­e­gy is a con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tor mobi­liza­tion effort, coor­di­nat­ed with groups like Char­lie Kirk’s Turn­ing Points USA, Ralph Reed’s Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion, and the Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, one of the enti­ties play­ing an impor­tant role in the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot. Is there any coor­di­nat­ing with the effort Amer­i­can Renew­al Project? There does­n’t appear to be any indi­ca­tion of that yet but it’s hard not to notice the enor­mous over­lap in shared inter­ests and efforts. In oth­er words, what are the odds the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project fun­ders aren’t also Zik­lag donors? It’s the same CNP-orga­nized domin­ion­ist effort. The same one:

...
The last prong of Ziklag’s 2024 strat­e­gy is Oper­a­tion Steeple­chase, which urges con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tors to mobi­lize their con­gre­gants to vote in this year’s elec­tion. This project will work in coor­di­na­tion with sev­er­al promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive groups that sup­port for­mer pres­i­dent Trump’s reelec­tion, such as Turn­ing Point USA’s faith-based group, the Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion run by con­ser­v­a­tive oper­a­tive Ralph Reed and the Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, one of sev­er­al groups close­ly allied with Trump.

Zik­lag says in a 2023 inter­nal video that it and its allies will “coor­di­nate exten­sive pas­tor and church out­reach through pas­tor sum­mits, church-focused mes­sag­ing and events and the cre­ation of pas­tor resources.” As preach­er and activist John Amanchuk­wu said at a Zik­lag event, “We need a church that’s will­ing to do any­thing and every­thing to get to the point where we reclaim that which was stolen from us.”
...

Final­ly, there’s the glar­ing tax code vio­la­tion for Zik­lag’s ‘char­i­ta­ble’ tax-deductible efforts that’s anoth­er par­al­lel with the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project — housed by the ‘char­i­ta­ble’ Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion and financed by the ‘char­i­ta­ble’ Niemoller Foun­da­tion. All 501(c}(3) enti­ties, alleged­ly engaged in non­par­ti­san tax deductible activ­i­ties:

...
In a record­ing of a 2023 inter­nal strat­e­gy dis­cus­sion, a Zik­lag offi­cial stressed that the objec­tive was the same in oth­er swing states. “The goal is to win,” the offi­cial said. “If 75,000 peo­ple wins the White House, then how do we get 150,000 peo­ple so we make sure we win?”

...

But Zik­lag is not a polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion: It is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt char­i­ty, the same legal des­ig­na­tion as the Unit­ed Way or Boys and Girls Club. Such orga­ni­za­tions do not have to pub­licly dis­close their fun­ders, and dona­tions are tax deductible. In exchange, they are “absolute­ly pro­hib­it­ed from direct­ly or indi­rect­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in, or inter­ven­ing in, any polit­i­cal cam­paign on behalf of (or in oppo­si­tion to) any can­di­date for elec­tive pub­lic office,”accord­ing to the IRS.

ProP­ub­li­ca and Doc­u­ment­ed pre­sent­ed the find­ings of their inves­ti­ga­tion to six non­par­ti­san lawyers and legal experts. All expressed con­cern that Zik­lag was test­ing or vio­lat­ing the law.

The report­ing by ProP­ub­li­ca and Doc­u­ment­ed “casts seri­ous doubt on this organization’s sta­tus as a 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tion,” said Roger Col­in­vaux, a pro­fes­sor at Catholic University’s Colum­bus School of Law.

“I think it’s across the line with­out a ques­tion,” said Lloyd Hitoshi May­er, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame law pro­fes­sor.

Zik­lag offi­cials did not respond to a detailed list of ques­tions. Mar­tin Nuss­baum, an attor­ney who said he was the group’s gen­er­al coun­sel, said in a writ­ten response that “some of the state­ments in your email are cor­rect. Oth­ers are not,” but he then did not respond to a request to spec­i­fy what was erro­neous. The group is seek­ing to “align” the cul­ture “with Bib­li­cal val­ues and the Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion, and that they will serve the com­mon good,” he wrote. Using the offi­cial tax name for Zik­lag, he wrote that “USATrans­Form does not endorse can­di­dates for pub­lic office.” He declined to com­ment on the group’s mem­bers.

There are no bright lines or mag­ic words that the IRS might look for when it inves­ti­gates a char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion for engag­ing in polit­i­cal inter­ven­tion, said May­er. Instead, the agency exam­ines the facts and cir­cum­stances of a group’s activ­i­ties and makes a con­clu­sion about whether the group vio­lat­ed the law.

The biggest risk for char­i­ties that inter­vene in polit­i­cal cam­paigns, May­er said, is loss of their tax-exempt sta­tus. Donors’ abil­i­ty to deduct their dona­tions can be a major sell, not to men­tion it can cre­ate “a halo effect” for the group, May­er added.

“They may be able to get more mon­ey this way,” he said, adding, “It boils down to tax eva­sion at the end of the day.”

...

Con­fi­den­tial donor net­works reg­u­lar­ly invest hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars into polit­i­cal and char­i­ta­ble groups, from the lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy Alliance to the Koch-affil­i­at­ed Stand Togeth­er orga­ni­za­tion on the right. But unlike Zik­lag, nei­ther of those orga­ni­za­tions is legal­ly set up as a true char­i­ty.

Zik­lag appears to be the first coor­di­nat­ed effort to get wealthy donors to fund an overt­ly Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist agen­da, accord­ing to his­to­ri­ans, legal experts and oth­er peo­ple famil­iar with the group. “It shows that this idea isn’t being dis­missed as fringe in the way that it might have been in the past,” said Mary Ziegler, a legal his­to­ri­an and Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis law pro­fes­sor.

...

Six tax experts reviewed the elec­tion-relat­ed strat­e­gy dis­cus­sions and tac­tics report­ed in this sto­ry. All of them said the activ­i­ties test­ed or ran afoul of the law gov­ern­ing 501(c)(3) char­i­ties. The IRS and the Texas attor­ney gen­er­al, which would over­see the South­lake, Texas, char­i­ty, did not respond to ques­tions.

While not all of its polit­i­cal efforts appeared to be clear-cut vio­la­tions, the experts said, oth­ers may be: The stat­ed plan to mobi­lize vot­ers “sym­pa­thet­ic to Repub­li­cans,” Zik­lag offi­cials open­ly dis­cussing the goal to win the elec­tion, and Wallnau’s call to fund bal­lot ini­tia­tives that would “deliv­er swing states” while at the same time voic­ing explic­it crit­i­cism of Biden all raised red flags, the experts said.

“I am trou­bled about a tax-exempt char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion that’s set up and its main oper­a­tion seems to be to get peo­ple to win office,” said Phil Hack­ney, a pro­fes­sor of law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh and an expert on tax-exempt orga­ni­za­tions.

“They’re plan­ning an elec­tion effort,” said Mar­cus Owens, a tax lawyer at Loeb and Loeb and a for­mer direc­tor of the IRS’ exempt orga­ni­za­tions divi­sion. “That’s not a 501(c)(3) activ­i­ty.”
...

Don’t hold your breath wait­ing for the IRS to final­ly crack down on this bla­tant trolling that’s been going on for decades. Trolling that dou­bles as effec­tive tax eva­sion. To help finance a move­ment ded­i­cat­ed to the com­plete cap­ture of soci­ety. It’s hard to get more par­ti­san than that. And yet this is all for ‘char­i­ty’. LOL. The joke is on us.

“You won’t have to do it any­more. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote any­more, my beau­ti­ful Chris­tians.” That was the high­ly dis­turb­ing mes­sage deliv­ered by Don­ald Trump a lit­tle over a month ago at the Turn­ing Point Action’s “Believ­ers Sum­mit” in West Palm Beach, Flori­da. Chris­tians just had to vote this one last time and they could be done with vot­ing for­ev­er. It was a mes­sage that was under­stand­ably inter­pret­ed as just one more open hint at plans to effec­tive­ly end what’s left of the US’s demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions. An inter­pre­ta­tion that log­i­cal­ly fol­lows the ongo­ing Sched­ule F/Project 2025 Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist plot.

And while it’s cer­tain­ly very pos­si­ble Trump real­ly did intend to send a mes­sage of “I’ll per­ma­nent­ly ‘fix’ democ­ra­cy so you nev­er lose again” mes­sage to this audi­ence, it’s worth not­ing how that rhetoric syn­er­gizes with the mes­sag­ing tar­get­ing evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers com­ing from anoth­er keen­ly inter­est­ed group: David Lane and his claims over the years that only around a quar­ter of evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers even both­er vot­ing in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. It’s a mes­sage Lane has appar­ent­ly been shar­ing with audi­ences at his var­i­ous Amer­i­can Renew­al Project ‘pas­tor events’ for years. Nor is Lane the only one to make this claim. Mike Huck­abee, for exam­ple, has made the same claims.

It’s not a par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing mes­sage to hear com­ing from some­one in Lane’s posi­tion. He’s lead­ing a group ded­i­cat­ed to polit­i­cal­ly orga­niz­ing pas­tors and, in turn, their con­gre­ga­tions. A mes­sage about a vast untapped pool of vot­ers sit­ting in these con­gre­ga­tions has a lot of obvi­ous appeal. And yet, as we’re also going to see, it’s not actu­al­ly true. Evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers in US vote at rough­ly the same lev­els as oth­er demo­graph­ics, con­sis­tent­ly hov­er­ing some­where around 50 per­cent vot­ing rates.

But there’s anoth­er very inter­est­ing polit­i­cal sto­ry relat­ed to this quest to increase the evan­gel­i­cal vote: before Don­ald Trump came along to con­quer the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry in 2016, it was Ted Cruz who was not only lead­ing the Repub­li­can pack but did so through a high effec­tive strat­e­gy of tar­get­ing pas­tors. A strat­e­gy that not only had par­al­lels with David Lane’s Amer­i­can Renew­al Project but was lit­er­al­ly part of it. As we’re going to see, Cruz was a reg­u­lar attendee at Lane’s var­i­ous ‘pas­tor events’ going back to 2013, along with Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz. It turns out Rafael is also quite close to Lane and a reg­u­lar speak­er at these events. Along with chief domin­ion­ist pseu­do-his­to­ri­an David Bar­ton. This is a good time to recall how, back in 1980, both Mike Huck­abee and Rafael Cruz were involved with the orga­niz­ing of the Jame Robison’s “Reli­gious Round­table” that whipped up major evan­gel­i­cal enthu­si­asm for Ronald Rea­gan’s pres­i­den­tial run. Rafael Cruz has been a key dri­ving force behind the politi­ciza­tion of the evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty for decades, effec­tive­ly groom­ing his son to be ‘God’s pres­i­dent’ some­day.

And that brings us to anoth­er aspect of Rafael’s activism that should be kept in mind: recall those sto­ries in 2022 about how the domin­ion­ist Moms for Lib­er­ty and the Truth and Lib­er­ty Coali­tion — run by Lance Wall­nau and David Bar­ton — work­ing to suc­cess­ful­ly take con­trol of school boards in Texas by focus­es on anti-tran­s/an­ti-LGBTQ hys­te­ria. Wall­nau is the promi­nent New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion (NAR) leader who co-authored of a pop­u­lar 2013 book pro­mot­ing the idea of domin­ion­ism. Fol­low­ing Trump’s elec­tion in 2016, Wall­nau start­ed push­ing the idea back in 2018 that Trump was a God-ordained change agent anal­o­gous to the Bib­li­cal fig­ure of King Cyrus. A “mod­ern-day Cyrus”, as Wall­nau described Trump. This was a sto­ry about a domin­ion­ist cap­ture of school boards in Texas. A high­ly suc­cess­ful cap­ture that had them plan­ning a nation­al roll­out of the strat­e­gy.

As we also saw, one of the groups also work­ing on that effort was Patri­ot Mobile, a con­ser­v­a­tive chris­t­ian cell­phone com­pa­ny with a busi­ness mod­el that pledges to spend some of the prof­its on con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es. It’s worth tak­ing a clos­er look at the group and its efforts in those school board cap­tures. Found­ed in 2012, the com­pa­ny ini­tial­ly boast­ed of a busi­ness mod­el that pledged to sup­port groups that opposed abor­tion, defend reli­gious free­dom, pro­tect gun rights and sup­port the mil­i­tary. After Trump’s elec­tion, Patri­ot Mobile became much more overt­ly domin­ion­ist. By 2022, it was one of the enti­ties deeply involved this this school board cap­ture effort, includ­ing coor­di­nat­ing with the True Texas Project on the effort. As we’ve seen, the True Texas Project is one of those groups heav­i­ly reliant on the finances of Texas theo­crat­ic bil­lion­aire Tim Dunn through his Defend Texas Lib­er­ty PAC. And also infest­ed with Nazis. As we saw, not only is the group found­ed by Julie McCar­ty, who open­ly sym­pa­thized with the motives of El Paso shoot­er Patrick Cru­sius. But just three weeks before that now-infa­mous Octo­ber sev­en hour long meet­ing with Nick Fuentes at the head­quar­ters of Dun­n’s Pale Horse Strate­gies polit­i­cal group held in ear­ly Octo­ber 6 2023, the True Texas Project held a ‘pass­ing the torch’ event in Dal­las that fea­tured John Doyle and Jake Lloyd Col­glazier. Doyle has fre­quent­ly appeared along­side Nick Fuentes at events. For exam­ple, Doyle and Fuentes co-led a Lans­ing Michi­gan “Stop the Steal” ral­ly in the lead up to the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol Insur­rec­tion. Col­glazier was one of the most promi­nent mem­bers of Fuentes’s ‘groyper army’. In 2019, Col­glazier, Fuentes, and Patrick Casey — the leader of Iden­ti­ty Evropa, since rebrand­ed as the “Amer­i­can Iden­ti­ty Move­ment” — were the head­lin­ers at a white nation­al­ist con­fer­ence where they advo­cat­ed a strat­e­gy of pulling the Repub­li­can Par­ty fur­ther to the right with a strat­e­gy of attack­ing Repub­li­cans for issues like being weak on immi­gra­tion or sup­port for Israel. In 2018, Casey was open­ly telling NBC News he was plan­ning on infil­trat­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty, with an empha­sis on befriend­ing and win­ning over young col­lege Repub­li­cans. The True Texas Project was list­ed as an affil­i­at­ed on Patri­ot Mobile’s own web­site as one of its affil­i­ate. So when we see Patri­ot Mobile coor­di­nat­ing with the True Texas Project, keep in mind that it’s one of mul­ti­ple Nazi-friend­ly groups close­ly asso­ci­at­ed both Nick Fuentes and Tim Dunn who have a youth-focused strat­e­gy of rad­i­cal­iz­ing Repub­li­cans even more.

Dur­ing this school board cap­ture cam­paign in 2022, none oth­er than Rafael Cruz was giv­ing week­ly Bible study class­es at the Patri­ot Mobile head­quar­ters. The lec­tures, broad­cast on Youtube, were domin­ion­ists lessons in how the sep­a­rate of church and state should real­ly only be seen as ‘one-way’, with gov­ern­ment pro­hib­it­ed from med­dling with church but church­es free to wield what­ev­er influ­ence they deem appro­pri­ate over gov­ern­ment. Not only is it a reminder that Rafael Cruz’s decades of polit­i­cal activism is still very much active today, but it rais­es the ques­tion as to who is more influ­en­tial these days when it comes to mobi­lizes con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ers: Ted Cruz or his dad? Rafael is clear­ly very influ­en­tial with this com­mu­ni­ty and has been since before Ted Cruz first got elect­ed.

It’s also worth keep­ing in mind that it was Rafael Cruz who Don­ald Trump sug­gest­ed may have played a role in the JFK assas­si­na­tion back dur­ing the GOP pri­ma­ry race of 2016, when Ted was his only remain­ing obsta­cle to the nom­i­na­tion. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing win­kle to this ongo­ing sto­ry of Rafael Cruz’s decades of domin­ion­ist activism, which includ­ed groom­ing his son to be “God’s pres­i­dent” some day. A role his son could have secured in 2016 had Trump not charmed the par­ty with his fas­cist mad­ness. We can only assume Rafael’s activism has a ‘Trump is a divine­ly inspired actor’ mes­sage since that’s the mes­saged embraced by the rest of this move­ment. But it was sup­posed to be his son. Instead it was Trump, who accused him of being involved in the JFK assas­si­na­tion, which is all the more fas­ci­nat­ing because we can’t real­ly rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty he worked with Lee Har­vey Oswald’s Fair Play for Cuba leaflet­ing activ­i­ties.

So while Trump’s “you won’t have to do it any­more” mes­sage to evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers cer­tain­ly has an air of omi­nous­ness due to the theo­crat­ic author­i­tar­i­an per­ils posed by a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that focus­ing on surg­ing the evan­gel­i­cal vote is the same strat­e­gy the GOP has been rely­ing on for decades. It was the same strat­e­gy Rafael Cruz has been help­ing David Lane cul­ti­vate for years through the Amer­i­can Renew­al Pro­jec­t’s numer­ous ‘pas­tor gath­er­ings’, and the same strat­e­gy that was sup­posed to secure the GOP nom­i­na­tion for Ted Cruz in 2016 before Trump came along. And it’s ulti­mate­ly the same strat­e­gy at the heart of the anti-tran­s/an­ti-LGBTQ pan­ics get­ting whipped up at the local lev­el.

In oth­er words, if the prospect of a sec­ond Trump term — with all of the asso­ci­at­ed Project 2025 theo­crat­ic ambi­tions — almost sounds like what we might expect from a Ted Cruz pres­i­den­cy, that’s because that’s sort of what Trump’s pres­i­den­cy real­ly was: the theo­crat­ic poli­cies that appeal to Ted Cruz vot­ers, but deliv­ered with that dement­ed Trumpian flare that seems to have more pop­u­lar appeal. When we see Don­ald Trump active­ly dis­tanc­ing him­self from the polit­i­cal­ly tox­ic nature of Project 2025’s theo­crat­ic agen­da, he’s not just run­ning away from his own agen­da. He’s run­ning away from the Cruz agen­da. An Rafael Cruz groomed Ted to exe­cute at the exec­u­tive lev­el. But Trump is the one God chose instead. Either way, it’s domin­ion­ist agen­da, MAGA pati­na or not. An agen­da designed to appeal to the core of evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers that David Lane and Rafael Cruz have been cul­ti­vat­ing for decades and that was sup­posed to pro­pelled Ted Cruz into the White House in 2016, before Don­ald Trump hijacked it:

Yahoo News

Ted Cruz’s con­tro­ver­sial super-PAC leader divides evan­gel­i­cals

Jon Ward·Chief Nation­al Cor­re­spon­dent
Jan­u­ary 29, 2016

Last Sat­ur­day night in north­east­ern Iowa, moments before Glenn Beck deliv­ered a 56-minute speech in which he even­tu­al­ly got around to endors­ing Sen. Ted Cruz for pres­i­dent, a wil­lowy man with pow­der puff white hair strolled to the lectern and said a few words.

Not once did the man — who spoke of Beck as “a vision­ary” and who laid his hands on Beck in prayer before­hand — men­tion Cruz’s name.

David Bar­ton also nev­er told the crowd inside the Five Sul­li­van Broth­ers Con­ven­tion Cen­ter his name, even though he intro­duced oth­er speak­ers and served as the event’s de fac­to mas­ter of cer­e­monies.

Barton’s anonymi­ty was fit­ting. It was some­thing of a metaphor for the rela­tion­ship between Cruz and Bar­ton, both of whom hail from Texas. Cruz has main­tained a del­i­cate bal­ance in his asso­ci­a­tion with Bar­ton, a fig­ure who is a hero to some evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians, and a fraud to oth­ers.

Few fig­ures rep­re­sent the split run­ning down the mid­dle of Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­ism bet­ter than Bar­ton, a 62-year-old self-taught his­to­ri­an (crit­ics call him a pseu­do-his­to­ri­an) who has for more than two decades stumped across the coun­try telling con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians that their nation’s reli­gious her­itage has been cov­ered up and stolen from them by god­less sec­u­lar pro­gres­sives.

Many in the crowd doubt­less knew who Bar­ton was even with­out an intro­duc­tion. He is some­thing of a celebri­ty to those who have viewed his videos at church events or online, or who saw him on Fox News when he reg­u­lar­ly appeared on Beck’s show. But Barton’s rep­u­ta­tion has tak­en some big hits in the last few years, and the integri­ty of his arti­cles, videos and books has been wide­ly called into ques­tion, most aggres­sive­ly by some con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal schol­ars and writ­ers. One his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at a Chris­t­ian uni­ver­si­ty said Bar­ton was the con­ser­v­a­tive ver­sion of left-wing aca­d­e­m­ic Howard Zinn.

“Nei­ther of them are his­to­ri­ans. They just want to use and manip­u­late the past to serve their own polit­i­cal or ide­o­log­i­cal agen­das in the present,” wrote John Fea, chair of the his­to­ry depart­ment at Mes­si­ah Col­lege in Mechan­ics­burg, Pa.

Yet Bar­ton is help­ful to Cruz because the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date has built his strat­e­gy for win­ning the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion around win­ning in Iowa, the first state to vote in the pri­ma­ry process, and a place where 60 per­cent of the GOP elec­torate iden­ti­fies as evan­gel­i­cal. Too close an asso­ci­a­tion with Bar­ton, how­ev­er, would open Cruz up to ques­tions about the influ­ence on his think­ing of a man whose views about faith and pol­i­tics can often sound like Chris­t­ian recon­struc­tion­ism — the belief that gov­ern­ment laws and poli­cies should be drawn explic­it­ly from the Bible.

Bar­ton argued in 2011 that the pro­gres­sive income tax, cap­i­tal gains tax and the estate tax (or death tax), are all con­trary to the Bible. “Jesus has two entire teach­ings on the cap­i­tal gains tax,” Bar­ton claimed, cit­ing Luke 19:13–26 and Matthew 25:14–29. And, he added, “Jesus did not like the min­i­mum wage.”

The Bible does not address any of these issues explic­it­ly. Bar­ton was tak­ing para­bles told by Jesus in the New Tes­ta­ment and inter­pret­ing them quite lib­er­al­ly. Bar­ton said in an inter­view that his crit­ics often mis­in­ter­pret or exag­ger­ate his many claims. “I like the Con­sti­tu­tion we’ve got. I’m not try­ing to replace it with the Bible,” he said. When asked about his com­ments about Jesus’ views on tax pol­i­cy, Bar­ton deflect­ed the ques­tion. “What I often say in report­ing his­to­ry doesn’t mean that’s what I’m advo­cat­ing for pol­i­cy right now,” he said.

Bar­ton may say state­ments about Jesus’ view of tax­es aren’t pre­scrip­tive, but for Chris­tians who believe the Bible should gov­ern all aspects of their lives, Barton’s com­ments pro­vide a the­o­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for ignor­ing their tax bill that takes high­er prece­dence than the law. If the word of God is explic­it­ly opposed to what the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice is doing, such a believ­er might rea­son with him­self, then he or she is in fact bound to oppose and defy the IRS.

These are not the types of state­ments the Cruz cam­paign wants their can­di­date being ques­tioned about on the cam­paign trail. In Sep­tem­ber Bar­ton was named as the leader of a pro-Cruz super-PAC, Keep the Promise, mak­ing him an offi­cial sup­port­er of Cruz’s but with­out any offi­cial con­nec­tion to Cruz’s cam­paign. Of course, if Cruz world was uncom­fort­able with Barton’s endorse­ment, they wouldn’t have want­ed him involved with the super-PAC at all.

One of Barton’s most notice­able projects so far in the cam­paign was to gath­er rough­ly 300 pas­tors and “faith lead­ers” at the Texas ranch of frack­ing bil­lion­aire Far­ris Wilks dur­ing the week after Christ­mas for a day of dis­cus­sion and prayer. (Wilks had giv­en $10 mil­lion to Keep the Promise III, one of three super-PACs under the umbrel­la of the one run by Bar­ton.)

...

Some in the sprawl­ing world of the mul­ti­ple Cruz super-PACs have tak­en pot­shots at Bar­ton. “David Bar­ton is known among evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors but he’s not known as a polit­i­cal strate­gist or a fundrais­er,” said an offi­cial from one of Cruz’s super-PACs. “He’s prob­a­bly one of the least active peo­ple on the whole team.”

But pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions with those who know the PAC’s work­ings sug­gest Bar­ton is a cen­tral fig­ure, mak­ing key hires and man­ag­ing deci­sion mak­ing and strat­e­gy. In Novem­ber, Bar­ton was the per­son who hired Drew Ryun, a for­mer Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee oper­a­tive who in recent years has worked in grass­roots pol­i­tics out­side Wash­ing­ton, often tak­ing on the estab­lish­ment.

Barton’s hir­ing for the PAC last Sep­tem­ber was anoth­er nod to old­er evan­gel­i­cals that Cruz should be their man. Cruz had appealed to the Jer­ry Fal­well wing of evan­gel­i­cal­ism since announc­ing his can­di­da­cy last spring at Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty, the Chris­t­ian col­lege found­ed by the late Fal­well, whose son Jer­ry Jr. now runs the school (and who endorsed Don­ald Trump this week). Cruz has worked hard to build a net­work of pas­tors and Chris­t­ian activists across Iowa who are key to high turnout on the night of the cau­cus­es.

Barton’s endorse­ment, said Iowa Repub­li­can oper­a­tive Ann Trim­ble-Ray, is “prob­a­bly more impact­ful with the con­sis­tent cau­cus-goer” than an endorse­ment from some­one like for­mer Alas­ka Gov. Sarah Palin, who last week came out for Trump. He’s not the only Chris­t­ian activist with more sway than Palin, said Trim­ble-Ray, who serves as Iowa Rep. Steve King’s point per­son in west­ern Iowa. Phyl­lis Schafly, the nona­ge­nar­i­an but still-ven­er­at­ed con­ser­v­a­tive activist, is also influ­en­tial among old­er reli­gious vot­ers, Trim­ble-Ray said, and she has endorsed Trump as well.

...

Cruz is smart enough to know that if he remains com­pet­i­tive in the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry beyond Iowa, he will need sup­port from evan­gel­i­cals who think Bar­ton is an embar­rass­ment. One of the more robust fac­tions inside Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­ism is this set: a most­ly younger group who reject the cul­ture war approach of Falwell’s Moral Major­i­ty. (I’ve dubbed them the “Keller wing,” after New York city pas­tor and author Tim Keller.)

These faith vot­ers are not yet as reli­able a vot­ing bloc as the old­er faith vot­ers in states like Iowa, who have been con­di­tioned to orga­nize polit­i­cal­ly around faith issues. But there are influ­en­tial evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers — some of them more polit­i­cal­ly active than oth­ers — who have no time for a fig­ure like Bar­ton.Rus­sell Moore of the South­ern Bap­tists, megachurch pas­tor Rick War­ren, who is on a faith advi­so­ry board for Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mar­co Rubio, and even Keller him­self employ a style that takes a dif­fer­ent approach to post-Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca than some­one like Bar­ton.

Bar­ton argues that Amer­i­ca was found­ed as a Chris­t­ian nation, though he insist­ed to me that he defined this only as “a nation that was influ­enced by Chris­t­ian prin­ci­ples and cul­ture.” He says that much of America’s found­ing doc­u­ments — in par­tic­u­lar the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence — and its laws were derived from the Bible. The impli­ca­tion, despite his denials, is that this is what it should be again.

To many, Barton’s argu­ment that Amer­i­ca was a Chris­t­ian nation at its found­ing is, as jour­nal­ist Julie Inger­soll put it, vital to old­er Chris­tians’ “myth­ic under­stand­ing” of them­selves. It is a vital com­po­nent of their iden­ti­ty that they are part of the nation’s true her­itage.

Many younger evan­gel­i­cals, even those who wish for greater spir­i­tu­al vital­i­ty in the nation and for more Chris­t­ian influ­ence in cul­ture and pol­i­tics, don’t have or seek the same iden­ti­ty. They embrace the notion of being pil­grims, sojourn­ers, even aliens in a strange land, as a way of life and iden­ti­ty that lines up more close­ly with their faith and the teach­ings of the Bible. In oth­er words, they’re more com­fort­able being a cul­tur­al minor­i­ty, and advo­cat­ing for their beliefs and poli­cies based on their beliefs from such a posi­tion. For old­er evan­gel­i­cals, who grew up at a time when Amer­i­can cul­ture endorsed and affirmed their way of life and their beliefs, this is a more fright­en­ing propo­si­tion.

And old­er evan­gel­i­cals like Bar­ton often see the younger gen­er­a­tion as cow­ards, shrink­ing away from the nec­es­sary cul­tur­al com­bat, afraid of the slings and arrows of stand­ing up for what is right. In this world­view, crit­i­cism and oppo­si­tion is a badge of hon­or, and can be viewed as val­i­da­tion that one is on the right track.

...

Barton’s cred­i­bil­i­ty has been called into ques­tion more than once since he self-pub­lished his first book in 1989, “The Myth of Sep­a­ra­tion.” In the mid-90s he had to retract a dozen quotes he had used from his­tor­i­cal fig­ures, most­ly the Found­ing Fathers, after his­to­ri­ans found errors and inac­cu­ra­cies. Nonethe­less, his pop­u­lar­i­ty with fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­tians con­tin­ued to grow. Much of Barton’s allure is based on his col­lec­tion of what he says is more than 100,000 orig­i­nal doc­u­ments that date back to the pre-1812 Amer­i­can rev­o­lu­tion­ary era, which he stores in a vault at the head­quar­ters of his orga­ni­za­tion, Wall­Builders, in Ale­do, Texas. He pep­pers his pre­sen­ta­tions or talk­ing points with a dizzy­ing num­ber of ref­er­ences and quo­ta­tions.

Bar­ton became a nation­al fig­ure dur­ing George W. Bush’s pres­i­den­cy. He was elect­ed co-chair of the Texas GOP and by 2004 he had been hired by the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee to help get social con­ser­v­a­tives to the polls to reelect Bush. In 2005, Time Mag­a­zine named Bar­ton one of the most influ­en­tial evan­gel­i­cals in Amer­i­ca. Bar­ton was an advis­er to for­mer Arkansas Gov. Mike Huck­abee, who won the Iowa cau­cus­es in 2008 before his pres­i­den­tial can­di­da­cy lost steam.

In May of 2012, Bar­ton was inter­viewed by a puz­zled but impressed Jon Stew­art on “The Dai­ly Show.” But around that same time, Barton’s lat­est book on Thomas Jef­fer­son came under heavy scruti­ny from a group of evan­gel­i­cal schol­ars. The same week in August that Bar­ton was skep­ti­cal­ly pro­filed by Nation­al Pub­lic Radio, Thomas Nel­son, the book’s pub­lish­er, pulled the book from stores and ceased pub­li­ca­tion, even though the book had hit the New York Times best­seller list. The pub­lish­er had “lost con­fi­dence” in Barton’s book based on inquiries from con­ser­v­a­tive his­to­ri­ans.

“The with­draw­ing a book from the mar­ket is extreme­ly rare. It’s so rare I can’t think of the last time we’ve done this,” said Thomas Nelson’s pub­lish­er, Bri­an Hamp­ton.

The flame wars between Bar­ton and his crit­ics have con­tin­ued to this day, as Barton’s book, “The Jef­fer­son Lies,” was repub­lished ear­li­er this month by World Net Dai­ly. Even among some Bar­ton friends and sup­port­ers, his cred­i­bil­i­ty has been hurt, in large part because the crit­i­cism of his work came not from lib­er­al aca­d­e­mics but from his­to­ri­ans and oth­er aca­d­e­mics who are Chris­tians and work at Chris­t­ian insti­tu­tions.

“That’s what scared me,” said Don McEl­roy, the for­mer chair­man of the Texas Board of Edu­ca­tion, who was at the cen­ter of a major fight over cur­ricu­lum stan­dards in 2010 and who praised Barton’s input as a mem­ber of a six-per­son review board. “I can’t imag­ine [Bar­ton] mak­ing mis­takes, but I was stunned by the crit­i­cism.”

“Most of the time I find him to be right as rain,” McEl­roy said of Bar­ton.

Bar­ton remains defi­ant. “Lib­er­als will fight the truth with lies, good with evil, hon­esty with deceit,” he wrote on Twit­ter this week with a link to his book. Ear­li­er this month he was on Beck’s show on the TV net­work that Beck start­ed and owns, The Blaze, argu­ing that Thomas Jef­fer­son “came out very clear­ly” against gay rights.

...

Cruz told Politi­co ear­li­er this year that Bar­ton is “a good man, a coura­geous leader and a friend.”

“David’s his­tor­i­cal research has helped mil­lions redis­cov­er the found­ing prin­ci­ples of our nation and the incred­i­ble sac­ri­fices that men and women of faith made to bequeath to us the freest and most pros­per­ous nation in the world,” Cruz said.

Some spec­u­late that Bar­ton is a Cruz-whis­per­er push­ing him toward theoc­ra­cy, but — set­ting aside the ques­tion of what exact­ly Bar­ton wants the gov­ern­ment to look like — there’s lit­tle evi­dence that the two men are close.

How­ev­er, Bar­ton has deeply influ­enced Raphael Cruz, the candidate’s father, who spent much of the last year trav­el­ing across Iowa speak­ing in church­es about his son. Raphael Cruz’s world­view is sim­i­lar to Barton’s, and Barton’s his­tor­i­cal research has giv­en Raphael Cruz more fod­der to believe that Amer­i­ca is los­ing its soul, and that Chris­tians must “take this coun­try back.” Raphael Cruz has pub­lished a new book, “A Time for Action: Empow­er­ing the Faith­ful to Reclaim Amer­i­ca,” in which he quotes and cites Bar­ton.

“Rafael and David are extreme­ly close,” said Gary Miller, who runs a group called “Talk Less! Pray More!” and also works with oper­a­tives like David Lane who orga­nize events to bring politi­cians to speak to groups of Chris­t­ian pas­tors across the coun­try.

“When it comes to Ted, there is a friend­ship, but I get the dis­tinct impres­sion that Ted Cruz is his own man,” Miller said. “He cer­tain­ly rec­og­nizes that David Bar­ton has a voice among evan­gel­i­cals, but you also would have to know that David Bar­ton dri­ves some evan­gel­i­cals crazy. I’m not one of those, but I have friends of mine who are.”

“There’s a wider range of evan­gel­i­cals that have to be embraced,” he said.

Ted Cruz strad­dles the worlds inside con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal­ism. At 45, he is young enough to under­stand the men­tal­i­ty of the Keller wing. But he was raised by a strong-willed polit­i­cal refugee from Cuba who came to fierce­ly embrace the com­bat­ive cul­ture war approach of the Fal­well wing. And he knows that the “take back Amer­i­ca” crowd is for the moment the dom­i­nant vot­ing bloc in Repub­li­can pol­i­tics.

And thus, he wel­comes the embrace of a fig­ure like Bar­ton, but at arms length.

———-

“Ted Cruz’s con­tro­ver­sial super-PAC leader divides evan­gel­i­cals” by Jon Ward; Yahoo News; 01/29/2016

“Barton’s anonymi­ty was fit­ting. It was some­thing of a metaphor for the rela­tion­ship between Cruz and Bar­ton, both of whom hail from Texas. Cruz has main­tained a del­i­cate bal­ance in his asso­ci­a­tion with Bar­ton, a fig­ure who is a hero to some evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians, and a fraud to oth­ers.”

The anony­mous ‘Ted Cruz whis­per­er’. That’s how David Bar­ton was depict­ed in this piece of Jan­u­ary of 2016. Bar­ton’s form of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism has clear­ly had a pro­found influ­ence on Cruz, serv­ing as a kind of the­o­log­i­cal men­tor. And yet, thanks to the con­tro­ver­sial nature of Bar­ton’s the­ol­o­gy, it’s a men­tor­ship that could end up becom­ing a polit­i­cal lia­bil­i­ty out­side of the­o­log­i­cal­ly-friend­ly cir­cles. So when we see Bar­ton was act­ing as the de fac­to mas­ter of cer­e­monies at this Cruz cam­paign event with­out ever intro­duc­ing him­self, we can see how Bar­ton’s polit­i­cal endorse­ments sort of oper­ate in a ‘If You Know, You Know’ man­ner:

...
David Bar­ton also nev­er told the crowd inside the Five Sul­li­van Broth­ers Con­ven­tion Cen­ter his name, even though he intro­duced oth­er speak­ers and served as the event’s de fac­to mas­ter of cer­e­monies.

...

Few fig­ures rep­re­sent the split run­ning down the mid­dle of Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­ism bet­ter than Bar­ton, a 62-year-old self-taught his­to­ri­an (crit­ics call him a pseu­do-his­to­ri­an) who has for more than two decades stumped across the coun­try telling con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians that their nation’s reli­gious her­itage has been cov­ered up and stolen from them by god­less sec­u­lar pro­gres­sives.

...

Yet Bar­ton is help­ful to Cruz because the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date has built his strat­e­gy for win­ning the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion around win­ning in Iowa, the first state to vote in the pri­ma­ry process, and a place where 60 per­cent of the GOP elec­torate iden­ti­fies as evan­gel­i­cal. Too close an asso­ci­a­tion with Bar­ton, how­ev­er, would open Cruz up to ques­tions about the influ­ence on his think­ing of a man whose views about faith and pol­i­tics can often sound like Chris­t­ian recon­struc­tion­ism — the belief that gov­ern­ment laws and poli­cies should be drawn explic­it­ly from the Bible.

Bar­ton argued in 2011 that the pro­gres­sive income tax, cap­i­tal gains tax and the estate tax (or death tax), are all con­trary to the Bible. “Jesus has two entire teach­ings on the cap­i­tal gains tax,” Bar­ton claimed, cit­ing Luke 19:13–26 and Matthew 25:14–29. And, he added, “Jesus did not like the min­i­mum wage.”

The Bible does not address any of these issues explic­it­ly. Bar­ton was tak­ing para­bles told by Jesus in the New Tes­ta­ment and inter­pret­ing them quite lib­er­al­ly. Bar­ton said in an inter­view that his crit­ics often mis­in­ter­pret or exag­ger­ate his many claims. “I like the Con­sti­tu­tion we’ve got. I’m not try­ing to replace it with the Bible,” he said. When asked about his com­ments about Jesus’ views on tax pol­i­cy, Bar­ton deflect­ed the ques­tion. “What I often say in report­ing his­to­ry doesn’t mean that’s what I’m advo­cat­ing for pol­i­cy right now,” he said.

Bar­ton may say state­ments about Jesus’ view of tax­es aren’t pre­scrip­tive, but for Chris­tians who believe the Bible should gov­ern all aspects of their lives, Barton’s com­ments pro­vide a the­o­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for ignor­ing their tax bill that takes high­er prece­dence than the law. If the word of God is explic­it­ly opposed to what the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice is doing, such a believ­er might rea­son with him­self, then he or she is in fact bound to oppose and defy the IRS.

These are not the types of state­ments the Cruz cam­paign wants their can­di­date being ques­tioned about on the cam­paign trail. In Sep­tem­ber Bar­ton was named as the leader of a pro-Cruz super-PAC, Keep the Promise, mak­ing him an offi­cial sup­port­er of Cruz’s but with­out any offi­cial con­nec­tion to Cruz’s cam­paign. Of course, if Cruz world was uncom­fort­able with Barton’s endorse­ment, they wouldn’t have want­ed him involved with the super-PAC at all.

...

Some in the sprawl­ing world of the mul­ti­ple Cruz super-PACs have tak­en pot­shots at Bar­ton. “David Bar­ton is known among evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors but he’s not known as a polit­i­cal strate­gist or a fundrais­er,” said an offi­cial from one of Cruz’s super-PACs. “He’s prob­a­bly one of the least active peo­ple on the whole team.”

But pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions with those who know the PAC’s work­ings sug­gest Bar­ton is a cen­tral fig­ure, mak­ing key hires and man­ag­ing deci­sion mak­ing and strat­e­gy. In Novem­ber, Bar­ton was the per­son who hired Drew Ryun, a for­mer Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee oper­a­tive who in recent years has worked in grass­roots pol­i­tics out­side Wash­ing­ton, often tak­ing on the estab­lish­ment.
...

Sim­i­lar­ly, we can see how Bar­ton was instru­men­tal in orga­niz­ing the Decem­ber 2015 gath­er­ing at the Texas ranch of Far­ris Wilks, who turned out to be a major Cruz donor. Recall how the bil­lion­aire Wilks broth­ers are key part­ners with Tim Dunn in the theo­crat­ic cap­ture of the Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty. It’s a reminder that, while Bar­ton serves as a poten­tial­ly potent, but also poten­tial­ly con­tro­ver­sial, spokesper­son for Cruz when deal­ing with the pub­lic, he’s a theo­crat­ic mega-donor super-star in the right cir­cles:

...
One of Barton’s most notice­able projects so far in the cam­paign was to gath­er rough­ly 300 pas­tors and “faith lead­ers” at the Texas ranch of frack­ing bil­lion­aire Far­ris Wilks dur­ing the week after Christ­mas for a day of dis­cus­sion and prayer. (Wilks had giv­en $10 mil­lion to Keep the Promise III, one of three super-PACs under the umbrel­la of the one run by Bar­ton.)
...

And as the arti­cle describes, while Ted Cruz and David Bar­ton may not be par­tic­u­lar­ly close per­son­al­ly, it’s a very dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion when we’re talk­ing about Bar­ton and Rafael Cruz, who are described as extreme­ly close:

...
Some spec­u­late that Bar­ton is a Cruz-whis­per­er push­ing him toward theoc­ra­cy, but — set­ting aside the ques­tion of what exact­ly Bar­ton wants the gov­ern­ment to look like — there’s lit­tle evi­dence that the two men are close.

How­ev­er, Bar­ton has deeply influ­enced Raphael Cruz, the candidate’s father, who spent much of the last year trav­el­ing across Iowa speak­ing in church­es about his son. Raphael Cruz’s world­view is sim­i­lar to Barton’s, and Barton’s his­tor­i­cal research has giv­en Raphael Cruz more fod­der to believe that Amer­i­ca is los­ing its soul, and that Chris­tians must “take this coun­try back.” Raphael Cruz has pub­lished a new book, “A Time for Action: Empow­er­ing the Faith­ful to Reclaim Amer­i­ca,” in which he quotes and cites Bar­ton.

“Rafael and David are extreme­ly close,” said Gary Miller, who runs a group called “Talk Less! Pray More!” and also works with oper­a­tives like David Lane who orga­nize events to bring politi­cians to speak to groups of Chris­t­ian pas­tors across the coun­try.

“When it comes to Ted, there is a friend­ship, but I get the dis­tinct impres­sion that Ted Cruz is his own man,” Miller said. “He cer­tain­ly rec­og­nizes that David Bar­ton has a voice among evan­gel­i­cals, but you also would have to know that David Bar­ton dri­ves some evan­gel­i­cals crazy. I’m not one of those, but I have friends of mine who are.”
...

And as the fol­low­ing Boston Globe arti­cle, also from Jan­u­ary of 2016, describes, it’s not just that Rafael Cruz and David Bar­ton are long­time close asso­ciates. Rafael was seen by many as his son’s ‘secret weapon’ in the GOP pri­mar­i­ly pre­cise­ly because the elder Cruz has so much sway with evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers. Beyond that, as the arti­cle also describes, Ted Cruz has effec­tive­ly been groomed by his father to run for pres­i­dent since he was a child. So when we see how David Bar­ton was play­ing a key role ral­ly evan­gel­i­cals around Ted Cruz’s 2016 pres­i­den­tial bid, keep in mind that this was a moment Rafael had been plan­ning on for a very long time. Per­haps longer than Ted had been:

The Boston Globe

Ted Cruz’s father gives him edge among con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians

By Tra­cy Jan Globe Staff,
Jan­u­ary 26, 2016, 8:45 p.m.

MARION, Iowa — The Texas pas­tor paced before the wood­en cross in a rur­al church, point­ing toward the heav­ens as he lament­ed the sor­ry state of the coun­try.

Cast your vote in the Iowa cau­cus, he exhort­ed the con­gre­ga­tion, and reclaim Amer­i­ca!

“If the right­eous are not run­ning for office and not even vot­ing, what is left?” he asked dur­ing Sun­day morn­ing ser­vice at Grace Bap­tist Church in Iowa. “The wicked elect­ing the wicked. And we get what we deserve.”

Meet Rafael Cruz, Ted Cruz’s 76-year-old father, a cru­cial — if some­times divi­sive — ele­ment of the Texas sen­a­tor’s cam­paign to win over con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian vot­ers. The senior Cruz’s cru­sades at church­es across Iowa have paid big div­i­dends; with strong sup­port among evan­gel­i­cals, Cruz has pulled with­in strik­ing dis­tance of front-run­ner Don­ald Trump in next week’s first-in-the-nation cau­cus.

Rafael Cruz has drawn crit­i­cism for mak­ing incen­di­ary state­ments: He has com­pared Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to Fidel Cas­tro and advo­cat­ed that the pres­i­dent be sent “back to Kenya.” He accus­es gay activists of try­ing to legal­ize pedophil­ia. He con­tends pub­lic schools are brain­wash­ing chil­dren with sec­u­lar­ism. But among many Chris­tians here, he’s preach­ing to the choir, draw­ing cries of “Amen!” “Preach!” and “C’mon!” from the pews.

For more than a year, Rafael Cruz, a trim, spry man with a ring of white hair, has been preach­ing the same fire and brim­stone ser­mon at church­es and in pri­vate meet­ings with pas­tors all over Iowa and the coun­try, on a mis­sion to ral­ly this crit­i­cal demo­graph­ic toward polit­i­cal activism — and sup­port his son for the pres­i­den­cy.

...

When Rafael Cruz was asked by a reporter to respond to crit­ics who dis­miss his views as extrem­ist, a cam­paign aide hov­er­ing near­by whis­pered to him not to answer. The advice was ignored.

“If they don’t agree, they don’t agree,” said an unapolo­getic Cruz. “But my son is try­ing to be pres­i­dent to all Amer­i­cans.”

Ted Cruz said in an inter­view that his father is a pow­er­ful voice for free­dom and that his mes­sage should res­onate deeply even among non-Chris­tians.

Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives say they are par­tic­u­lar­ly drawn to Rafael Cruz because of his dra­mat­ic life sto­ry. He was an active oppo­nent of Cuba’s Batista dic­ta­tor­ship who fled to the Unit­ed States in 1957 on a stu­dent visa and $100 sewn into his under­wear. He stud­ied math at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Austin, learn­ing Eng­lish by watch­ing movies and sup­port­ing him­self by wash­ing dish­es.

He and his sec­ond wife, an Amer­i­can, even­tu­al­ly moved to Cana­da, where Ted Cruz was born in 1970. But Rafael Cruz, an alco­holic, aban­doned his wife and tod­dler son and returned to Texas. It was there that he found God, lead­ing him to rec­on­cile with his fam­i­ly in 1975 and bring­ing them back to the Unit­ed States.

By the time Ted Cruz was 9, his father was pro­vid­ing heavy dos­es of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian pol­i­tics at the din­ner table. By 13, the younger Cruz had mem­o­rized the Con­sti­tu­tion and through high school toured the state of Texas, deliv­er­ing speech­es on free mar­ket eco­nom­ics and the Con­sti­tu­tion.

“Essen­tial­ly his father groomed him for this moment,” said Steve Deace, a con­ser­v­a­tive Iowa radio talk show host who has endorsed Cruz. “That back­sto­ry was cru­cial in influ­enc­ing a lot of peo­ple.”

Empha­siz­ing the fam­i­ly’s reli­gious ties with­in Iowa’s Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty seems to be work­ing. While Trump is hold­ing on to a lead of around 5 points, Ted Cruz remained the favorite among evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians, accord­ing to the lat­est Des Moines Reg­is­ter poll: 37 per­cent of self-iden­ti­fied evan­gel­i­cals or born-again Chris­tians sup­port­ed Cruz, com­pared to 17 per­cent for Trump.

Of Iowans who have said they plan to cau­cus next week, between 40 and 50 per­cent iden­ti­fy as evan­gel­i­cals, said J. Ann Selz­er, poll­ster for the Des Moines Reg­is­ter.]

“Rafael is an amaz­ing clos­er,” said Bryan Eng­lish, Cruz’s Iowa state direc­tor and a for­mer pas­tor who shut­tled Rafael Cruz all over the state in his Dodge Dako­ta last year to more than 1,000 meet­ings. “Too many politi­cians over the years come in, wave a Bible, quote a cou­ple of vers­es, and think they’re a part of our move­ment. We’ve been burned.”

The elder Cruz, many evan­gel­i­cals say, speaks to the authen­tic­i­ty of Ted Cruz’s rela­tion­ship with God. That’s a key rea­son he won the sought-after endorse­ment last month of Bob Van­der Plaats, pres­i­dent of The Fam­i­ly Leader, an influ­en­tial Chris­t­ian advo­ca­cy group.

“He’s a clar­i­fy­ing check that Ted’s the real deal,” said Van­der Plaats dur­ing an inter­view from his Urban­dale office, half a mile from Cruz’s Iowa head­quar­ters.

Pas­tor Joseph Brown, head of Mar­i­on Avenue Bap­tist Church in Wash­ing­ton, Iowa, leads 99 Pas­tors for Cruz, a grass-roots effort to secure an endorse­ment from a pas­tor in each coun­ty and use their built-in audi­ences every Sun­day to pro­pel Cruz to a win. Brown, who had not pre­vi­ous­ly insert­ed him­self in pol­i­tics, said he came up with the idea after lis­ten­ing to Rafael Cruz chal­lenge pas­tors to get involved.

...

On Sat­ur­day, as Ted Cruz held a ral­ly with radio host Glenn Beck at a Bap­tist col­lege in a Des Moines sub­urb, Rafael Cruz and Deace auto­graphed copies of their new books at a church 16 miles away.

“We have to get the right­eous involved in the polit­i­cal process,” Rafael Cruz told a cou­ple in their ear­ly 70s. He flipped to Chap­ter 13 of his book “A Time For Action.”

“I give action steps here, what peo­ple need to do to get involved,” Cruz said.

The cou­ple, Cheryl and Dave Kutsch­er, bought two copies, so they could read it simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. They said they sup­port Ted Cruz, in large part because of his father.

“If Ted ever got out of line, Rafael would put him back in place,” said Dave Kutsch­er, a land devel­op­er.

The next day, at the Mar­i­on church, Cruz, dressed in a blue suit, railed against the abo­li­tion of prayer and Bible read­ing in schools as the cause of sky­rock­et­ing teen preg­nan­cy, dropout rates, and van­dal­ism. Now, he said, “homo­sex­u­al mar­riage” is the lat­est “frontal attack on reli­gious lib­er­ty.”

“The dev­il over­played his hand because this deci­sion has act­ed as a cat­a­lyst to awak­en the sleep­ing giant,” Cruz said, his voice boom­ing through the church. He nev­er men­tioned his son’s name.

On Mon­day, about 150 Iowa pas­tors attend­ed a pri­vate din­ner at a Des Moines air­port hotel host­ed by David Lane, a Chris­t­ian activist from Cal­i­for­nia whose group, Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, mobi­lizes pas­tors to run for polit­i­cal office.

The din­ner served as a final oppor­tu­ni­ty for pas­tors to hear from Ted Cruz him­self. Lane, who allowed the Globe to attend the closed event with the agree­ment of the cam­paign, has host­ed sim­i­lar din­ners for oth­er can­di­dates, includ­ing Mike Huck­abee, Rand Paul, and Mar­co Rubio. But Cruz has drawn the largest crowd by far, dou­ble that of Rubio’s, Lane said.

As guests dined on hon­ey pecan chick­en and straw­ber­ry cheese­cake par­faits, Ted Cruz deliv­ered his father’s mantra of the impor­tance of vot­ing on bib­li­cal val­ues.

“What mat­ters in the next 167 hours is who shows up on cau­cus night,” Cruz said. “This is entire­ly about turnout. And the men and women in this room have the pow­er to change the elec­tion and the course of his­to­ry.”

Sit­ting a few feet away, Rafael Cruz looked up at his son and beamed.

———-

“Ted Cruz’s father gives him edge among con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians” By Tra­cy Jan Globe Staff; The Boston Globe; 01/26/2016

“Meet Rafael Cruz, Ted Cruz’s 76-year-old father, a cru­cial — if some­times divi­sive — ele­ment of the Texas sen­a­tor’s cam­paign to win over con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian vot­ers. The senior Cruz’s cru­sades at church­es across Iowa have paid big div­i­dends; with strong sup­port among evan­gel­i­cals, Cruz has pulled with­in strik­ing dis­tance of front-run­ner Don­ald Trump in next week’s first-in-the-nation cau­cus.”

Rafael Cruz is quite the crowd pleas­er. At least for the right kind of crowd. Like an Iowan Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry audi­ence.

But as we can see, Rafael has­n’t just been meet­ing with church­go­ers to pro­mote his son’s pres­i­den­tial bid. He had been meet­ing in pri­vate with pas­tors all over the US for at least a year at that point. And had been prepar­ing Ted for this role since child­hood:

...
Rafael Cruz has drawn crit­i­cism for mak­ing incen­di­ary state­ments: He has com­pared Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to Fidel Cas­tro and advo­cat­ed that the pres­i­dent be sent “back to Kenya.” He accus­es gay activists of try­ing to legal­ize pedophil­ia. He con­tends pub­lic schools are brain­wash­ing chil­dren with sec­u­lar­ism. But among many Chris­tians here, he’s preach­ing to the choir, draw­ing cries of “Amen!” “Preach!” and “C’mon!” from the pews.

For more than a year, Rafael Cruz, a trim, spry man with a ring of white hair, has been preach­ing the same fire and brim­stone ser­mon at church­es and in pri­vate meet­ings with pas­tors all over Iowa and the coun­try, on a mis­sion to ral­ly this crit­i­cal demo­graph­ic toward polit­i­cal activism — and sup­port his son for the pres­i­den­cy.

...

Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives say they are par­tic­u­lar­ly drawn to Rafael Cruz because of his dra­mat­ic life sto­ry. He was an active oppo­nent of Cuba’s Batista dic­ta­tor­ship who fled to the Unit­ed States in 1957 on a stu­dent visa and $100 sewn into his under­wear. He stud­ied math at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Austin, learn­ing Eng­lish by watch­ing movies and sup­port­ing him­self by wash­ing dish­es.

He and his sec­ond wife, an Amer­i­can, even­tu­al­ly moved to Cana­da, where Ted Cruz was born in 1970. But Rafael Cruz, an alco­holic, aban­doned his wife and tod­dler son and returned to Texas. It was there that he found God, lead­ing him to rec­on­cile with his fam­i­ly in 1975 and bring­ing them back to the Unit­ed States.

By the time Ted Cruz was 9, his father was pro­vid­ing heavy dos­es of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian pol­i­tics at the din­ner table. By 13, the younger Cruz had mem­o­rized the Con­sti­tu­tion and through high school toured the state of Texas, deliv­er­ing speech­es on free mar­ket eco­nom­ics and the Con­sti­tu­tion.

“Essen­tial­ly his father groomed him for this moment,” said Steve Deace, a con­ser­v­a­tive Iowa radio talk show host who has endorsed Cruz. “That back­sto­ry was cru­cial in influ­enc­ing a lot of peo­ple.”
...

And when we see how Rafael sought out the endorse­ment of key Iowa con­ser­v­a­tive king-mak­er, Bob Van­der Plaats, recall how Van­der Plaats end­ed up endorse Ron DeSan­tis in the 2024 Iowa cau­cus, trig­ger­ing a big fight for Van­der Plaats with the ‘Pas­tors for Trump’ group that’s emerged in recent year. In fact, Pas­tors for Trump was start­ed not long after Van­der Plaats began open­ly crit­i­ciz­ing Don­ald Trump fol­low­ing Trump’s now-infa­mous din­ner at Mar-a-Lago with Kanye West and neo-Nazi leader Nick Fuentes. It’s a reminder that the race of evan­gel­i­cal endorse­ments has become more com­pli­cat­ed since Trump’s cap­ture of the Repub­li­can Par­ty:

...
Empha­siz­ing the fam­i­ly’s reli­gious ties with­in Iowa’s Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty seems to be work­ing. While Trump is hold­ing on to a lead of around 5 points, Ted Cruz remained the favorite among evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians, accord­ing to the lat­est Des Moines Reg­is­ter poll: 37 per­cent of self-iden­ti­fied evan­gel­i­cals or born-again Chris­tians sup­port­ed Cruz, com­pared to 17 per­cent for Trump.

Of Iowans who have said they plan to cau­cus next week, between 40 and 50 per­cent iden­ti­fy as evan­gel­i­cals, said J. Ann Selz­er, poll­ster for the Des Moines Reg­is­ter.]

“Rafael is an amaz­ing clos­er,” said Bryan Eng­lish, Cruz’s Iowa state direc­tor and a for­mer pas­tor who shut­tled Rafael Cruz all over the state in his Dodge Dako­ta last year to more than 1,000 meet­ings. “Too many politi­cians over the years come in, wave a Bible, quote a cou­ple of vers­es, and think they’re a part of our move­ment. We’ve been burned.”

The elder Cruz, many evan­gel­i­cals say, speaks to the authen­tic­i­ty of Ted Cruz’s rela­tion­ship with God. That’s a key rea­son he won the sought-after endorse­ment last month of Bob Van­der Plaats, pres­i­dent of The Fam­i­ly Leader, an influ­en­tial Chris­t­ian advo­ca­cy group.

“He’s a clar­i­fy­ing check that Ted’s the real deal,” said Van­der Plaats dur­ing an inter­view from his Urban­dale office, half a mile from Cruz’s Iowa head­quar­ters.
...

And then we get a ref­er­ence to one of David Lane’s Amer­i­can Renew­al Project events, fea­tur­ing Ted Cruz. An event attend­ed by Rafael too:

...
On Mon­day, about 150 Iowa pas­tors attend­ed a pri­vate din­ner at a Des Moines air­port hotel host­ed by David Lane, a Chris­t­ian activist from Cal­i­for­nia whose group, Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, mobi­lizes pas­tors to run for polit­i­cal office.

The din­ner served as a final oppor­tu­ni­ty for pas­tors to hear from Ted Cruz him­self. Lane, who allowed the Globe to attend the closed event with the agree­ment of the cam­paign, has host­ed sim­i­lar din­ners for oth­er can­di­dates, includ­ing Mike Huck­abee, Rand Paul, and Mar­co Rubio. But Cruz has drawn the largest crowd by far, dou­ble that of Rubio’s, Lane said.

As guests dined on hon­ey pecan chick­en and straw­ber­ry cheese­cake par­faits, Ted Cruz deliv­ered his father’s mantra of the impor­tance of vot­ing on bib­li­cal val­ues.

“What mat­ters in the next 167 hours is who shows up on cau­cus night,” Cruz said. “This is entire­ly about turnout. And the men and women in this room have the pow­er to change the elec­tion and the course of his­to­ry.”

Sit­ting a few feet away, Rafael Cruz looked up at his son and beamed.
...

And that brings us to the fol­low­ing April 2015 piece from the Wash­ing­ton Times describ­ing a rela­tion­ship we should more or less expect at this point: it turns out David Lane and Rafael Cruz have a long­stand­ing work­ing rela­tion­ship. The kind of rela­tion­ship that could have been very help­ful had Ted won the pri­ma­ry. Because as the Cruz cam­paign explained at the time, Ted Cruz’s path to the White House was pred­i­cat­ed on acti­vat­ed two dif­fer­ent groups of evan­gel­i­cals: reg­u­lar evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers and non-reg­u­lar evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers. And as David Lane explained, one of his goals was get­ting preach­ers to ener­gize the then 30-to-40 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cals not reg­is­tered to vote. It’s a reminder that, while the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project might have a pub­lic focus on recruit­ing pas­tors to run for office, at its core the project appears to be more about using pas­tors to con­vert non-vot­ing evan­gel­i­cals into vot­ers:

The Wash­ing­ton Times

Evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors descend on Las Vegas to learn to moti­vate Chris­tians to vote

By Kel­ly Rid­dell
Wednes­day, April 22, 2015

Hun­dreds of Evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors and their wives will descend on Las Vegas Thurs­day to learn how to moti­vate their con­gre­ga­tions to get out and vote, prefer­ably for social con­ser­v­a­tives.

David Lane, an evan­gel­i­cal polit­i­cal activist and event spon­sor, is eager to get preach­ers to tack­le gov­ern­ment poli­cies from the pul­pit and ener­gize the esti­mat­ed 30 to 40 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians who are not reg­is­tered to vote.

“Somebody’s prin­ci­ples are going to reign supreme, it’s either our prin­ci­ples or some­body else’s prin­ci­ples,” said Mr. Lane. “By us stay­ing home, we’re elect­ing peo­ple who oppose our val­ues. Evan­gel­i­cal believ­ers and pro-life Catholic Chris­tians, our con­stituen­cy, has to engage if we’re going to save Amer­i­ca.”

There are about 65 to 80 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians in Amer­i­ca, half of those are not reg­is­tered to vote, and only about 25 per­cent of the ones who are reg­is­tered do, accord­ing to Mr. Lane.

Repub­li­can Sen. Ted Cruz, who announced his pres­i­den­tial bid at the Chris­t­ian-found­ed Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty last month, is depend­ing on these votes. He’s also look­ing to defy some estab­lish­ment Repub­li­cans and those in the media who say he’s on a fools errand.

“Today, rough­ly half of born-again Chris­tians aren’t vot­ing. They’re stay­ing home,” said Mr. Cruz, a Texas Repub­li­can, in the speech announc­ing his can­di­da­cy at Lib­er­ty. “Imag­ine instead mil­lions of peo­ple of faith all across Amer­i­ca com­ing out to the polls and vot­ing our val­ues.”

Mr. Cruz detailed to the Nation­al Jour­nal this month his plan to take the White House, which con­sists of two parts. The first is moti­vat­ing Chris­tians who stayed at home in the 2012 elec­tion to vote. The sec­ond is to be so true to his evan­gel­i­cal, con­sti­tu­tion­al val­ues that he pulls in peo­ple who have nev­er vot­ed before or sways oth­ers to chose him regard­less of polit­i­cal par­ty.

...

But Philip Bump, a polit­i­cal blog­ger at the Wash­ing­ton Post, has mocked Mr. Cruz’s evan­gel­i­cal strat­e­gy.

“Sen. Ted Cruz is a demon­stra­bly smart man, hav­ing grad­u­at­ed from both Prince­ton and Har­vard. It is easy to see, how­ev­er, that his degrees were not in math­e­mat­ics or sta­tis­tics,” Mr. Bump wrote in an April col­umn, argu­ing get­ting some­one who has no vot­ing his­to­ry to vote is an uphill climb, and by Mr. Cruz not mov­ing to the cen­ter, he won’t attract the inde­pen­dent vot­ers he’s plan­ning on.

...

George Will, a con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist wrote on April 1: “Cruz, like Shakespeare’s Glen­dow­er (’I can call spir­its from the vasty deep’), hopes his rhetor­i­cal pow­ers can sub­stan­tial­ly change the com­po­si­tion of the Repub­li­can nom­i­nat­ing elec­torate. Skep­tics of Cruz’s sum­mon­ing respond like Hot­spur: ’But will they come when you do call for them?’”

Mr. Lane found­ed the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, the spon­sor of Thurs­day and Friday’s Las Vegas pas­tor con­fer­ence, and start­ed this evan­gel­i­cal mod­el with for­mer Texas Gov. Rick Per­ry in 2005, He has held sev­er­al events since then fea­tur­ing Mr. Cruz, his father and pas­tor Rafael Cruz, South Car­oli­na Gov. Nik­ki Haley, Louisiana Gov. Bob­by Jin­dal, 2016 poten­tial can­di­dates Mike Huck­abee and Rick San­to­rum and Sen. Rand Paul, among oth­ers.

In 2014, his group ded­i­cat­ed $2 mil­lion to a ground game in four embat­tled states with Sen­ate races with the aim of turn­ing out evan­gel­i­cals. The Amer­i­can Renew­al Project held “pas­tors and pews” events speak­ing about the need for preach­ers to engage their con­gre­ga­tions, did vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves, gave out vot­er guides and launched a dig­i­tal strat­e­gy. The group iden­ti­fied 75,000 low propen­si­ty vot­ers in each state, and tar­get­ed them with phone calls, knock­ing on doors, and mail.

Over­all, the group esti­mates it turned out 141,151 votes in North Car­oli­na, Col­orado, Iowa and Arkansas com­bined. Repub­li­can sen­a­tors won each of those con­tests, and over­all, only 324,146 votes decid­ed them.

...

The goal of the pas­tor con­fer­ences is to show preach­ers how Amer­i­can his­to­ry and the pul­pit inter­twine and the only way to get Chris­t­ian val­ues reflect­ed in nation­al pol­i­cy is to get Chris­tians to par­tic­i­pate in it, said Rafael Cruz.

“There is a lot of peo­ple who are total­ly unaware of the Chris­t­ian his­to­ry of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion,” said the elder Cruz, who gives a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion to oth­er pas­tors dubbed “Reclaim­ing Amer­i­ca: Why Pas­tors and Chris­tians in Gen­er­al Need to be Involved in the Polit­i­cal Are­na.”

“If we look at the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence there are sev­en­teen griev­ances list­ed against King George, but what most peo­ple don’t know is that each and every one of those griev­ances were preached in the church­es of Amer­i­ca before they were com­plied in the dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence,” said the elder Cruz. “My friend David Bar­ton has said that the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence could be con­sid­ered a series of ser­mon sum­maries. So it was preach­ers from the pul­pit call­ing out King George for the atroc­i­ties the British were per­pe­trat­ing on the Amer­i­can peo­ple. That is our his­to­ry.”

Still, skep­tics are wary any­thing can be done to mobi­lize a base that his­tor­i­cal­ly hasn’t come out to vote or are even reg­is­tered.

“If Cruz wants to count those, good luck to him,” wrote Mr. Bump.

———-

“The Wash­ing­ton Times” By Kel­ly Rid­dell; The Wash­ing­ton Times; 04/22/2015

“There are about 65 to 80 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians in Amer­i­ca, half of those are not reg­is­tered to vote, and only about 25 per­cent of the ones who are reg­is­tered do, accord­ing to Mr. Lane.”

Only around half of the 65–80 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cals in Amer­i­ca are even reg­is­tered to vote and, only around a quar­ter of those who are reg­is­tered vote at all. In oth­er words, a clear major­i­ty of Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals don’t vote. Or at least that was claim David Lane was mak­ing in 2015. As we’re going to see below, it was a wild­ly exag­ger­at­ed claim that oth­ers in Lane’s orbit also like to repeat. Still, it’s a reflec­tion of the intense focus in Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry pol­i­tics on mobi­liz­ing evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers in par­tic­u­lar. As Ted Cruz was describ­ing at the time, ener­giz­ing and mobi­liz­ing the evan­gel­i­cal vote was at the core of his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign strat­e­gy. It’s not clear the strat­e­gy would have worked, as plen­ty of skep­tics point­ed out. But that was the plan:

...
David Lane, an evan­gel­i­cal polit­i­cal activist and event spon­sor, is eager to get preach­ers to tack­le gov­ern­ment poli­cies from the pul­pit and ener­gize the esti­mat­ed 30 to 40 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians who are not reg­is­tered to vote.

...

Repub­li­can Sen. Ted Cruz, who announced his pres­i­den­tial bid at the Chris­t­ian-found­ed Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty last month, is depend­ing on these votes. He’s also look­ing to defy some estab­lish­ment Repub­li­cans and those in the media who say he’s on a fools errand.

“Today, rough­ly half of born-again Chris­tians aren’t vot­ing. They’re stay­ing home,” said Mr. Cruz, a Texas Repub­li­can, in the speech announc­ing his can­di­da­cy at Lib­er­ty. “Imag­ine instead mil­lions of peo­ple of faith all across Amer­i­ca com­ing out to the polls and vot­ing our val­ues.”

Mr. Cruz detailed to the Nation­al Jour­nal this month his plan to take the White House, which con­sists of two parts. The first is moti­vat­ing Chris­tians who stayed at home in the 2012 elec­tion to vote. The sec­ond is to be so true to his evan­gel­i­cal, con­sti­tu­tion­al val­ues that he pulls in peo­ple who have nev­er vot­ed before or sways oth­ers to chose him regard­less of polit­i­cal par­ty.

...

But Philip Bump, a polit­i­cal blog­ger at the Wash­ing­ton Post, has mocked Mr. Cruz’s evan­gel­i­cal strat­e­gy.

“Sen. Ted Cruz is a demon­stra­bly smart man, hav­ing grad­u­at­ed from both Prince­ton and Har­vard. It is easy to see, how­ev­er, that his degrees were not in math­e­mat­ics or sta­tis­tics,” Mr. Bump wrote in an April col­umn, argu­ing get­ting some­one who has no vot­ing his­to­ry to vote is an uphill climb, and by Mr. Cruz not mov­ing to the cen­ter, he won’t attract the inde­pen­dent vot­ers he’s plan­ning on.

...

George Will, a con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist wrote on April 1: “Cruz, like Shakespeare’s Glen­dow­er (’I can call spir­its from the vasty deep’), hopes his rhetor­i­cal pow­ers can sub­stan­tial­ly change the com­po­si­tion of the Repub­li­can nom­i­nat­ing elec­torate. Skep­tics of Cruz’s sum­mon­ing respond like Hot­spur: ’But will they come when you do call for them?’”
...

And not how these Amer­i­can Renew­al Project events at the time did­n’t just fea­ture pres­i­den­tial hope­fuls like Nik­ki Haley or Ted Cruz. Rafael Cruz him­self was fea­tured guest at some of these events, giv­ing Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion to oth­er pas­tors dubbed “Reclaim­ing Amer­i­ca: Why Pas­tors and Chris­tians in Gen­er­al Need to be Involved in the Polit­i­cal Are­na”:

...
Mr. Lane found­ed the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, the spon­sor of Thurs­day and Friday’s Las Vegas pas­tor con­fer­ence, and start­ed this evan­gel­i­cal mod­el with for­mer Texas Gov. Rick Per­ry in 2005, He has held sev­er­al events since then fea­tur­ing Mr. Cruz, his father and pas­tor Rafael Cruz, South Car­oli­na Gov. Nik­ki Haley, Louisiana Gov. Bob­by Jin­dal, 2016 poten­tial can­di­dates Mike Huck­abee and Rick San­to­rum and Sen. Rand Paul, among oth­ers.

In 2014, his group ded­i­cat­ed $2 mil­lion to a ground game in four embat­tled states with Sen­ate races with the aim of turn­ing out evan­gel­i­cals. The Amer­i­can Renew­al Project held “pas­tors and pews” events speak­ing about the need for preach­ers to engage their con­gre­ga­tions, did vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves, gave out vot­er guides and launched a dig­i­tal strat­e­gy. The group iden­ti­fied 75,000 low propen­si­ty vot­ers in each state, and tar­get­ed them with phone calls, knock­ing on doors, and mail.

...

The goal of the pas­tor con­fer­ences is to show preach­ers how Amer­i­can his­to­ry and the pul­pit inter­twine and the only way to get Chris­t­ian val­ues reflect­ed in nation­al pol­i­cy is to get Chris­tians to par­tic­i­pate in it, said Rafael Cruz.

“There is a lot of peo­ple who are total­ly unaware of the Chris­t­ian his­to­ry of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion,” said the elder Cruz, who gives a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion to oth­er pas­tors dubbed “Reclaim­ing Amer­i­ca: Why Pas­tors and Chris­tians in Gen­er­al Need to be Involved in the Polit­i­cal Are­na.”

“If we look at the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence there are sev­en­teen griev­ances list­ed against King George, but what most peo­ple don’t know is that each and every one of those griev­ances were preached in the church­es of Amer­i­ca before they were com­plied in the dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence,” said the elder Cruz. “My friend David Bar­ton has said that the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence could be con­sid­ered a series of ser­mon sum­maries. So it was preach­ers from the pul­pit call­ing out King George for the atroc­i­ties the British were per­pe­trat­ing on the Amer­i­can peo­ple. That is our his­to­ry.”
...

Next, let’s take a quick look at this Novem­ber 2013 piece in the Wash­ing­ton Month­ly about Lane’s Amer­i­can Renew­al Project events, fea­tur­ing David Bar­ton, that were already under­way for the 2014 elec­tion cycle. And as it notes, Ted Cruz was already attend­ing these events. Keep in mind that he was first elect­ed to the Sen­ate in 2012, so he was­n’t actu­al­ly fac­ing any elec­tions in the 2014 elec­tion cycle. In oth­er words, Ted Cruz was already start­ing the process of win­ning over evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors for his 2016 pres­i­den­tial race in 2013, with the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project as his venue of choice:

Wash­ing­ton Month­ly

Wacko Birds of a Feath­er

by Ed Kil­go­re
Novem­ber 4, 2013

Those who mar­veled at my ear­li­er post about David Barton’s belief that legal­ized abor­tion is the cause of cli­mate change should be aware that the “his­to­ri­an” is not only the chief inspi­ra­tion for the whole “Chris­t­ian Nation” meme that has large­ly been accept­ed as a tru­ism by much of the Amer­i­can Right, but swims in some of the same waters as reg­u­lar old Repub­li­can pols.

This becomes appar­ent if you look at one of ol’ David’s favorite orga­ni­za­tions, the Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, the very insid­er Chris­t­ian Right group close­ly aligned with the aggres­sive­ly homo­pho­bic Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion, and run by the famous­ly influ­en­tial David Lane, whose main vehi­cle is the “Pastor’s Pol­i­cy Brief­in­gs” that bring pols in on the car­pet to be instruct­ed by cler­gy in an off-the-record con­text.

Bar­ton was present at the first such event of the 2014 elec­toral cycle in Iowa back in July. So, too, were Rand Paul, and the man who stole the show, Ted Cruz (per this account from the Des Moines Reg­is­ter‘s Jen­nifer Jacobs:

This morn­ing, Cruz spoke for near­ly an hour at the Iowa Renew­al Project, a two-day, all-expens­es-paid forum orga­nized by David Lane, a polit­i­cal activist from Cal­i­for­nia who has been qui­et­ly mobi­liz­ing evan­gel­i­cals in Iowa for six years. Two top-name GOP politi­cians who are like­ly 2016 pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates – Cruz and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Ken­tucky, both born-again Chris­tians – are the stars of today’s ses­sions.

Cruz lec­tured for 30 min­utes, his voice at times ris­ing to a shout. He answered ques­tions for anoth­er 20 min­utes, then stood at the cen­ter of a cir­cle as pas­tors laid their hands on him and the whole audi­ence – a pre­dom­i­nant­ly white group with about 20 black pas­tors – bowed heads to pray for him.

Then there was this tid­bit, which is even more inter­est­ing now that David Corn has drawn atten­tion to a cer­tain rev­erend close to the junior sen­a­tor from Texas:

Cruz, who told The Des Moines Reg­is­ter he has nev­er been to Iowa before, laid out his social con­ser­v­a­tive cre­den­tials in some detail, explain­ing all the reli­gious issues he defend­ed in court cas­es he worked on as a pri­vate lawyer and as solic­i­tor gen­er­al in Texas. He intro­duced his Cuban immi­grant father, Rafael Cruz, who sat in the audi­ence.

That was then. This is now, today, per Andrew Shain of The State:

Repub­li­can U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is reach­ing out Mon­day to the same audi­ence of South Car­oli­na pas­tors that for­mer House Speak­er Newt Gin­grich vis­it­ed twice before his sur­prise vic­to­ry in the state’s 2012 pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry.

Cruz, an expect­ed White House hope­ful who was the light­ning rod dur­ing last month’s 16-day par­tial fed­er­al gov­ern­ment shut­down, will speak at a Colum­bia hotel. It is one of many events that evan­gel­i­cal polit­i­cal oper­a­tive David Lane has orga­nized in key bat­tle­ground states since 2005.

Lane’s Amer­i­can Renew­al Project is financed by the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion, the Mis­sis­sip­pi-based Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tion that advo­cates on social issues. Lane’s goal is to get more evan­gel­i­cals to the polls via the “pas­tors’ pol­i­cy brief­in­gs’’ that he has held over the years, includ­ing a half-dozen in South Car­oli­na.

...

I could go on and on (anoth­er speak­er at the SC event, Dr. Lau­rence White, deliv­ered a blood-cur­dling speech I hap­pened to hear in Iowa last year attack­ing Chris­tians who tol­er­ate “the per­vert­ed stan­dards of the ungod­ly who live around us” and damned any­one who would in any way com­pro­mise with baby-killing pro-choicers). But you get the point. Pun­dits who casu­al­ly talk about pols in both par­ties pan­der­ing to “extrem­ists” or “inter­est groups” clear­ly don’t get it. There is no ana­log among Demo­c­ra­t­ic politicians–certainly those con­sid­ered pos­si­ble seri­ous can­di­dates for president–consorting with peo­ple as “out there” as Bar­ton and Fed­er­er and White and AFA founder Don Wild­mon (anoth­er speak­er in Colum­bia) and Lane and Lord knows who else. For Repub­li­cans, it’s not only busi­ness as usu­al, but essen­tial to good rela­tions with “the base” and an oblig­a­tory chore on the road to the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion.

———-

“Wacko Birds of a Feath­er” by Ed Kil­go­re; Wash­ing­ton Month­ly; 11/04/2013

“Bar­ton was present at the first such event of the 2014 elec­toral cycle in Iowa back in July. So, too, were Rand Paul, and the man who stole the show, Ted Cruz”

Look who stole the show at the ‘first’ Amer­i­can Renew­al Project event of the 2014 elec­tion cycle, back in July of 2013 in Iowa. And then, in Novem­ber of that year, he attend­ed anoth­er such event, this time South Car­oli­na. That’s part of the con­text of all these reports we were get­ting 2015 and 2016 about how Cruz was rely­ing on Lane’s net­work to secure his pri­ma­ry vic­to­ry and go on to win the White House: Ted Cruz has appar­ent­ly been attend­ed a large num­ber David Lane’s events.

And note when we see the ref­er­ence to Dr. Lau­rence White deliv­ered a blood-cur­dling speech at a 2012 Amer­i­can Renew­al Project event, recall how White and his wife were two of three direc­tors on the Niemoller Foundation’s gov­ern­ing board. In oth­er words, White is an Amer­i­can Renew­al Project mega-donor. He could pre­sum­ably give as many blood-cur­dling speech­es at he want­ed at these kinds of events:

...
I could go on and on (anoth­er speak­er at the SC event, Dr. Lau­rence White, deliv­ered a blood-cur­dling speech I hap­pened to hear in Iowa last year attack­ing Chris­tians who tol­er­ate “the per­vert­ed stan­dards of the ungod­ly who live around us” and damned any­one who would in any way com­pro­mise with baby-killing pro-choicers). But you get the point. Pun­dits who casu­al­ly talk about pols in both par­ties pan­der­ing to “extrem­ists” or “inter­est groups” clear­ly don’t get it. There is no ana­log among Demo­c­ra­t­ic politicians–certainly those con­sid­ered pos­si­ble seri­ous can­di­dates for president–consorting with peo­ple as “out there” as Bar­ton and Fed­er­er and White and AFA founder Don Wild­mon (anoth­er speak­er in Colum­bia) and Lane and Lord knows who else. For Repub­li­cans, it’s not only busi­ness as usu­al, but essen­tial to good rela­tions with “the base” and an oblig­a­tory chore on the road to the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion.
...

Final­ly, let’s take a look at the fol­low­ing March 2015 Wash­ing­ton Post piece explor­ing these claims we’ve heard from Lane about how only a quar­ter of evan­gel­i­cals vote in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. Note the piece is by Philip Bump, who , as we saw in the above Wash­ing­ton Times piece, was active­ly mock­ing Ted Cruz’s strat­e­gy at the time of rely­ing pret­ty much exclu­sive­ly on gen­er­at­ing turnout from non-vot­ing evan­gel­i­cals to secure his path to the White House. Mock­ery based, pre­sum­ably in part, on the fol­low­ing analy­sis exam­in­ing just how accu­rate this ’25% of evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers actu­al­ly vote’ claim real­ly is. Sur­prise! It’s not a very accu­rate claim:

The Wash­ing­ton Post

Ted Cruz under­sells evan­gel­i­cal turnout. But he has a good rea­son.

In a speech at Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty in Lynch­burg, Va., Sen. Ted Cruz (R‑Tex.) out­lined his vision for the U.S. and announced his can­di­da­cy for pres­i­dent. Here’s the full speech. (Video: AP)

By Philip Bump
March 23, 2015 at 1:39 p.m. EDT

“Today,” Ted Cruz said dur­ing his pres­i­den­tial announce­ment Mon­day, “rough­ly half of born-again Chris­tians aren’t vot­ing. They’re stay­ing home.” Con­tin­u­ing his cen­tral theme — imag­ine! — Cruz offered an alter­na­tive: “Imag­ine instead mil­lions of peo­ple of faith all across Amer­i­ca com­ing out to the polls and vot­ing our val­ues.”

Get­ting votes from con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian vot­ers is crit­i­cal to Cruz’s chances of win­ning the nom­i­na­tion, as we’ve not­ed. And it’s always the case that get­ting out more of your base is crit­i­cal to suc­cess. But is it true that half of born-again Chris­tians don’t vote?

...

After the 2000 elec­tion, a sur­vey from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Akron put evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tant turnout at 50 per­cent, as Cruz stat­ed. But by 2004, evan­gel­i­cal turnout was at 63 per­cent, accord­ing to the next iter­a­tion of that same sur­vey. What’s more, that turnout isn’t abysmal­ly low rel­a­tive to oth­er groups. In the 2000 sur­vey, Catholics also turned out at 50 per­cent. In 2004, main­line Protes­tants turned out at 69 per­cent — the same as the more con­ser­v­a­tive sub­set of evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants in the sur­vey.

In the wake of the 2012 Mitt Rom­ney loss, there were var­i­ous analy­ses of Chris­t­ian turnout that point­ed to weak con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian turnout in some states as being a cause of the loss. Our crack poll­ster team looked at data from the 2012 Amer­i­can Nation­al Elec­tion Stud­ies to esti­mate evan­gel­i­cal turnout. More peo­ple in the study report vot­ing than actu­al­ly do. Once cor­rect­ed for that over-report­ing, we esti­mate that 62 per­cent of evan­gel­i­cals went to the polls in 2012. It’s down from the 2004 esti­mate cit­ed above, but it’s also using dif­fer­ent data. And that 62 per­cent is about four points high­er than the over­all pop­u­la­tion.

The idea of low turnout in the group isn’t unique to Cruz. Last year, for­mer Arkansas gov­er­nor Mike Huck­abee — who would very much like to absorb those same reli­gious votes in next year’s pri­maries — artic­u­lat­ed a more extreme ver­sion of Cruz’s math. At the Val­ue Vot­ers Sum­mit, Huck­abee said that there are about 80 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cals, half of whom are reg­is­tered to vote — and a quar­ter of whom actu­al­ly vote in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. And in midterms? Only half of those who vote in pres­i­den­tial races!

That’s pret­ty clear­ly not true. A sur­vey from Pew Research puts the per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion of U.S. adults that is evan­gel­i­cal at 26.3 per­cent. (This may be high, as is argued here.) The Cen­sus Bureau tracks reg­is­tra­tion and vot­ing over time, allow­ing us to see what the num­bers would look like if Huck­abee were cor­rect.

Turnout accord­ing to Mike Huck­abee

Year Adult U.S. pop­u­la­tion Total vot­ers Evan­gel­i­cal adults (per Pew) Reg­is­tered evang. Vot­ed evang. Per­cent of all vot­ers
2008 225.5 mil­lion 131.2 mil­lion 59.3 mil­lion 29.7 mil­lion 14.8 mil­lion 11.3 per­cent
2010 230 mil­lion 96 mil­lion 60.4 mil­lion 30.2 mil­lion 7.5 mil­lion 7.9 per­cent
2012 235.2 mil­lion 132.9 mil­lion 61.9 mil­lion 30.9 mil­lion 15.5 mil­lion 11.6 per­cent

Before we get any fur­ther, notice the over­all turnout rates in 2008 through 2012, accord­ing to the Cen­sus Bureau: 58.2 per­cent, 41.8 per­cent, 56.5 per­cent. Turnout of 50 per­cent, then, isn’t any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly unusu­al, depend­ing on the elec­tion.

But we can eval­u­ate Huck­abee’s claim against exit polling. Since 2004, 25 per­cent of the elec­torate has iden­ti­fied itself as evan­gel­i­cal in exit polling, vot­ing heav­i­ly for Repub­li­cans. In 2008, the fig­ure was 26 per­cent; in 2010, 25; in 2012, 26 again. That’s much high­er than Huck­abee’s esti­mates, and it’s pret­ty con­sis­tent.

You might notice that it’s also about in line with the Pew find­ings that 26 per­cent of the coun­try is evan­gel­i­cal. That’s a dif­fer­ent thing than say­ing that a cer­tain per­cent­age of the evan­gel­i­cal pop­u­la­tion came out to vote, but it does mean that turnout is about where you’d expect.

Which was­n’t Cruz’s point, real­ly. In the same way that the 2008 and 2012 cam­paigns of Barack Oba­ma put an empha­sis on boost­ing African-Amer­i­can turnout — suc­cess­ful­ly — Cruz’s goal isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly to say that evan­gel­i­cals are under-per­form­ing; rather, that he needs them to over-per­form, and prefer­ably on his behalf. Today, rough­ly half of every­body isn’t vot­ing. But Cruz is not ter­ri­bly inter­est­ed in see­ing more turnout from mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans or Democ­rats.

———–

“Ted Cruz under­sells evan­gel­i­cal turnout. But he has a good rea­son.” By Philip Bump; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 03/23/2015

“The idea of low turnout in the group isn’t unique to Cruz. Last year, for­mer Arkansas gov­er­nor Mike Huck­abee — who would very much like to absorb those same reli­gious votes in next year’s pri­maries — artic­u­lat­ed a more extreme ver­sion of Cruz’s math. At the Val­ue Vot­ers Sum­mit, Huck­abee said that there are about 80 mil­lion evan­gel­i­cals, half of whom are reg­is­tered to vote — and a quar­ter of whom actu­al­ly vote in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. And in midterms? Only half of those who vote in pres­i­den­tial races!”

As Bump points out, Mike Huck­abee was mak­ing the same claim we heard from David Lane: only a quar­ter of evan­gel­i­cals actu­al­ly vote in pres­i­den­tial race. And yet, as Bump’s team found, evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers appear to vote rough­ly in line with oth­er demographics...something around half vote, like every­one else in the US:

...
After the 2000 elec­tion, a sur­vey from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Akron put evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tant turnout at 50 per­cent, as Cruz stat­ed. But by 2004, evan­gel­i­cal turnout was at 63 per­cent, accord­ing to the next iter­a­tion of that same sur­vey. What’s more, that turnout isn’t abysmal­ly low rel­a­tive to oth­er groups. In the 2000 sur­vey, Catholics also turned out at 50 per­cent. In 2004, main­line Protes­tants turned out at 69 per­cent — the same as the more con­ser­v­a­tive sub­set of evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants in the sur­vey.

In the wake of the 2012 Mitt Rom­ney loss, there were var­i­ous analy­ses of Chris­t­ian turnout that point­ed to weak con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian turnout in some states as being a cause of the loss. Our crack poll­ster team looked at data from the 2012 Amer­i­can Nation­al Elec­tion Stud­ies to esti­mate evan­gel­i­cal turnout. More peo­ple in the study report vot­ing than actu­al­ly do. Once cor­rect­ed for that over-report­ing, we esti­mate that 62 per­cent of evan­gel­i­cals went to the polls in 2012. It’s down from the 2004 esti­mate cit­ed above, but it’s also using dif­fer­ent data. And that 62 per­cent is about four points high­er than the over­all pop­u­la­tion.

...

Which was­n’t Cruz’s point, real­ly. In the same way that the 2008 and 2012 cam­paigns of Barack Oba­ma put an empha­sis on boost­ing African-Amer­i­can turnout — suc­cess­ful­ly — Cruz’s goal isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly to say that evan­gel­i­cals are under-per­form­ing; rather, that he needs them to over-per­form, and prefer­ably on his behalf. Today, rough­ly half of every­body isn’t vot­ing. But Cruz is not ter­ri­bly inter­est­ed in see­ing more turnout from mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans or Democ­rats.
...

Again, it’s not real­ly a sur­prise to find the claims of a vast evan­gel­i­cal under-vot­ing cri­sis are basi­cal­ly a fab­ri­ca­tion. It’s a very con­ve­nient fab­ri­ca­tion for fig­ures like Mike Huck­abee or David Lane. Or Rafael and Ted Cruz. Fig­ures who have built entire careers cen­tered around ener­giz­ing this vot­ing demo­graph­ic. Just as it’s not sur­pris­ing to find that a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion is pred­i­cat­ed on pla­cat­ing this same demo­graph­ic. The path to the White House for Repub­li­cans has long been on the backs of evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers and that remains the case today.

But it’s not just that Trump is rely­ing on this same evan­gel­i­cal-heavy mod­el for vic­to­ry that Repub­li­cans have long pred­i­cat­ed their White House bids on. Trump’s ‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ pol­i­tics — and his demon­strat­ed will­ing­ness to cater to the domin­ion­ist crowd when it comes to Supreme Court jus­tices — real­ly has ampli­fied the domin­ion­ist move­ment in large part because it’s so com­pat­i­ble with it. ‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ is music to the ears of those argu­ing con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians should force­ful­ly seize the reigns of gov­ern­ment and use that gov­ern­ment pow­er to active­ly impose ‘god­ly’ poli­cies. As the fol­low­ing August 2022 NBC report describes, that was the sen­ti­ment dri­ving many of the groups push­ing for the domin­ion­ist cap­ture of local school boards across Texas that year. A wild­ly suc­cess­ful cap­ture, as we’ve seen. Recall how the South­lake school board takeover effort was a major focus of the CNP’s Moms for Lib­er­ty, along with the Truth and Lib­er­ty Coali­tion run by David Bar­ton and Lance Wall­nau. Also recall how Wall­nau — the co-author of a pop­u­lar 2013 book pro­mot­ing Domin­ion­ism — was push­ing the idea back in 2018 that Trump was a God-ordained change agent anal­o­gous to the Bib­li­cal fig­ure of King Cyrus. A “mod­ern-day Cyrus”, as Wall­nau described Trump.

And as we also saw with those South­lake school board efforts, anoth­er group assist­ing in that effort was Patri­ot Mobile, a con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian cell­phone com­pa­ny that spends a por­tion of its funds on con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal caus­es. Rafael Cruz was giv­ing week­ly Bible study class­es for Patri­ot Mobile’s employ­ees dur­ing this peri­od. Note that Patri­ot Mobile’s co-founder and CFO, Glenn P. Sto­ry, shows up on the CNP mem­bers list.

So let’s take a clos­er look at Rafael Cruz’s Bible study teach­ings to the Patri­ot Mobile employ­ees dur­ing this joint cap­ture of the local Texas school boards. As we’ll see, the lessons were effec­tive­ly that there should be an end to the sep­a­ra­tion of church in state. Instead, it should be a “one-way wall”, where church­es are allowed to direct­ly inter­fere with the state but not the oth­er way around.

And as the arti­cle also points out, there’s anoth­er we’ve seen before that was direct­ly involved in the school board cap­ture. The group asked its fol­low­ers to show up to pub­lic hear­ings and loud­ly sup­port the array of new pro­pos­als that soon inun­dat­ed the school boards this move­ment took over. The group hap­pens to be the True Texas Project. As we’ve seen, this is one of those groups in the direct orbit of Texas bil­lion­aire theo­crat Tim Dunn where domin­ion­ism and overt Nazis min­gle. One of many polit­i­cal enti­ties with Tim Dun­n’s Defend Texas Lib­er­ty as its pri­ma­ry donor. As we saw, not only is the group found­ed by Julie McCar­ty, who open­ly sym­pa­thized with the motives of El Paso shoot­er Patrick Cru­sius. But just three weeks before that now-infa­mous Octo­ber sev­en hour long meet­ing with Nick Fuentes at the head­quar­ters of Dun­n’s Pale Horse Strate­gies polit­i­cal group held in ear­ly Octo­ber 6 2023, the True Texas Project held a ‘pass­ing the torch’ event in Dal­las that fea­tured John Doyle and Jake Lloyd Col­glazier. Doyle has fre­quent­ly appeared along­side Nick Fuentes at events. Recall how Doyle and Fuentes co-led a Lans­ing Michi­gan “Stop the Steal” ral­ly in the lead up to the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol Insur­rec­tion. Col­glazier was one of the most promi­nent mem­bers of Fuentes’s ‘groyper army’. In 2019, Col­glazier, Fuentes, and Patrick Casey — the leader of Iden­ti­ty Evropa, since rebrand­ed as the “Amer­i­can Iden­ti­ty Move­ment” — were the head­lin­ers at a white nation­al­ist con­fer­ence where they advo­cat­ed a strat­e­gy of pulling the Repub­li­can Par­ty fur­ther to the right with a strat­e­gy of attack­ing Repub­li­cans for issues like being weak on immi­gra­tion or sup­port for Israel. In 2018, Casey was open­ly telling NBC News he was plan­ning on infil­trat­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty, with an empha­sis on befriend­ing and win­ning over young col­lege Repub­li­cans. The True Texas Project was list­ed as an affil­i­at­ed on Patri­ot Mobile’s own web­site as one of its affil­i­ate. So when we see Patri­ot Mobile coor­di­nat­ing with the True Texas Project, keep in mind that it’s one of mul­ti­ple Nazi-friend­ly groups close­ly asso­ci­at­ed both Nick Fuentes and Tim Dunn who have a youth-focused strat­e­gy of rad­i­cal­iz­ing Repub­li­cans even more. Nazis and Domin­ion­ists. And Rafael Cruz. Amped up more than ever on domin­ion­ism thanks to Don­ald Trump:

NBC News

How a far-right, Chris­t­ian cell­phone com­pa­ny ‘took over’ four Texas school boards

Patri­ot Mobile mar­kets itself as “America’s only Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive wire­less provider.” Now the Trump-aligned com­pa­ny is on a mis­sion to win con­trol of Texas school boards.

Aug. 25, 2022, 7:00 AM CDT
By Mike Hix­en­baugh

DALLAS — A lit­tle more than a year after for­mer Trump advis­er Steve Ban­non declared that con­ser­v­a­tives need­ed to win seats on local school boards to “save the nation,” he used his con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry-fueled TV pro­gram to spot­light Patri­ot Mobile, a Texas-based cell­phone com­pa­ny that had answered his call to action.

“The school boards are the key that picks the lock,” Ban­non said dur­ing an inter­view with Patri­ot Mobile’s pres­i­dent, Glenn Sto­ry, from the floor of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence, or CPAC, in Dal­las on Aug. 6. “Tell us about what you did.”

Sto­ry turned to the cam­era and said, “We went out and found 11 can­di­dates last cycle and we sup­port­ed them, and we won every seat. We took over four school boards.”

“Eleven seats on school boards, took over four!” Ban­non shout­ed as a crowd of CPAC atten­dees erupt­ed in applause.

It was a moment of cel­e­bra­tion for an upstart com­pa­ny whose lead­ers say they are on a mis­sion from God to restore con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian val­ues at all lev­els of gov­ern­ment — espe­cial­ly in pub­lic schools. To car­ry out that call­ing, the Grapevine-based com­pa­ny this year cre­at­ed a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee, Patri­ot Mobile Action, and gave it more than $600,000 to spend on non­par­ti­san school board races in the Fort Worth sub­urbs.

This spring, the PAC blan­ket­ed the com­mu­ni­ties of South­lake, Keller, Grapevine and Mans­field with with thou­sands of polit­i­cal mail­ers warn­ing that sit­ting school board mem­bers were endan­ger­ing stu­dents with crit­i­cal race the­o­ry and oth­er “woke” ide­olo­gies. Patri­ot Mobile pre­sent­ed its can­di­dates as patri­ots who would “keep polit­i­cal agen­das out of the class­room.”

Their can­di­dates won every race, and near­ly four months lat­er, those Patri­ot Mobile-backed school boards have begun to deliv­er results.

The Keller Inde­pen­dent School Dis­trict made nation­al head­lines this month after the school board passed a new pol­i­cy that led the dis­trict to abrupt­ly pull more than 40 pre­vi­ous­ly chal­lenged library books off shelves for fur­ther review, includ­ing a graph­ic adap­ta­tion of Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl,” as well as sev­er­al LGBTQ-themed nov­els.

In the neigh­bor­ing city of South­lake, Patri­ot Mobile donat­ed framed posters that read “In God We Trust” to the Car­roll Inde­pen­dent School Dis­trict dur­ing a spe­cial pre­sen­ta­tion before the school board. Under a new Texas law, the dis­trict is now required to dis­play the posters promi­nent­ly in each of its school build­ings. After­ward, Patri­ot Mobile cel­e­brat­ed the dona­tion in a blog post titled “Putting God Back Into Our Schools.”

And this week at a tense, eight-hour school board meet­ing, the Grapevine-Col­leyville Inde­pen­dent School District’s board of trustees vot­ed 4–3 to imple­ment a far-reach­ing set of poli­cies that restrict how teach­ers can dis­cuss race and gen­der. The new poli­cies also lim­it the rights of trans­gen­der and non­bi­na­ry stu­dents to use bath­rooms and pro­nouns that cor­re­spond with their gen­ders. And the board made it eas­i­er for par­ents to ban library books deal­ing with sex­u­al­i­ty.

...

Patri­ot Mobile offi­cials didn’t respond to mes­sages request­ing com­ment. Leigh Wamb­s­ganss, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Patri­ot Mobile Action and vice pres­i­dent of gov­ern­ment and media affairs at Patri­ot Mobile, declined to speak with a reporter at CPAC, say­ing she did not trust NBC News to accu­rate­ly report on the company’s polit­i­cal activism. In a social media post days lat­er, she called the journalist’s inter­view request harass­ment, adding, “I don’t inter­view with reporters I don’t trust.”

In recent inter­views with con­ser­v­a­tive media out­lets, Wamb­s­ganss has said that Patri­ot Mobile’s goal is to install school board mem­bers who will oppose the teach­ing of “LGBTQ ide­olo­gies,” fight to remove “porno­graph­ic books,” and stand against school anti-racism ini­tia­tives, which she and her sup­port­ers have argued indoc­tri­nate chil­dren with anti-white and anti-Amer­i­can views.

“You know, the sad thing is there is real racism, and that is real­ly a ter­ri­ble thing,” Wamb­s­ganss said in a June appear­ance on the Mark Davis Show, a con­ser­v­a­tive talk radio pro­gram that broad­casts in the Dal­las region. “But they’re water­ing down and devalu­ing that word so bad that it’s become mean­ing­less.”

In that same inter­view, Wamb­s­ganss made clear that Patri­ot Mobile views its polit­i­cal activism as a reli­gious call­ing — and that the group’s elec­toral suc­cess this spring was just the begin­ning.

“We’re not here on this earth to please man — we’re here to please God,” Wamb­s­ganss said, adding lat­er in the inter­view, “Ulti­mate­ly we want to expand to oth­er coun­ties, oth­er states and be in every state across the nation.”

‘Make Amer­i­ca Chris­t­ian Again’

Found­ed about a decade ago, Patri­ot Mobile mar­kets itself as “America’s only Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive wire­less provider,” which includes a pledge to donate a por­tion of users’ month­ly bills to con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es.

Ini­tial­ly, Patri­ot Mobile’s founders said their goal was to sup­port groups and politi­cians who promised to oppose abor­tion, defend reli­gious free­dom, pro­tect gun rights and sup­port the mil­i­tary.

After the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, the company’s brand­ing shift­ed fur­ther to the right and embraced Trump’s style of pol­i­tics. One of Patri­ot Mobile’s most famous adver­tise­ments includes the slo­gan “Mak­ing Wire­less Great Again,” along­side an image of Trump’s face pho­to­shopped onto a tanned, mus­cled body hold­ing a machine gun.

That approach has drawn the sup­port of some big names on the right.

“You can give your mon­ey to AT&T, the par­ent com­pa­ny of CNN, and you can pay the salary of Don Lemon, or you can sup­port some­one like a Patri­ot Mobile and give back to caus­es that they believe in,” Don­ald Trump Jr. said from the stage at a CPAC gath­er­ing in Feb­ru­ary. “That’s not can­cel cul­ture, folks. That’s using your damn brain.”

Patri­ot Mobile has also aligned itself in recent years with polit­i­cal and reli­gious lead­ers who pro­mote a once-fringe strand of Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy that experts say has grown more pop­u­lar on the right in recent years. Domin­ion­ism, some­times referred to as the Sev­en Moun­tains Man­date, is the belief that Chris­tians are called on to dom­i­nate the sev­en key “moun­tains” of Amer­i­can life, includ­ing busi­ness, media, gov­ern­ment and edu­ca­tion.

John Fea, a pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can his­to­ry at the pri­vate, Chris­t­ian Mes­si­ah Uni­ver­si­ty in Penn­syl­va­nia, has spent years study­ing Sev­en Moun­tains the­ol­o­gy. Fea said the idea that Chris­tians are called on to assert bib­li­cal val­ues across all aspects of Amer­i­can soci­ety has been around for decades on the right, but “large­ly on the fringe.”

Trump’s elec­tion changed that.

“It fits very well with the ‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ mantra,” Fea said. “‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ to them means, ‘Make Amer­i­ca Chris­t­ian Again,’ restore Amer­i­ca to its Chris­t­ian roots.”

Patri­ot Mobile appears to have embraced that shift, Fea said.

Begin­ning a year ago, one of the lead­ing pro­po­nents of the Sev­en Moun­tains world­view, Rafael Cruz, a pas­tor, began lead­ing week­ly Bible stud­ies for employ­ees at Patri­ot Mobile’s cor­po­rate office, which the com­pa­ny films and posts on YouTube.

In a recent Patri­ot Mobile ser­mon, Cruz — the father of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R‑Texas — dis­missed the con­cept of sep­a­ra­tion of church and state as a myth, argu­ing that America’s founders meant that ide­al as a “one-way wall” pre­vent­ing the gov­ern­ment from inter­fer­ing with the church, not pre­vent­ing the church from influ­enc­ing the gov­ern­ment.

He then called on peo­ple who “are root­ed in the right­eous­ness of the word of God” to run for pub­lic office.

“If those peo­ple are not run­ning for office, if they are not even vot­ing, then what’s left?” Cruz said. “The wicked elect­ing the wicked.”

...

Begin­ning last year, after oppo­si­tion to “crit­i­cal race the­o­ry” emerged as a polit­i­cal attack on the right, Fea said he began to observe anoth­er shift in the Chris­t­ian Domin­ion­ism move­ment.

Rather than focus­ing pri­mar­i­ly on win­ning fed­er­al elec­tions, these groups start­ed talk­ing about the need to take con­trol of pub­lic schools — “the ide­al bat­tle­ground,” Fea said, “if you’re look­ing to fight this bat­tle.”

“This is a spir­i­tu­al war, they believe, against demon­ic forces that under­mine a god­ly nation by teach­ing kids in school that Amer­i­ca is not great, Amer­i­ca is not a city on the hill or that Amer­i­ca has flaws,” Fea said. “If you can get in and teach the right side of his­to­ry, and social stud­ies and civics lessons about what Amer­i­ca is, you can win the next gen­er­a­tion and save Amer­i­ca for Christ.”

‘Sav­ing our pub­lic schools’

Patri­ot Mobile’s uncon­ven­tion­al busi­ness strat­e­gy appears to be pay­ing off.

With­out pro­vid­ing spe­cif­ic num­bers, the com­pa­ny said it dou­bled its sub­scriber base in 2021, and as a result, it planned to give more than $1.5 mil­lion to con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es in 2022, triple the amount from the year pri­or.

In Jan­u­ary, the com­pa­ny filed doc­u­ments to estab­lish Patri­ot Mobile Action and brought on Wamb­s­ganss to lead it — a strong sig­nal that the com­pa­ny was plan­ning to get involved in school board pol­i­tics.

Wamb­s­ganss, a long-time polit­i­cal activist, had earned nation­al acclaim among con­ser­v­a­tives in 2021 for her work as one of the co-founders of South­lake Fam­i­lies PAC, anoth­er group that pro­motes itself as “unapolo­get­i­cal­ly root­ed in Judeo-Chris­t­ian val­ues.” When the Car­roll school sys­tem in South­lake unveiled a diver­si­ty plan to crack down on racism and anti-LGBTQ bul­ly­ing in the major­i­ty white school dis­trict, South­lake Fam­i­lies, under Wamb­s­ganss’ lead­er­ship, raised hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars to sup­port a slate of school board can­di­dates who promised to kill the plan.

After win­ning every race by a land­slide, the PAC’s suc­cess was cel­e­brat­ed on Fox News and in The Wall Street Jour­nal, prompt­ing for­mer Texas GOP Chair­man Allan West to urge South­lake Fam­i­lies lead­ers to “export this to every sin­gle major sub­ur­ban area in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.”

At the helm of the new­ly estab­lished Patri­ot Mobile Action, Wamb­s­ganss got to work achiev­ing that goal this spring, start­ing first with some sub­ur­ban school sys­tems close to home.

In inter­views with con­ser­v­a­tive out­lets, Wamb­s­ganss has said she and her team zeroed in on four North Texas inde­pen­dent school dis­tricts — Keller, Grapevine-Col­leyville, Mans­field and Car­roll — that had imple­ment­ed or con­sid­ered poli­cies deal­ing with race, sex­u­al­i­ty and gen­der that she and oth­er Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives found objec­tion­able.

After inter­view­ing can­di­dates in each dis­trict, Patri­ot Mobile Action set­tled on a slate of 11 who pledged to sup­port con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es. Fol­low­ing the play­book from South­lake, the PAC hired a pair of heavy-hit­ter GOP con­sult­ing firms that had worked on cam­paigns for Ted Cruz and Vir­ginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin — bring­ing sophis­ti­cat­ed nation­al-lev­el polit­i­cal strate­gies to local school board races.

Patri­ot Mobile paid Van­guard Field Strate­gies near­ly $150,000 to run get-out-the-vote can­vass­ing oper­a­tions across the four school dis­tricts, accord­ing to finan­cial dis­clo­sures. The PAC paid anoth­er $240,000 to Axiom Strate­gies to pro­duce and send tens of thou­sands of polit­i­cal mail­ers to homes across North Texas.

One fly­er sent to Mans­field res­i­dents base­less­ly blamed a recent class­room shoot­ing at a local high school on crit­i­cal race the­o­ry-inspired dis­ci­pli­nary poli­cies and accused the dis­trict of putting “woke” pol­i­tics ahead of the safe­ty of chil­dren.

A Patri­ot Mobile mail­er sent in Grapevine and Col­leyville endorsed two board can­di­dates who the PAC said would oppose crit­i­cal race the­o­ry, an aca­d­e­m­ic study of sys­temic racism that, accord­ing to the fly­er, “vio­lates every­thing patri­ots believe in.”

...

At CPAC in August, Ban­non asked Wamb­s­ganss and Sto­ry on his “War Room” TV show whether they had start­ed to see changes in the four school dis­tricts.

“Oh, tremen­dous,” Wamb­s­ganss said. “Those 11 seats in four ISDs means that now North Texas has over 100,000 stu­dents who, before May, had left­ist lead­er­ship. Now they have con­ser­v­a­tive lead­er­ship.”

Ban­non replied, “Amen.”

‘This is not love’

On Mon­day night, North Texas res­i­dents got a front-row seat for what it looks like when Patri­ot Mobile takes over a school board.

Just 72-hours before the meet­ing, the Grapevine-Col­leyville school dis­trict had unveiled a sweep­ing 36-page pol­i­cy touch­ing on vir­tu­al­ly every aspect of the cul­ture wars over race, gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty that have dom­i­nat­ed school pol­i­tics since last year.

Under the pol­i­cy, teach­ers are pro­hib­it­ed from dis­cussing any con­cepts relat­ed to or inspired by crit­i­cal race the­o­ry or what the pol­i­cy refers to as “sys­temic dis­crim­i­na­tion ide­olo­gies.” The pol­i­cy gives school employ­ees the right to refer to trans and non­bi­na­ry stu­dents by pro­nouns and names match­ing the ones they were assigned at birth — a prac­tice known as mis­gen­der­ing or dead­nam­ing — even if the student’s par­ents sup­port their child’s gen­der expres­sion. And the pol­i­cy pro­hibits any read­ing mate­ri­als and class­room dis­cus­sions deal­ing with “gen­der flu­id­i­ty,” which the doc­u­ment defines as any belief that “espous­es the view that bio­log­i­cal sex is mere­ly a social con­struct.”

Tam­my Naka­mu­ra, one of the board mem­bers backed by Patri­ot Mobile, said the board’s 4–3 vote to adopt the pol­i­cy ful­filled her cam­paign promise “to put an end to adults push­ing their world­views, whims and fan­tasies onto unsus­pect­ing chil­dren.”

Although some mem­bers of the board major­i­ty and their sup­port­ers argued that the pol­i­cy mere­ly brought the dis­trict in line with state and fed­er­al laws, Kate Hud­dle­ston, a staff attor­ney with the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union of Texas, said the plan goes well beyond the state’s anti-CRT law and appears to be in vio­la­tion of fed­er­al civ­il rights statutes that pro­tect stu­dents from dis­crim­i­na­tion on the basis of their gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty.

“This is the most extreme board pol­i­cy that we have seen relat­ed to class­room cen­sor­ship,” Hud­dle­ston said.

Debate over the pol­i­cy turned Monday’s school board meet­ing into a polit­i­cal cir­cus.

The Patri­ot Mobile-aligned True Texas Project, which has been labeled as an anti-gov­ern­ment extrem­ist group by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, called on its sup­port­ers to pack the meet­ing and turn it into a par­ty cel­e­brat­ing the new pol­i­cy. The group set up tents hours before­hand and tail­gat­ed in the park­ing lot, along with an anti-trans activist group whose leader was sus­pend­ed from Twit­ter this year after she wrote, “Let’s start round­ing up peo­ple who par­tic­i­pate in pride events,” refer­ring to LGBTQ rights cel­e­bra­tions.

Near­ly 200 peo­ple signed up to speak dur­ing pub­lic com­ments pri­or to the board vote.

One man who spoke in sup­port of the new pol­i­cy urged the board major­i­ty to “fight like hell” and “hold the ground against the LGBT mafia and their dang pedo fans” — echo­ing false claims by some Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives in recent months that queer edu­ca­tors have been try­ing to sex­u­al­ly groom chil­dren.

“And guess what,” the man shout­ed into the micro­phone, “teach­ers shouldn’t be forced to use your freakin’ made up fan­ta­sy pro­nouns!”

Anoth­er res­i­dent who spoke in sup­port of the pol­i­cy said one of the things that made Amer­i­ca great was “schools that taught kids to read and know the Bible, and recite the Con­sti­tu­tion.” She com­mend­ed the school board for work­ing to restore those ideals.

“Our kids have to be taught our foun­da­tion,” she said. “Our foun­da­tion of God-giv­en inalien­able rights, reli­gious free­doms, indi­vid­u­al­ism, democ­ra­cy and a free mar­ket.”

Lat­er, a mom told the board she sup­port­ed ban­ning class­room dis­cus­sions of “gen­der flu­id­i­ty” because, she said, when her child start­ed iden­ti­fy­ing as a girl, Grapevine-Col­leyville teach­ers pro­vid­ed the stu­dent with infor­ma­tion affirm­ing that gen­der expres­sion. As a result, the moth­er said, chok­ing up as a beep­er sig­naled that her time had expired, “I lost my son.”

Nobody from Patri­ot Mobile spoke at the meet­ing. In a recent talk radio inter­view, Wamb­s­ganss said she and her team were busy map­ping out their plans for repli­cat­ing what they achieved in dis­tricts like Grapevine-Col­leyville in com­mu­ni­ties across Texas.

A major­i­ty of those who did com­ment dur­ing Monday’s meet­ing said they opposed the pol­i­cy changes, includ­ing one father who accused Grapevine-Col­leyville board mem­bers of being behold­en to Patri­ot Mobile. “The result,” he said, “is our kids are being forced to act as pawns in their polit­i­cal game.”

...

———-

“How a far-right, Chris­t­ian cell­phone com­pa­ny ‘took over’ four Texas school boards” By Mike Hix­en­baugh; NBC News; 08/25/2022

““We’re not here on this earth to please man — we’re here to please God,” Wamb­s­ganss said, adding lat­er in the inter­view, “Ulti­mate­ly we want to expand to oth­er coun­ties, oth­er states and be in every state across the nation.””

Patri­ot Mobile isn’t here to please the pub­lic. They are here to please God. Start­ing with get­ting domin­ion­ists elect­ed to school boards. It start­ed in Texas but they have nation ambi­tions. It’s not to see why. They won every race by a land­slide. The mod­el works fan­tas­ti­cal­ly. At least fan­tas­ti­cal­ly in these 2022 tri­al runs:

...
It was a moment of cel­e­bra­tion for an upstart com­pa­ny whose lead­ers say they are on a mis­sion from God to restore con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian val­ues at all lev­els of gov­ern­ment — espe­cial­ly in pub­lic schools. To car­ry out that call­ing, the Grapevine-based com­pa­ny this year cre­at­ed a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee, Patri­ot Mobile Action, and gave it more than $600,000 to spend on non­par­ti­san school board races in the Fort Worth sub­urbs.

This spring, the PAC blan­ket­ed the com­mu­ni­ties of South­lake, Keller, Grapevine and Mans­field with with thou­sands of polit­i­cal mail­ers warn­ing that sit­ting school board mem­bers were endan­ger­ing stu­dents with crit­i­cal race the­o­ry and oth­er “woke” ide­olo­gies. Patri­ot Mobile pre­sent­ed its can­di­dates as patri­ots who would “keep polit­i­cal agen­das out of the class­room.”

Their can­di­dates won every race, and near­ly four months lat­er, those Patri­ot Mobile-backed school boards have begun to deliv­er results.

...

Begin­ning last year, after oppo­si­tion to “crit­i­cal race the­o­ry” emerged as a polit­i­cal attack on the right, Fea said he began to observe anoth­er shift in the Chris­t­ian Domin­ion­ism move­ment.

Rather than focus­ing pri­mar­i­ly on win­ning fed­er­al elec­tions, these groups start­ed talk­ing about the need to take con­trol of pub­lic schools — “the ide­al bat­tle­ground,” Fea said, “if you’re look­ing to fight this bat­tle.”

“This is a spir­i­tu­al war, they believe, against demon­ic forces that under­mine a god­ly nation by teach­ing kids in school that Amer­i­ca is not great, Amer­i­ca is not a city on the hill or that Amer­i­ca has flaws,” Fea said. “If you can get in and teach the right side of his­to­ry, and social stud­ies and civics lessons about what Amer­i­ca is, you can win the next gen­er­a­tion and save Amer­i­ca for Christ.”

...

After win­ning every race by a land­slide, the PAC’s suc­cess was cel­e­brat­ed on Fox News and in The Wall Street Jour­nal, prompt­ing for­mer Texas GOP Chair­man Allan West to urge South­lake Fam­i­lies lead­ers to “export this to every sin­gle major sub­ur­ban area in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.”
...

But as we’ve seen, they haven’t been win­ning these school board races on their own. First, as we’ve seen, the 2022 South­lake school board takeover effort was a major focus of the CNP’s Moms for Lib­er­ty, along with the Truth and Lib­er­ty Coali­tion run by David Bar­ton and Lance Wall­nau. Also recall how Wall­nau — the co-author of a pop­u­lar 2013 book pro­mot­ing Domin­ion­ism — was push­ing the idea back in 2018 that Trump was a God-ordained change agent anal­o­gous to the Bib­li­cal fig­ure of King Cyrus. A “mod­ern-day Cyrus”, as Wall­nau described Trump. Patri­ot Mobile Action was just one of the many CNP-con­nect­ed groups focused on Texas school boards in 2022.

And then there’s the True Texas Project, one of many polit­i­cal enti­ties with Tim Dun­n’s Defend Texas Lib­er­ty as its pri­ma­ry donor. As we saw, not only is the group found­ed by Julie McCar­ty, who open­ly sym­pa­thized with the motives of El Paso shoot­er Patrick Cru­sius. But just three weeks before that now-infa­mous Octo­ber sev­en hour long meet­ing with Nick Fuentes at the head­quar­ters of Dun­n’s Pale Horse Strate­gies polit­i­cal group held in ear­ly Octo­ber 6 2023, the True Texas Project held a ‘pass­ing the torch’ event in Dal­las that fea­tured John Doyle and Jake Lloyd Col­glazier. Doyle has fre­quent­ly appeared along­side Nick Fuentes at events. Recall how Doyle and Fuentes co-led a Lans­ing Michi­gan “Stop the Steal” ral­ly in the lead up to the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol Insur­rec­tion. Col­glazier was one of the most promi­nent mem­bers of Fuentes’s ‘groyper army’. In 2019, Col­glazier, Fuentes, and Patrick Casey — the leader of Iden­ti­ty Evropa, since rebrand­ed as the “Amer­i­can Iden­ti­ty Move­ment” — were the head­lin­ers at a white nation­al­ist con­fer­ence where they advo­cat­ed a strat­e­gy of pulling the Repub­li­can Par­ty fur­ther to the right with a strat­e­gy of attack­ing Repub­li­cans for issues like being weak on immi­gra­tion or sup­port for Israel. In 2018, Casey was open­ly telling NBC News he was plan­ning on infil­trat­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty, with an empha­sis on befriend­ing and win­ning over young col­lege Repub­li­cans. So when we see Patri­ot Mobile coor­di­nat­ing with the True Texas Project, keep in mind that it’s one of mul­ti­ple Nazi-friend­ly groups close­ly asso­ci­at­ed both Nick Fuentes and Tim Dunn who have a youth-focused strat­e­gy of rad­i­cal­iz­ing Repub­li­cans even more:

...
Debate over the pol­i­cy turned Monday’s school board meet­ing into a polit­i­cal cir­cus.

The Patri­ot Mobile-aligned True Texas Project, which has been labeled as an anti-gov­ern­ment extrem­ist group by the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, called on its sup­port­ers to pack the meet­ing and turn it into a par­ty cel­e­brat­ing the new pol­i­cy. The group set up tents hours before­hand and tail­gat­ed in the park­ing lot, along with an anti-trans activist group whose leader was sus­pend­ed from Twit­ter this year after she wrote, “Let’s start round­ing up peo­ple who par­tic­i­pate in pride events,” refer­ring to LGBTQ rights cel­e­bra­tions.

Near­ly 200 peo­ple signed up to speak dur­ing pub­lic com­ments pri­or to the board vote.

One man who spoke in sup­port of the new pol­i­cy urged the board major­i­ty to “fight like hell” and “hold the ground against the LGBT mafia and their dang pedo fans” — echo­ing false claims by some Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives in recent months that queer edu­ca­tors have been try­ing to sex­u­al­ly groom chil­dren.

“And guess what,” the man shout­ed into the micro­phone, “teach­ers shouldn’t be forced to use your freakin’ made up fan­ta­sy pro­nouns!”

Anoth­er res­i­dent who spoke in sup­port of the pol­i­cy said one of the things that made Amer­i­ca great was “schools that taught kids to read and know the Bible, and recite the Con­sti­tu­tion.” She com­mend­ed the school board for work­ing to restore those ideals.

“Our kids have to be taught our foun­da­tion,” she said. “Our foun­da­tion of God-giv­en inalien­able rights, reli­gious free­doms, indi­vid­u­al­ism, democ­ra­cy and a free mar­ket.”

...

Nobody from Patri­ot Mobile spoke at the meet­ing. In a recent talk radio inter­view, Wamb­s­ganss said she and her team were busy map­ping out their plans for repli­cat­ing what they achieved in dis­tricts like Grapevine-Col­leyville in com­mu­ni­ties across Texas.

A major­i­ty of those who did com­ment dur­ing Monday’s meet­ing said they opposed the pol­i­cy changes, includ­ing one father who accused Grapevine-Col­leyville board mem­bers of being behold­en to Patri­ot Mobile. “The result,” he said, “is our kids are being forced to act as pawns in their polit­i­cal game.”
...

And last, but cer­tain­ly not least, in the long list of Domin­ion­ist groups work­ing on those 2022 school board races we find Rafael Cruz, who began hold­ing week­ly Bible stud­ies for Patri­ot Mobile employ­ees where he advo­cat­ed for an end to the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state while implor­ing con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians to run for office:

...
Begin­ning a year ago, one of the lead­ing pro­po­nents of the Sev­en Moun­tains world­view, Rafael Cruz, a pas­tor, began lead­ing week­ly Bible stud­ies for employ­ees at Patri­ot Mobile’s cor­po­rate office, which the com­pa­ny films and posts on YouTube.

In a recent Patri­ot Mobile ser­mon, Cruz — the father of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R‑Texas — dis­missed the con­cept of sep­a­ra­tion of church and state as a myth, argu­ing that America’s founders meant that ide­al as a “one-way wall” pre­vent­ing the gov­ern­ment from inter­fer­ing with the church, not pre­vent­ing the church from influ­enc­ing the gov­ern­ment.

He then called on peo­ple who “are root­ed in the right­eous­ness of the word of God” to run for pub­lic office.

“If those peo­ple are not run­ning for office, if they are not even vot­ing, then what’s left?” Cruz said. “The wicked elect­ing the wicked.”
...

And as the arti­cle describes, while Patri­ot Mobile was found­ed in 2012 and polit­i­cal­ly active from the begin­ning, it was only after the elec­tion of Don­ald Trump in 2016 that the group began open­ly embrac­ing Domin­ion­ist stances. At the same time it became rapid­ly pro-Trump. “Make Amer­i­ca Great Again” was domin­ion­ist code. At least to the domin­ion­ists:

...
Found­ed about a decade ago, Patri­ot Mobile mar­kets itself as “America’s only Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive wire­less provider,” which includes a pledge to donate a por­tion of users’ month­ly bills to con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es.

Ini­tial­ly, Patri­ot Mobile’s founders said their goal was to sup­port groups and politi­cians who promised to oppose abor­tion, defend reli­gious free­dom, pro­tect gun rights and sup­port the mil­i­tary.

After the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, the company’s brand­ing shift­ed fur­ther to the right and embraced Trump’s style of pol­i­tics. One of Patri­ot Mobile’s most famous adver­tise­ments includes the slo­gan “Mak­ing Wire­less Great Again,” along­side an image of Trump’s face pho­to­shopped onto a tanned, mus­cled body hold­ing a machine gun.

That approach has drawn the sup­port of some big names on the right.

“You can give your mon­ey to AT&T, the par­ent com­pa­ny of CNN, and you can pay the salary of Don Lemon, or you can sup­port some­one like a Patri­ot Mobile and give back to caus­es that they believe in,” Don­ald Trump Jr. said from the stage at a CPAC gath­er­ing in Feb­ru­ary. “That’s not can­cel cul­ture, folks. That’s using your damn brain.”

Patri­ot Mobile has also aligned itself in recent years with polit­i­cal and reli­gious lead­ers who pro­mote a once-fringe strand of Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy that experts say has grown more pop­u­lar on the right in recent years. Domin­ion­ism, some­times referred to as the Sev­en Moun­tains Man­date, is the belief that Chris­tians are called on to dom­i­nate the sev­en key “moun­tains” of Amer­i­can life, includ­ing busi­ness, media, gov­ern­ment and edu­ca­tion.

John Fea, a pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can his­to­ry at the pri­vate, Chris­t­ian Mes­si­ah Uni­ver­si­ty in Penn­syl­va­nia, has spent years study­ing Sev­en Moun­tains the­ol­o­gy. Fea said the idea that Chris­tians are called on to assert bib­li­cal val­ues across all aspects of Amer­i­can soci­ety has been around for decades on the right, but “large­ly on the fringe.”

Trump’s elec­tion changed that.

“It fits very well with the ‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ mantra,” Fea said. “‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ to them means, ‘Make Amer­i­ca Chris­t­ian Again,’ restore Amer­i­ca to its Chris­t­ian roots.”

Patri­ot Mobile appears to have embraced that shift, Fea said.
...

Trump tur­bo-charged Amer­i­can domin­ion­ism. It’s one of the most under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed and like­ly con­se­quen­tial aspects of the whole Trump ‘expe­ri­ence’ for the Unit­ed States. Of course, it was­n’t just Trump’s pres­i­den­cy that tur­bo charged this agen­da. His ‘stolen elec­tion’ nar­ra­tive has been instru­men­tal in shift­ing the dis­cus­sion from how to win the next elec­tion to how to seize pow­er per­ma­nent­ly. A ‘Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion’, as Kevin Roberts infa­mous­ly put it. The move­ment is ready to drop the pre­tense of democ­ra­cy, and just might get an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­firm that, should Trump win or lose. Don’t for­get, the insur­rec­tion was a CNP project too. You can’t real­ly sep­a­rate the mad­ness of the Trump years from the CNP. Which is why any attempts to sep­a­rate Trump from the CNP’s Project 2025 is noth­ing more than sil­ly the­atrics. Along with any attempts to seri­ous­ly dif­fer­en­ti­ate the kind of poli­cies we’d get get a sec­ond Trump pres­i­den­cy from what we could expect from Ted Cruz’s first term. The one Rafael has been plan­ning for Ted’s whole life. Same diff. On one lev­el, Trump is a wild phe­nom­e­na that cap­ture the Repub­li­can Par­ty and is per­ma­nent­ly shap­ing it in his image. But from the per­spec­tive of the CNP’s long-stand­ing agen­da that Rafael has been work­ing on for decades, Trump just Ted with the fas­cist charis­ma nec­es­sary to pull it off. They hope.

It’s also all a reminder that, should Trump lose and not man­age to drag what’s left of US democ­ra­cy down with him in the process and there’s still elec­tions in the future, the ‘post-Trump’ GOP sort of has default leader. Ted Cruz. The same guy who was prob­a­bly going to win the nom­i­na­tion through an evan­gel­i­cal-focused pri­ma­ry strat­e­gy in 2016 before Trump came along. Which means we should prob­a­bly brace our­selves for the new and improved Trumpian ‘charis­mat­ic’ MAGA Ted, ready and eager to claim Trump’s man­tle. It can always get worse. Ted Cruz worse, in this case.

Tuck­er Carl­son still has it. “It” being the abil­i­ty to troll­ish­ly plat­form Nazis and their fel­low trav­el­ers while act­ing like he did noth­ing wrong. In this case, the Nazi hap­pened to be Dar­ryl Coop­er, who Carl­son described as “the best and most hon­est pop­u­lar his­to­ri­an” in Amer­i­ca. Coop­er hap­pens to be the kind of his­to­ri­an who has con­clud­ed the chief vil­lain of WWII was Win­ston Churchill and that the Holo­caust was just an acci­den­tal con­se­quence of poor Ger­man plan­ning.

Carl­son’s recent inter­view of Coop­er gen­er­at­ed the kind of out­cry we might expect. But adding to the out­cry is the fact that both Don­ald Trump and JD Vance have appear­ances sched­uled on Carl­son’s show lat­er this month. And so far there’s no indi­ca­tion those inter­views have been can­celed. In fact, the Trump cam­paign has already issued the state­ment declar­ing that Vance “obvi­ous­ly does not share the views of the guest inter­viewed by Tuck­er Carl­son” but that he also “does­n’t believe in guilt-by-asso­ci­a­tion can­cel cul­ture.”

It’s also worth recall­ing last year’s ‘Hitler con­tro­ver­sy’ sur­round­ing Moms for Lib­er­ty. Or rather, con­tro­ver­sies. It start­ed when the Indi­ana chap­ter of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP)-backed ‘grass roots’ group decid­ed to include a Hitler quote in one of its newslet­ters. “He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future.” Fol­low­ing the pub­lic out­cry led by the SPLC’s report­ing on the top­ic, the group issued the defi­ant state­ment that “Moms for Lib­er­ty will not be intim­i­dat­ed by hate groups.” Weeks lat­er, Moms for Lib­er­ty held its annu­al sum­mit fea­tur­ing none oth­er than North Car­oli­na Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Mark Robin­son. As Robin­son declared, “Whether you’re talk­ing about Adolf Hitler; whether you’re talk­ing about Chair­man Mao; whether you’re talk­ing about Stal­in; whether you’re talk­ing about Pol Pot; whether you’re talk­ing about Cas­tro in Cuba; or whether you’re talk­ing about a dozen oth­er despots all around the globe; it is time for us to get back and start read­ing some of those quotes.” Robin­son then went on to imply Hitler was a left-wing dic­ta­tor by adding, “It’s time for us to start teach­ing our chil­dren about the dirty, despi­ca­ble, awful things that those com­mu­nist and social­ist despots did in our his­to­ry.” Now, obvi­ous­ly, Robin­son’s com­ments weren’t as ‘pro-Hitler’ as Coop­er’s. But the trend is clear. The idea that ‘you know, there’s a lot to be learned from Hitler’ just keeps get­ting more and more main­stream.

As we’re going to see, anoth­er part of what makes the Carl­son’s Coop­er inter­view such a polit­i­cal light­ning rod for the Trump cam­paign is the real­i­ty that JD Vance lit­er­al­ly “fol­lows” Dar­ryl Coop­er on Twit­ter. And Coop­er is far from the only white nation­al­ist account Vance is fol­low­ing. As one observ­er describes, Vance is open­ly fol­low­ing many of the lead­ing fig­ures in what is now called the ‘post-Alt-Right’. A ‘post-Alt-Right’ that has been down­right gid­dy fol­low­ing his selec­tion as Trump’s VP. From their per­spec­tive, ‘one of their own’ is about to be vice pres­i­dent. It’s not exact­ly clear what dis­tin­guish­es the ‘Alt-Right’ from the ‘post-Alt-Right’, except per­haps the mask has been dropped quite a bit more.

But as we’re also going to see, Vance’s extrem­ist appeal isn’t lim­it­ed to the ‘post-Alt-Right’. He’s the mem­ber of anoth­er impor­tant ‘post-’ move­ment: ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholi­cism, a grow­ing Catholic move­ment that could almost be seen as the Catholic ana­log to protes­tant Domin­ion­ism. Less a Catholic phi­los­o­phy and more a polit­i­cal move­ment, ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholi­cism appears to have at its foun­da­tion the con­clu­sion that mod­ern lib­er­al­ism is a scourge that must be rolled back, with Catholic doc­trines sort of tacked on as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for what is ulti­mate­ly a polit­i­cal project. A polit­i­cal project that is very much aligned with the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme to purge soci­ety’s insti­tu­tions of lib­er­als and use those insti­tu­tions to impose an extreme­ly con­ser­v­a­tive vision of soci­ety. A scheme that JD Vance has open­ly endorsed.

And guess who hap­pens to be the indi­vid­ual Vance attrib­ut­es with his con­ver­sion to ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholi­cism: Peter Thiel. Accord­ing to Vance, it was a talk Thiel gave in 2011 while Vance was a stu­dent at Yale Law School that plant­ed the seed of Vance’s con­ver­sion. At that point, Vance was an athe­ist going along with the Ivy League crowd. Vance, of course, went on to a career as a Sil­i­con Val­ley ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist with Thiel as his chief busi­ness patron. And by 2019, Vance for­mal­ly con­verts to Catholi­cism. Which also hap­pens to be right around the time when he formed his Narya Cap­i­tal ven­ture cap­i­tal fund with heavy financ­ing from Thiel. A com­pa­ny that went on to fund the ‘Alt-Right’ friend­ly social media start­up Rum­ble.

Inter­est­ing­ly, while Thiel has clear­ly played a major role in Vance’s con­ver­sion to ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholi­cism, Thiel isn’t exact­ly aligned with ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholics, who tend to view mod­ern soci­etal ills as being root­ed in West­ern pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of indi­vid­ual lib­er­ty and expec­ta­tions of con­tin­u­al eco­nom­ic growth over the ‘com­mon good’. Instead, as we’ve seen, Thiel actu­al­ly feels that the prob­lem with mod­ern soci­ety is not near­ly enough tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment, which Thiel blames on lib­er­al democ­ra­cy. Tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment in the area of tran­shu­man­ism have been espe­cial­ly. As Thiel argues, Chris­tian­i­ty is fun­da­men­tal­ly a tran­shu­man­ist phi­los­o­phy and has been a dri­ving force for tech­no­log­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic advance­ments. Until democ­ra­cy got in the way. This is a good time to recall Thiel’s many invest­ments in longevi­ty tech­nolo­gies and his quest to live for­ev­er that includes hav­ing his body cryo­geni­cal­ly frozen after he dies. He’s very seri­ous about his tran­shu­man­ism.

Anoth­er aspect to keep in mind with this ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholic net­work is the real­i­ty that today’s far right Supreme Court major­i­ty is over­whelm­ing­ly Catholic: Jus­tices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Ali­to, Neil Gor­such, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Bar­rett. As we’ve seen, Amy Coney Bar­rett hap­pens to be a mem­ber of the “Peo­ple of Praise”, the group that served as the real life inspi­ra­tion for Mar­garet Atwood’s The Hand­maid­’s Tale. And then there’s the fact that the indi­vid­ual long tasked with select­ing Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tion Supreme Court nom­i­nees, Leonard Leo, is not just Catholic but also heav­i­ly financed by the bil­lion­aire Cork­ery fam­i­ly who are Opus Dei mem­bers. In oth­er words, a sig­nif­i­cant ele­ment of the con­tem­po­rary author­i­tar­i­an-lean­ing con­ser­v­a­tive grip on insti­tu­tion­al pow­er hap­pens to be Catholic at the same time the Repub­li­can Par­ty is increas­ing­ly in the grip of an evan­gel­i­cal-dom­i­nat­ed Domin­ion­ist move­ment cul­mi­nat­ing around the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 agen­da. That’s all part of the rel­e­vance of Vance’s ‘postlib­er­al’ affil­i­a­tions. The Catholic and Protes­tant wings of this fun­da­men­tal­ly polit­i­cal move­ment need a shared agen­da. ‘Postlib­er­al’ Catholi­cism is a part of that ide­o­log­i­cal cohe­sion.

So we’ll see what kind of grotes­queries emerge from Vance’s upcom­ing inter­view with Carl­son. We can be pret­ty con­fi­dent Vance won’t make any claims about why the Nazis were actu­al­ly right. But it’s going to be worth keep­ing in mind that Vance isn’t just a fan favorite for the ‘post-Alt-Right’ and its dreams of over­throw­ing democ­ra­cy and ush­er­ing in a post-demo­c­ra­t­ic order. He’s the fan favorite for all sorts of groups that want to see the emer­gence of a post-demo­c­ra­t­ic order, includ­ing Domin­ion­ists and their Catholic ‘postlib­er­al’ fel­low trav­el­ers:

The Week

Tuck­er Carl­son’s WWII inter­view frac­tures con­ser­v­a­tives

Holo­caust revi­sion­ism forces ‘intro­spec­tion’ in right-wing media

By Joel Math­is, The Week US
pub­lished 11 Sep­tem­ber 2024

You think you know the his­to­ry of World War II: The Nazis were the bad guys and Adolf Hitler was prob­a­bly the great­est vil­lain the world has ever known — the author of a Holo­caust that killed 6 mil­lion Jews. End of sto­ry, right? Tuck­er Carl­son isn’t so sure.

The for­mer Fox News host sparked a right-wing “media melt­down” after inter­view­ing a Holo­caust-deny­ing pod­cast­er on his new online plat­form, Axios said. Carl­son called Dar­ryl Coop­er “the best and most hon­est pop­u­lar his­to­ri­an” in Amer­i­ca. Coop­er in turn called Win­ston Churchill the “chief vil­lain of the Sec­ond World War,” said CNN. Coop­er also sug­gest­ed that the Holo­caust was an inad­ver­tent con­se­quence of poor Ger­man war plan­ning, in which “mil­lions of peo­ple end­ed up dead.”

...

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Don­ald Trump must “dis­avow” Carl­son, con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor William Gal­ston said at The Wall Street Jour­nal. Don­ald Trump Jr. and J.D. Vance, the vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee, are both sched­uled to join Carl­son on tour lat­er this month. That can’t hap­pen. Trump must “draw a bright line between what’s accept­able and what isn’t, Gal­ston added.” What isn’t: “Bla­tant anti­semitism.”

...

“Dubi­ous charges of Nazism are a dime a dozen in U.S. polit­i­cal rhetoric,” Sohrab Ahmari said at The Free Press. But there is no oth­er way to describe Coop­er’s ideas, nor Carl­son’s pro­mo­tion of them. The “obvi­ous fact” is that the Nazis were evil — and that Coop­er’s cast­ing of Churchill as the war’s vil­lain is a “per­verse moral inver­sion.”

‘We believe in free speech’

“Is Vance still going to hang out with Tuck­er Carl­son, even now?” the con­ser­v­a­tive Jim Ger­aghty said at The Wash­ing­ton Post. Carl­son has caused headaches for Vance before: The nom­i­nee’s infa­mous “child­less cat ladies” com­ment came on Carl­son’s Fox News show in 2021. The lat­est con­tro­ver­sy is worse. An “ordi­nary cam­paign” would avoid send­ing its vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date to hang out pub­licly with a “Putin-ador­ing nutjob con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist” ahead of the elec­tion, but Trump and Vance aren’t run­ning an ordi­nary cam­paign. “Let’s see whether Vance final­ly draws the line at hang­ing with the guy who hosts a revi­sion­ist his­to­ri­an with a blind spot for Adolf Hitler,” Ger­aghty said.

It does not look like Vance will skip out on Carl­son, said The New York Times. “We believe in free speech and debate,” Vance said dur­ing a cam­paign stop. The cam­paign lat­er issued a state­ment declar­ing that Vance “obvi­ous­ly does not share the views of the guest inter­viewed by Tuck­er Carl­son” but that he also “does­n’t believe in guilt-by-asso­ci­a­tion can­cel cul­ture.” Vance is sched­uled to appear onstage with Carl­son on Sep­tem­ber 21.

———–

“Tuck­er Carl­son’s WWII inter­view frac­tures con­ser­v­a­tives” By Joel Math­is; The Week; 09/11/2024

“The for­mer Fox News host sparked a right-wing “media melt­down” after inter­view­ing a Holo­caust-deny­ing pod­cast­er on his new online plat­form, Axios said. Carl­son called Dar­ryl Coop­er “the best and most hon­est pop­u­lar his­to­ri­an” in Amer­i­ca. Coop­er in turn called Win­ston Churchill the “chief vil­lain of the Sec­ond World War,” said CNN. Coop­er also sug­gest­ed that the Holo­caust was an inad­ver­tent con­se­quence of poor Ger­man war plan­ning, in which “mil­lions of peo­ple end­ed up dead.””

For­get Hitler. The chief vil­lain of WWII was Win­ston Churchill. It’s the kind of per­spec­tive one might expect to hear on a neo-Nazi pod­cast. And, sad­ly, it’s now also the kind of con­tent we should expect on Tuck­er Carl­son’s show. The once-lead­ing Fox News anchor is now run­ning what amounts to an inter­net neo-Nazi pod­cast. A pre­sum­ably very pop­u­lar inter­net Nazi-friend­ly pod­cast with enor­mous reach and influ­ence. So when we see how Don­ald Trump and JD Vance are both sched­uled to join Tuck­er Carl­son lat­er this month, keep in mind that they’re going to be com­mu­ni­cat­ing with an audi­ence that is, at this point, famil­iar with pro-Nazi con­tent. In oth­er words, Vance will be lucky if he does­n’t say end up say­ing some­thing a lot more inflam­ma­to­ry than his now-infa­mous “child­less cat ladies” com­ment from his 2021 Carl­son inter­view. These could be some wild inter­views:

...
Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Don­ald Trump must “dis­avow” Carl­son, con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor William Gal­ston said at The Wall Street Jour­nal. Don­ald Trump Jr. and J.D. Vance, the vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee, are both sched­uled to join Carl­son on tour lat­er this month. That can’t hap­pen. Trump must “draw a bright line between what’s accept­able and what isn’t, Gal­ston added.” What isn’t: “Bla­tant anti­semitism.”

...

“Is Vance still going to hang out with Tuck­er Carl­son, even now?” the con­ser­v­a­tive Jim Ger­aghty said at The Wash­ing­ton Post. Carl­son has caused headaches for Vance before: The nom­i­nee’s infa­mous “child­less cat ladies” com­ment came on Carl­son’s Fox News show in 2021. The lat­est con­tro­ver­sy is worse. An “ordi­nary cam­paign” would avoid send­ing its vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date to hang out pub­licly with a “Putin-ador­ing nutjob con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist” ahead of the elec­tion, but Trump and Vance aren’t run­ning an ordi­nary cam­paign. “Let’s see whether Vance final­ly draws the line at hang­ing with the guy who hosts a revi­sion­ist his­to­ri­an with a blind spot for Adolf Hitler,” Ger­aghty said.

It does not look like Vance will skip out on Carl­son, said The New York Times. “We believe in free speech and debate,” Vance said dur­ing a cam­paign stop. The cam­paign lat­er issued a state­ment declar­ing that Vance “obvi­ous­ly does not share the views of the guest inter­viewed by Tuck­er Carl­son” but that he also “does­n’t believe in guilt-by-asso­ci­a­tion can­cel cul­ture.” Vance is sched­uled to appear onstage with Carl­son on Sep­tem­ber 21.
...

Also note one of the con­ser­v­a­tive crit­ics of Tuck­er for the Coop­er inter­view: Sohrab Ahmari. As we’re going to see below, Ahmari hap­pens to be a lead­ing thinker in the ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholic move­ment. In oth­er words, while Ahmari might be decry­ing the invi­ta­tion of a Nazi apol­o­gist on Carl­son’s show, he also hap­pens to be part of fun­da­men­tal­ly unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic move­ment with its own predilec­tions for author­i­tar­i­an­ism:

...
“Dubi­ous charges of Nazism are a dime a dozen in U.S. polit­i­cal rhetoric,” Sohrab Ahmari said at The Free Press. But there is no oth­er way to describe Coop­er’s ideas, nor Carl­son’s pro­mo­tion of them. The “obvi­ous fact” is that the Nazis were evil — and that Coop­er’s cast­ing of Churchill as the war’s vil­lain is a “per­verse moral inver­sion.”
...

And as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing piece in The Inde­pen­dent, the crit­i­cisms of Trump and Vance for being will­ing to appear ar Carl­son’s pro­gram short­ly after the Coop­er inter­view isn’t real­ly com­plete with­out rec­og­niz­ing that Vance actu­al­ly ‘fol­lows’ Coop­er on Twit­ter. One of many Nazi-adja­cent social media accounts Vance open­ly fol­lows. It’s why the selec­tion of Vance as Trump’s VP had so many in the ‘Alt Right’ world gid­dy with excite­ment. Or rather, the ‘post-AltRight’ world. Yes, we’ve been in the ‘Alt Right’ era for so long now, we’ve already made it to the ‘post-Alt Right’ era. And JD Vance is one of post-Alt Right’s favorite politi­cians:

The Inde­pen­dent

White nation­al­ist body­builders and lib­er­al elites: Here’s who JD Vance is fol­low­ing on X

JD Vance, who was cho­sen as the Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee this week, fol­lows accounts on X that pro­mote white nation­al­ist views.

Richard Hall, Isaac Lozano
Sat­ur­day 20 July 2024 13:27 BST

Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date JD Vance fol­lows sev­er­al accounts on X that espouse far-right and white nation­al­ist views, accord­ing to an analy­sis by The Inde­pen­dent.

...

Among them are two of the most pop­u­lar fig­ures in the Right Wing Body­builders scene — an online com­mu­ni­ty in which many share a world­view that com­bines white nation­al­ist ideas with anti-glob­al­ism, weight-lift­ing and nutri­tion.

One of them is Raw Egg Nation­al­ist, an account that has shared Adolf Hitler memes, quot­ed Mein Kampf and pro­mot­ed the ‘Great Replace­ment’ con­spir­a­cy — a the­o­ry posit­ing that West­ern elites are inten­tion­al­ly replac­ing White pop­u­la­tions with migrants — to its 200,000 plus fol­low­ers.

Vance also fol­lows Bronze Age Per­vert, believed to be run by far-right body­builder Costin Ala­mar­iu. That account has also pro­mot­ed the racist Great Replace­ment the­o­ry and eugenic breed­ing. His self-pub­lished book, Bronze Age Mind­set’ is con­sid­ered a foun­da­tion­al text for the scene, and was said to be cir­cu­lat­ing among younger mem­bers of the Trump White House.

He wrote in a 2021 essay: “I have said for a long time that I believe in rule by a mil­i­tary caste of men who would be able to guide soci­ety toward a moral­i­ty of eugen­ics.”

Joshua Far­rell-Mol­loy, an extrem­ism researcher at the Accel­er­a­tionism Research Con­sor­tium, described the two accounts as belong­ing to a “post-alt-right move­ment” that is “pret­ty much at the van­guard of white nation­al­ism.”

“They are one of the main cen­ters of grav­i­ty with­in the con­tem­po­rary far right in the US,” he told The Inde­pen­dent.

Since Vance received the nom­i­na­tion on Mon­day, Mol­loy said there has been a “buzz of excite­ment” in the com­mu­ni­ty, which is some­times referred to as “anon Twit­ter” or “Frog Twit­ter,” in ref­er­ence to the alt-right meme Pepe the Frog.

...

Vance has described anoth­er con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure, polit­i­cal sci­en­tist Richard Hana­nia, as a “friend” and a “real­ly inter­est­ing thinker.” A Huff­Post inves­ti­ga­tion revealed Hana­nia as hav­ing writ­ten for sev­er­al white nation­al­ist web­sites under a pseu­do­nym in the ear­ly 2010s — where he expressed sup­port for eugen­ics, opposed “race-mix­ing” and cit­ed neo-Nazis — although Vance con­tin­ues to fol­low him on X.

Hana­nia lat­er dis­avowed the views he expressed while writ­ing under a pseu­do­nym, writ­ing in an essay titled ‘My Jour­ney Out of Extrem­ism’ last year: “I tru­ly sucked back then.”

Just a cou­ple of months before the pub­li­ca­tion of the essay, Hana­nia used his account on X to call for “more polic­ing, incar­cer­a­tion, and sur­veil­lance of black peo­ple.”

Far-right social media influ­encer Lau­ra Loomer is also on Vance’s fol­low list. Loomer has described her­self as a “proud Islam­o­phobe.”

Vance also fol­lows pod­cast host Dar­ryl Coop­er, who said that the 2017 Char­lottesville ‘Unite The Right’ ral­ly includ­ed “a bunch of good peo­ple and wrote in a since-delet­ed tweet that “FDR chose the wrong side in WW2,” The Atlantic report­ed.

It is not clear how long Vance has fol­lowed each account, or if he has ever seen or inter­act­ed with any of their post­ed con­tent, but Coop­er con­grat­u­lat­ed his “long­time mutu­al” Vance after he was cho­sen as the Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date.

Fol­low­ing a per­son on X does not imply that the per­son agrees with the views shared on the account, but a review of Vance’s fol­low­er list does pro­vide some insight into what the poten­tial future vice pres­i­dent sees online.

...

Vance notably fol­lows a rel­a­tive­ly large num­ber of jour­nal­ists from lib­er­al insti­tu­tions, despite spend­ing much of his time rail­ing against the “lib­er­al elite.”

He fol­lows nine jour­nal­ists from The Atlantic, one of America’s lead­ing estab­lish­ment lib­er­al mag­a­zines, as well as an assort­ment of New York Times reporters.

Vance addressed the Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion on Wednes­day evening as he accept­ed the party’s nom­i­na­tion for vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, shar­ing the sto­ry of grow­ing up poor in Ken­tucky and Ohio.

“I will be a vice pres­i­dent who nev­er for­gets where he came from,” he told the crowd.

———-

“White nation­al­ist body­builders and lib­er­al elites: Here’s who JD Vance is fol­low­ing on X” by Richard Hall, Isaac Lozano; The Inde­pen­dent; 07/20/2024

“Since Vance received the nom­i­na­tion on Mon­day, Mol­loy said there has been a “buzz of excite­ment” in the com­mu­ni­ty, which is some­times referred to as “anon Twit­ter” or “Frog Twit­ter,” in ref­er­ence to the alt-right meme Pepe the Frog.”

As we can see, the ‘Alt-Right’ was pal­pa­bly excit­ed with the selec­tion of Vance as Trump’s vice pres­i­dent. And why would­n’t they be? Vance is an open ‘Alt-Right’ fan. Or, rather, the ‘post-Alt-Right’. The ‘Alt-Right’ is yes­ter­year, appar­ent­ly. But ‘Alt-Right’ or ‘post-Alt-Right’, the affec­tion between Vance and this move­ment appears to be mutu­al:

...
One of them is Raw Egg Nation­al­ist, an account that has shared Adolf Hitler memes, quot­ed Mein Kampf and pro­mot­ed the ‘Great Replace­ment’ con­spir­a­cy — a the­o­ry posit­ing that West­ern elites are inten­tion­al­ly replac­ing White pop­u­la­tions with migrants — to its 200,000 plus fol­low­ers.

Vance also fol­lows Bronze Age Per­vert, believed to be run by far-right body­builder Costin Ala­mar­iu. That account has also pro­mot­ed the racist Great Replace­ment the­o­ry and eugenic breed­ing. His self-pub­lished book, Bronze Age Mind­set’ is con­sid­ered a foun­da­tion­al text for the scene, and was said to be cir­cu­lat­ing among younger mem­bers of the Trump White House.

He wrote in a 2021 essay: “I have said for a long time that I believe in rule by a mil­i­tary caste of men who would be able to guide soci­ety toward a moral­i­ty of eugen­ics.”

Joshua Far­rell-Mol­loy, an extrem­ism researcher at the Accel­er­a­tionism Research Con­sor­tium, described the two accounts as belong­ing to a “post-alt-right move­ment” that is “pret­ty much at the van­guard of white nation­al­ism.”

“They are one of the main cen­ters of grav­i­ty with­in the con­tem­po­rary far right in the US,” he told The Inde­pen­dent.
...

And then there’s Vance’s descrip­tion of Richard Hana­nia as a “friend” and “real­ly inter­est­ing thinker”. As’ve we’ve seen,Hana­nia was basi­cal­ly post­ing as a Nazi pseudonony­mous­ly for years before get­ting exposed and declar­ing him­self reformed (a sto­ry with a num­ber of par­al­lels with con­ser­v­a­tive lawyer (and clos­et Nazi) Christo­pher Roach). Along with Lau­ra Loomer — who recent­ly attend­ed a 9/11 memo­r­i­al cer­e­mo­ny as one of Don­ald Trump’s guests — and Dar­ryl Coop­er. These are Vance’s fel­low trav­el­ers:

...
Vance has described anoth­er con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure, polit­i­cal sci­en­tist Richard Hana­nia, as a “friend” and a “real­ly inter­est­ing thinker.” A Huff­Post inves­ti­ga­tion revealed Hana­nia as hav­ing writ­ten for sev­er­al white nation­al­ist web­sites under a pseu­do­nym in the ear­ly 2010s — where he expressed sup­port for eugen­ics, opposed “race-mix­ing” and cit­ed neo-Nazis — although Vance con­tin­ues to fol­low him on X.

Hana­nia lat­er dis­avowed the views he expressed while writ­ing under a pseu­do­nym, writ­ing in an essay titled ‘My Jour­ney Out of Extrem­ism’ last year: “I tru­ly sucked back then.”

Just a cou­ple of months before the pub­li­ca­tion of the essay, Hana­nia used his account on X to call for “more polic­ing, incar­cer­a­tion, and sur­veil­lance of black peo­ple.”

Far-right social media influ­encer Lau­ra Loomer is also on Vance’s fol­low list. Loomer has described her­self as a “proud Islam­o­phobe.”

Vance also fol­lows pod­cast host Dar­ryl Coop­er, who said that the 2017 Char­lottesville ‘Unite The Right’ ral­ly includ­ed “a bunch of good peo­ple and wrote in a since-delet­ed tweet that “FDR chose the wrong side in WW2,” The Atlantic report­ed.

It is not clear how long Vance has fol­lowed each account, or if he has ever seen or inter­act­ed with any of their post­ed con­tent, but Coop­er con­grat­u­lat­ed his “long­time mutu­al” Vance after he was cho­sen as the Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date.
...

But as we’re remind­ed of in the fol­low­ing AP piece, Vance’s extrem­ist admir­ers isn’t lim­it­ed to his many ‘post-Alt-Right’ fans. He also hap­pens to be a mem­ber of the ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholic move­ment. A move­ment that sounds more or less like the Catholic ver­sion of Domion­ism. An extreme­ly Sched­ule F/Project 2025-friend­ly move­ment with ambi­tions of tak­ing over soci­ety’s insti­tu­tions and wield­ing that pow­er for the “com­mon good”, where “com­mon good” is defined under an extreme­ly con­ser­v­a­tive lense. And as we’ve seen, this ‘postlib­er­al’ move­ment has one very promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive mega-donor fel­low trav­el­er: Peter Thiel. In fact, accord­ing to Vance, it was a 2011 talk by Thiel while Vance was a Yale Law School stu­dent that put Vance on the path towards his con­ver­sion to Catholi­cism and embrace of a ‘postlib­er­al’ world­view.

Now, as we’ve also seen, Thiel isn’t quite a ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholic. Because while most postlib­er­als raise harsh cri­tiques on mod­ern soci­ety for cre­at­ing exis­ten­tial dread by plac­ing an empha­sis on per­son­al lib­er­ties and eco­nom­ic growth, Thiel actu­al­ly feels that the prob­lem with mod­ern soci­ety is not near­ly enough tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment, which he blames on lib­er­al democ­ra­cy. Tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment in the area of tran­shu­man­ism, in par­tic­u­lar. At Thiel argues, Chris­tian­i­ty is fun­da­men­tal­ly a tran­shu­man­ist phi­los­o­phy and has been a dri­ving force for tech­no­log­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic advance­ments. Until democ­ra­cy got in the way and derailed all that advance­ment. And Thiel is, of course, JD Vance’s chief patron in both busi­ness and pol­i­tics. So when we see all of these ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholic lead­ers declar­ing Vance as one of their own, keep in mind that Peter Thiel has his own tran­shu­man­ist ver­sion of ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholi­cism that is pre­sum­ably influ­enc­ing Vance too:

Asso­ci­at­ed Press

JD Vance’s Catholi­cism helped shape his views. So did this lit­tle-known group of Catholic thinkers

By MICHELLE R. SMITH and PETER SMITH
Updat­ed 1:36 PM CDT, Sep­tem­ber 4, 2024

By his own account, Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s 2019 con­ver­sion to Catholi­cism pro­vid­ed a spir­i­tu­al ful­fill­ment he couldn’t find in his Yale edu­ca­tion or career suc­cess.

It also amount­ed to a polit­i­cal con­ver­sion.

Catholi­cism pro­vid­ed him a new way of look­ing at the addic­tions, fam­i­ly break­downs and oth­er social ills he described in his 2016 best­selling mem­oir, “Hill­bil­ly Ele­gy.”

“I felt des­per­ate for a world­view that under­stood our bad behav­ior as simul­ta­ne­ous­ly social and indi­vid­ual, struc­tur­al and moral; that rec­og­nized that we are prod­ucts of our envi­ron­ment; that we have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to change that envi­ron­ment, but that we are still moral beings with indi­vid­ual duties,” he wrote in a 2020 essay.

His con­ver­sion also put Vance in close touch with a Catholic intel­lec­tu­al move­ment, viewed by some crit­ics as hav­ing reac­tionary or author­i­tar­i­an lean­ings, that has been lit­tle known to the Amer­i­can pub­lic until Vance’s rise to the nation­al stage as the Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee.

These are not your father’s Catholic con­ser­v­a­tives.

The pro­fes­sors and media per­son­al­i­ties in this net­work don’t all agree on every­thing — even on what to call them­selves – but most go by “postlib­er­al.” Vance has used that term to describe him­self, though the Trump-Vance cam­paign did not respond to ques­tions about where Vance sees him­self in the move­ment and whether he shares some of the beliefs pro­mot­ed by many postlib­er­als.

Postlib­er­als do share some long­stand­ing Catholic con­ser­v­a­tive views, such as oppo­si­tion to abor­tion and LGBTQ+ rights.

But where Catholic con­ser­v­a­tives of the past have seen big gov­ern­ment as a prob­lem rather than a solu­tion, the postlib­er­als want a mus­cu­lar gov­ern­ment — one that they con­trol.

They envi­sion a coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion in which they would take over gov­ern­ment bureau­cra­cy and insti­tu­tions like uni­ver­si­ties from with­in, replac­ing entrenched “elites” with their own and act­ing upon their vision of the “com­mon good.”

“What is need­ed … is regime change — the peace­ful but vig­or­ous over­throw of a cor­rupt and cor­rupt­ing lib­er­al rul­ing class and the cre­ation of a postlib­er­al order,” wrote Patrick Deneen, a promi­nent author in the move­ment, in his 2023 book, “Regime Change.”

Vance has sig­naled his align­ment with some of what Catholic postlib­er­als advo­cate. He’s said the next time his allies con­trol the pres­i­den­cy or Con­gress, “ we real­ly need to be real­ly ruth­less when it comes to the exer­cise of pow­er” and said Repub­li­cans should seize insti­tu­tions, includ­ing uni­ver­si­ties “to make them work for our peo­ple.” He’s advo­cat­ed for gov­ern­ment poli­cies to spur child­bear­ing, a notion reflect­ed in his digs at “child­less cat ladies” with alleged­ly no stake in America’s future.

...

At an Ohio con­fer­ence fea­tur­ing a who’s who of Catholic postlib­er­als in 2022, he told fel­low speak­ers he has “admired a lot of you from afar” as “some of the peo­ple who I think are most inter­est­ing about what’s going on in this coun­try.”

Vance praised Deneen’s book at a 2023 pan­el dis­cus­sion with the author, a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame.

Vance has also met pri­vate­ly with lead­ing postlib­er­als, who have post­ed pho­tos of their gath­er­ings on social media and cheered his vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion.

Catholic jour­nals for years have bris­tled with debates about postlib­er­al­ism, but with lit­tle pub­lic atten­tion — in part because its adher­ents are few and its views are far from main­stream.

But now, postlib­er­als have an avid lis­ten­er in Don­ald Trump’s run­ning mate.

“You can go from peo­ple writ­ing on an unusu­al Catholic the­ol­o­gy blog to the vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in the course of less than a decade,” said James Pat­ter­son, pro­fes­sor of pol­i­tics at Ave Maria Uni­ver­si­ty in Flori­da.

...

“Most ordi­nary Amer­i­can Catholics would not treat a child­less sin­gle woman with cats with this kind of con­tempt,” Pat­ter­son said. Even if Vance is not steeped in the phi­los­o­phy, Pat­ter­son added, “he is pick­ing up on the postlib­er­al vibe.”

Some Catholics, includ­ing con­ser­v­a­tives, have raised alarms about the com­pa­ny Vance has kept, say­ing postlib­er­al­ism has his­tor­i­cal con­nec­tions to 20th cen­tu­ry Euro­pean move­ments that are asso­ci­at­ed with author­i­tar­i­an regimes like Fran­cis­co Franco’s in Spain.

“We’re talk­ing about peo­ple that pre­fer right-wing author­i­tar­i­an regimes,” Pat­ter­son said.

In a postlib­er­al soci­ety, Pat­ter­son wrote in an August com­men­tary in the online jour­nal The Dis­patch, cit­i­zens become “sub­jects” and per­son­al lib­er­ties sub­ject­ed to “admin­is­tra­tive despo­tism.”

Vance has recent­ly tried to down­play his Catholicism’s impact on pol­i­cy-mak­ing.

Trump’s Supreme Court appointees pro­vid­ed the cru­cial major­i­ty to over­turn Roe v. Wade, which had legal­ized abor­tion nation­wide. But the issue has become a polit­i­cal lia­bil­i­ty, with vot­ers in sev­er­al states reject­ing abor­tion restric­tions.

Vance had strong­ly opposed abor­tion, in the runup to his 2022 sen­a­to­r­i­al win, say­ing at one point that “two wrongs don’t make a right” when refer­ring to excep­tions for rape and incest. The cam­paign said in an email Wednes­day that he sup­ports “rea­son­able” excep­tions for rape, incest, and life of the moth­er.

But Vance has aligned with the Repub­li­cans’ first post-Roe plat­form in 2024, in which it backed off from its long­stand­ing sup­port for nation­wide abor­tion restric­tions. He pledged he could “absolute­ly com­mit” that a Trump-Vance admin­is­tra­tion would not impose such an abor­tion ban.

Trump has spo­ken incon­sis­tent­ly about a bal­lot mea­sure repeal­ing Florida’s ban on abor­tions after six weeks of preg­nan­cy.

After fac­ing back­lash from anti-abor­tion activists for seem­ing to indi­cate he would sup­port the mea­sure, Trump said he would oppose it.

The Catholic Church’s U.S. bish­ops declared oppos­ing abor­tion “our pre-emi­nent pri­or­i­ty.”

Vance told the New York Post in August that Catholic social teach­ing “cer­tain­ly influ­ences how I think about issues.” But he acknowl­edged “there are a lot of things the Catholic Church teach­es that frankly, Amer­i­cans would just nev­er go for.”

He added that in a democ­ra­cy, “you have to give peo­ple their abil­i­ty to have their own moral views reflect­ed in pub­lic pol­i­cy. There are a lot of non-Catholics in Amer­i­ca and I accept that.”

Julian Waller, a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, said Vance has numer­ous influ­ences out­side of Catholic postlib­er­al­ism — from Trump-style pop­ulists to his men­tor, tech bil­lion­aire Peter Thiel.

It remains to be seen whether Catholic postlib­er­als would get promi­nent appoint­ments in a Trump-Vance admin­is­tra­tion — or even how often they’d get their calls returned.

...

For an exam­ple of what an admin­is­tra­tion using state pow­er for postlib­er­al ends might look like, Waller point­ed to Flori­da and Gov. Ron DeSan­tis’ efforts to rid pub­lic high­er edu­ca­tion of diver­si­ty ini­tia­tives and crit­i­cal race the­o­ry.

“If you want the mod­el for what some­one like JD Vance is real­ly inter­est­ed in, it’s prob­a­bly the Flori­da mod­el, force­ful­ly chang­ing insti­tu­tions, cap­tur­ing insti­tu­tions,” Waller said.

Postlib­er­als’ ideas vary, but there are com­mon themes, said Kevin Val­li­er, author of “ All the King­doms of the World,” a 2023 book on the mod­ern postlib­er­al and inte­gral­ist move­ments and their cen­turies-old roots.

Depend­ing on who’s talk­ing, a postlib­er­al regime change could involve encour­ag­ing child­bear­ing, eas­ing or remov­ing church-state sep­a­ra­tion, ban­ning pornog­ra­phy for adults and chil­dren alike, reim­pos­ing laws lim­it­ing busi­ness on the Sab­bath, sup­port­ing pri­vate-sec­tor unions and strength­en­ing safe­ty nets for the mid­dle class.

It’s com­mon to hear postlib­er­als prais­ing Hungary’s nation­al­ist prime min­is­ter, Vik­tor Orban, par­tic­u­lar­ly for his use of finan­cial incen­tives for fam­i­lies that have more babies. Orban has cham­pi­oned an “illib­er­al democ­ra­cy,”  which includes restric­tions on  immi­gra­tion and LGBTQ+ rights.

Vance has praised Orban for Hungary’s sub­si­dies to mar­ried cou­ples with chil­dren and for “smart deci­sions” in seiz­ing con­trol of uni­ver­si­ties.

Vance has echoed the regime-change rhetoric of using gov­ern­ment, staffed by like­mind­ed offi­cials, for postlib­er­al goals.

“You need to have a func­tion­al state that accom­plish­es some of the things that we care about. You need good peo­ple to go and work in that func­tion­al state,” Vance said a 2022 con­fer­ence at Fran­cis­can Uni­ver­si­ty of Steubenville, Ohio. It fea­tured promi­nent postlib­er­als like Deneen and Har­vard Law School pro­fes­sor Adri­an Ver­meule.

Ver­meule has advo­cat­ed for “com­mon-good con­sti­tu­tion­al­ism,” in which the gov­ern­ment enacts “strong rule in the inter­est of attain­ing the com­mon good.”

...

Vance’s choice to speak at Steubenville under­scored his affin­i­ty with postlib­er­als, Val­li­er said.

“He could have giv­en that talk any­where,” said Val­li­er, a pro­fes­sor at the Insti­tute of Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion­al Thought and Lead­er­ship at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tole­do in Ohio. “Why is he appear­ing with these intel­lec­tu­als if he’s not sym­pa­thet­ic to their ideas?”

Vance’s reli­gious jour­ney began in a fam­i­ly that rarely went to church when he was young, he wrote in “Hill­bil­ly Ele­gy.” But he said his grand­moth­er — the most sta­ble adult in his tur­bu­lent house­hold — reg­u­lar­ly read the Bible and taught a Chris­tian­i­ty that demand­ed hard work, for­give­ness and hope.

For a time, the young JD embraced the strict bib­li­cal lit­er­al­ism of his father’s Pen­te­costal church, cred­it­ing it as a sta­bi­liz­ing force, he wrote.

But in col­lege, Vance embraced what he lat­er viewed as an arro­gant and fash­ion­able athe­ism.

Even­tu­al­ly, he wrote in a 2020 essay for the Catholic jour­nal The Lamp, he con­clud­ed he “need­ed grace” to pro­vide him the virtues to be a good hus­band and father.

“I need­ed, in oth­er words, to become Catholic,” he wrote.

————

“JD Vance’s Catholi­cism helped shape his views. So did this lit­tle-known group of Catholic thinkers” By MICHELLE R. SMITH and PETER SMITH; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 09/04/2024

“The pro­fes­sors and media per­son­al­i­ties in this net­work don’t all agree on every­thing — even on what to call them­selves – but most go by “postlib­er­al.” Vance has used that term to describe him­self, though the Trump-Vance cam­paign did not respond to ques­tions about where Vance sees him­self in the move­ment and whether he shares some of the beliefs pro­mot­ed by many postlib­er­als.”

JD Vance isn’t just a Catholic con­vert. He’s a ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholic con­vert. And as we can see, this ‘postlib­er­al’ move­ment just hap­pens to be high­ly ide­o­log­i­cal­ly aligned with the sen­ti­ment dri­ving the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot to purge all major US insti­tu­tions of the influ­ences of ‘the left’ and then using those hijacked insti­tu­tions to impose of far right vision of soci­ety on a major­i­ty that does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly agree with this agen­da. The ‘postlib­er­al’ move­ment is ulti­mate­ly post-demo­c­ra­t­ic. So when we see Vance prais­ing promi­nent ‘postlib­er­al’ author like Patrick Deneen, who open­ly calls for a Sched­ule F‑style impo­si­tion of postlib­er­al goals on soci­ety, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that the whole Sched­ule F/Project 2025 agen­da for a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion is effec­tive­ly the real­iza­tion of this move­men­t’s goals:

...
His con­ver­sion also put Vance in close touch with a Catholic intel­lec­tu­al move­ment, viewed by some crit­ics as hav­ing reac­tionary or author­i­tar­i­an lean­ings, that has been lit­tle known to the Amer­i­can pub­lic until Vance’s rise to the nation­al stage as the Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee.

These are not your father’s Catholic con­ser­v­a­tives.

...

Postlib­er­als do share some long­stand­ing Catholic con­ser­v­a­tive views, such as oppo­si­tion to abor­tion and LGBTQ+ rights.

But where Catholic con­ser­v­a­tives of the past have seen big gov­ern­ment as a prob­lem rather than a solu­tion, the postlib­er­als want a mus­cu­lar gov­ern­ment — one that they con­trol.

They envi­sion a coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion in which they would take over gov­ern­ment bureau­cra­cy and insti­tu­tions like uni­ver­si­ties from with­in, replac­ing entrenched “elites” with their own and act­ing upon their vision of the “com­mon good.”

“What is need­ed … is regime change — the peace­ful but vig­or­ous over­throw of a cor­rupt and cor­rupt­ing lib­er­al rul­ing class and the cre­ation of a postlib­er­al order,” wrote Patrick Deneen, a promi­nent author in the move­ment, in his 2023 book, “Regime Change.”

Vance has sig­naled his align­ment with some of what Catholic postlib­er­als advo­cate. He’s said the next time his allies con­trol the pres­i­den­cy or Con­gress, “ we real­ly need to be real­ly ruth­less when it comes to the exer­cise of pow­er” and said Repub­li­cans should seize insti­tu­tions, includ­ing uni­ver­si­ties “to make them work for our peo­ple.” He’s advo­cat­ed for gov­ern­ment poli­cies to spur child­bear­ing, a notion reflect­ed in his digs at “child­less cat ladies” with alleged­ly no stake in America’s future.

...

At an Ohio con­fer­ence fea­tur­ing a who’s who of Catholic postlib­er­als in 2022, he told fel­low speak­ers he has “admired a lot of you from afar” as “some of the peo­ple who I think are most inter­est­ing about what’s going on in this coun­try.”

Vance praised Deneen’s book at a 2023 pan­el dis­cus­sion with the author, a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame.

...

“Most ordi­nary Amer­i­can Catholics would not treat a child­less sin­gle woman with cats with this kind of con­tempt,” Pat­ter­son said. Even if Vance is not steeped in the phi­los­o­phy, Pat­ter­son added, “he is pick­ing up on the postlib­er­al vibe.”

Some Catholics, includ­ing con­ser­v­a­tives, have raised alarms about the com­pa­ny Vance has kept, say­ing postlib­er­al­ism has his­tor­i­cal con­nec­tions to 20th cen­tu­ry Euro­pean move­ments that are asso­ci­at­ed with author­i­tar­i­an regimes like Fran­cis­co Franco’s in Spain.

“We’re talk­ing about peo­ple that pre­fer right-wing author­i­tar­i­an regimes,” Pat­ter­son said.

In a postlib­er­al soci­ety, Pat­ter­son wrote in an August com­men­tary in the online jour­nal The Dis­patch, cit­i­zens become “sub­jects” and per­son­al lib­er­ties sub­ject­ed to “admin­is­tra­tive despo­tism.”
...

And when we see how Vance’s path to Catholi­cism was appar­ent­ly deeply influ­enced by Peter Thiel — Vance’s chief polit­i­cal patron — at the same time Thiel is described as a Catholic who is ‘out­side of Cathol postlib­er­alis’, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind how Thiel’s world­view aligns with that of promi­nent postlib­er­al thinkers like Deneen. As we saw, Thiel large­ly agreed with Deneen’s con­clu­sion that mod­ern soci­ety’s woes are a result of lib­er­al­ism. But where Deneen saw lib­er­al­is­m’s empha­sis on per­son­al lib­er­ty and eco­nom­ic growth as the root of this malaise, Thiel saw a lack of mate­r­i­al sci­en­tif­ic progress as the under­ly­ing issue. Beyond that, Thiel seemed to embrace a kind of tran­shu­man­ist phi­los­o­phy that he argued was very much in keep­ing with the true nature of Chris­tian­i­ty. So yes, tech­ni­cal­ly, Thiel isn’t com­plete­ly aligned with the ‘postlib­er­als’, but they do share the under­ly­ing goal of over­throw­ing soci­ety and impos­ing some­thing rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent, under the ban­ner of Chris­tian­i­ty:

...
Julian Waller, a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, said Vance has numer­ous influ­ences out­side of Catholic postlib­er­al­ism — from Trump-style pop­ulists to his men­tor, tech bil­lion­aire Peter Thiel.

...

Vance’s reli­gious jour­ney began in a fam­i­ly that rarely went to church when he was young, he wrote in “Hill­bil­ly Ele­gy.” But he said his grand­moth­er — the most sta­ble adult in his tur­bu­lent house­hold — reg­u­lar­ly read the Bible and taught a Chris­tian­i­ty that demand­ed hard work, for­give­ness and hope.

For a time, the young JD embraced the strict bib­li­cal lit­er­al­ism of his father’s Pen­te­costal church, cred­it­ing it as a sta­bi­liz­ing force, he wrote.

But in col­lege, Vance embraced what he lat­er viewed as an arro­gant and fash­ion­able athe­ism.

Even­tu­al­ly, he wrote in a 2020 essay for the Catholic jour­nal The Lamp, he con­clud­ed he “need­ed grace” to pro­vide him the virtues to be a good hus­band and father.

“I need­ed, in oth­er words, to become Catholic,” he wrote.
...

Final­ly, as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing piece in The Atlantic, the ‘postlib­er­al’ move­ment is per­haps sur­pris­ing­ly not very focused on the tra­di­tion­al of Catholic phi­los­o­phy. Instead, it appears to be a move­ment root­ed in a con­vic­tion that lib­er­al­ism is bad and must be repealed, with Catholic argu­ments then glommed on as part of the move­men­t’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. And as the arti­cle also notes, while Peter Thiel shares many of ‘postlib­er­al’ Catholi­cis­m’s crit­i­cisms of mod­ern soci­ety, Thiel does­n’t advo­cate a ‘postlib­er­al’ solu­tion. Instead, he advances a kind of hyper-tech­nol­o­gy-focused goal of tran­shu­man­ism as a kind of sacred mis­sion for human­i­ty. That’s also part of the con­text of Vance’s 2019 con­ver­sion to Catholi­cism, to appears to have hap­pened right around he formed his Narya Cap­i­tal ven­ture cap­i­tal fund with heavy financ­ing from Thiel. A com­pa­ny that went on to fund the ‘Alt-Right’ friend­ly social media start­up Rum­ble. That’s all part of the con­text of Vance’s ‘postlib­er­al’ the­ol­o­gy: it’s a the­ol­o­gy that has polit­i­cal goals as its core objec­tives and under­ly­ing motives and Vance hap­pened to have his con­ver­sion to this move­ment right around the time he start­ed a new ‘Alt-Right’-friendly ven­ture cap­i­tal fund with Thiel’s patron­age:

The Atlantic

The Post-lib­er­al Catholics Find Their Man

As vice pres­i­dent, J. D. Vance would ele­vate their dis­dain for Amer­i­can lib­er­al­ism to the high­est lev­els of gov­ern­ment.

By Damon Link­er
August 8, 2024
Updat­ed at 10:24 p.m. ET on August 8, 2024

When jour­nal­ists write about ties between Don­ald Trump and the reli­gious right, they usu­al­ly focus on evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants. That empha­sis makes sense, giv­en that evan­gel­i­cals make up a siz­able por­tion of the GOP’s elec­toral coali­tion, and their endur­ing devo­tion to the moral­ly and reli­gious­ly louche Repub­li­can nom­i­nee remains more than a lit­tle shock­ing.

But Trump’s choice of J. D. Vance as his run­ning mate puts a spot­light on a dif­fer­ent fac­tion of the reli­gious right: the so-called post-lib­er­al Catholics, who have been Vance’s friends, allies, and inter­locu­tors since his 2019 con­ver­sion to Catholi­cism (he was raised Protes­tant) and trans­for­ma­tion into a MAGA Repub­li­can short­ly after.

This group of Catholic intellectuals—which includes Patrick Deneen of Notre Dame, Adri­an Ver­meule of Har­vard Law School, and Sohrab Ahmari, a founder and an edi­tor of the eclec­ti­cal­ly pop­ulist mag­a­zine Com­pact—is known for its sweep­ing attack on clas­si­cal lib­er­al­ism. It claims that a long list of con­tem­po­rary prob­lems (ris­ing rates of eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty, drug addic­tion, sui­cide, home­less­ness, child­less­ness) can be traced back to moral-philo­soph­i­cal errors made cen­turies ago by the Amer­i­can Founders and their ide­o­log­i­cal prog­en­i­tors. In place of our polity’s com­mit­ment to indi­vid­ual rights, auton­o­my, and plu­ral­ism, the post-lib­er­als aim to cre­ate a soci­ety uni­fied around the com­mon good, which is itself fixed on a the­o­log­i­cal vision of the High­est Good.

Hence the need for what Deneen calls “regime change” in the title of his most recent book. In con­crete terms, this means replac­ing the peo­ple and insti­tu­tions that dom­i­nate America’s cul­tur­al, eco­nom­ic, and polit­i­cal life with a new elite will­ing to eschew lib­er­al norms in ser­vice of sup­pos­ed­ly high­er ideals. In this respect, Vance is the man the post-lib­er­als have been wait­ing for—a self-iden­ti­fied mem­ber of the “post-lib­er­al right,” and now a con­tender for one of the country’s high­est polit­i­cal offices.

...

These ambi­tions mark a sig­nif­i­cant change in the Catholic right com­pared with its most recent moment of max­i­mal influ­ence, dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of George W. Bush. Then, writ­ers such as Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak, and Robert P. George argued that, when prop­er­ly under­stood, Catholic Chris­t­ian rev­e­la­tion, Amer­i­can his­to­ry and ideals, and the Repub­li­can Party’s plat­form were per­fect­ly har­mo­nious. These thinkers made their case by con­tend­ing that Amer­i­can lib­er­al­ism was root­ed in the­o­log­i­cal sources, that Catholic ortho­doxy was essen­tial­ly lib­er­al and that the GOP was tai­lor-made to unite the two.

Things feel very dif­fer­ent on the Catholic right today. Set­backs at home and at the Vatican—including the elec­tion (and reelec­tion) of Barack Oba­ma, Pope Francis’s efforts to push back against the con­ser­v­a­tive lega­cies of his pre­de­ces­sors, and the Oberge­fell deci­sion by the U.S. Supreme Court declar­ing same-sex mar­riage a con­sti­tu­tion­al right—discredited the idea that lib­er­al­ism and tra­di­tion­al Catholi­cism could go togeth­er. One rad­i­cal response to these devel­op­ments can be found on the fur­thest extreme of the Catholic right, among a group called the inte­gral­ists. Despite their name, they aim to sub­or­di­nate the state to the Church, not inte­grate them.

Vance hasn’t gone that far in his pub­lic state­ments. Yet his account of his con­ver­sion to the Catholic Church, pub­lished in 2020 in the mag­a­zine The Lamp, marks him as very much a man of our post-lib­er­al moment. In his essay, Vance explains the intel­lec­tu­al influ­ences on his spir­i­tu­al evo­lu­tion. Some are con­ven­tion­al, such as St. Augus­tine, the the­olo­gian and bish­op who has been an inspi­ra­tion to Chris­t­ian con­verts down through the cen­turies. But one is decid­ed­ly less ortho­dox: the bil­lion­aire ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist Peter Thiel.

Before Thiel spent rough­ly $15 mil­lion on Vance’s suc­cess­ful 2022 Sen­ate cam­paign in Ohio, Vance worked as a prin­ci­pal for Mithril Cap­i­tal, one of Thiel’s many firms. Their first encounter, how­ev­er, came back in 2011, when Thiel deliv­ered a talk at Yale Law School, where Vance was then a stu­dent. As Vance recalls in his essay, Thiel, who has described him­self as Chris­t­ian, observed that the mer­i­to­crat­ic striv­ing of smart young peo­ple (like Vance) often results in both per­son­al exis­ten­tial empti­ness and soci­etal stag­na­tion. That’s a vari­a­tion on a cri­tique of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy that Thiel has been devel­op­ing for much of his career. In his idio­syn­crat­ic read­ing of West­ern his­to­ry, the the­o­log­i­cal pre­cepts of Chris­t­ian civ­i­liza­tion are what inspired the great sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ments of the past sev­er­al cen­turies. The ideals of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy, by con­trast, are respon­si­ble for the mean­ing­less­ness and iner­tia that sup­pos­ed­ly plague the present.

Over the decade fol­low­ing his meet­ing with Thiel, Vance remained broad­ly com­mit­ted to a Bush-era vision of con­ti­nu­ity between Chris­tian­i­ty and the moral out­look and pol­i­cy agen­da of the pre-Trump Repub­li­can Par­ty. That ear­li­er Vance favored pro-busi­ness eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy and saw democ­ra­cy pro­mo­tion as a cru­cial ele­ment of Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy. He also empha­sized the impor­tance of per­son­al char­ac­ter in pub­lic life: Pover­ty could be explained, in part, by moral deprav­i­ty, and hold­ing polit­i­cal office required integri­ty. But around the time that he decid­ed to run for the Ohio Sen­ate seat vacat­ed by the retir­ing Rob Port­man in 2021, Vance under­went a sec­ond con­ver­sion—to the ideas of the post-lib­er­al Catholics and the right-wing pop­ulism asso­ci­at­ed with Don­ald Trump.

...

Most strik­ing­ly, after more than four years of con­demn­ing Trump, Vance began defend­ing the for­mer president’s most reck­less acts and ambi­tions. He start­ed denounc­ing the Amer­i­can “regime” and, in Sep­tem­ber 2021, told a far-right pod­cast­er that “we are in a late repub­li­can peri­od” in which it would be nec­es­sary to “get pret­ty wild, pret­ty far out there, and go in direc­tions that a lot of con­ser­v­a­tives right now are uncom­fort­able with.” This includ­ed “a de-Ba’athification pro­gram” with the fol­low­ing direc­tives: “seize the admin­is­tra­tive state for our own pur­pos­es … fire every civ­il ser­vant in the admin­is­tra­tive state [and] replace them with our peo­ple.”

The post-lib­er­al Catholics, includ­ing Deneen, in his book on regime change, insist that the moral and polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion they seek can be accom­plished peace­ful­ly. But Vance appears ready to excuse some dan­ger­ous polit­i­cal brinkman­ship. In a recent inter­view with The New York Times’ Ross Douthat, Vance defend­ed the idea of states across the coun­try appoint­ing alter­na­tive slates of elec­tors after the 2020 elec­tion. He seemed to con­cede that such actions could have pre­cip­i­tat­ed a “con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis.” So be it.

What might be most strange about this unapolo­get­i­cal­ly rad­i­cal style of pol­i­tics is how ten­u­ous its ties are to the Catholic Church as an insti­tu­tion and even Chris­tian­i­ty as a his­tor­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty of faith. Where­as the Bush-era Catholics reg­u­lar­ly cit­ed the New Tes­ta­ment, Thomas Aquinas, and John Court­ney Mur­ray, today’s post-lib­er­als rarely invoke the Bible or the­olo­gians in their polit­i­cal com­men­tary. They don’t base their pol­i­cy com­mit­ments on the Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church. They aren’t in the habit of refer­ring to the social teach­ings in papal encycli­cals. (As with any group, there are excep­tions. Ahmari, for exam­ple, has cit­ed Catholic teach­ing in sup­port of polit­i­cal argu­ments in some works.)

Rather, their the­o­log­i­cal con­vic­tions tend to remain in the back­ground, serv­ing as fuel for some­thing more cen­tral to their pub­lic thought: a pol­i­tics of reac­tionary nega­tion. Their faith con­firms that lib­er­al­ism is the great ene­my that must be fought and defeat­ed so that some­thing more whole­some and spir­i­tu­al­ly invig­o­rat­ing can take its place. But until lib­er­al­ism has been expunged from the world, Chris­tian­i­ty remains main­ly a civ­i­liza­tion­al sym­bol or iden­ti­ty mark­er whose pub­lic sub­stance is held in abeyance.

That’s quite a shift for the Catholic right in a sin­gle gen­er­a­tion. Not long ago, the group insist­ed on a near-per­fect iden­ti­fi­ca­tion between the Church and Amer­i­can lib­er­al­ism as expressed by the Repub­li­can Par­ty. Now it insists on the dis­con­ti­nu­ity between Chris­tian­i­ty and America’s rul­ing ide­ol­o­gy, which requires noth­ing short of polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion to over­come.

...

———–

“The Post-lib­er­al Catholics Find Their Man” By Damon Link­er; The Atlantic; 08/08/2024

” This group of Catholic intellectuals—which includes Patrick Deneen of Notre Dame, Adri­an Ver­meule of Har­vard Law School, and Sohrab Ahmari, a founder and an edi­tor of the eclec­ti­cal­ly pop­ulist mag­a­zine Com­pact—is known for its sweep­ing attack on clas­si­cal lib­er­al­ism. It claims that a long list of con­tem­po­rary prob­lems (ris­ing rates of eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty, drug addic­tion, sui­cide, home­less­ness, child­less­ness) can be traced back to moral-philo­soph­i­cal errors made cen­turies ago by the Amer­i­can Founders and their ide­o­log­i­cal prog­en­i­tors. In place of our polity’s com­mit­ment to indi­vid­ual rights, auton­o­my, and plu­ral­ism, the post-lib­er­als aim to cre­ate a soci­ety uni­fied around the com­mon good, which is itself fixed on a the­o­log­i­cal vision of the High­est Good.”

A ‘postlib­er­al’ purge pred­i­cat­ed on impos­ing their idea of the ‘com­mon good’, whether the major­i­ty likes it or not. It’s a vision that isn’t just rad­i­cal but also rel­a­tive­ly new. And not real­ly based on a tra­di­tion of Catholic phi­los­o­phy. Instead, it appears to be a branch of Catholi­cism that has, at its root, a polit­i­cal rejec­tion of mod­ern lib­er­al­ism:

...
Hence the need for what Deneen calls “regime change” in the title of his most recent book. In con­crete terms, this means replac­ing the peo­ple and insti­tu­tions that dom­i­nate America’s cul­tur­al, eco­nom­ic, and polit­i­cal life with a new elite will­ing to eschew lib­er­al norms in ser­vice of sup­pos­ed­ly high­er ideals. In this respect, Vance is the man the post-lib­er­als have been wait­ing for—a self-iden­ti­fied mem­ber of the “post-lib­er­al right,” and now a con­tender for one of the country’s high­est polit­i­cal offices.

...

These ambi­tions mark a sig­nif­i­cant change in the Catholic right com­pared with its most recent moment of max­i­mal influ­ence, dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of George W. Bush. Then, writ­ers such as Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak, and Robert P. George argued that, when prop­er­ly under­stood, Catholic Chris­t­ian rev­e­la­tion, Amer­i­can his­to­ry and ideals, and the Repub­li­can Party’s plat­form were per­fect­ly har­mo­nious. These thinkers made their case by con­tend­ing that Amer­i­can lib­er­al­ism was root­ed in the­o­log­i­cal sources, that Catholic ortho­doxy was essen­tial­ly lib­er­al and that the GOP was tai­lor-made to unite the two.

Things feel very dif­fer­ent on the Catholic right today. Set­backs at home and at the Vatican—including the elec­tion (and reelec­tion) of Barack Oba­ma, Pope Francis’s efforts to push back against the con­ser­v­a­tive lega­cies of his pre­de­ces­sors, and the Oberge­fell deci­sion by the U.S. Supreme Court declar­ing same-sex mar­riage a con­sti­tu­tion­al right—discredited the idea that lib­er­al­ism and tra­di­tion­al Catholi­cism could go togeth­er. One rad­i­cal response to these devel­op­ments can be found on the fur­thest extreme of the Catholic right, among a group called the inte­gral­ists. Despite their name, they aim to sub­or­di­nate the state to the Church, not inte­grate them.

...

What might be most strange about this unapolo­get­i­cal­ly rad­i­cal style of pol­i­tics is how ten­u­ous its ties are to the Catholic Church as an insti­tu­tion and even Chris­tian­i­ty as a his­tor­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty of faith. Where­as the Bush-era Catholics reg­u­lar­ly cit­ed the New Tes­ta­ment, Thomas Aquinas, and John Court­ney Mur­ray, today’s post-lib­er­als rarely invoke the Bible or the­olo­gians in their polit­i­cal com­men­tary. They don’t base their pol­i­cy com­mit­ments on the Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church. They aren’t in the habit of refer­ring to the social teach­ings in papal encycli­cals. (As with any group, there are excep­tions. Ahmari, for exam­ple, has cit­ed Catholic teach­ing in sup­port of polit­i­cal argu­ments in some works.)

Rather, their the­o­log­i­cal con­vic­tions tend to remain in the back­ground, serv­ing as fuel for some­thing more cen­tral to their pub­lic thought: a pol­i­tics of reac­tionary nega­tion. Their faith con­firms that lib­er­al­ism is the great ene­my that must be fought and defeat­ed so that some­thing more whole­some and spir­i­tu­al­ly invig­o­rat­ing can take its place. But until lib­er­al­ism has been expunged from the world, Chris­tian­i­ty remains main­ly a civ­i­liza­tion­al sym­bol or iden­ti­ty mark­er whose pub­lic sub­stance is held in abeyance.

That’s quite a shift for the Catholic right in a sin­gle gen­er­a­tion. Not long ago, the group insist­ed on a near-per­fect iden­ti­fi­ca­tion between the Church and Amer­i­can lib­er­al­ism as expressed by the Repub­li­can Par­ty. Now it insists on the dis­con­ti­nu­ity between Chris­tian­i­ty and America’s rul­ing ide­ol­o­gy, which requires noth­ing short of polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion to over­come.
...

And then we get more info on the role Thiel played in Vance’s con­ver­sion away from athe­ism to Catholi­cism. As Vance tells it, a talk from Thiel dur­ing Vance’s time at Yale Law School includ­ed a cri­tique by Thiel about per­son­al empti­ness and soci­ety stag­na­tion. As Thiel appar­ent­ly argues, the the­o­log­i­cal pre­cepts of Chris­t­ian civ­i­liza­tion are what inspired great sci­en­tif­ic achieve­ments and that’s been lost under lib­er­al democ­ra­cy. Again, don’t for­get how Thiel appears to argue that Chris­tian­i­ty is inher­ent­ly a tran­shu­man­ist reli­gion and the solu­tion to soci­ety’s woes is mas­sive tech­no­log­i­cal leaps. So when we see Thiel lament­ing the lack of sci­en­tif­ic progress, keep in mind that he’s like lament­ing the lack of tran­shu­man­ist tech­no­log­i­cal leaps. Specif­i­cal­ly, the tran­shu­man­ist tech­no­log­i­cal leaps that might allow oli­garchs like Thiel to live for­ev­er:

...
Vance hasn’t gone that far in his pub­lic state­ments. Yet his account of his con­ver­sion to the Catholic Church, pub­lished in 2020 in the mag­a­zine The Lamp, marks him as very much a man of our post-lib­er­al moment. In his essay, Vance explains the intel­lec­tu­al influ­ences on his spir­i­tu­al evo­lu­tion. Some are con­ven­tion­al, such as St. Augus­tine, the the­olo­gian and bish­op who has been an inspi­ra­tion to Chris­t­ian con­verts down through the cen­turies. But one is decid­ed­ly less ortho­dox: the bil­lion­aire ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist Peter Thiel.

Before Thiel spent rough­ly $15 mil­lion on Vance’s suc­cess­ful 2022 Sen­ate cam­paign in Ohio, Vance worked as a prin­ci­pal for Mithril Cap­i­tal, one of Thiel’s many firms. Their first encounter, how­ev­er, came back in 2011, when Thiel deliv­ered a talk at Yale Law School, where Vance was then a stu­dent. As Vance recalls in his essay, Thiel, who has described him­self as Chris­t­ian, observed that the mer­i­to­crat­ic striv­ing of smart young peo­ple (like Vance) often results in both per­son­al exis­ten­tial empti­ness and soci­etal stag­na­tion. That’s a vari­a­tion on a cri­tique of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy that Thiel has been devel­op­ing for much of his career. In his idio­syn­crat­ic read­ing of West­ern his­to­ry, the the­o­log­i­cal pre­cepts of Chris­t­ian civ­i­liza­tion are what inspired the great sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ments of the past sev­er­al cen­turies. The ideals of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy, by con­trast, are respon­si­ble for the mean­ing­less­ness and iner­tia that sup­pos­ed­ly plague the present.

Over the decade fol­low­ing his meet­ing with Thiel, Vance remained broad­ly com­mit­ted to a Bush-era vision of con­ti­nu­ity between Chris­tian­i­ty and the moral out­look and pol­i­cy agen­da of the pre-Trump Repub­li­can Par­ty. That ear­li­er Vance favored pro-busi­ness eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy and saw democ­ra­cy pro­mo­tion as a cru­cial ele­ment of Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy. He also empha­sized the impor­tance of per­son­al char­ac­ter in pub­lic life: Pover­ty could be explained, in part, by moral deprav­i­ty, and hold­ing polit­i­cal office required integri­ty. But around the time that he decid­ed to run for the Ohio Sen­ate seat vacat­ed by the retir­ing Rob Port­man in 2021, Vance under­went a sec­ond con­ver­sion—to the ideas of the post-lib­er­al Catholics and the right-wing pop­ulism asso­ci­at­ed with Don­ald Trump.
...

Final­ly, recall how we saw Sohrab Ahmari decry­ing Tuck­er Carl­son’s deci­sion to invite Dar­ryl Coop­er on for an inter­view. As we can see, Ahmari is a ‘postlib­er­al’ lead­ing intel­lec­tu­al. Sure, it’s very pos­si­ble that Ahmari real­ly is gen­uine­ly appalled by Nazi apol­o­gists like Coop­er. But it’s impor­tant to rec­og­nize that such crit­i­cisms are com­ing from the leader of a move­ment that appears to be the author­i­tar­i­an Catholic ana­log of domin­ion­ism:

...
This group of Catholic intellectuals—which includes Patrick Deneen of Notre Dame, Adri­an Ver­meule of Har­vard Law School, and Sohrab Ahmari, a founder and an edi­tor of the eclec­ti­cal­ly pop­ulist mag­a­zine Com­pact—is known for its sweep­ing attack on clas­si­cal lib­er­al­ism. It claims that a long list of con­tem­po­rary prob­lems (ris­ing rates of eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty, drug addic­tion, sui­cide, home­less­ness, child­less­ness) can be traced back to moral-philo­soph­i­cal errors made cen­turies ago by the Amer­i­can Founders and their ide­o­log­i­cal prog­en­i­tors. In place of our polity’s com­mit­ment to indi­vid­ual rights, auton­o­my, and plu­ral­ism, the post-lib­er­als aim to cre­ate a soci­ety uni­fied around the com­mon good, which is itself fixed on a the­o­log­i­cal vision of the High­est Good.
...

It’s going to be inter­est­ing to hear what Ahmari has to say fol­low­ing Vance’s upcom­ing Tuck­er Carl­son inter­view. We can be con­fi­dent Vance is pre­sum­ably going to avoid com­pli­ment­ing Hitler. But at the same time, we can also be con­fi­dent that the inter­view with be filled with Vance and Carl­son mutu­al­ly com­mis­er­at­ing over their shared cri­tique of the mod­ern world that will include a num­ber of ‘postlib­er­al’ argu­ments very much in line with not just the Domin­ion­ists lead­ing Sched­ule F/Project 2025 effort but also the kinds of cri­tiques of mod­ern soci­ety we might expect to hear from the likes of Dar­ryl Coop­er and the rest of Vance’s ‘post-Alt-Right’ fel­low trav­el­ers.

It’s also worth keep­ing in mind in all of this that there real­ly is an array of very valid extreme crit­i­cisms of the mod­ern world that absolute­ly have to be grap­pled with. A rejec­tion of the ‘postliberal’/‘post-Alt-Right’ post-demo­c­ra­t­ic move­ments should­n’t be mis­con­strued as some sort of hap­py embrace of our col­lec­tive state of affairs. Moder­ni­ty real­ly is in a state of per­il. Thanks, in part, to the endur­ing nature of human author­i­tar­i­an impuls­es. In that sense, Peter Thiel’s tran­shu­man­ist ambi­tions should­n’t be dis­count­ed entire­ly. There real­ly would be immense good that could be achieved if human­i­ty could some­how rid itself of the com­pul­sion to dom­i­nate and sub­ju­gate. For­tu­nate­ly, how­ev­er, we don’t actu­al­ly need to change human biol­o­gy to achieve that. We just need to be dili­gent­ly mind­ful and com­mit­ted to resist­ing those impuls­es. Dif­fi­cult, but pos­si­ble, with fail­ure ever loom­ing as a pos­si­bil­i­ty too. Oth­er­wise known as progress. It’s long been one of the under­ly­ing mes­sages of Chris­tian­i­ty and pret­ty much every oth­er major reli­gion once you cut through the chaff, which is why it’s worth keep­ing in mind that a col­lec­tive rejec­tion of the kinds of tox­ic world­views cham­pi­oned by JD Vance real­ly would rep­re­sent the kind of ‘tran­shu­man­ist’ advance­ment Thiel longs form. Long over­due advance­ment con­sis­tent­ly held back by these stub­born post-demo­c­ra­t­ic author­i­tar­i­an impuls­es that con­tin­ue to plague the mod­ern world.

“I’m a black Nazi!” Famous last words? We’ll see. But there’s no deny­ing Mark Robin­son’s already trou­bled guber­na­to­r­i­al cam­paign is fac­ing its biggest chal­lenge so far fol­low­ing a dev­as­tat­ing CNN report detail­ing Robin­son’s years-old anony­mous inter­net posts, most­ly made to online pornog­ra­phy forums. But it’s not the fact that these posts were made on pornog­ra­phy forums that has Robin­son’s cam­paign hem­or­rhag­ing staffers. It’s the con­tent of those posts. Con­tent like “I’m a black Nazi!”, all made by a ‘min­isol­dr’ online moniker wide­ly used by Robin­son for years.

Robin­son has already denied the report, vague­ly insist­ing that he’s the vic­tim of some sort of hack that also includ­ed arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. As we’re going to see, it would be effec­tive­ly impos­si­ble for hack­ers to have some­how cre­at­ed retroac­tive­ly cre­ate this con­tent, much of which are online posts dat­ed between 2010–2012. Because while it’s pos­si­ble for a hack­er to pos­si­bly hack into the data base of an indi­vid­ual forum’s con­tent to inject new con­tent that looks like it was post­ed by ‘min­isol­dr’ back in 2010, the CNN report isn’t based on a sin­gle web­site. It draws on a num­ber of sources, includ­ed the 2017 pub­lic leak of con­tent from the Dis­qus com­ment­ing plat­form where Robin­son’s name is asso­ci­at­ed with both the ‘min­isol­dr’ moniker and also the same email address used for those pornog­ra­phy forum posts years ear­li­er. Not that this has stopped Robin­son for insist­ing on an ‘nefar­i­ous AI’ expla­na­tion.

There’s also a very real AI angle to this sto­ry. It’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly nefar­i­ous AI, but it’s eth­i­cal­ly com­pli­cat­ed: it turns out a pro­gres­sive activist group real­ly has been using AI to gen­er­ate audio clips that seem to be Mark Robin­son’s voice say­ing absolute­ly out­ra­geous things and put those clips in ads. The thing is, while the absolute­ly out­ra­geous things may not be things Robin­son has said, they are things Robin­son has writ­ten. In oth­er words, this group is sort of putting Robin­son’s writ­ten words into his own mouth.

As we’re also going to see, while Robin­son’s cam­paign may be los­ing staffers, the North Car­oli­na GOP appears to be stick­ing with him. Along with the Trump cam­paign. And plen­ty of Trump vot­ers. As one Trump sup­port­ing North Car­oli­na vot­er put it to a reporter, “We’ve all done things in our past that we’re sor­ry for. Some of the things are crazy....I mean, if we just went on that, we wouldn’t be here for Trump, would we?”

So on one lev­el, this is just the lat­est sto­ry about Mark Robin­son mak­ing news for say­ing some­thing out­ra­geous and obscene. But on anoth­er lev­el, this is very much a mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy sto­ry, with jour­nal­ists piec­ing togeth­er online clues left by Robin­son — or by the 2017 pub­lic Dis­qus leak — to effec­tive­ly ‘out’ the guy as a clos­et Nazi. Grant­ed, Robin­son has bare­ly been in that clos­et for years, but he obvi­ous­ly did­n’t want his “I’m a black Nazi!” com­ments dis­cov­ered and out­ed.

And that brings us to anoth­er sto­ry that should also be seen as part of the con­text of this Robin­son’s out­ing as a Nazi. Because let’s not for­get that Robin­son also hap­pens to be the favorite speak­er in recent years for David Lane’s Amer­i­can Renew­al Project, a fun­da­men­tal­ly domin­ion­ist project with a goal of enforc­ing a theo­crat­ic world­view on the Amer­i­can pub­lic. At the same time, Robin­son was effec­tive­ly hand-picked by Don­ald Trump for the 2024 North Car­oli­na guber­na­to­r­i­al race. And should Trump win back the White House, we can ful­ly expect the domin­ion­ist Project 2025 scheme to not just exe­cute a deep ide­o­log­i­cal purge of the fed­er­al work­force but a purge of the pri­vate sec­tor too. And as we’re going to see, we got a kind of pre­view last year of what a theo­crat­i­cal­ly dri­ven pri­vate purge might look like: a secret Catholic non-prof­it group fig­ured out how to iden­ti­fy priests using gay ‘hookup’ dat­ing apps like Grindr, with a goals that includ­ed out­ing the priests or per­haps qui­et­ly ruin­ing their careers.

The data was pur­chased from the large­ly unreg­u­lat­ed online data bro­ker­age indus­try. Specif­i­cal­ly, it was data sold by adver­tis­ers who sold ads on gay ‘hook up’ apps like Grindr. That data includ­ed loca­tion data. As we’ve seen, immense amounts of data is avail­able for sale in the large­ly unreg­u­lat­ed data bro­ker­age space, includ­ing loca­tion data. And while the data was anonymized, rei­den­ti­fy­ing the data turns out to be fair­ly triv­ial when the loca­tions are asso­ci­at­ed with, for exam­ple, a priest’s home or office.

The Den­ver-based non­prof­it behind the effort, Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al, has three phil­an­thropist trustees: Mark Bau­man, John Mar­tin and Tim Reichert. As we’re going to see, Reichert’s polit­i­cal ‘activism’ isn’t lim­it­ed to secret­ly out­ing gay priests. Reichert ran in the GOP pri­ma­ry for a Col­orado con­gres­sion­al seat in 2022. And while he did­n’t win that pri­ma­ry, the race end­ed up expos­ing the extreme­ness of Reichert’s world­view. As Reichert sees it, not only is every abor­tion an act of child sac­ri­fice on the altar of Baal, but the great­est threat fac­ing the West is con­tra­cep­tion.

Sin­gle women using ‘hookup apps’ are also a prob­lem, in Reichert’s view. Did Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al make any attempts to iden­ti­fy oth­er peo­ple using the var­i­ous hookup apps they had data on? We have no idea, but that’s part of what makes this sto­ry about the secret out­ing of gay priests using com­mer­cial­ly avail­able inter­net data a sto­ry to watch. And that’s also why we should view the out­ing of Mark Robin­son as ‘min­isol­dr’ as a sim­i­lar ‘signs of the times’ kind of sto­ry to the out­ing of the gay priests. In both cas­es, pub­licly avail­able data was used to legal­ly expose some­one’s secrets. Except, of course, in one case we’re talk­ing about the expo­sure of clos­et­ed gay priests and in anoth­er case we’re talk­ing about a clos­et­ed Nazi run­ning to be gov­er­nor of North Car­oli­na. These are remote­ly the same when it comes to the ethics of expos­ing the tar­get­ed indi­vid­u­als, but they’re both a sign of what’s pos­si­ble with today’s oceans of ‘big data’ read­i­ly avail­able for who­ev­er wants to pay. Because we can be pret­ty con­fi­dent the folks behind Project 2025 are going to be very eager to pay for as much data on as many Amer­i­cans as pos­si­ble that could be used to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Amer­i­cans. And they aren’t going to be hunt­ing for black Nazis:

CNN

‘I’m a black NAZI!’: NC GOP nom­i­nee for gov­er­nor made dozens of dis­turb­ing com­ments on porn forum

By Andrew Kaczyn­s­ki and Em Steck, CNN
Pub­lished 3:21 PM EDT, Thu Sep­tem­ber 19, 2024

(CNN) — Mark Robin­son, the con­tro­ver­sial and social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can nom­i­nee for gov­er­nor of North Car­oli­na, made a series of inflam­ma­to­ry com­ments on a pornog­ra­phy website’s mes­sage board more than a decade ago, in which he referred to him­self as a “black NAZI!” and expressed sup­port for rein­stat­ing slav­ery, a CNN KFile inves­ti­ga­tion found.

Despite a recent his­to­ry of anti-trans­gen­der rhetoric, Robin­son said he enjoyed watch­ing trans­gen­der pornog­ra­phy, a review of archived mes­sages found in which he also referred to him­self as a “perv.”

The com­ments, which Robin­son denies mak­ing, pre­date his entry into pol­i­tics and cur­rent stint as North Carolina’s lieu­tenant gov­er­nor. They were made under a user­name that CNN was able to iden­ti­fy as Robin­son by match­ing a litany of bio­graph­i­cal details and a shared email address between the two.

Many of Robinson’s com­ments were gra­tu­itous­ly sex­u­al and lewd in nature. They were made between 2008 and 2012 on “Nude Africa,” a porno­graph­ic web­site that includes a mes­sage board. The com­ments were made under the user­name min­isol­dr, a moniker Robin­son used fre­quent­ly online.

Robin­son list­ed his full name on his pro­file for Nude Africa, as well as an email address he used on numer­ous web­sites across the inter­net for decades.

...

Many of Robinson’s com­ments on Nude Africa stand in con­trast to his pub­lic stances on issues such as abor­tion and trans­gen­der rights.

Pub­licly, Robin­son has fierce­ly argued that peo­ple should use bath­rooms only that cor­re­spond to the gen­der they were assigned at birth. He’s also said trans­gen­der women should be arrest­ed for using women’s restrooms.

“If you’re a man on Fri­day night, and all the sud­den Sat­ur­day, you feel like a woman, and you want to go in the women’s bath­room in the mall, you will be arrest­ed, or what­ev­er we got­ta do to you,” Robin­son said at a cam­paign ral­ly in Feb­ru­ary 2024. “We’re going to pro­tect our women.”

Yet pri­vate­ly under the user­name min­isol­dr on Nude Africa, Robin­son graph­i­cal­ly described his own sex­u­al arousal as an adult from the mem­o­ry of secret­ly “peep­ing” on women in pub­lic gym show­ers as a 14-year-old. Robin­son recount­ed the sto­ry as a mem­o­ry he said he still fan­ta­sized about.

“I came to a spot that was a dead end but had two big vent cov­ers over it! It just so hap­pened it over­looked the show­ers! I sat there for about an hour and watched as sev­er­al girls came in and show­ered,” Robin­son wrote on Nude Africa.

...

“I went peep­ing again the next morn­ing,” Robin­son wrote. “but after that I went back the lad­der was locked! So those two times where [sic] the only times I got to do it! Ahh­h­hh mem­o­ries!!!!”

In oth­er com­ments on Nude Africa, Robin­son dis­cussed his affin­i­ty for trans­gen­der pornog­ra­phy.

“I like watch­ing tran­ny on girl porn! That’s f*cking hot! It takes the man out while leav­ing the man in!” Robin­son wrote. “And yeah I’m a ‘perv’ too!”

In an inter­view with CNN on Thurs­day, Robin­son repeat­ed­ly denied that he made the com­ments on Nude Africa.

“This is not us. These are not our words. And this is not any­thing that is char­ac­ter­is­tic of me,” Robin­son said. Pre­sent­ed with the litany of evi­dence con­nect­ing him with the min­isol­dr user name on Nude Africa, Robin­son said, “I’m not going to get into the minu­tia of how some­body man­u­fac­tured this, these sala­cious tabloid lies.”

CNN first reached out to Robin­son Tues­day morn­ing with evi­dence con­nect­ing him to the com­ments on Nude Africa. It took his cam­paign two days to respond and issue a denial.

...

A his­to­ry of con­tro­ver­sial state­ments

Cam­paign­ing for lieu­tenant gov­er­nor in 2020, Robin­son advo­cat­ed for a com­plete abor­tion ban with­out excep­tions. He lat­er expressed regret in 2022 for pay­ing for his now-wife to have an abor­tion in the 1980s.

Now cam­paign­ing for gov­er­nor, he says he sup­ports a so-called “heart­beat” bill that would ban abor­tion when a heart­beat is detect­ed – approx­i­mate­ly six weeks – with excep­tions for rape, incest and health of the moth­er.

But writ­ing as min­isol­dr on Nude Africa in Decem­ber 2010, Robin­son said he did not care about a celebri­ty hav­ing an abor­tion.

“I don’t care. I just wan­na see the sex tape!” Robin­son wrote.

In anoth­er thread, com­menters con­sid­ered whether to believe the sto­ry of a woman who said she was raped by her taxi dri­ver while intox­i­cat­ed. In response, Robin­son wrote, “and the moral of this sto­ry….. Don’t f**k a white b*tch!”

Robin­son, who would become North Carolina’s first Black gov­er­nor if elect­ed, also repeat­ed­ly maligned civ­il rights leader Mar­tin Luther King Jr., attack­ing him in such intense terms that a user accused him of being a white suprema­cist.

“Get that f*cking com­mie bas­tard off the Nation­al Mall!,” Robin­son wrote about the ded­i­ca­tion of the memo­r­i­al to King in Wash­ing­ton, DC, by then-Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma.

“I’m not in the KKK. They don’t let blacks join. If I was in the KKK I would have called him Mar­tin Lucifer Koon!” Robin­son respond­ed.

CNN’s report­ing on Robinson’s com­ments comes a few weeks after The Assem­bly, a North Car­oli­na dig­i­tal pub­li­ca­tion, report­ed that Robin­son fre­quent­ed local video pornog­ra­phy shops in the 1990s and 2000s. The sto­ry cit­ed six peo­ple who inter­act­ed and saw him fre­quent the stores in Greens­boro, North Car­oli­na. A spokesper­son for Robin­son called the sto­ry false and a “com­plete fic­tion.”

...

Robinson’s his­to­ry of con­tro­ver­sial remarks, includ­ing mock­ing school shoot­ing sur­vivors, his past sup­port for total abor­tion bans with­out excep­tions for rape or incest and dis­parag­ing the civ­il rights move­ment have been a con­sis­tent theme in the race. Recent pub­lic polling shows Robin­son is los­ing to Stein.

Iden­ti­fy­ing min­isol­dr as Robin­son

On the Nude Africa web­site in both com­ments and his pro­file, min­isol­dr offered numer­ous details that align pre­cise­ly with Robinson’s per­son­al his­to­ry.

In his pro­file, min­isol­dr list­ed his full name as “mark robin­son” and dis­closed a pri­vate email address Robin­son used else­where online. In 2012, a user respond­ed to a com­ment by call­ing min­isol­dr “Mark.”

Min­isol­dr men­tioned in 2008 being mar­ried for 18 years, which cor­re­sponds with Robinson’s mar­riage to Yolan­da Hill in 1990. In 2011, min­isol­dr wrote he had been mar­ried 21 years. Min­isol­dr wrote in a 2011 post that he lived in Greens­boro, North Car­oli­na, the same town where Robin­son lived at the time and cur­rent­ly lives.

In a post in 2012, min­isol­dr said he served in the Army in the 1980s, dur­ing the same time peri­od as Robin­son. In his sex­u­al­ly graph­ic com­ments detail­ing watch­ing women in the show­ers in 2011, min­isol­dr wrote that his moth­er worked at an His­tor­i­cal­ly Black Col­lege and Uni­ver­si­ty (HBCU). Robinson’s moth­er worked as a cus­to­di­an at North Car­oli­na A&T State Uni­ver­si­ty, an HBCU locat­ed in Greens­boro.

Both min­isol­dr and Robin­son often post­ed about the same top­ics online, includ­ing reviews for remote-con­trolled heli­copters, their attrac­tion to spe­cif­ic celebri­ties and their favorite “Twi­light Zone” episode.

The email address asso­ci­at­ed with min­isol­dr on Nude Africa was also used by Robin­son else­where online and social media. On the com­ment­ing plat­form Dis­qus, a user who joined in April 2011 fea­tures Mark Robinson’s pho­to under the user­name min­isol­dr.

User­names and email address­es from Dis­qus were pub­licly leaked online in 2017, accord­ing to the com­pa­ny. CNN con­firmed that Robinson’s user­name min­isol­dr on Dis­qus shared the same email address as the one used on Nude Africa.

Robinson’s Dis­qus page is also linked to the Black social net­work­ing site Black Plan­et. The Web Archive shows a user named “min­isol­dr” described them­selves as 40 years old in Feb­ru­ary 2009 – the same age as Robin­son at the time – and liv­ing in Greens­boro, North Car­oli­na – Robinson’s home­town.

A user­name often used by Robin­son

Robin­son has fre­quent­ly used the user­name “min­isol­dr” else­where on the inter­net. On X, the plat­form for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter, Robin­son once used the min­isol­dr user­name, accord­ing to a screen­shot he shared on Face­book in 2018 and data in Robinson’s old tweets.

A YouTube playlist for a user named “min­isol­dr” fea­tures exclu­sive­ly videos of Robin­son. On Pin­ter­est, a user “min­isol­dr” lists his name as “Mark Robin­son.”

The “min­isol­dr” user­name has also post­ed reviews of prod­ucts and places Robin­son has also pub­licly rec­om­mend­ed. On Ama­zon, a user named “min­isol­dr” reviewed prod­ucts fre­quent­ly shared by Robin­son on Face­book, includ­ing remote-con­trolled heli­copters. And the same email address and user­name used on Nude Africa also left reviews on Google for two local busi­ness­es Robin­son lat­er post­ed on Face­book that he used.

Robinson’s unique choice of lan­guage fur­ther links him to the “min­isol­dr” alias on the porno­graph­ic forums. Uncom­mon phras­es such as “gag a mag­got,” “dun­der head,” “I don’t give a frogs a**,” and “I don’t give two shakes of it” were used both by min­isol­dr on Nude Africa and by Robin­son on his per­son­al Face­book page.

Robin­son as min­isol­dr ‘Slav­ery is not bad’

...

Writ­ing in a forum dis­cussing Black Repub­li­cans in Octo­ber 2010, Robin­son stat­ed unpro­voked: “I’m a black NAZI!”

That same month, Robin­son wrote in anoth­er post that he sup­port­ed the return of slav­ery.

“Slav­ery is not bad. Some peo­ple need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slav­ery) back. I would cer­tain­ly buy a few,” he wrote.

In March 2012, Robin­son wrote that he pre­ferred the for­mer leader of Nazi Ger­many Adolf Hitler over the lead­er­ship in Wash­ing­ton dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of Barack Oba­ma.

“I’d take Hitler over any of the sh*t that’s in Wash­ing­ton right now!” he wrote.

Robinson’s com­ments on Nude Africa often fre­quent­ly con­tained deroga­to­ry and racial slurs direct­ed at Black, Jew­ish and Mus­lim peo­ple.

In a series of sev­en posts in Octo­ber 2011, Robin­son dis­par­aged Mar­tin Luther King in such intense terms, call­ing him a “com­mie bas­tard,” “worse than a mag­got,” a “ho f**king, pho­ny,” and a “huck­ster,” that a user in the thread accused him of being in the KKK. Robin­son respond­ed by direct­ing a slur at King.

In Octo­ber 2010, Robin­son used the anti­se­mit­ic slur “hebe” when dis­cussing how he liked the show “Good Times” devel­oped by Nor­man Lear, say­ing “the show itself was a bunch of heb [sic] writ­ten lib­er­al bull­shit!”

While dis­cussing the Tal­iban, he referred to Mus­lims as “lit­tle rag-head­ed bas­tards” and said that “if Mus­lims took over lib­er­als would be the 1st ones to be behead­ed!”

Robin­son also used homo­pho­bic slurs fre­quent­ly, call­ing oth­er users f*gs.

In a large­ly pos­i­tive forum dis­cus­sion fea­tur­ing a pho­to of two men kiss­ing after one returned from a mil­i­tary deploy­ment, Robin­son wrote the sole neg­a­tive com­ment.

“That’s sum ole sick a** f*ggot bullsh*t!” he wrote.

———–

“‘I’m a black NAZI!’: NC GOP nom­i­nee for gov­er­nor made dozens of dis­turb­ing com­ments on porn forum” By Andrew Kaczyn­s­ki and Em Steck; CNN; 09/19/2024

“The com­ments, which Robin­son denies mak­ing, pre­date his entry into pol­i­tics and cur­rent stint as North Carolina’s lieu­tenant gov­er­nor. They were made under a user­name that CNN was able to iden­ti­fy as Robin­son by match­ing a litany of bio­graph­i­cal details and a shared email address between the two.”

It’s a con­ver­gence of evi­dence scat­tered across the web that, tak­en togeth­er, make the iden­ti­ty of the “I’m a black NAZI!” author abun­dant­ly clear. Mark Robin­son, the “Some folks need killing!” guy, is a self-declared Nazi. Who could have seen that com­ing:

...
Writ­ing in a forum dis­cussing Black Repub­li­cans in Octo­ber 2010, Robin­son stat­ed unpro­voked: “I’m a black NAZI!”

That same month, Robin­son wrote in anoth­er post that he sup­port­ed the return of slav­ery.

“Slav­ery is not bad. Some peo­ple need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slav­ery) back. I would cer­tain­ly buy a few,” he wrote.

In March 2012, Robin­son wrote that he pre­ferred the for­mer leader of Nazi Ger­many Adolf Hitler over the lead­er­ship in Wash­ing­ton dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of Barack Oba­ma.

“I’d take Hitler over any of the sh*t that’s in Wash­ing­ton right now!” he wrote.
...

But it’s not just the scan­dalous nature of Robin­son’s online anony­mous com­ments that make this the kind of sto­ry that like­ly won’t just grace­ful­ly fade away amid the din of dai­ly news. There’s also the fact that the Robin­son cam­paign has arrived at a strat­e­gy of insist­ing it’s all a hoax, despite the fact that it would be effec­tive­ly impos­si­ble to arrange for the array of years-old evi­dence this sto­ry is based on:

...
Many of Robinson’s com­ments were gra­tu­itous­ly sex­u­al and lewd in nature. They were made between 2008 and 2012 on “Nude Africa,” a porno­graph­ic web­site that includes a mes­sage board. The com­ments were made under the user­name min­isol­dr, a moniker Robin­son used fre­quent­ly online.

Robin­son list­ed his full name on his pro­file for Nude Africa, as well as an email address he used on numer­ous web­sites across the inter­net for decades.

...

In an inter­view with CNN on Thurs­day, Robin­son repeat­ed­ly denied that he made the com­ments on Nude Africa.

“This is not us. These are not our words. And this is not any­thing that is char­ac­ter­is­tic of me,” Robin­son said. Pre­sent­ed with the litany of evi­dence con­nect­ing him with the min­isol­dr user name on Nude Africa, Robin­son said, “I’m not going to get into the minu­tia of how some­body man­u­fac­tured this, these sala­cious tabloid lies.”

CNN first reached out to Robin­son Tues­day morn­ing with evi­dence con­nect­ing him to the com­ments on Nude Africa. It took his cam­paign two days to respond and issue a denial.
...

Com­pound­ing the evi­dence against Robin­son is the fact that the evi­dence includes infor­ma­tion released in a 2017 leak of infor­ma­tion from the com­ment­ing plat­form Dis­qus which fur­ther con­firms the use of the “min­isol­dr” user­name with Robin­son’s email address. It’s worth recall that this isn’t the first time a Dis­qus leak was used to out a promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive as an anony­mous online Nazi. Richard Hana­ni­a’s online per­sonas were also revealed thanks to a 2012 Dis­qus leak. Was the 2017 leaked Dis­qus data­base pre­emp­tive­ly hacked to impli­cate Mark Robin­son in 2024? Because that’s what would have been required for this to have been a real hack­ing oper­a­tion:

...
The email address asso­ci­at­ed with min­isol­dr on Nude Africa was also used by Robin­son else­where online and social media. On the com­ment­ing plat­form Dis­qus, a user who joined in April 2011 fea­tures Mark Robinson’s pho­to under the user­name min­isol­dr.

User­names and email address­es from Dis­qus were pub­licly leaked online in 2017, accord­ing to the com­pa­ny. CNN con­firmed that Robinson’s user­name min­isol­dr on Dis­qus shared the same email address as the one used on Nude Africa.

Robinson’s Dis­qus page is also linked to the Black social net­work­ing site Black Plan­et. The Web Archive shows a user named “min­isol­dr” described them­selves as 40 years old in Feb­ru­ary 2009 – the same age as Robin­son at the time – and liv­ing in Greens­boro, North Car­oli­na – Robinson’s home­town.
...

The ‘I was hacked’ defense may be an absurd ali­bi for Robin­son but it’s clear­ly the ali­bi he’s going with. And giv­en the pre­pon­der­ance of the evi­dence against him, ‘I was hacked!’ might be his best defense, if only to give sup­port­ers some­thing to pre­tend to believe. But as the fol­low­ing WaPo piece by Philip Bump notes, Robin­son isn’t just claim­ing to have been hacked. That’s old school. Instead, he’s mak­ing some sort of neb­u­lous ‘AI did it’ defense. Mark Robin­son can’t explain how AI did it, but he’s con­fi­dent AI is some­how the cul­prit:

The Wash­ing­ton Post

Mark Robin­son offers up the 2024 ver­sion of the I‑was-hacked defense

“AI” is the new “hack­ers.”

Col­umn by Philip Bump
Sep­tem­ber 20, 2024 at 12:33 p.m. EDT

One of the least cred­i­ble ways in which North Car­oli­na Lt. Gov. Mark Robin­son ® attempt­ed to dis­miss Thursday’s report about wild­ly offen­sive com­ments he made on the mes­sage board of a porno­graph­ic site years ago was that it didn’t sound like him.

“This is not my voice,” he told CNN’s Andrew Kaczyn­s­ki, whose team uncov­ered the com­ments. “These are not things that we would ever say or even think.”

The com­ments, Robin­son refer­ring to him­self as a “black NAZI” fore­most among them, are very much in keep­ing with his voice — at least, his voice before he became his party’s guber­na­to­r­i­al nom­i­nee. Robinson’s anti­se­mit­ic com­ments are well doc­u­ment­ed; oth­er pri­or report­ing offered insights into his pro­cliv­i­ty for adult enter­tain­ment. The CNN report, if any­thing, was sim­ply tying threads togeth­er.

What’s more, the report was robust. CNN’s team not only uncov­ered the com­ments, pub­lished more than a decade ago on a site called “Nude Africa,” but showed how details from that and oth­er sites tied Robin­son to the account and to the user­name “min­isol­dr,” under which the com­ments were post­ed. It’s a dig­i­tal trail that would be all but impos­si­ble to cre­ate arti­fi­cial­ly.

Yet that’s exact­ly what Robin­son sug­gest­ed had hap­pened.

“I’m not going to get into the minu­ti­ae of how some­body man­u­fac­tured these sala­cious tabloid lies,” he said. “But I can tell you this: There’s been over $1 mil­lion spent on me through AI by a billionaire’s son who’s bound and deter­mined to destroy me. The things that peo­ple can do with the inter­net now is incred­i­ble. But what I can tell you is this: Again, these are not my words.”

Kaczyn­s­ki pushed back: Was he sug­gest­ing some­one had invent­ed these com­ments and pinned them to Robin­son?

“Look,” Robin­son replied, “I have no idea how this was done.”

For years, the default response from politi­cians and pub­lic fig­ures dig­i­tal­ly linked to mis­takes or scan­dals was to assert they had been hacked. For­mer New York con­gress­man Antho­ny Wein­er sent a lewd pho­to to a young woman? Hack. A sports ana­lyst posts an incor­rect his­tor­i­cal point? Hacked.

...

Now, as reflect­ed in Robinson’s com­ments, there’s a new boogey­man: arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. We have all seen the way AI can be used to gen­er­ate star­tling­ly real­is­tic images and text; we know major insti­tu­tions are invest­ing bil­lions in ampli­fy­ing the technology’s capa­bil­i­ties. Those capa­bil­i­ties are still more lim­it­ed than the public’s imag­i­na­tion, in the same way that “hack­ing” has been mis­un­der­stood, mean­ing AI is an appeal­ing new vehi­cle for claims that a pri­mar­i­ly dig­i­tal scan­dal some­how stems from devi­ous robot influ­ence.

Before Robin­son, there was Don­ald Trump, claim­ing that Democ­rats used AI in prepar­ing videos for the House hear­ing on Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s han­dling of clas­si­fied mate­r­i­al or that a years-old pho­to of him was some­how per­haps gen­er­at­ed through arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Trump has also claimed that Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris used AI to inflate the size of her crowds in pho­tos, some­thing that only some­one strange­ly obsessed with crowd size might enter­tain.

Seek­ing to rebut the CNN report­ing, Robin­son took the same tack. It is true, as he notes, that he has been the tar­get of AI-gen­er­at­ed imagery from a wealthy oppo­nent. But the use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence in that case isn’t to man­u­fac­ture false asser­tions from Robin­son. Instead, it’s to present writ­ten state­ments from the Repub­li­can can­di­date as spo­ken ones. This can be eval­u­at­ed on its own eth­i­cal mer­its, but it isn’t real­ly what Robin­son is try­ing to sug­gest hap­pened with the Nude Africa posts.

Robin­son waves away ques­tions about how this would work for the sim­ple rea­son that it wouldn’t. It is per­haps pos­si­ble that some­one went into the Nude Africa data­base of past com­ments and insert­ed ones attrib­uted to “min­isol­dr.” It’s pos­si­ble that an AI bot could be trained on Robinson’s past com­ments, mean­ing they would use sim­i­lar phras­es as ones he used in pub­lic posts, as CNN doc­u­ment­ed. (Which, by the way, severe­ly under­cuts the idea that the posts were not in his voice.)

This isn’t as easy as it seems, giv­en that the com­ments were part of ongo­ing inter­ac­tions, includ­ing respons­es from oth­er users. You’d have to cre­ate those, too, and inject them into the data­base — but then you’re mak­ing it rel­a­tive­ly easy to val­i­date those users and their dig­i­tal trails. Oh, what a tan­gled web we weave when first we train an algo­rithm to deceive.

And all of this to what end? To put slight­ly more out­ra­geous words in Robinson’s mouth? To tie him to a slight­ly more sala­cious com­mu­ni­ty? It seems clear that one rea­son the CNN report was such a sen­sa­tion was that there had been hours of hints that it was com­ing — hints cen­tered around the North Car­oli­na Repub­li­can Party’s obvi­ous inter­est in find­ing a last-minute replace­ment for their already-trail­ing-bad­ly can­di­date. This became a big thing in part, it seems, because some Repub­li­cans want­ed it to be a big thing.

...

————

“Mark Robin­son offers up the 2024 ver­sion of the I‑was-hacked defense” by Philip Bump; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 09/20/2024

“What’s more, the report was robust. CNN’s team not only uncov­ered the com­ments, pub­lished more than a decade ago on a site called “Nude Africa,” but showed how details from that and oth­er sites tied Robin­son to the account and to the user­name “min­isol­dr,” under which the com­ments were post­ed. It’s a dig­i­tal trail that would be all but impos­si­ble to cre­ate arti­fi­cial­ly.”

As Philip Bump describes, you real­ly can’t fea­si­bly arti­fi­cial­ly cre­ate the dig­i­tal trail this sto­ry is based on. The incrim­i­nat­ing data is tri­an­gu­lat­ed across too many dif­fer­ent web­sites. But that impos­si­bil­i­ty isn’t pre­vent­ing the Robin­son cam­paign from insist­ing that ‘AI’ is some­how behind it. A claim con­sis­tent­ly with the ‘AI did it’ theme we’ve been hear­ing com­ing out of the Trump cam­paign already this year. In oth­er words, expect more ‘It was AI’ claims in the face of future sor­did sto­ries like this:

...
Yet that’s exact­ly what Robin­son sug­gest­ed had hap­pened.

“I’m not going to get into the minu­ti­ae of how some­body man­u­fac­tured these sala­cious tabloid lies,” he said. “But I can tell you this: There’s been over $1 mil­lion spent on me through AI by a billionaire’s son who’s bound and deter­mined to destroy me. The things that peo­ple can do with the inter­net now is incred­i­ble. But what I can tell you is this: Again, these are not my words.”

Kaczyn­s­ki pushed back: Was he sug­gest­ing some­one had invent­ed these com­ments and pinned them to Robin­son?

“Look,” Robin­son replied, “I have no idea how this was done.”

...

Now, as reflect­ed in Robinson’s com­ments, there’s a new boogey­man: arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. We have all seen the way AI can be used to gen­er­ate star­tling­ly real­is­tic images and text; we know major insti­tu­tions are invest­ing bil­lions in ampli­fy­ing the technology’s capa­bil­i­ties. Those capa­bil­i­ties are still more lim­it­ed than the public’s imag­i­na­tion, in the same way that “hack­ing” has been mis­un­der­stood, mean­ing AI is an appeal­ing new vehi­cle for claims that a pri­mar­i­ly dig­i­tal scan­dal some­how stems from devi­ous robot influ­ence.

Before Robin­son, there was Don­ald Trump, claim­ing that Democ­rats used AI in prepar­ing videos for the House hear­ing on Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s han­dling of clas­si­fied mate­r­i­al or that a years-old pho­to of him was some­how per­haps gen­er­at­ed through arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Trump has also claimed that Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris used AI to inflate the size of her crowds in pho­tos, some­thing that only some­one strange­ly obsessed with crowd size might enter­tain.
...

But then there’s this unfor­tu­nate com­pli­ca­tion: it real­ly is the case that a group actu­al­ly has used AI to cre­ate qua­si-fake Mark Robin­son audio clips. Fake in the sense that these audio clips are all AI gen­er­at­ed voic­es intend­ed to sound like Mark Robin­son, but real in the sense that these are all things Robin­son has writ­ten. So this group effec­tive­ly put Robin­son’s own writ­ten words into his mouth, thanks to AI:

...
Seek­ing to rebut the CNN report­ing, Robin­son took the same tack. It is true, as he notes, that he has been the tar­get of AI-gen­er­at­ed imagery from a wealthy oppo­nent. But the use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence in that case isn’t to man­u­fac­ture false asser­tions from Robin­son. Instead, it’s to present writ­ten state­ments from the Repub­li­can can­di­date as spo­ken ones. This can be eval­u­at­ed on its own eth­i­cal mer­its, but it isn’t real­ly what Robin­son is try­ing to sug­gest hap­pened with the Nude Africa posts.
...

Will the Robin­son cam­paign suc­cess­ful­ly dis­si­pate this scan­dal through an ‘AI did it!’ deflec­tion? That’s clear­ly the strat­e­gy the cam­paign is deploy­ing. And as the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, the group behind those AI ads had more ads in mind:

Indy­Week

Raleigh Mil­lion­aire Launch­es AI Attack Cam­paign Tar­get­ing Mark Robin­son

Todd Stiefel’s satire PAC is launch­ing a mobile and dig­i­tal cam­paign fea­tur­ing the Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date speak­ing in an AI-gen­er­at­ed voice.

by Chase Pel­le­gri­ni de Paur 09/12/2024

Any­one strolling through Raleigh this week­end may hear the voice of Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Mark Robin­son blast­ing from an elec­tron­ic bill­board on the side of a truck.

“MLK was a com­mu­nist,” Robinson’s voice says, speak­ing over an image of him­self point­ing into the face of the revered leader. “And the Civ­il Rights Move­ment was CRAP!” he adds, edit­ed into the bus seat next to Rosa Parks.

On anoth­er slide, his voice calls the afford­able care act “an effort to enslave every­body” while he pos­es, tin hat perched on his bald head, in front of an Illu­mi­nati con­spir­a­cy board.

But Robin­son, Repub­li­can can­di­date for gov­er­nor, didn’t sit down to record those lines for the ads. The sounds weren’t even spliced togeth­er from past clips. Instead, his voice was dig­i­tal­ly created—to read quotes and beliefs tak­en from his old Face­book posts, ral­lies, and media appearances—with AI.

The cam­paign is the lat­est from Amer­i­cans for Prospar­o­dy (not to be con­fused with Koch broth­ers-backed con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty), a satire polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee (PAC) found­ed and fund­ed by Raleigh mil­lion­aire and activist Todd Stiefel.

...

Even by the stan­dards of a polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions world rav­aged by Don­ald Trump and the Supreme Court’s Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion, the ads run­ning in Raleigh are pret­ty wild. But the Amer­i­cans for Prospar­o­dy ads that didn’t make it onto the truck are even more jaw-drop­ping.

In one, Robin­son, in a red one­sie with dev­il horns and wings, con­fess­es that he is a mur­der­er because he paid for his now-wife’s abor­tion. In anoth­er, he holds a sev­ered head and a cross and tells the view­er to “take the head of your ene­my in God’s name!”

...

Dur­ing the spring’s pri­ma­ry, Amer­i­cans for Prospar­o­dy ran sev­er­al sim­i­lar ads focused on Robin­son before he was offi­cial­ly the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee. Those ads fea­tured the more car­toon­ish “Mark Rot­ten­son” char­ac­ter, with a vil­lain­ous mus­tache and an old-timey hat. (Accord­ing to PAC fil­ings, those mobile bill­boards cost $66,000).

“I want­ed it to be as obvi­ous as pos­si­ble that [Rot­ten­son] was par­o­dy and satire,” says Stiefel. But the PAC quick­ly ran into anoth­er problem—lieutenant gov­er­nor isn’t exact­ly a posi­tion with a lot of star pow­er, so many peo­ple didn’t know who Robin­son was, or wouldn’t have rec­og­nized his like­ness, to begin with.

That’s why the cur­rent cam­paign fea­tures Robin­son with­out any props. It also means the PAC has to be more care­ful about the script it writes for the AI voice, as the imi­ta­tion is cer­tain­ly good enough to make a passer­by stop and won­der if Robin­son real­ly said that.

For the most part, Robin­son did. But by using some real quotes along­side some satir­i­cal con­tent, all in Robinson’s AI voice, some of the ads blur the line between real­i­ty and par­o­dy.

In March, that debat­able dis­tinc­tion had both Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans speak­ing out against the Rot­ten­son cam­paign.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Josh Stein’s cam­paign told WRAL that “any use of AI to mis­lead vot­ers is unequiv­o­cal­ly wrong and has no place in this cam­paign,” while Robin­son cam­paign spokesper­son Michael Lon­er­gan told INDY that “Stiefel’s low-rent web­site is full of fake clips and out­ra­geous lies. North Car­oli­na vot­ers will see right through it.”

Lon­er­gan also called the site “a typ­i­cal Demo­c­rat smear cam­paign,” and point­ed out that Stiefel is a major Stein donor. (Stiefel is an unaf­fil­i­at­ed vot­er, but has donat­ed at least $40,000 to Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates and PACs in 2024 alone and at least $18,000 to Stein since 2016.)

For one 2023 dona­tion, Stiefel list­ed his occu­pa­tion as “provo­ca­teur.”

Stiefel says the cur­rent bill­board cam­paign cost $23,000, and will run through the month. The press release not­ed that the ads are “part of a larg­er buy to be announced in the com­ing days.”

———–

“Raleigh Mil­lion­aire Launch­es AI Attack Cam­paign Tar­get­ing Mark Robin­son” by Chase Pel­le­gri­ni de Paur; Indy­Week; 09/12/2024

“But Robin­son, Repub­li­can can­di­date for gov­er­nor, didn’t sit down to record those lines for the ads. The sounds weren’t even spliced togeth­er from past clips. Instead, his voice was dig­i­tal­ly created—to read quotes and beliefs tak­en from his old Face­book posts, ral­lies, and media appearances—with AI.”

Yes, AI was used to put words in Mark Robin­son’s mouth. Except they hap­pen to be Robin­son’s own words. Unless, of course, we assume all of the sala­cious com­ments this group attrib­uted to Robin­son were actu­al­ly the result of some sort of hack­ing oper­a­tion. A sil­ly assump­tion but one the Robin­son cam­paign is obvi­ous­ly hap­py to encour­age:

...
The cam­paign is the lat­est from Amer­i­cans for Prospar­o­dy (not to be con­fused with Koch broth­ers-backed con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty), a satire polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee (PAC) found­ed and fund­ed by Raleigh mil­lion­aire and activist Todd Stiefel.

...

Dur­ing the spring’s pri­ma­ry, Amer­i­cans for Prospar­o­dy ran sev­er­al sim­i­lar ads focused on Robin­son before he was offi­cial­ly the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee. Those ads fea­tured the more car­toon­ish “Mark Rot­ten­son” char­ac­ter, with a vil­lain­ous mus­tache and an old-timey hat. (Accord­ing to PAC fil­ings, those mobile bill­boards cost $66,000).

“I want­ed it to be as obvi­ous as pos­si­ble that [Rot­ten­son] was par­o­dy and satire,” says Stiefel. But the PAC quick­ly ran into anoth­er problem—lieutenant gov­er­nor isn’t exact­ly a posi­tion with a lot of star pow­er, so many peo­ple didn’t know who Robin­son was, or wouldn’t have rec­og­nized his like­ness, to begin with.

That’s why the cur­rent cam­paign fea­tures Robin­son with­out any props. It also means the PAC has to be more care­ful about the script it writes for the AI voice, as the imi­ta­tion is cer­tain­ly good enough to make a passer­by stop and won­der if Robin­son real­ly said that.

For the most part, Robin­son did. But by using some real quotes along­side some satir­i­cal con­tent, all in Robinson’s AI voice, some of the ads blur the line between real­i­ty and par­o­dy.
...

Of course, as the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, it’s not like Mark Robin­son’s sup­port­ers are hav­ing a hard time dis­miss­ing all of these reports as just ‘fake news’. Or even just ‘old news’ that might be true but isn’t real­ly rel­e­vant. It’s the oth­er side of this wild sto­ry: the ques­tion of whether or not the Robin­son cam­paign can defuse this issue isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly the pri­ma­ry ques­tion fac­ing the cam­paign. Instead, the big ques­tion is whether or not vot­ers will even care. This is the polit­i­cal era of Trump, after all. Do enough North Car­oli­na vot­ers even care of Mark Robin­son is a self-declared Black Nazi? It remains an open ques­tion. Either way, the North Car­oli­na GOP and Trump cam­paign are stick­ing with Robin­son:

The Wash­ing­ton Post

Mark Robinson’s porn site scan­dal greet­ed with shrugs by some Trump back­ers

The rev­e­la­tions sur­round­ing the N.C. guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date mark a test of vot­ers’ tol­er­ance for dis­turb­ing alle­ga­tions in the Trump era.

By Han­nah Knowles
Updat­ed Sep­tem­ber 22, 2024 at 6:37 p.m. EDT|Published Sep­tem­ber 22, 2024 at 1:30 p.m. EDT

WILMINGTON, N.C. — The scan­dal engulf­ing Mark Robinson’s cam­paign for North Car­oli­na gov­er­nor seems career-end­ing to many in pol­i­tics. At Don­ald Trump’s ral­ly here this week­end, how­ev­er, plen­ty of peo­ple weren’t both­ered.

So what if Robin­son, the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee for gov­er­nor, is linked to the account of a porn site user who once argued for the rein­state­ment of slav­ery, detailed an affair with his wife’s sis­ter, called him­self a “black NAZI” and praised Adolf Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf” as “a good read”?

“I didn’t put much cre­dence in it,” Bob Jud­son, a 70-year-old unaf­fil­i­at­ed vot­er, said of the alle­ga­tions against Robin­son. “We’ve all done things in our past that we’re sor­ry for. Some of the things are crazy.”

“I mean,” he added, “if we just went on that, we wouldn’t be here for Trump, would we?”

Robinson’s con­test has become a remark­able test case of vot­ers and GOP lead­ers’ tol­er­ance for dis­turb­ing alle­ga­tions against can­di­dates in the Trump era — when news is deeply dis­trust­ed, scan­dals car­ry less weight and no offense seems to be enough to rat­tle Trump’s base.

Still, the accu­sa­tions about Robin­son are dam­ag­ing enough that Trump steered clear of the can­di­date at his Wilm­ing­ton, N.C., ral­ly on Sat­ur­day, mak­ing no men­tion of his long­time ally days after CNN report­ed that Robin­son made shock­ing com­ments on a porn forum more than a decade ago. Some Repub­li­can offi­cials, such as Sen. Thom Tillis (R‑N.C.), have said the report­ing rais­es seri­ous con­cerns if true. Robinson’s cam­paign announced Sun­day evening that four senior staffers, includ­ing the cam­paign man­ag­er, had resigned.

...

But Robin­son, the lieu­tenant gov­er­nor of North Car­oli­na, has respond­ed with Trump-like defi­ance, deny­ing any involve­ment and rail­ing against “sala­cious tabloid lies.” The North Car­oli­na GOP fol­lowed suit, issu­ing a state­ment of sup­port and sug­gest­ing the polit­i­cal left is “try­ing to demo­nize [Robin­son] via per­son­al attacks.” Trump has not denounced Robin­son or the com­ments attrib­uted to him, and the gen­er­al strat­e­gy at Trump’s ral­ly seemed to be to ignore the issue.

On Sat­ur­day, Sen. JD Vance (R‑Ohio), Trump’s run­ning mate, dodged ques­tions from an NBC reporter on whether he believed Robinson’s claim that the offen­sive posts weren’t his.

“I don’t not believe him, I don’t believe him — I just think you have to let these things play out some­times in the court of pub­lic opin­ion,” Vance respond­ed.

Dan Bish­op, the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee for North Car­oli­na attor­ney gen­er­al, was the out­lier. He spent much of his ral­ly speech denounc­ing “white suprema­cist Democ­rats” from the 1890s before blam­ing Democ­rats for the Robin­son dra­ma and sug­gest­ing, inac­cu­rate­ly, that hack­ing was required to obtain the porn site posts.

“This week in North Car­oli­na, Democ­rats sud­den­ly aban­doned their aver­sion to hack and dump, rolled out a metic­u­lous­ly timed and coor­di­nat­ed char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion, and then moved imme­di­ate­ly to smear by asso­ci­a­tion,” Bish­op said. “Their aim, they say, is to dis­grace not just one but all Repub­li­can can­di­dates, in the name of decen­cy, they say.”

...

Trump ral­ly­go­er Con­nie Wittmer said she was will­ing to look past Robinson’s past con­tro­ver­sies — like his com­ment that women get abor­tions because they couldn’t keep their “skirt down” — but hes­i­tat­ed when a reporter described the porn site posts. “That dis­turbs me,” she said. She would have to think about her vote.

Yet the range of reac­tions to the past week’s bomb­shells reflect the dif­fi­cul­ty of pierc­ing par­ti­san loy­al­ty — and echo years of dis­mis­sive respons­es to con­tro­ver­sies around Trump, who won in 2016 despite a record­ing in which he bragged that he could grab women by their gen­i­tals.

Kirk Giles, 50, down­played the alle­ga­tions against Robin­son as nor­mal male behav­ior.

“There’s not a man alive that’s nev­er looked at porn or did some­thing stu­pid on porn because we’re men,” he said at the Wilm­ing­ton ral­ly. “That’s what men do.” Beside him, his friend Don Bussey said he was still vot­ing for Robin­son, too.

A reporter sug­gest­ed that most men on porn sites don’t praise “Mein Kampf.”

“There’s a lot of men that say some stu­pid stuff on those porn sites,” Giles said. “The thing is, you say some stu­pid stuff just to get atten­tion. Peo­ple strive for atten­tion. There’s atten­tion-seek­ers out there.”

Oth­ers cast doubt on the report­ing about Robin­son, bol­stered by years of Trump and oth­er Repub­li­cans decry­ing “fake news.” Allen Can­non, 70, said he doesn’t trust CNN and not­ed, “It was 10 years ago.” His wife, 69-year-old Rose Can­non, thought of all the alle­ga­tions against Trump they believed were unfair.

There was E. Jean Carroll’s alle­ga­tion that Trump sex­u­al­ly assault­ed her in a depart­ment store in the 1990s; Trump was found liable for sex­u­al abuse last year in civ­il court and ordered to pay more than $80 mil­lion in dam­ages. “And then all these charges,” Rose Can­non said. “It’s just, I don’t believe all that. I think all that is wrong.”

“When I hear him talk … he’s a very pos­i­tive, strong man,” she said of Robin­son. “Now that this has hap­pened, I don’t know. We’ll hear through it, and see what we think.”

....

———–

“Mark Robinson’s porn site scan­dal greet­ed with shrugs by some Trump back­ers” By Han­nah Knowles; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 09/22/2024

“Dan Bish­op, the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee for North Car­oli­na attor­ney gen­er­al, was the out­lier. He spent much of his ral­ly speech denounc­ing “white suprema­cist Democ­rats” from the 1890s before blam­ing Democ­rats for the Robin­son dra­ma and sug­gest­ing, inac­cu­rate­ly, that hack­ing was required to obtain the porn site posts.”

As we can see, the North Car­oli­na GOP is ral­ly­ing around Robin­son, echo­ing the ‘hack­ing’ alle­ga­tions. And then there’s the Trump vot­ers who point out that, if they were to turn on Robin­son for say­ing out­ra­geous things, “we wouldn’t be here for Trump, would we?” It’s a pret­ty suc­cinct way to put it:

...
“I didn’t put much cre­dence in it,” Bob Jud­son, a 70-year-old unaf­fil­i­at­ed vot­er, said of the alle­ga­tions against Robin­son. “We’ve all done things in our past that we’re sor­ry for. Some of the things are crazy.”

“I mean,” he added, “if we just went on that, we wouldn’t be here for Trump, would we?”

...

But Robin­son, the lieu­tenant gov­er­nor of North Car­oli­na, has respond­ed with Trump-like defi­ance, deny­ing any involve­ment and rail­ing against “sala­cious tabloid lies.” The North Car­oli­na GOP fol­lowed suit, issu­ing a state­ment of sup­port and sug­gest­ing the polit­i­cal left is “try­ing to demo­nize [Robin­son] via per­son­al attacks.” Trump has not denounced Robin­son or the com­ments attrib­uted to him, and the gen­er­al strat­e­gy at Trump’s ral­ly seemed to be to ignore the issue.

On Sat­ur­day, Sen. JD Vance (R‑Ohio), Trump’s run­ning mate, dodged ques­tions from an NBC reporter on whether he believed Robinson’s claim that the offen­sive posts weren’t his.

“I don’t not believe him, I don’t believe him — I just think you have to let these things play out some­times in the court of pub­lic opin­ion,” Vance respond­ed.
...

And that’s all why it remains to be seen just how much dam­age this sto­ry is ulti­mate­ly going to do to Mark Robin­son’s can­di­da­cy. The guy was a rav­ing lunatic long before this sto­ry, after all.

But as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing pair of arti­cles, part of what makes the lat­est Robin­son scan­dal so fas­ci­nat­ing is that it’s kind of an inver­sion of the kind of ‘big data’ fueled ‘analy­sis’ that we should prob­a­bly expect from the theo­crat­ic far right should Don­ald Trump return to the White House. Project 2025 is a plan for a nation­wide domin­ion­ist purge, after all. And that brings us to the fol­low­ing sto­ry from March of 2023 about a theo­crat­ic ‘big data’ project that could be seen as a kind of ‘proof of con­cept’ ini­tia­tive: a secret group armed with data pur­chased from the large­ly unreg­u­lat­ed online data bro­ker­age indus­try fig­ured out how to iden­ti­fy priests using gay ‘hookup’ dat­ing apps like Grindr. It was­n’t a par­tic­u­lar­ly tricky method. All they did was use com­mer­cial­ly avail­able infor­ma­tion from adver­tis­ers that includ­ed loca­tion data on where the ads were served (for exam­ple, the approx­i­mate loca­tion of the phones receiv­ing ads deliv­ered through Grindr) and com­bined that with pub­licly avail­able address infor­ma­tion. So if a bunch of ads on Grindr are seen in the area of, say, a priest’s home or office, you can be at least some­what con­fi­dent about the iden­ti­ty of the per­son using that Grindr app.

Then there’s the inter­est the­ol­o­gy found with the phil­an­thropist trustees: Mark Bau­man, John Mar­tin and Tim Reichert. As we’re going to see below, Reichert ran in the GOP pri­ma­ry for a Col­orado con­gres­sion­al seat in 2022. And while he did­n’t win that pri­ma­ry, the race end­ed up expos­ing the extreme­ness of Reichert’s world­view. As Reichert sees it, not only is every abor­tion an act of child sac­ri­fice on the altar of Baal, but the great­est threat fac­ing the West is con­tra­cep­tion.

Sin­gle women using ‘hookup apps’ are also a prob­lem, in Reichert’s view. Did Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al make any attempts to iden­ti­fy oth­er peo­ple using the var­i­ous hookup apps they had data on? We have no idea, but that’s part of what makes this sto­ry about the secret out­ing of gay priests using com­mer­cial­ly avail­able inter­net data a sto­ry to watch. Because if we do end up see­ing Project 2025 put into action, odds are it’s going to be a ‘big data’ project that tar­gets a lot more than just gay priests:

The Wash­ing­ton Post

Catholic group spent mil­lions on app data that tracked gay priests

A group of phil­an­thropists poured mon­ey into a Den­ver non­prof­it that obtained dat­ing and hookup app data and shared it with bish­ops around the coun­try, a Post inves­ti­ga­tion has found

By Michelle Boorstein and Heather Kel­ly
March 9, 2023 at 8:52 a.m. EST

A group of con­ser­v­a­tive Col­orado Catholics has spent mil­lions of dol­lars to buy mobile app track­ing data that iden­ti­fied priests who used gay dat­ing and hookup apps and then shared it with bish­ops around the coun­try.

The secre­tive effort was the work of a Den­ver non­prof­it called Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al, whose trustees are phil­an­thropists Mark Bau­man, John Mar­tin and Tim Reichert, accord­ing to pub­lic records, an audio record­ing of the nonprofit’s pres­i­dent dis­cussing its mis­sion and oth­er doc­u­ments. The use of data is emblem­at­ic of a new sur­veil­lance fron­tier in which pri­vate indi­vid­u­als can poten­tial­ly track oth­er Amer­i­cans’ loca­tions and activ­i­ties using com­mer­cial­ly avail­able infor­ma­tion. No U.S. data pri­va­cy laws pro­hib­it the sale of this data.

The project’s aim, accord­ing to tax records, is to “empow­er the church to car­ry out its mis­sion” by giv­ing bish­ops “evi­dence-based resources” with which to iden­ti­fy weak­ness­es in how they train priests.

In response to requests for com­ment and a detailed list of ques­tions, a spokesper­son for Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al ini­tial­ly said the group’s pres­i­dent, Jayd Hen­ricks, would agree to an inter­view at a cer­tain time, but Hen­ricks did not call or return sev­er­al mes­sages seek­ing com­ment. After The Wash­ing­ton Post reached out again, Hen­ricks on Wednes­day post­ed a first-per­son piece on the site First Things, say­ing he was proud to be part of the group, whose pur­pose was “to love the Church and to help the Church to be holy, with every tool she could be giv­en,” includ­ing data. He wrote that the group has done oth­er research, in addi­tion to the analy­sis of dat­ing and hookup apps.

The Post inter­viewed two peo­ple with first­hand knowl­edge of the project, heard an audio record­ing of Hen­ricks dis­cussing it, and reviewed doc­u­ments that were pre­pared for bish­ops as well as pub­lic records. One of the two peo­ple works for the church and spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because they were not autho­rized to talk about it. The sec­ond per­son is active in the church in Col­orado, knows some of the project’s orga­niz­ers, and spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because the project is not sup­posed to be pub­lic. Both dis­ap­prove of the project because they see it as spy­ing and coer­cive in ways that are dam­ag­ing to priest-bish­op rela­tions and to the rep­u­ta­tion of the Catholic Church and thus its abil­i­ty to evan­ge­lize. They also see the project as tak­ing a sim­plis­tic approach to moral­i­ty that they call un-Catholic.

Some of the men who are part of the Renew­al project were also involved in the July 2021 out­ing of a promi­nent priest, Mon­sign­or Jef­frey Bur­rill, accord­ing to the two peo­ple with first­hand knowl­edge of the project and com­ments by the group’s pres­i­dent on the audio record­ing. Bur­rill, who declined to com­ment for this sto­ry, resigned from his post as the top admin­is­tra­tor at the U.S. Con­fer­ence of Catholic Bish­ops (USCCB) after a Catholic news site, the Pil­lar, said it had mobile app data show­ing he was a reg­u­lar on Grindr and had gone to a gay bar and a gay bath­house and spa. The Pil­lar did not say where its data came from.

...

Until now, the peo­ple behind Burrill’s out­ing and the extent of the project were not pub­lic, nor was the fact that the effort con­tin­ued — for at least anoth­er year after that inci­dent, accord­ing to the peo­ple famil­iar with it and doc­u­ments.

“The pow­er of this sto­ry is that you don’t often see where these prac­tices are linked to a spe­cif­ic per­son or group of peo­ple. Here, you can clear­ly see the link,” said Justin Sher­man, a senior fel­low at Duke University’s pub­lic pol­i­cy school, who focus­es on data pri­va­cy issues. The num­ber of data pri­va­cy laws in the coun­try, he said, “you can count them on one or two hands.”

Accord­ing to two sep­a­rate reports pre­pared for bish­ops and reviewed by The Post, the group says it obtained data that spans 2018 through 2021 for mul­ti­ple dat­ing and hookup apps includ­ing Grindr, Scruff, Growlr and Jack’d, all used by gay men, as well as OkCu­pid, a major site for peo­ple of var­i­ous sex­u­al­i­ties. But most of the data appears to be from Grindr, and those famil­iar with the project said the orga­niz­ers’ focus was gay priests.

...

One report pre­pared for bish­ops says the group’s sources are data bro­kers who got the infor­ma­tion from ad exchanges, which are sites where ads are bought and sold in real time, like a stock mar­ket. The group cross-ref­er­enced loca­tion data from the apps and oth­er details with loca­tions of church res­i­dences, work­places and sem­i­nar­ies to find cler­gy who were alleged­ly active on the apps, accord­ing to one of the reports and also the audio­tape of the group’s pres­i­dent.

Sher­man said police depart­ments have bought data about cit­i­zens instead of seek­ing a war­rant, domes­tic abusers have accessed data about their vic­tims, and antiabor­tion activists have used data to tar­get peo­ple who vis­it clin­ics.

But Ben­nett Cyphers, a spe­cial advis­er to the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion, a dig­i­tal rights orga­ni­za­tion, said the Bur­rill sto­ry was the first time he had heard of a pri­vate group buy­ing com­mer­cial data and using it against a spe­cif­ic indi­vid­ual.

“It was the first nee­dle-in-a-haystack case, where some­one sifts through mil­lions of loca­tions in apps and looks for one per­son and then tries to use that info to impeach them,” Cyphers said. “It was a char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion of a pri­vate cit­i­zen for some kind of polit­i­cal rea­son based on infor­ma­tion [the cit­i­zen] didn’t know they were being tracked on.”

...

The Rev. Ger­ald Mur­ray, a New York City canon lawyer who offers church com­men­tary on the Catholic chan­nel EWTN and Fox News, said Bur­rill being a priest in a promi­nent role makes any mis­be­hav­ior “a much greater scan­dal” and essen­tial­ly elim­i­nates his right to pri­va­cy.

“The promise of celiba­cy is a pub­lic act, it’s not a pri­vate com­mit­ment. It’s of pub­lic inter­est when those are vio­lat­ed in a scan­dalous way,” he said.

The Renew­al group has spent at least $4 mil­lion, accord­ing to the record­ing of Hen­ricks, and approached more than a dozen bish­ops with the infor­ma­tion. It’s not clear what impact the project is hav­ing on cler­gy who the data sug­gests have active­ly used a dat­ing or hookup app on their phone. Except for Bur­rill, it is not known whether the data has led to the res­ig­na­tion or ter­mi­na­tion of any oth­er priests or sem­i­nar­i­ans. One of the two peo­ple famil­iar with the project said peo­ple may be kept from pro­mo­tions or wind up in ear­ly retire­ment but not know why.

The project’s exis­tence reflects a new­ly empow­ered Amer­i­can Catholic right wing that sees enforc­ing its inter­pre­ta­tion of church teach­ing on sex­u­al­i­ty and gen­der as an exis­ten­tial issue for the church and that no longer trusts bish­ops to do so. It is a flip of tra­di­tion­al church pow­er dynam­ics, with the Col­orado laypeo­ple in a posi­tion to pres­sure bish­ops.

At the most inti­mate lev­el, it shows a new gen­er­a­tion of sur­veil­lance tech­nol­o­gy mov­ing into dif­fer­ent realms, now includ­ing the reli­gious.

“Reveal­ing infor­ma­tion that harms a person’s rep­u­ta­tion with­out an objec­tive­ly valid rea­son — even if it’s true — is con­sid­ered a sin,” said a mem­ber of the USCCB who knows Bur­rill and watched the mon­sign­or expe­ri­ence “intense emo­tion­al dis­tress” when his ori­en­ta­tion and use of Grindr were made pub­lic in 2021. This per­son spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because of their work­ing rela­tion­ship with bish­ops. This per­son had heard about the data project before the Bur­rill news from anoth­er per­son who was approached by the non­prof­it who told the USCCB mem­ber the effort was main­ly focused on expos­ing gay priests.

A data project

In 2018, a man “con­cerned with reform­ing the Catholic cler­gy” approached a few Catholic orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing the Catholic News Agency, accord­ing to a cryp­tic arti­cle CNA pub­lished the day before the Bur­rill sto­ry broke.

That 2018 pitch, CNA report­ed, “was to pro­vide this infor­ma­tion pri­vate­ly to Church offi­cials in the hopes that they would dis­ci­pline or remove those found to be using these tech­nolo­gies to vio­late their cler­i­cal vows and pos­si­bly bring scan­dal to the Church.” CNA had declined the man’s offer, the sto­ry said, “but there are reports this week that infor­ma­tion tar­get­ing alleged­ly active homo­sex­u­al priests may become pub­lic.”

Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al opened for busi­ness in June 2019, incor­po­ra­tion records show. The non­prof­it was cre­at­ed to “sup­port the com­mit­ment of Roman Catholic cler­gy to liv­ing the teach­ings of the church,” its 2019 tax fil­ing states. Its pur­pose is “to work sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly with bish­ops, priests, reli­gious and sem­i­nar­i­ans to … pro­vide evi­dence-based resources to bish­ops that enable them to effec­tive­ly judge and sup­port qual­i­ty for­ma­tion prac­tices, and [to] iden­ti­fy weak­ness­es in cur­rent for­ma­tion prac­tices and priest­ly life.”

It’s not clear if or how the Renew­al group is con­nect­ed to the man who approached CNA.

Bau­man, Mar­tin and Reichert are list­ed as trustees on the nonprofit’s tax fil­ings for the two years they are pub­licly avail­able.

Mar­tin is a co-founder of one of the largest nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­ers in the west­ern Unit­ed States, McMur­ry Oil Co. He sup­ports many char­i­ta­ble efforts through his and his wife’s Mar­tin Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion. Those include his co-found­ing of the Amaz­ing Parish, a nation­al con­sult­ing firm to help improve parish­es, and major dona­tions to the caus­es of cam­pus evan­ge­liza­tion, antiabor­tion, anti-pover­ty and reli­gious edu­ca­tion. He con­tributed $555,000 to Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al over two years, tax records show.

Bau­man is a for­mer enter­tain­ment com­pa­ny exec­u­tive who is now pres­i­dent of the board of Christ in the City, a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that trains mis­sion­ar­ies and serves the home­less. He is a bene­fac­tor of some of the same Den­ver-area groups as Mar­tin and Reichert, includ­ing Catholic Char­i­ties and Focus cam­pus min­istry. He did not donate mon­ey to the Renew­al group in 2019 or 2020, accord­ing to tax doc­u­ments.

Reichert is the founder of Eco­nom­ics Part­ners, a con­sult­ing firm that employs dozens of econ­o­mists. He ran unsuc­cess­ful­ly for Con­gress last year in the cen­tral 7th Dis­trict as a Repub­li­can. With his wife, he gives major gifts to Catholic Char­i­ties, Moth­er Teresa’s order Mis­sion­ar­ies of Char­i­ty and col­lege evan­ge­liza­tion. The cou­ple also gave $600,000 to Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al over two years, accord­ing to the group’s tax returns.

In a speech last year giv­en to a Catholic Char­i­ties men’s break­fast, Reichert said Chris­tians need to oppose false ideas like “post-Chris­tian­i­ty” or “plu­ral­ism,” which he calls a “fool’s errand.” Instead, he said, they need to bold­ly pros­e­ly­tize and not wor­ry about being unpop­u­lar or can­celed. “To be free, one has to be will­ing to lose one’s rep­u­ta­tion. That’s the way they’ve set up the game.”

Accord­ing to two peo­ple with knowl­edge of the project, the phil­an­thropists hired Hen­ricks, the for­mer head of gov­ern­ment rela­tions for the USCCB, the orga­nized body of Catholic lead­ers in the Unit­ed States. Hen­ricks by then had moved from D.C. to Den­ver to work for the Augus­tine Insti­tute, a Catholic grad­u­ate school. Mar­tin and Bau­man have donat­ed to the school. Reichert’s wife, Martha, is list­ed as a staff mem­ber there.

Tax doc­u­ments for Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al show rev­enue of $1.5 mil­lion in 2019 and $1.8 mil­lion in 2020, the most recent year infor­ma­tion is pub­lic. Most of the mon­ey each year was spent on “data and com­put­ing,” staff salaries and attor­neys’ fees.

The law firm rep­re­sent­ing the group is D.C.-based Schaerr-Jaffe, found­ed by Gene Schaerr, a mem­ber of the Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter-day Saints who has called fight­ing same-sex mar­riage “a reli­gious duty.” Schaerr advis­es evan­gel­i­cal col­leges on how to pro­tect their gov­ern­ment fund­ing while uphold­ing prac­tices such as bar­ring LGBTQ stu­dent clubs.

...

Oth­er donors to the non­prof­it include the Catholic Foun­da­tion of North­ern Col­orado, which works in tan­dem with the Arch­dio­cese of Den­ver to sup­port its min­istries and parish­es. The foun­da­tion gave the Renew­al group $400,000 in the two years for which tax forms are avail­able.

...

Hen­ricks knows many bish­ops from his pre­vi­ous job with the bish­ops’ con­fer­ence. Accord­ing to the per­son who works for the church and to the audio record­ing, Henricks’s role has been to take the data sets to var­i­ous bish­ops and use their knowl­edge of priests’ and sem­i­nar­i­ans’ loca­tions to match the known device loca­tions with actu­al peo­ple.

Hen­ricks wrote in First Things that he shared this infor­ma­tion with “a hand­ful of rec­tors and bish­ops” and did not make the infor­ma­tion avail­able for pub­lic use, so as to be able to “have hon­est and frank con­ver­sa­tions with Church lead­ers, and pro­tect the pri­va­cy of those affect­ed.”

How­ev­er, one of the peo­ple with knowl­edge of the project said some bish­ops felt pres­sure from the group to take action.

The Post has seen copies of two dif­fer­ent reports pre­sent­ed to bish­ops. One is from the Renew­al group to a dio­cese and the oth­er is the one that the Pil­lar pre­sent­ed to the USCCB about Bur­rill. The infor­ma­tion in both is most­ly about Grindr, although the reports also say they have used data from oth­er gay dat­ing apps Growlr, Scruff and Jack’d, as well as OkCu­pid.

These dat­ing and hookup apps let peo­ple cre­ate pro­files, search for oth­er users and send pri­vate mes­sages back and forth. The apps can use a person’s exact loca­tion to show them poten­tial match­es near­by, in real time, for in-per­son mee­tups.

The data cov­ers peri­ods from 2018 to 2021 and the reports include images of cer­tain address­es with loca­tion pings marked on top, such as parish­es, rec­to­ries and sem­i­nar­ies.

The doc­u­ments The Post reviewed do not name the ad bro­kers and exchanges where they say the data came from. It isn’t clear whether the Renew­al donors pur­chased data direct­ly from bro­kers, or from some­one else who had, or a com­bi­na­tion of the two.

...

Some want­ed to out the men, like Bur­rill, believed to have the apps on their phones, the per­son said.

Oth­ers want to use data to work behind the scenes, to mon­i­tor the men, per­haps con­fronting them with­out say­ing how their app use was known, or maybe keep­ing such men from ris­ing in their careers, the per­son said.

Vul­ner­a­ble tech

The dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing indus­try has com­piled and sold such detailed data for years, claim­ing that strip­ping away infor­ma­tion like names made it anony­mous. Researchers have long shown, how­ev­er, that it is pos­si­ble to take a large amount of data for a spe­cif­ic loca­tion and re-iden­ti­fy peo­ple using addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion such as known address­es, and the out­ing of Bur­rill showed the prac­tice in action. This buy­ing and sell­ing of data — from demo­graph­ics and polit­i­cal beliefs to health infor­ma­tion — is a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar, almost unreg­u­lat­ed indus­try, said Sher­man of Duke Uni­ver­si­ty.

Although no names were in the orig­i­nal data from bro­kers, it includ­ed enough iden­ti­fy­ing details and loca­tion pings that the group was able to ana­lyze it for spe­cif­ic loca­tions and nar­row down like­ly peo­ple using the apps. The infor­ma­tion the group told bish­ops they had includ­ed: the type of device, the loca­tion, the device ID and the inter­net ser­vice provider being used, among oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tics, accord­ing to the reports.

The group also focused on devices that spent mul­ti­ple nights at a rec­to­ry, for exam­ple, or if a hookup app was used for a cer­tain num­ber of days in a row in some oth­er church build­ing, such as a sem­i­nary or an admin­is­tra­tive build­ing. They then tracked oth­er places those devices went accord­ing to loca­tion infor­ma­tion and cross-ref­er­enced address­es with pub­lic infor­ma­tion.

Hen­ricks said in his First Things piece that they were “metic­u­lous” about com­ply­ing with all applic­a­ble laws, includ­ing data and pri­va­cy ones.

The app com­pa­nies say they have changed what infor­ma­tion they share.

Grindr spokesman Patrick Leni­han told The Post that the com­pa­ny stopped shar­ing loca­tion infor­ma­tion in ear­ly 2020. The com­pa­ny says it only shares lim­it­ed infor­ma­tion with ad part­ners now. Grindr has said it asked the Pil­lar sev­er­al times to see the data to ver­i­fy it came from the app but no data was pro­vid­ed.

Growlr said it pre­vi­ous­ly shared loca­tion data with adver­tis­ers but stopped in May 2022, “in light of poten­tial vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties that could lead to unin­tend­ed mis­use,” said a spokesper­son for its own­er, the Meet Group.

...

Match Group, which owns OkCu­pid, says the app did not share that kind of loca­tion data dur­ing that time and does not cur­rent­ly. “Loca­tion data is obfus­cat­ed with­in a kilo­me­ter for safe­ty rea­sons,” said Match Group spokes­woman Jus­tine Sac­co.

Per­ry Street Soft­ware, which owns Jack’d and Scruff, said in a state­ment Thurs­day that it removed third-par­ty ad net­works from Scruff in August 2018 and did the same in Feb. 2020 after it acquired Jack’d.

...

Buy­ing and sell­ing pre­cise loca­tion data is still com­mon in the dig­i­tal ad indus­try, despite a few big­ger apps chang­ing their own poli­cies, said Matt Voda, chief exec­u­tive of mar­ket­ing ana­lyt­ics com­pa­ny Opti­Mine.

Regard­less, the data used by the Den­ver group shows only when and where dat­ing apps have been acti­vat­ed on a phone; they don’t prove con­ver­sa­tions or in-per­son meet­ings took place. That lack of infor­ma­tion was cit­ed by crit­ics of the Pillar’s 2021 report­ing, which said Bur­rill was guilty of “ser­i­al sex­u­al mis­con­duct.” The Pil­lar also described Grindr, which is used by 11 mil­lion peo­ple around the world each month, as a tool of child preda­tors. The site did note that there was no sug­ges­tion or evi­dence Bur­rill was in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with minors.

In 2021, Pil­lar edi­tor JD Fly­nn defend­ed their report­ing, say­ing a priest shouldn’t be on Grindr for the same rea­son a priest shouldn’t ride alone in a car with a child.

“It seems total­ly rea­son­able to say the Church must ask: ‘Is there a sim­i­lar tech­no­log­i­cal ana­log where no cler­ic would use such an app because of the way in which an infin­i­tes­i­mal­ly small num­ber of cler­ics have already been demon­strat­ed to use the app inap­pro­pri­ate­ly?’”

...

After the Pillar’s report­ing in 2021 on Bur­rill, it ini­tial­ly seemed as though the then-anony­mous project was about to explode in pub­lic across the coun­try.

Three days after the Pil­lar wrote about Bur­rill, it pub­lished a sto­ry say­ing its analy­sis of sig­nal data with­in the Arch­dio­cese of Newark showed “pat­terns of loca­tion-based hookup app use” at var­i­ous church res­i­dences. It said it did not de-anonymize the Newark data.

A few days lat­er, the Pil­lar report­ed that its data analy­sis showed that 32 devices in the Vat­i­can com­plex put off sig­nals in 2018 from hookup apps.

A Newark spokesper­son told The Post that the Pil­lar pro­vid­ed no actu­al data or evi­dence of mis­con­duct and that the mat­ter was being reviewed. The Vat­i­can com­plex in Rome declined to com­ment to the Pil­lar.

After that, the sto­ries stopped.

A Catholic debate

The top­ic of cler­gy sex­u­al­i­ty has vexed the U.S. Catholic Church for decades. Sev­er­al promi­nent experts on cler­gy sex­u­al­i­ty esti­mate a third of U.S. priests are gay men, who serve a church that teach­es being gay is “dis­or­dered,” in oppo­si­tion to God’s plan. Social con­ser­v­a­tives have not­ed that abuse vic­tims of Catholic cler­gy in recent decades were most­ly male and have tried to paint gay priests as the prob­lem. But pro­fes­sion­al advo­cates for abuse sur­vivors say the prob­lem isn’t gay priests, but instead a silence and sim­pli­fi­ca­tion around the top­ics of celiba­cy and cler­gy sex­u­al­i­ty that in a minor­i­ty of cas­es allows secrets to fes­ter.

The Catholic Church teach­es that priests make promis­es of “celiba­cy,” which falls under the Sixth Com­mand­ment (in Catholi­cism the Sixth Com­mand­ment calls for per­ma­nent fideli­ty to your spouse) and lit­er­al­ly means they will not mar­ry. Celiba­cy, Catholi­cism teach­es, is also con­sid­ered a spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­pline cre­at­ed for the good of the church. Church law requires priests not to have sex, but church lead­ers have long dis­agreed about what that lit­er­al­ly means, long before the com­plex dig­i­tal era. Experts dis­agree whether actions such as hav­ing a hookup app on your phone, engag­ing in sex­u­al talk on an app or watch­ing peo­ple have sex at a bath­house qual­i­fy under church law as sex.

“These aren’t new issues; the inter­net is just a new tool. There is a ten­sion between these poli­cies about sins involv­ing the Sixth Com­mand­ment, and the fact that [the Church] has nev­er defined that in law. It always shifts and is up to the opin­ions of moral the­olo­gians,” said Jen­nifer Hasel­berg­er, a canon lawyer in pri­vate prac­tice who worked for sev­er­al dio­ce­ses, includ­ing Min­neapo­lis-St. Paul, where she was head of the canon­i­cal depart­ment.

Sim­ply hav­ing Grindr on a phone, as a priest, is not against the Sixth Com­mand­ment, she said. Church law “isn’t there at all.”

Mon­sign­or Fred Eas­t­on, a canon lawyer who was top judge for the tri­bunal of the Arch­dio­cese of Indi­anapo­lis, said there is no auto­mat­ic penal­ty under the code of canon law against a priest for hav­ing a dat­ing app on his phone, but bish­ops have dis­cre­tion.

In Burrill’s case, after an extend­ed leave, his bish­op, William Calla­han of La Crosse, Wis., in June appoint­ed Bur­rill to serve as the parochial admin­is­tra­tor of a parish there.

Mur­ray, the New York City priest, not­ed that church law calls for cler­ics to “behave with due pru­dence toward per­sons whose com­pa­ny can endan­ger their oblig­a­tion to observe con­ti­nence or give rise to scan­dal among the faith­ful.”

The track­ing and out­ing of Bur­rill was “a very good thing,” he said.

Mur­ray, like many Catholic con­ser­v­a­tives, is con­cerned about increased accep­tance of LGBTQ rela­tion­ships in the church. That said, it’s “gaslight­ing” to call sto­ries focused on Grindr anti-gay, he said. “The issue is unchasti­ty and the scan­dal giv­en to the peo­ple in the pews.”

———-

“Catholic group spent mil­lions on app data that tracked gay priests” By Michelle Boorstein and Heather Kel­ly; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 03/09/2023

“The secre­tive effort was the work of a Den­ver non­prof­it called Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al, whose trustees are phil­an­thropists Mark Bau­man, John Mar­tin and Tim Reichert, accord­ing to pub­lic records, an audio record­ing of the nonprofit’s pres­i­dent dis­cussing its mis­sion and oth­er doc­u­ments. The use of data is emblem­at­ic of a new sur­veil­lance fron­tier in which pri­vate indi­vid­u­als can poten­tial­ly track oth­er Amer­i­cans’ loca­tions and activ­i­ties using com­mer­cial­ly avail­able infor­ma­tion. No U.S. data pri­va­cy laws pro­hib­it the sale of this data.”

An secret group has made it its mis­sion to out gay priests using legal­ly avail­able com­mer­cial inter­net data. A ‘big data’ approach to ‘moral­i­ty polic­ing’ con­duct­ed by the pri­vate­ly fund­ed Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al. It’s not the same as the Mark Robin­son sto­ry, but boy are there a lot of par­al­lels. A big dif­fer­ence, of course, being that these gay priests aren’t self-declared Nazis run­ning to be gov­er­nor. And as the pres­i­dent of the group, Jayd Hen­ricks, warns, they haven’t just been look­ing at dat­ing app data. Because of course they aren’t just look­ing at that data. As we’ve seen, there’s a uni­verse of data avail­able for sale in the data bro­ker­age space. In oth­er words, we should­n’t assume this 2023 report is the last time we hear about this group and don’t assume future sto­ries will nec­es­sar­i­ly just rely on dat­ing app info:

...
The project’s aim, accord­ing to tax records, is to “empow­er the church to car­ry out its mis­sion” by giv­ing bish­ops “evi­dence-based resources” with which to iden­ti­fy weak­ness­es in how they train priests.

In response to requests for com­ment and a detailed list of ques­tions, a spokesper­son for Catholic Laity and Cler­gy for Renew­al ini­tial­ly said the group’s pres­i­dent, Jayd Hen­ricks, would agree to an inter­view at a cer­tain time, but Hen­ricks did not call or return sev­er­al mes­sages seek­ing com­ment. After The Wash­ing­ton Post reached out again, Hen­ricks on Wednes­day post­ed a first-per­son piece on the site First Things, say­ing he was proud to be part of the group, whose pur­pose was “to love the Church and to help the Church to be holy, with every tool she could be giv­en,” includ­ing data. He wrote that the group has done oth­er research, in addi­tion to the analy­sis of dat­ing and hookup apps.

The Post inter­viewed two peo­ple with first­hand knowl­edge of the project, heard an audio record­ing of Hen­ricks dis­cussing it, and reviewed doc­u­ments that were pre­pared for bish­ops as well as pub­lic records. One of the two peo­ple works for the church and spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because they were not autho­rized to talk about it. The sec­ond per­son is active in the church in Col­orado, knows some of the project’s orga­niz­ers, and spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because the project is not sup­posed to be pub­lic. Both dis­ap­prove of the project because they see it as spy­ing and coer­cive in ways that are dam­ag­ing to priest-bish­op rela­tions and to the rep­u­ta­tion of the Catholic Church and thus its abil­i­ty to evan­ge­lize. They also see the project as tak­ing a sim­plis­tic approach to moral­i­ty that they call un-Catholic.
...

And note how the group was eas­i­ly rei­den­ti­fy­ing the anonymized loca­tion-based ad infor­ma­tion it was pur­chas­ing with pub­licly avail­able address data, a sim­ple tech­nique that is obvi­ous­ly avail­able to plen­ty of oth­er actors. This is a good time to recall how one of the strug­gles US spy agen­cies are now deal­ing with is the sheer vol­ume of com­mer­cial­ly avail­able infor­ma­tion. Sift­ing through it all is appar­ent­ly a chal­lenge. How many oth­er sim­ple rei­den­ti­fi­ca­tion tech­niques are there avail­able for use by any­one who gets their hands on this kind of data? And note how it’s not like the vic­tims of these spy­ing tech­niques even know it hap­pened. Maybe they just have their careers qui­et­ly thwart­ed, which may have hap­pened to some of these priests?

...
One report pre­pared for bish­ops says the group’s sources are data bro­kers who got the infor­ma­tion from ad exchanges, which are sites where ads are bought and sold in real time, like a stock mar­ket. The group cross-ref­er­enced loca­tion data from the apps and oth­er details with loca­tions of church res­i­dences, work­places and sem­i­nar­ies to find cler­gy who were alleged­ly active on the apps, accord­ing to one of the reports and also the audio­tape of the group’s pres­i­dent.

Sher­man said police depart­ments have bought data about cit­i­zens instead of seek­ing a war­rant, domes­tic abusers have accessed data about their vic­tims, and antiabor­tion activists have used data to tar­get peo­ple who vis­it clin­ics.

But Ben­nett Cyphers, a spe­cial advis­er to the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion, a dig­i­tal rights orga­ni­za­tion, said the Bur­rill sto­ry was the first time he had heard of a pri­vate group buy­ing com­mer­cial data and using it against a spe­cif­ic indi­vid­ual.

“It was the first nee­dle-in-a-haystack case, where some­one sifts through mil­lions of loca­tions in apps and looks for one per­son and then tries to use that info to impeach them,” Cyphers said. “It was a char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion of a pri­vate cit­i­zen for some kind of polit­i­cal rea­son based on infor­ma­tion [the cit­i­zen] didn’t know they were being tracked on.”

...

These dat­ing and hookup apps let peo­ple cre­ate pro­files, search for oth­er users and send pri­vate mes­sages back and forth. The apps can use a person’s exact loca­tion to show them poten­tial match­es near­by, in real time, for in-per­son mee­tups.

The data cov­ers peri­ods from 2018 to 2021 and the reports include images of cer­tain address­es with loca­tion pings marked on top, such as parish­es, rec­to­ries and sem­i­nar­ies.

The doc­u­ments The Post reviewed do not name the ad bro­kers and exchanges where they say the data came from. It isn’t clear whether the Renew­al donors pur­chased data direct­ly from bro­kers, or from some­one else who had, or a com­bi­na­tion of the two.

...

Some want­ed to out the men, like Bur­rill, believed to have the apps on their phones, the per­son said.

Oth­ers want to use data to work behind the scenes, to mon­i­tor the men, per­haps con­fronting them with­out say­ing how their app use was known, or maybe keep­ing such men from ris­ing in their careers, the per­son said.
...

But also note that, while this entire project is clear­ly pret­ty sleazy, it’s also legal under US law. In part because there’s so few data pri­va­cy laws to begin with:

...
The dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing indus­try has com­piled and sold such detailed data for years, claim­ing that strip­ping away infor­ma­tion like names made it anony­mous. Researchers have long shown, how­ev­er, that it is pos­si­ble to take a large amount of data for a spe­cif­ic loca­tion and re-iden­ti­fy peo­ple using addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion such as known address­es, and the out­ing of Bur­rill showed the prac­tice in action. This buy­ing and sell­ing of data — from demo­graph­ics and polit­i­cal beliefs to health infor­ma­tion — is a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar, almost unreg­u­lat­ed indus­try, said Sher­man of Duke Uni­ver­si­ty.

Although no names were in the orig­i­nal data from bro­kers, it includ­ed enough iden­ti­fy­ing details and loca­tion pings that the group was able to ana­lyze it for spe­cif­ic loca­tions and nar­row down like­ly peo­ple using the apps. The infor­ma­tion the group told bish­ops they had includ­ed: the type of device, the loca­tion, the device ID and the inter­net ser­vice provider being used, among oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tics, accord­ing to the reports.

The group also focused on devices that spent mul­ti­ple nights at a rec­to­ry, for exam­ple, or if a hookup app was used for a cer­tain num­ber of days in a row in some oth­er church build­ing, such as a sem­i­nary or an admin­is­tra­tive build­ing. They then tracked oth­er places those devices went accord­ing to loca­tion infor­ma­tion and cross-ref­er­enced address­es with pub­lic infor­ma­tion.

Hen­ricks said in his First Things piece that they were “metic­u­lous” about com­ply­ing with all applic­a­ble laws, includ­ing data and pri­va­cy ones.
...

Final­ly, here’s an April 2022 piece in the Huff­in­g­ton Post that gives us a bet­ter idea of the kind of the­ol­o­gy moti­vat­ing this effort. Because it turns out one of three phil­an­thropic trustees for the group, Tim Reichert, also made a 2022 con­gres­sion­al run for office in Col­orado’s 7th Dis­trict. Reichert did­n’t end up win­ning the GOP pri­ma­ry. But the race still shined some light on Reichert’s views, which include view­ing all abor­tions as a form of child sac­ri­fice on the altar of Baal. But abor­tions aren’t the biggest threat fac­ing the US, accord­ing to Reichert. That would be con­tra­cep­tion:

The Huff­in­g­ton Post

GOP Con­gres­sion­al Can­di­date Believes ‘Abor­tion Is A Human Sac­ri­fice’ To Demons

Econ­o­mist Tim Reichert has also argued that birth con­trol con­tributes to rape.

By Alan­na Vagianos
Apr 1, 2022, 04:58 PM EDT

Tim Reichert, a busi­ness­man who has described abor­tion as “the sac­ri­fice of a child at the altar of Baal,” is run­ning for Con­gress in Colorado’s 7th Dis­trict, and is so far the only can­di­date who has qual­i­fied for the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry bal­lot.

Reichert, an econ­o­mist from Gold­en, Col­orado, threw his name into the com­pet­i­tive pri­ma­ry in Jan­u­ary, com­mit­ting half a mil­lion dol­lars of his own mon­ey to the cam­paign. Rep. Ed Perl­mut­ter (D) cur­rent­ly rep­re­sents the dis­trict, but has said he will not seek re-elec­tion in the fall. Although Democ­rats usu­al­ly have an advan­tage in the region, the dis­trict was redrawn last year, shift­ing west, which experts believe will make it a slight­ly more com­pet­i­tive race.

Reichert, who has a doc­tor­ate in eco­nom­ics, has spent much of his career doing finan­cial con­sult­ing. He says he is run­ning to help strength­en the mid­dle class or “the lit­tle guy” — a term that appears sev­er­al times on his cam­paign web­site.

But Reichert also holds extreme views on abor­tion, birth con­trol and oth­er repro­duc­tive health care issues, argu­ing in pub­lished arti­cles and pre­sen­ta­tions that con­tra­cep­tion irrev­o­ca­bly harms women by destroy­ing the insti­tu­tion of mar­riage.

...

“Every abor­tion is a human sac­ri­fice,” Reichert said last year in an accep­tance speech for an award from Catholic Char­i­ties of Den­ver, a min­istry-based char­i­ty that oppos­es abor­tion rights. “Every abor­tion feeds the demon­ic and there­by con­tributes direct­ly to the demise of the church, the demise of Amer­i­ca and the demise of the West.”

“Every sin­gle abor­tion is not just a trag­ic loss with two vic­tims,” he went on. “It is much more than that — it’s fuel. Fuel for the demon­ic, because it is the sac­ri­fice of a child at the altar of Baal.” (Watch the video in full below.)

...

As an econ­o­mist, Reichert has giv­en pre­sen­ta­tions and writ­ten sev­er­al opin­ion arti­cles argu­ing that con­tra­cep­tion harms women eco­nom­i­cal­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly because birth con­trol makes it hard­er for women to get mar­ried. In a 2010 opin­ion arti­cle titled “Bit­ter Pill,” Reichert wrote that con­tra­cep­tion is “social­ly dam­ag­ing,” “increas­es the inci­dence of infi­deli­ty” and is “deeply sex­ist in nature.”

“Arti­fi­cial con­tra­cep­tion sets up what econ­o­mists call a ‘prisoner’s‑dilemma’ game, in which each woman is induced to make deci­sions ratio­nal­ly that ulti­mate­ly make her, and all women, worse off,” he wrote in the arti­cle, which was pub­lished in a Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive jour­nal.

Reichert lat­er turned that piece into an hour­long lec­ture, “Bit­ter Pill: Con­tra­cep­tive Tech­nol­o­gy and the Decline of Women,” which he pre­sent­ed at a con­fer­ence host­ed by the Catholic Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion in 2017 and 2018. Reichert repeat­ed­ly referred to the work of soci­ol­o­gists — or “intel­lec­tu­al giants,” as he called them — who believed that “the most fun­da­men­tal threat to the West” was con­tra­cep­tion.

In his pre­sen­ta­tion, Reichert argued that con­tra­cep­tion caus­es gen­der scarci­ty, which leads to rape and vio­lence against women. In response to a ques­tion fol­low­ing his lec­ture, Reichert point­ed to research show­ing that “women who engaged in hookup cul­ture tend to divorce more than women who are chaste.” He added: “I think that’s prob­a­bly true.”

...

Reichert and his wife donat­ed to for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s 2020 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, con­tribut­ing just over $30,000. The cou­ple also donat­ed about $20,000 to the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee. Reichert is expect­ed to fund most of his cam­paign him­self.

Reichert is up against two oth­er Repub­li­can can­di­dates in the pri­ma­ry, which is set for June 28. If elect­ed to Con­gress, Reichert would like­ly con­tribute to the fed­er­al attacks on abor­tion care. The con­sti­tu­tion­al right to abor­tion, estab­lished in the land­mark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, is now in per­il, since a 2018 Mis­sis­sip­pi law is like­ly to gut or over­turn Roe in the com­ing months.

———–

“GOP Con­gres­sion­al Can­di­date Believes ‘Abor­tion Is A Human Sac­ri­fice’ To Demons” By Alan­na Vagianos; The Huff­in­g­ton Post; 04/01/2022

“Reichert, an econ­o­mist from Gold­en, Col­orado, threw his name into the com­pet­i­tive pri­ma­ry in Jan­u­ary, com­mit­ting half a mil­lion dol­lars of his own mon­ey to the cam­paign. Rep. Ed Perl­mut­ter (D) cur­rent­ly rep­re­sents the dis­trict, but has said he will not seek re-elec­tion in the fall. Although Democ­rats usu­al­ly have an advan­tage in the region, the dis­trict was redrawn last year, shift­ing west, which experts believe will make it a slight­ly more com­pet­i­tive race.”

Tim Reichert was­n’t just secret­ly fund­ing a project to out gay priests. He has much big­ger ambi­tions, includ­ing a con­gres­sion­al seat. And while Reichert ulti­mate­ly lost his pri­ma­ry race, it’s hard to ignore just how much his ide­ol­o­gy has won. In par­tic­u­lar his extreme anti-abor­tion ide­ol­o­gy that views every abor­tion as a child sac­ri­fice at the altar of Baal. After all, this report came just two months before the over­turn­ing of Roe v Wade. States are now free to treat abor­tions like child sac­ri­fices if they choose to do so:

...
“Every abor­tion is a human sac­ri­fice,” Reichert said last year in an accep­tance speech for an award from Catholic Char­i­ties of Den­ver, a min­istry-based char­i­ty that oppos­es abor­tion rights. “Every abor­tion feeds the demon­ic and there­by con­tributes direct­ly to the demise of the church, the demise of Amer­i­ca and the demise of the West.”

“Every sin­gle abor­tion is not just a trag­ic loss with two vic­tims,” he went on. “It is much more than that — it’s fuel. Fuel for the demon­ic, because it is the sac­ri­fice of a child at the altar of Baal.” (Watch the video in full below.)
...

But Reichert isn’t just an anti-abor­tion extrem­ist. Con­tra­cep­tion is the biggest threat soci­ety faces, in his view. A fun­da­men­tal threat to the West. Along with the ‘hookup cul­ture’ that con­tra­cep­tion enables:

...
As an econ­o­mist, Reichert has giv­en pre­sen­ta­tions and writ­ten sev­er­al opin­ion arti­cles argu­ing that con­tra­cep­tion harms women eco­nom­i­cal­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly because birth con­trol makes it hard­er for women to get mar­ried. In a 2010 opin­ion arti­cle titled “Bit­ter Pill,” Reichert wrote that con­tra­cep­tion is “social­ly dam­ag­ing,” “increas­es the inci­dence of infi­deli­ty” and is “deeply sex­ist in nature.”

“Arti­fi­cial con­tra­cep­tion sets up what econ­o­mists call a ‘prisoner’s‑dilemma’ game, in which each woman is induced to make deci­sions ratio­nal­ly that ulti­mate­ly make her, and all women, worse off,” he wrote in the arti­cle, which was pub­lished in a Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive jour­nal.

Reichert lat­er turned that piece into an hour­long lec­ture, “Bit­ter Pill: Con­tra­cep­tive Tech­nol­o­gy and the Decline of Women,” which he pre­sent­ed at a con­fer­ence host­ed by the Catholic Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion in 2017 and 2018. Reichert repeat­ed­ly referred to the work of soci­ol­o­gists — or “intel­lec­tu­al giants,” as he called them — who believed that “the most fun­da­men­tal threat to the West” was con­tra­cep­tion.

In his pre­sen­ta­tion, Reichert argued that con­tra­cep­tion caus­es gen­der scarci­ty, which leads to rape and vio­lence against women. In response to a ques­tion fol­low­ing his lec­ture, Reichert point­ed to research show­ing that “women who engaged in hookup cul­ture tend to divorce more than women who are chaste.” He added: “I think that’s prob­a­bly true.”
...

How wide­spread is Reichert’s ‘hookups are an exis­ten­tial threat’ per­spec­tive among his fel­low theocrats? What steps will they take to crack­down on ‘hookups’ giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty and what kind of big data will they use to iden­ti­fy the ‘offend­ers’? These are the kinds of ques­tions that should loom large over US vot­ers in 2024. Because whether they real­ize it or not, they are vot­ing on whether or not theocrats should assume the pow­er to engage in mass moral­i­ty polic­ing of the pub­lic. That’s ulti­mate­ly what Project 2025 is all about. The impo­si­tion of a far right theoc­ra­cy. Sure, busi­ness­es will get their tax breaks and reg­u­la­tions will get gut­ted too. But the theocrats aren’t going to be sat­is­fied with tax cuts. This is a plan for deep social con­trols, with a fix­a­tion on sex­u­al­i­ty and female sex­u­al­i­ty espe­cial­ly. The kind of deep social con­trols Mark Robin­son the can­di­date would be proud to impose in pub­lic, even if ‘min­isol­dr the Nazi’ has a dif­fer­ent pri­vate per­spec­tive.

Recent­ly there was some incrim­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion about Mike Lin­dell, the MyP­il­low guy, who was close to Trump and pro­vid­ed sug­ges­tions as to what to do next after the Insur­rec­tion failed includ­ing who to appoint as a Trump friend­ly CIA Direc­tor. He changed his pil­low price to $14.88 which is the 14 Nazi words “We must secure the exis­tence of our peo­ple and a future for white chil­dren.” Along with 88 where “H” is the 8th let­ter in the alpha­bet so 88 is HH or Heil Hitler. The ques­tion to ask is, Lin­dell a deep cov­er Nazi or Fas­cist Agent?

Trump ‘shut down talks with Mike Lin­dell with­in min­utes’ after the MyP­il­low CEO was seen at White House bran­dish­ing notes about ‘mar­tial law’ and Insur­rec­tion Act Jan­u­ary 16, 2021 Dai­ly Mail UK

• Sum­ma­ry of the key points of Arti­cle: My MyP­il­low CEO Mike Lin­dell appeared at White House on Fri­day (Jan­u­ary 15, 2021) car­ry­ing a set of notes. A Wash­ing­ton Post pho­tog­ra­ph­er obtained a close-up of papers car­ried by Lin­dell. The notes:
• ref­er­enced mar­tial law and Insur­rec­tion Act. The blacked-out part of his notes sup­pos­ed­ly ref­er­enced fir­ing Cipol­lone.
• One line said ‘mar­tial law if nec­es­sary upon the first hint of any....’
• The term does not come with­out prece­dent. For­mer Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor Mike Fly­nn spoke open­ly about it while par­rot­ing Trump’s claims of a ‘rigged’ elec­tion – and scored his own White House meet­ing after­ward.
• Anoth­er line, part­ly obscured by Lin­del­l’s hand, most like­ly ref­er­enced the ‘Insur­rec­tion Act’ – the sub­ject of dis­cus­sion before after the elec­tion about use of forces inside the coun­try. It said to ‘Act now as a result of the assault on the ...’
• Oth­er lines ref­er­ence Fort Mead and a top cyber­se­cu­ri­ty lawyer, which could iden­ti­fy Frank Colon, who accord­ing to his LinkedIn page is an attor­ney with Cyber Oper­a­tions 780th Mil­i­tary Intel­li­gence Brigade.
• There are also ref­er­ences to ‘Krak­en’ lawyer Sid­ney Pow­ell, who over­saw failed elec­tion chal­lenges in court and who has been at the White House post-elec­tion.
• Anoth­er line stat­ed ‘Move Kash Patel to CIA Act­ing,’ with an indi­ca­tion to oust CIA Direc­tor Gina Haspel, and put in her place a Trump loy­al­ist recent­ly moved to the Pen­ta­gon. Note that Patel wrote in an op-ed post­ed by Fox News Thurs­day – after the Biden tran­si­tion com­plained for weeks it was not get­ting the brief­in­gs it request­ed. that ‘I ordered the DOD to ful­ly coop­er­ate with Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden,’
• It also had some state­ment ‘For­eign Inter­fer­ence in the elec­tion Trig­ger ... pow­ers, make clear this is a China/Iran ... domes­tic actors. Instruct Frank,’
• Lin­dell also appears to have devel­oped a rela­tion­ship with Mike Fly­nn, the nation­al secu­ri­ty advi­sor who lied to the FBI, got a par­don, then went to the Oval Office and advo­cat­ed mar­tial law.
• Lin­dell, 59, was a small-time Min­neso­ta busi­ness­man who became addict­ed to crack cocaine and alco­hol, los­ing his wife with whom he had four chil­dren to divorce because of it, but — accord­ing to his often-told sto­ry — still man­aged to invent his MyP­il­low in 2004 and turn it into a suc­cess. The pil­low itself is a patent­ed foam design and from the begin­ning Lin­dell man­u­fac­tured it in his native state and put its Made in Amer­i­ca cre­den­tials in the pitch
• So dis­cred­it­ed were Lin­del­l’s fraud claims that News­max had to cut him off live on air but he was unstop­pable: on the day of the MAGA riots he was in D.C., then after they hap­pened he spout­ed claims that the whole event was staged by Antifa.

This sug­gests he was an agent involved in a con­spir­a­cy out­side of Trump’s plans. He was affil­i­at­ed with Mike Fly­nn whose broth­er Charles was a Gen­er­al in the Army who slow walked a response to the Jan­u­ary 6, 2021 insur­rec­tion. Who might this Chris­t­ian Patri­ot be work­ing for? Anoth­er arti­cle in Newsweek pub­lished on Sep­tem­ber 23, 2024 by Sophie Clark may shed some light on this titled “Mike Lin­del­l’s New MyP­il­low Price Sparks ‘Nazi’ Claims”.
MyP­il­low post­ed an adver­tise­ment that marked down the pil­lows from its sale price of $29.99 to an even low­er price of $14.88. This spe­cif­ic price of $14.88 raised eye­brows as, to keen observers, it is affil­i­at­ed with white suprema­cists and online neo-Nazi groups. Accord­ing to the Anti-Defama­tion League (ADL), the num­ber 88 is used in white suprema­cist cir­cles as short­hand for Heil Hitler. The let­ter H is the eighth let­ter of the alpha­bet, so two Hs togeth­er are “Heil Hitler”. Addi­tion­al­ly, the num­ber 14 refers to the “14-word slo­gan,” a phrase coined by white suprema­cist David Lane who was the get­away dri­ver of the peo­ple who killed Alan Berg a lib­er­al Jew­ish radio talk show host in 1984.
One neo-Nazi account by the name of Bal­k­nom­ic repost­ed the ad, say­ing: “14.88? How could you pass up such a great deal?”

Anoth­er account called Chud Post­ing that fre­quent­ly posts neo-Nazi and Alt-Right memes, repost­ed the ad say­ing: “Pil­lows at an Aryan price. Bil­lions must buy. Total­ly nice dreams.” Inci­den­tal­ly, The phrase “bil­lions must buy” is a play on words of the alt-right meme “bil­lions must die,” which is a main­stay of neo-Nazi forums.

Lin­dell is also cur­rent­ly involved in a suit led by Domin­ion Vot­ing Sys­tems for alleged­ly libel­ing their com­pa­ny. He denies any wrong­do­ing.

Lin­dell feigned igno­rance about the issue and tried to ratio­nal­ize his pric­ing scheme to the Rupert Mur­doch Owned New York Post. Mur­doch owns the right wing media out­let Fox News.

https://mol.im/a/9153263
By GEOFF EARLE, DEPUTY U.S. POLITICAL EDITOR and KEITH GRIFFITH FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 17:41 EDT, 15 Jan­u­ary 2021 | UPDATED: 02:02 EDT, 16 Jan­u­ary 2021

Trump ‘shut down talks with Mike Lin­dell with­in min­utes’ after the MyP­il­low CEO was seen at White House bran­dish­ing notes about ‘mar­tial law’ and Insur­rec­tion Act
• MyP­il­low CEO Mike Lin­dell appeared unex­pect­ed­ly at White House on Fri­day
• He was bran­dish­ing sheaf of notes ref­er­enc­ing mar­tial law and Insur­rec­tion Act
• Lin­dell claims notes were from a lawyer work­ing to prove Trump won elec­tion
• He said Trump appeared ‘dis­in­ter­est­ed’ and quick­ly sent him away
• Lin­dell demand­ed to see White House Coun­sel Pat Cipol­lone after­wards
• The blacked-out part of his notes sup­pos­ed­ly ref­er­enced fir­ing Cipol­lone
• Mike Fly­nn pre­vi­ous­ly called for Trump to impose mar­tial law and rerun elec­tions
• It comes as 25,000 Nation­al Guards­men descend on DC for inau­gu­ra­tion
• Secu­ri­ty fears run high after a mob of Trump loy­al­ist stormed the US Capi­tol

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump report­ed­ly cut short his meet­ing with MyP­il­low CEO Mike Lin­dell with­in min­utes, after the entre­pre­neur was spot­ted at the White House bran­dish­ing notes ref­er­enc­ing mar­tial law, the Insur­rec­tion Act and a CIA lead­er­ship shake­up.
Lin­dell said that Trump appeared ‘dis­in­ter­est­ed’ in his notes, and offi­cials say Trump quick­ly dis­missed him and sent him to the White House Coun­sel’s office, accord­ing to New York Times reporter Mag­gie Haber­man.

Lin­dell, an infor­mal Trump advi­sor who enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly backed con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about mas­sive elec­tion fraud, appeared unex­pect­ed­ly at the White House Fri­day after­noon. A Marine was sta­tioned out­side the West Wing, indi­cat­ing Trump was most like­ly there.

The MyP­il­low CEO claimed to Haber­man that the notes he was car­ry­ing were on behalf of an unnamed attor­ney he’s been work­ing with to ‘prove’ that Trump real­ly won the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

Lin­dell denied that the notes ref­er­enced ‘mar­tial law,’ but an admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial said that they def­i­nite­ly con­tained the phrase, and pho­tos of his notes appear to show it.

Once Trump dis­missed him, Lin­dell insist­ed on meet­ing White House Coun­sel Pat Cipol­lone, and the meet­ing turned awk­ward in part because the blacked-out part of his notes relat­ed to call­ing for Cipol­lone to be fired, Haber­man report­ed.

Amid a huge Nation­al Guard pres­ence in D.C. after last week’s MAGA riots in the Capi­tol, close-up of Lin­del­l’s notes revealed some bizarre snip­pets about what may be on his mind.

Lin­dell, like Trump, spoke to the Jan­u­ary 6 ral­ly crowd out­side the White House before Trump sup­port­ers stormed the U.S. Capi­tol.

A Wash­ing­ton Post pho­tog­ra­ph­er obtained a close-up of papers car­ried by Lin­dell.

One omi­nous line said ‘mar­tial law if nec­es­sary upon the first hint of any....’ The term does not come with­out prece­dent. For­mer Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor Mike Fly­nn spoke open­ly about it while par­rot­ing Trump’s claims of a ‘rigged’ elec­tion – and scored his own White House meet­ing after­ward.

Anoth­er line, part­ly obscured by Lin­del­l’s hand, most like­ly ref­er­enced the ‘Insur­rec­tion Act’ – the sub­ject of dis­cus­sion before after the elec­tion about use of forces inside the coun­try. It said to ‘Act now as a result of the assault on the ...‘Oth­er lines hint­ed at rec­om­mend­ed staff moves. One reads ‘Colon NOW as Act­ing Nation­al Secu­ri­ty...’ – sug­gest­ing a staff move atop the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency or a new Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor.
The fol­low­ing lines ref­er­ence Fort Mead and a top cyber­se­cu­ri­ty lawyer, which could iden­ti­fy Frank Colon, who accord­ing to his LinkedIn page is an attor­ney with Cyber Oper­a­tions 780th Mil­i­tary Intel­li­gence Brigade.

Colon said he had nev­er met Lin­dell and was baf­fled by the pro­pos­al to install him in a high-rank­ing posi­tion, accord­ing to New York Mag­a­zine.

He described him­self as ‘just a gov­ern­ment employ­ee who does work for the Army.’

There are also ref­er­ences to ‘Krak­en’ lawyer Sid­ney Pow­ell, who over­saw failed elec­tion chal­lenges in court and who has been at the White House post-elec­tion.
‘Move Kash Patel to CIA Act­ing,’ it says, in a line which could indi­cate a pro­pos­al to oust CIA Direc­tor Gina Haspel, and put in her place a Trump loy­al­ist recent­ly moved to the Pen­ta­gon.

‘I ordered the DOD to ful­ly coop­er­ate with Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden,’ Patel wrote in an op-ed post­ed by Fox News Thurs­day – after the Biden tran­si­tion com­plained for weeks it was not get­ting the brief­in­gs it request­ed.
Oth­er lines are mere snip­pets, but they sug­gest Trump’s obses­sion with a ‘stolen’ elec­tion – although Joe Biden beat him by 7 mil­lion votes, or 306 to 232 in the Elec­toral Col­lege.

‘Been with get­ting the evi­dence of ALL the ... as the elec­tion and all infor­ma­tion regard­ing ... among peo­ple he knows who already have secu­ri­ty ... done mas­sive research on these issues,’ the notes say.
‘For­eign Inter­fer­ence in the elec­tion Trig­ger ... pow­ers, make clear this is a China/Iran ... domes­tic actors. Instruct Frank,’ it says.

The meet­ing comes days after Trump took part in a script­ed video where he final­ly said: ‘A new admin­is­tra­tion will be inau­gu­rat­ed on Jan­u­ary 20.’ But he has­n’t said out­right that Joe Biden won, even as Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence final­ly called Vice Pres­i­dent-elect Kamala Har­ris and began what appears to be a farewell tour.

Trump has been hun­kered down in office, with bizarre White House sched­ules say­ing only that: ‘Pres­i­dent Trump will work from ear­ly in the morn­ing until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meet­ings.’

A mes­sage to Lin­dell was not imme­di­ate­ly returned. The White House did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for com­ment about the meet­ing.

Trump’s obses­sion with over­turn­ing the results are also reflect­ed in charts that could be seen as trade advi­sor Peter Navar­ro walked on White House grounds. It said ‘Vote Irreg­u­lar­i­ties and Ille­gal­i­ties by Cat­e­go­ry and State.’

Trump him­self is expect­ed to leave D.C. on Jan­u­ary 20th, with no plans for the tra­di­tion­al meet­ing with Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden.

The omi­nous snip­pets in Lin­del­l’s notes about the elec­tion were con­tra­dict­ed by real­i­ty on the ground at the White House Fri­day after­noon. A pro­ces­sion of aides left the build­ing with box­es, even pack­ing away large framed pho­tos that have adorned the build­ing.
HOW MIKE LINDELL WENT FROM CRACK ADDICT TO CHRISTIAN PILLOW PITCHMAN TO QANON SPOUTING TRUMP ADVISER

With his preter­nat­u­ral­ly dark hair and mus­tache, ubiq­ui­tous TV ads and tri­umph-over-tragedy per­son­al sto­ry, Mike Lin­dell should be the per­fect pitch­man for his pil­lows.

But his advo­ca­cy of Don­ald Trump appears to have tak­en him into dark­er and more dan­ger­ous ter­ri­to­ry, car­ry­ing notes about ‘mar­tial law’ to the Oval Office for a meet­ing with Trump on his last Fri­day in the White House.
Lin­dell, 59, was a small-time Min­neso­ta busi­ness­man who became addict­ed to crack cocaine and alco­hol, los­ing his wife with whom he had four chil­dren to divorce because of it, but — accord­ing to his often-told sto­ry — still man­aged to invent his MyP­il­low in 2004 and turn it into a suc­cess.

The pil­low itself is a patent­ed foam design and from the begin­ning Lin­dell man­u­fac­tured it in his native state and put its Made in Amer­i­ca cre­den­tials in the pitch.
In its first years Lin­dell sold it at mall kiosks and state fairs but his own life had a dra­mat­ic change, he says, in 2009, when he became sober, putting it down to the pow­er of prayer.

Cleaned up, he record­ed a 30-minute live-audi­ence infomer­cial at the cost of $500,000 in 2011 and watched the suc­cess take off — with Lin­dell the focal point as much as the pil­lows.

With tranch­es of TV ads Lin­dell made a for­tune — not with­out bumps on the way includ­ing set­tling a law­suit for claims the pil­lows helped with snor­ing and divorc­ing his sec­ond wife after less than two months of mar­riage — and made his evan­gel­i­cal faith and then his alle­giance to Trump as much part of his pitch as his prod­ucts.
They appear to have first met in August 2016 and he jumped on the Trump train, going to the first pres­i­den­tial debate in Octo­ber, and speak­ing at a ral­ly that Novem­ber.

Since then he has become a reg­u­lar ral­ly per­former, even pitch­ing a run for Min­neso­ta gov­er­nor in 2022 — which he has not men­tioned recent­ly — and chair­ing the state’s Trump cam­paign.

At the ral­lies he would be intro­duced as ‘the MyP­il­low guy’ to cheers and describe Trump as ‘cho­sen by God,’ tout his own faith and soak up the applause.
A fair­ly reg­u­lar White House pres­ence, he tout­ed to Trump an unproven COVID ‘cure,’ ole­an­drin, whose man­u­fac­tur­er he had a stake in.

Ben Car­son, a dis­tin­guished neu­ro­sur­geon turned Trump cab­i­net mem­ber, took it. He suc­cumbed bad­ly to the infec­tion; Car­son has not main­tained a med­ical reg­is­tra­tion for some years.

Lin­dell devot­ed him­self to Trump in the weeks before the 2020 elec­tion, appear­ing at mul­ti­ple ral­lies and con­vinc­ing the pres­i­dent he would win Min­neso­ta, which he lost hand­i­ly.

But after the elec­tion defeat Lin­dell became obsessed by Trump’s claims of vot­er fraud and has pushed them at every turn, includ­ing on the Right Side Broad­cast­ing Net­work YouTube chan­nel which he has a finan­cial stake in.

He lam­bast­ed Fox News for its cov­er­age even though he is thought to be its biggest sin­gle adver­tis­er, and he pushed the out­er fringes of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries from dis­cred­it­ed ‘Krak­en’ attor­ney Sid­ney Pow­ell.

He appears to have fund­ed the Right Side Broad­cast­ing Net­work, a YouTube chan­nel which aired ral­lies from the March for Trump bus tour whose speak­ers includ­ed Lin­dell and Lin Wood, the even more fringe attor­ney who sug­gest­ed Mike Pence should be exe­cut­ed.

Among the cast of ‘reporters’ on RSB­N’s cov­er­age were oth­er Trump ral­ly reg­u­lars includ­ing the ‘wall guy’ who wears a suit which rep­re­sents the Mex­i­can bor­der wall. The suit is designed to look like it is made of bricks, when the wall is in fact steel and rebar. The ads were inevitably for MyP­il­low.

Lin­dell also appears to have devel­oped a rela­tion­ship with Mike Fly­nn, the nation­al secu­ri­ty advi­sor who lied to the FBI, got a par­don, then went to the Oval Office and advo­cat­ed mar­tial law.

So dis­cred­it­ed were Lin­del­l’s fraud claims that News­max had to cut him off live on air but he was unstop­pable: on the day of the MAGA riots he was in D.C., then after they hap­pened he spout­ed claims that the whole event was staged by Antifa.

From a pri­vate jet a few days lat­er he record­ed a mes­sage that ‘Don­ald Trump will be our pres­i­dent for the next four years.’

On Jan­u­ary 20 his faith in Trump was not reward­ed: his claims got the same F rat­ing from real­i­ty which his com­pa­ny did from the Bet­ter Busi­ness Bureau.
A view­ing plat­form for the inau­gu­ra­tion already has print­ed sig­nage for Joe Biden and Kamala Har­ris. Biden spoke in Delaware about changes he plans to insti­tute for vac­cine roll­out, fol­low­ing reports that the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion Oper­a­tion Warp Speed name will be one of the first things jet­ti­soned.

Even low­er lev­el aides in the West Wing have already depart­ed, leav­ing a skele­ton crew – even as the nation faced a relent­less surge of coro­n­avirus infec­tions and deaths.

Lin­dell post­ed even after the riots with claims about ways to ‘sup­press the evil’ and ‘beat the evil’ with claims that Trump sup­port­ers ‘broke the algo­rithms.’
He post­ed brief com­ments, which appear to be made aboard a pri­vate jet, where he wrote that ‘Don­ald Trump is going to be your pres­i­dent for the next 4 years.’
Lin­dell retweet­ed a tweet by Right Side Broad­cast­ing Net­work Jan­u­ary 10 which bashed the idea of impeach­ment as point­less. ‘Seems like a whole lot of trou­ble to go through to impeach some­one who, if tra­di­tion has its way, will be gone from office in 10 days. What is going on here, Nan­cy? Seems a lit­tle des­per­ate. There must be...other fac­tors at play,’ it said.

https://www.newsweek.com/mike-lindell-baffled-nazi-claims-my-pillow-priing

Mike Lin­dell Baf­fled by ‘Nazi’ Claims About MyP­il­low Pric­ing — Newsweek

By Sophie Clark Pub­lished Sep 24, 2024 at 9:19 AM EDT Updat­ed Sep 24, 2024 at 2:09 PM EDT

Mike Lin­dell has hit back against the claims that his new MyP­il­low price is inad­ver­tent­ly linked to neo-Nazi pro­pa­gan­da.

Lin­dell spoke to the New York Post fol­low­ing Newsweek’s report on Lin­del­l’s MyP­il­low adver­tise­ment that prices his Stan­dard Clas­sic Pil­low at a num­ber that is affil­i­at­ed with neo-Nazi slo­gans. Lin­dell told The Post: “I have no idea what this is all about.”

On Sep­tem­ber 20, MyP­il­low post­ed an adver­tise­ment that marked down the pil­lows from its sale price of $29.99 to an even low­er price of $14.88.

This price came to the atten­tion of both his­to­ri­ans and online neo-Nazis as the num­bers 14 and 88 are dog-whis­tles in white suprema­cist cir­cles.

The num­ber 88 is used as short­hand for Heil Hitler, as “H” is the eight let­ter of the alpha­bet. The num­ber 14 refers to the “14-word-slo­gan” by David Lane, a mem­ber of white suprema­cist group The Order. Lane, who died in prison serv­ing 190 years for rack­e­teer­ing and vio­la­tion of civ­il rights, said: “We must secure the exis­tence of our peo­ple and a future for white chil­dren.”

Lin­dell told The Post that the 88 cents price point is a com­mon price used by com­pa­nies such as Wal­mart.
Mike Lin­dell speak­ing at a Trump ral­ly on July 27, 2024 in St Cloud, Min­neso­ta. He has denied his price point has any­thing to do with white suprema­cist pro­pa­gan­da. Stephen Maturen/Getty images

He added: “[The price point] had noth­ing to do with what­ev­er you guys are try­ing to make it out to be.” He then insist­ed that attacks on his price point were ret­ri­bu­tion for his elec­tion claims.

“This whole thing is anoth­er attack on Mike Lin­dell and MyP­il­low because I want to go to paper bal­lots, hand-count­ed in our coun­try.”

Mike Lin­dell has been con­tact­ed by Newsweek via email for com­ment.

Lin­dell has fre­quent­ly denied the results of the 2020 elec­tion to the point that he lost $5 mil­lion after say­ing he would pay that sum to any­one who could dis­prove his claims that the elec­tion was “rigged” in favor of Joe Biden.

Com­put­er foren­sics expert Robert Zied­man suc­cess­ful­ly proved that Lin­del­l’s account of the elec­tion being “rigged” was incor­rect and Lin­dell was forced to hand over the mon­ey in 2024.

Lin­dell is also cur­rent­ly involved in a suit led by Domin­ion Vot­ing Sys­tems for alleged­ly libel­ing their com­pa­ny. He denies any wrong­do­ing.

The num­bers 1488 tat­tooed on the hand of a far right pro­test­er at the U.S. Supreme Court, Wash­ing­ton, D.C., April 1, 2023. The exact same num­bers fea­ture in a MyP­il­low advert. Andrew Caballero-Reynold­s/Get­ty images

When the MyP­il­low price was list­ed, his­to­ry pro­fes­sor Seth Cot­lar at Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty in Ore­gon wrote on his Bluesky account: “I doubt Lin­dell is behind this or would even get the ref­er­ence, but that does­n’t real­ly mat­ter.”

Despite Lin­dell insist­ing that he knew noth­ing about the price point’s links to white suprema­cy, the ad has been liked and repost­ed by a num­ber of neo- Nazi accounts online, mean­ing that even if it was a com­plete acci­dent it has been picked up by white suprema­cist cir­cles.
One neo-Nazi account by the name of Bal­k­nom­ic repost­ed the ad, say­ing: “14.88? How could you pass up such a great deal?”

Anoth­er account called Chud Post­ing that fre­quent­ly posts neo-Nazi and Alt-Right memes, repost­ed the ad say­ing: “Pil­lows at an Aryan price. Bil­lions must buy. Total­ly nice dreams.”

The phrase “bil­lions must buy” is a play on words of the alt-right meme “bil­lions must die,” which is a main­stay of neo-Nazi forums.

The sale adver­tise­ment is still list­ed on MyP­il­low’s social media accounts. It has been post­ed twice on their X and Face­book accounts.

The sec­ond ad on Face­book appeared 20 hours ago, the sec­ond ad on X appeared at 9:27 a.m. EDT on Sep­tem­ber 23, 20 min­utes after Newsweek pub­lished the ini­tial arti­cle detail­ing the price affil­i­a­tion with white suprema­cist groups.

@Socrates: That’s def­i­nite­ly one of those ‘signs of the times’ kinds of sto­ries. Our trolling times. And as you point out, Lin­del­l’s close ties to Jan­u­ary 6 and key orga­niz­ers like Michael Fly­nn make clear that he isn’t just a sim­ple Trump-lov­ing lunatic. The guy has turned him­self into a polit­i­cal oper­a­tive with sub­stan­tial finan­cial resources to throw around. He has both a pub­lic pres­ence and, now, expe­ri­ence as a back­room schemer. In one sense, Lin­dell has come a long way from his time as a crack head. But at the same time, it’s like he nev­er changed and soci­ety just got cracked out enough to catch up with him. And here we are, with $14.88 get­ting trot­ted out by far right busi­ness­es as if it was noth­ing at all. Overt Nazi trolling as a form of polit­i­cal aggres­sion is just nor­mal these days.

And that brings us to anoth­er recent sto­ry that touch­es on many of the same themes: it turns out an open Nazi who was jailed over his Jan­u­ary 6 actions has been cel­e­brat­ed repeat­ed­ly at Trump’s Bed­min­ster coun­try club over the past cou­ple of years. The Nazi, Tim­o­thy Hale-Cusanel­li, is a for­mer mem­ber of the US Navy who report­ed­ly told his cowork­ers at a naval weapons sta­tion that “Hitler should have fin­ished the job” and “babies born with any defor­mi­ties or dis­abil­i­ties should be shot in the fore­head.” He was wear­ing a Hitler mus­tache dur­ing Jan­u­ary 6, and even­tu­al­ly sen­tenced to four years in prison, although he was released back in Decem­ber.

The cel­e­bra­tions of Hale-Cusanel­li were tech­ni­cal­ly real­ly cel­e­bra­tions for the Patri­ot Free­dom Project, a group set up to cham­pi­on those jailed for their Jan­u­ary 6 activ­i­ties. But in effect the group is real­ly most­ly about Hale-Cusanel­li. In fact, the founder of the group, Cyn­thia Hugh­es, calls her­self Hale-Cusanel­li’s “adop­tive aunt”. Hugh­es has also gone on to become a reg­u­lar guest on Steve Ban­non’s “War Room” pod­cast.

Trump him­self donat­ed $10k to Patri­ot Free­dom Project back in Decem­ber of 2022, the same month Trump attend­ed and spoke at a Decem­ber 1 “open house” event held by the group. Keep in mind the tim­ing of this. It was Novem­ber 22, 2022, when Trump had his infa­mous din­ner with Nick Fuentes and Kanye West at Mar a Lago, lead­ing a peri­od of harsh crit­i­cism of fel­low Repub­li­cans. So Trump was speak­ing at events for the Hitler Mus­tache Naz­i’s free­dom fund and even mak­ing large dona­tions at the same time he was fac­ing major crit­i­cism for din­ner with a Nazi.

Fol­low­ing his release from prison back in Decem­ber of last year, Hale-Cusanel­li has also been mak­ing appear­ances at these Patri­ot Free­dom Project events, includ­ing events at Bed­min­ster. In fact, it was dur­ing an event at Bed­min­ster back in August that Hale-Cusanel­li was giv­en an award for pro­mot­ing “God, fam­i­ly and coun­try.” And it was none oth­er than Ed Mar­tin giv­ing the award. This is the same Ed Mar­tin who, like Steve Ban­non, hap­pens to be a Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) mem­ber. But beyond his CNP ties, recall how Mar­tin has long been a major boost­er of the ‘Stop the Steal’ nar­ra­tive. On Jan­u­ary 5, 2021, Mar­tin gave a speech out­side the Capi­tol that involved Mar­tin start­ing the chant “stop the steal”. Mar­tin went on to implore the audi­ence to be pre­pared to fight to their last breath the next day. “No mat­ter what hap­pens tomor­row, or the next day, or the day after, we still need to be in the fight. There’s no sum­mer sol­diers and spring­time patri­ots here. There’s the die-hard true Amer­i­cans,” Mar­tin said. “We start today, go through tomor­row and every day till we have a last breath and go home to the Lord because we will stop the steal.” On Jan 6, Mar­tin attend­ed Don­ald Trump’s speech in the VIP sec­tion before march­ing off to the Capi­tol. Lat­er in 2021, Mar­tin was sub­poe­naed by the House­’s Jan­u­ary 6 com­mit­tee, which said it had evi­dence that he was “involved in the logis­ti­cal plan­ning” of the “Stop the Steal” ral­ly on Jan. 6. Mar­tin did not com­ply with the sub­poe­na. Mar­tin has since attend­ed a num­ber of events along­side Michael Fly­nn and Ali Alexan­der. This year, Mar­tin served as one of three mem­bers of the RNC’s offi­cial 2024 plat­form com­mit­tee. Yes, a CNP mem­ber of the RNC’s exec­u­tive plat­form com­mit­tee award­ed the Hitler mus­tache Jan 6 guy with a “God, fam­i­ly, and coun­try” award at a Patri­ot Free­dom Project event at Bed­min­ster this year. Oh, and it turns out Trump held an anti-anti­semitism event at Bed­min­ster the very next day. It’s like Trump’s ver­sion of “$14.88? What’s that?” Full spec­trum Nazi trolling.

But Ed Mar­tin isn’t just a big Hale-Cusanel­li fan and ‘Stop the Steal’ pro­mot­er. He’s also on the Patri­ot Free­dom Project board of trustees. It’s not clear when exact­ly Mar­tin joined the board. But as we’re going to see, hav­ing Mar­tin join the board helped the group with a legal prob­lem that arose from the fact that Patri­ot Free­dom Project claims to be a 501(c)(3) non­prof­it char­i­ty. The prob­lem being that the group’s orig­i­nal board of trustees con­sist­ed of Hugh­es, Hugh­es’ sis­ter-in-law, and Hugh­es’ 24-year-old son. An ‘all in the fam­i­ly’ board of trustees is gen­er­al­ly seen as a red flag for char­i­ties. But that was­n’t the only red flag. Some Jan­u­ary 6 defen­dants and their fam­i­lies accuse the group of be very selec­tive in which defen­dants its cham­pi­ons, and ques­tions about whether or not the Hugh­es fam­i­ly is self-enrich­ing from dona­tions con­tin­ue to linger.

Beyond that, the group oper­ates in bla­tant vio­la­tion of the non-par­ti­san­ship rules 501(c)(3) char­i­ties are sup­posed to abide by, so much so that mul­ti­ple mem­bers of Con­gress have called on the IRS to inves­ti­gate the group. But the IRS isn’t the only agency with over­sight over the char­i­ty. State reg­u­la­tors also have a role. And yet, despite all those calls for inves­ti­ga­tions into what appears to be a shady ‘char­i­ty’ that exists large­ly to raise funds and cel­e­brate a Nazi, the group still has its 501(c)(3) tax-deductible char­i­ta­ble sta­tus to this day. As of Jan­u­ary of this year, the group had raised over $2 mil­lion since its found­ing. That’s all part of the con­text of Mike Lin­del­l’s ‘$14.88’ pil­low trolling. Every­one knows what’s going on. The absurd denials are just part of the fun. The kind of Nazi ‘fun’ that can also make a lot of mon­ey. For ‘char­i­ty’.

But Hale-Cusanel­li isn’t the only fig­ure cham­pi­oned by the Patri­ot Free­dom Project. For exam­ple, at a June 2023 Patri­ot Free­dom Project event at Bed­min­ster that includ­ed a speech by Don­ald Trump, a dif­fer­ent Nazi-adja­cent fig­ured was fet­ed: Der­rick Evans, then the pri­ma­ry chal­lengers for West Vir­gini­a’s 1st Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict. Evans also hap­pened to spent a few months in jail after livestream­ing his time storm­ing the Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6. And guess who hap­pened to also be at that Bed­min­ster event to give their full throat­ed endorse­ment of Evan­s’s can­di­da­cy: Mike Lin­dell! Yep. It turns out Lin­dell is no stranger to Patri­ot Free­dom Project events.

So did Evans win his pri­ma­ry race? Nope. He lost, much to the relief of Jew­ish Repub­li­cans. Yes, it turns out Evans isn’t just a pre­vi­ous­ly jailed Jan 6 riot­er. He also hap­pens to be a fan of the idea that “the Jews” stole in 2020 elec­tion and that Israel was the true cul­prit behind Jan­u­ary 6. At least those were the view Evans shared back in Feb­ru­ary dur­ing an appear­ance on the far right “Stew Peters” pod­cast. As Evans put it, ques­tions about the Jew­ish role behind Jan­u­ary 6 were “good ques­tions”.

That’s all part of the con­text of Lin­del­l’s ‘$14.88’ stunt. Lin­dell lit­er­al­ly endorsed a Nazi Jan 6 riot­er for Con­gress just last year. At Bed­min­ster. With Don­ald Trump stand­ing next to him. At an event for a group most­ly ded­i­cat­ed to the Jan 6 guy who was sport­ing a Hitler mus­tache that day.

Ok, first, here’s a look at this year’s Patri­ot Free­dom Project Bed­min­ster events. Events that includ­ed Hale-Cusanel­li in per­son since he was already out of prison, allow­ing him to receive an award back in August from Ed Mar­tin, one of the mem­bers of the RNC’s 2024 plat­form com­mit­tee:

Nation­al Pub­lic Radio

Trump’s Bed­min­ster club host­ed an alleged Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er who stormed the Capi­tol

Sep­tem­ber 12, 2024 3:00 PM ET
Heard on All Things Con­sid­ered
Tom Dreis­bach

Twice this past sum­mer, Don­ald Trump’s golf club in Bed­min­ster, N.J. has fea­tured speech­es from a riot­er con­vict­ed of par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capi­tol, who has a well-doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry of extreme anti­se­mit­ic and racist rants.

One of those events — a fundrais­er for a con­tro­ver­sial non­prof­it group that sup­ports Capi­tol riot defen­dants — was per­son­al­ly endorsed by Trump him­self in a video mes­sage that was played for the room.

“All of the peo­ple there, you’re amaz­ing patri­ots,” Trump said in the video. “Have a great time at Bed­min­ster.”

As part of his crim­i­nal case over Jan. 6, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors described the riot­er, Tim­o­thy Hale-Cusanel­li, as a “white suprema­cist and Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er,” who told his cowork­ers at a naval weapons sta­tion that “Hitler should have fin­ished the job” and “babies born with any defor­mi­ties or dis­abil­i­ties should be shot in the fore­head.”

Court fil­ings fea­tured mul­ti­ple pic­tures of Hale-Cusanel­li at work with a “Hitler mus­tache.” A lengthy online video he post­ed in 2020 attacked what he called a “Hasidic Jew­ish inva­sion” of New Jer­sey and com­pared ortho­dox Jews to a “plague of locusts.”

Accord­ing to report­ing in the Asbury Park Press and Gothamist, Hale-Cusanel­li antag­o­nized a Jew­ish man in Ocean Coun­ty, N.J. online pri­or to Jan. 6. Both news orga­ni­za­tions report­ed that Hale-Cusanel­li pub­lished the man’s address on social media and indi­cat­ed that he would go to his house on the Sab­bath, though no charges were filed.

In response to NPR’s report­ing, Jew­ish orga­ni­za­tions raised con­cerns about Hale-Cusanelli’s appear­ances at Trump’s golf club.

“As an orga­ni­za­tion rep­re­sent­ing the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, we believe that those who pro­mote anti­semitism — or prej­u­dice or racism or big­otry in any form — should not be giv­en a plat­form and encour­aged to share their views,” said Kei­th Kriv­itzky, the man­ag­ing direc­tor of the Jew­ish Fed­er­a­tion of Ocean Coun­ty. “We also believe that it is vital that those in posi­tions of lead­er­ship stand up to hate and extrem­ist views.”

“We hope that the Trump cam­paign will dis­avow this indi­vid­ual and his anti­se­mit­ic views if in fact he was giv­en a plat­form at a Jan. 6 defen­dants fundrais­ing event,” said a spokesper­son for the Anti-Defama­tion League.

“For­mer Pres­i­dent Trump has­n’t sim­ply ignored or giv­en a pass to these anti­se­mit­ic extrem­ists,” said Amy Spi­tal­nick, CEO of the Jew­ish Coun­cil for Pub­lic Affairs, “In many ways, he’s embraced them and helped main­stream their ideas in our polit­i­cal rhetoric.”

...

A Trump cam­paign offi­cial told NPR that the for­mer pres­i­dent is “not even aware of this indi­vid­ual.”

NPR point­ed out that Trump has repeat­ed­ly endorsed the non­prof­it Patri­ot Free­dom Project, a group found­ed in direct response to Hale-Cusanelli’s arrest. The group’s founder, Cyn­thia Hugh­es, calls her­self an “adop­tive aunt” to Hale-Cusanel­li and spoke about his case at a Trump cam­paign ral­ly. In 2023, Trump spoke at anoth­er Patri­ot Free­dom Project event at Bed­min­ster along­side Hugh­es.

The Trump cam­paign offi­cial clar­i­fied that Trump has “not been made aware of the com­ments that [Hale-Cusanelli’s] made.”

Regard­ing Hale-Cusanelli’s speech­es at the for­mer president’s Bed­min­ster prop­er­ty, press sec­re­tary Karo­line Leav­itt said, “Pres­i­dent Trump did not attend these events, and, of course, he absolute­ly con­demns big­otry and hatred of any kind.”

Hale-Cusanel­li did not respond to NPR’s requests for com­ment sent through Hugh­es and his attor­ney. In the past, Hale-Cusanel­li has referred to the Anti-Defama­tion league as “par­a­sitic oppor­tunists and Jew­ish suprema­cists.”

On Jan. 6, Hale-Cusanel­li stormed the U.S. Capi­tol, but was not accused of phys­i­cal vio­lence against police. Video evi­dence pre­sent­ed at his crim­i­nal tri­al showed him mov­ing bar­ri­ers pro­tect­ing the build­ing, wav­ing in fel­low riot­ers, inter­fer­ing with an attempt­ed police arrest and scream­ing at offi­cers, “the rev­o­lu­tion will be tele­vised, c***.”

Pros­e­cu­tors pre­sent­ed text mes­sages he sent about the 2020 elec­tion, where he used an anti­se­mit­ic slur and accused Democ­rats of “n***** rig­ging”.

The jury found him guilty of four mis­de­meanors, as well as one felony, obstruc­tion of an offi­cial pro­ceed­ing. The Supreme Court has since lim­it­ed the use of the felony obstruc­tion charge in Jan. 6‑related cas­es, and Hale-Cusanel­li is appeal­ing his con­vic­tion. If he wins his appeal, he could regain his gun rights.

At Hale-Cusanelli’s sen­tenc­ing hear­ing, Judge Trevor McFad­den, a Trump appointee, cit­ed his his­to­ry of anti­se­mit­ic remarks.

“State­ments and actions like yours make [Jew­ish peo­ple] less safe and less con­fi­dent they can par­tic­i­pate as equal mem­bers of our soci­ety,” McFad­den said.

Hale-Cusanel­li, a for­mer U.S. Army reservist, apol­o­gized at the hear­ing to mem­bers of Con­gress and the Capi­tol Police.

“My behav­ior that day was unac­cept­able,” he told Judge McFad­den. “I dis­graced my uni­form and I dis­graced the coun­try.”

Judge McFad­den sen­tenced Hale-Cusanel­li to four years in prison. Hale-Cusanel­li was able to secure release from cus­tody in Dec. 2023, accord­ing to the Bureau of Pris­ons.

Since then, he has called him­self a polit­i­cal pris­on­er and embraced con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries that the Jan. 6 attack was a “set­up” by gov­ern­ment provo­ca­teurs. He also claimed that his extreme rants amount­ed to inter­net trolling to pro­voke a reac­tion, and said that he has Puer­to Rican and Jew­ish ances­try, telling one inter­view­er “I don’t hate Jews.” He has denied that he’s a Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er or white suprema­cist.

...

In 2022, the for­mer pres­i­dent had din­ner at his Mar-a-Lago estate with Nick Fuentes, a white nation­al­ist and Holo­caust denier, who used a bull­horn to urge Trump sup­port­ers on Jan. 6 to “break down the bar­ri­ers and dis­re­gard the police.” (Fuentes did not per­son­al­ly breach the build­ing and has not faced crim­i­nal charges.) Trump told the extrem­ist group the Proud Boys, whose founder has a his­to­ry of anti­se­mit­ic remarks, to “stand back and stand by” at a 2020 pres­i­den­tial debate. Dur­ing the 2016 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, Trump ini­tial­ly declined to dis­avow an endorse­ment from David Duke, a for­mer grand wiz­ard of the Ku Klux Klan.

...

Trump has made sup­port for the Jan. 6 defen­dants a cen­tral plank of his 2024 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. His first offi­cial cam­paign ral­ly opened with a ren­di­tion of “The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner” sung by Jan. 6 defen­dants in jail. He has referred to the defen­dants as “patri­ots” and “hostages,” and promised to issue par­dons to con­vict­ed riot­ers, includ­ing those who assault­ed police offi­cers. Approx­i­mate­ly 140 offi­cers were injured in the attack on the Capi­tol.

The two events at Trump’s Bed­min­ster prop­er­ty fea­tur­ing Hale-Cusanel­li both took place over the sum­mer.

In June, Hale-Cusanel­li spoke at a Patri­ot Free­dom Project fundrais­er.

In August, Hale-Cusanel­li received an award for pro­mot­ing “God, fam­i­ly and coun­try.” Con­ser­v­a­tive activist Ed Mar­tin, a leader of the 2024 Repub­li­can Nation­al Convention’s plat­form com­mit­tee, praised Hale-Cusanel­li as an “extra­or­di­nary man” and an “extra­or­di­nary leader.” (Among the oth­er award recip­i­ents were for­mer New York May­or Rudy Giu­liani, Trump advis­er Boris Epshteyn and sev­er­al oth­er fig­ures close­ly tied to the for­mer pres­i­dent.)

In an email to NPR, Mar­tin did not address Hale-Cusanelli’s past anti­se­mit­ic remarks.

“NPR, the gov­ern­ment-fund­ed pro­pa­gan­da out­let that has lied at every turn about what hap­pened on J6 is at it again,” he wrote.

As he received his award from Mar­tin at Bed­min­ster, Hale-Cusanel­li attacked the Biden admin­is­tra­tion.

“We’ll nev­er make Amer­i­ca great again, unless we acknowl­edge the true depth and scope of this tyran­ni­cal and despot­ic regime,” he said, “[and] the extent to which they will go to destroy this coun­try and every­thing that we hold dear.”

The fol­low­ing day, Trump held an event at Bed­min­ster ded­i­cat­ed to fight­ing anti­semitism, where he said, “we believe that this vicious out­break of mil­i­tant anti­semitism — it’s very mil­i­tant — must be giv­en no quar­ter, no safe har­bor, no place in a civ­i­lized soci­ety.”

Hale-Cusanel­li has hailed Trump as a “God Emper­or,” post­ed pho­tos from near the front of a Trump ral­ly and showed off a MAGA hat that was appar­ent­ly signed by the for­mer pres­i­dent.

After his sec­ond appear­ance at Trump’s club, he post­ed on social media, “Great time at Trump Bed­min­ster YET AGAIN!”

———–

“Trump’s Bed­min­ster club host­ed an alleged Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er who stormed the Capi­tol” by Tom Dreis­bach; Nation­al Pub­lic Radio; 09/12/2024

“Trump has made sup­port for the Jan. 6 defen­dants a cen­tral plank of his 2024 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. His first offi­cial cam­paign ral­ly opened with a ren­di­tion of “The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner” sung by Jan. 6 defen­dants in jail. He has referred to the defen­dants as “patri­ots” and “hostages,” and promised to issue par­dons to con­vict­ed riot­ers, includ­ing those who assault­ed police offi­cers. Approx­i­mate­ly 140 offi­cers were injured in the attack on the Capi­tol.”

Jus­tice for the ‘Jan 6 patri­ots’ isn’t just a Trump ral­ly ral­ly­ing cry. It’s a cen­tral plank of the Trump agen­da. Keep­ing Trump out of jail is kind of the whole point of him run­ning again, after all. Sure, it’s pos­si­ble Trump would have decid­ed to run again in 2024 had he not put him­self in so much legal per­il dur­ing in time in the White House. But there’s no ques­tion at this point regard­ing Trump’s pri­ma­ry motive today for regain­ing the pres­i­den­cy. He needs that par­don pow­er back for is own sake. Promis­ing to par­don the rest of the Jan­u­ary 6 con­victs is just part of the sales pitch to make that hap­pen.

But when we see these Patri­ot Free­dom Project gath­er­ings at Bed­min­ster, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that the Patrio Free­dom Project isn’t a gener­ic ‘pro-jail Jan 6ers’ group. It was specif­i­cal­ly found­ed in response to Hale-Cusanel­li’s arrest and the group’s founder, Cyn­thia Hugh­es, calls her­self Hale-Cusanel­li’s “adop­tive aunt”. So when we see Trump mak­ing speech­es along­side Hugh­es at a Patri­ot Free­dom Project event held at Bed­min­ster, this is effec­tive­ly a Trump event for Hale-Cusanel­li:

...
“All of the peo­ple there, you’re amaz­ing patri­ots,” Trump said in the video. “Have a great time at Bed­min­ster.”

...

A Trump cam­paign offi­cial told NPR that the for­mer pres­i­dent is “not even aware of this indi­vid­ual.”

NPR point­ed out that Trump has repeat­ed­ly endorsed the non­prof­it Patri­ot Free­dom Project, a group found­ed in direct response to Hale-Cusanelli’s arrest. The group’s founder, Cyn­thia Hugh­es, calls her­self an “adop­tive aunt” to Hale-Cusanel­li and spoke about his case at a Trump cam­paign ral­ly. In 2023, Trump spoke at anoth­er Patri­ot Free­dom Project event at Bed­min­ster along­side Hugh­es.

The Trump cam­paign offi­cial clar­i­fied that Trump has “not been made aware of the com­ments that [Hale-Cusanelli’s] made.”

Regard­ing Hale-Cusanelli’s speech­es at the for­mer president’s Bed­min­ster prop­er­ty, press sec­re­tary Karo­line Leav­itt said, “Pres­i­dent Trump did not attend these events, and, of course, he absolute­ly con­demns big­otry and hatred of any kind.”
...

And note that not only did Hale-Cusanel­li post a video on Twit­ter of his speech at the June Patri­ot Free­dom Project event at Bed­min­ster, but he starts off his speech (at 1:35 in in video) thank­ing Ed Mar­tin, who went on to give Hale-Cusanel­li an award for pro­mot­ing “God, fam­i­ly and coun­try” at the August Bed­min­ster event. Yes, Hale-Cusanel­li has been at two Bed­min­ster events just since his release from prison in Decem­ber, and at one of those events he was award­ed by key CNP pro-insur­rec­tion oper­a­tive Ed Mar­tin:

...
Judge McFad­den sen­tenced Hale-Cusanel­li to four years in prison. Hale-Cusanel­li was able to secure release from cus­tody in Dec. 2023, accord­ing to the Bureau of Pris­ons.

...

The two events at Trump’s Bed­min­ster prop­er­ty fea­tur­ing Hale-Cusanel­li both took place over the sum­mer.

In June, Hale-Cusanel­li spoke at a Patri­ot Free­dom Project fundrais­er.

In August, Hale-Cusanel­li received an award for pro­mot­ing “God, fam­i­ly and coun­try.” Con­ser­v­a­tive activist Ed Mar­tin, a leader of the 2024 Repub­li­can Nation­al Convention’s plat­form com­mit­tee, praised Hale-Cusanel­li as an “extra­or­di­nary man” and an “extra­or­di­nary leader.” (Among the oth­er award recip­i­ents were for­mer New York May­or Rudy Giu­liani, Trump advis­er Boris Epshteyn and sev­er­al oth­er fig­ures close­ly tied to the for­mer pres­i­dent.)

In an email to NPR, Mar­tin did not address Hale-Cusanelli’s past anti­se­mit­ic remarks.

“NPR, the gov­ern­ment-fund­ed pro­pa­gan­da out­let that has lied at every turn about what hap­pened on J6 is at it again,” he wrote.

As he received his award from Mar­tin at Bed­min­ster, Hale-Cusanel­li attacked the Biden admin­is­tra­tion.

“We’ll nev­er make Amer­i­ca great again, unless we acknowl­edge the true depth and scope of this tyran­ni­cal and despot­ic regime,” he said, “[and] the extent to which they will go to destroy this coun­try and every­thing that we hold dear.”

...

Hale-Cusanel­li has hailed Trump as a “God Emper­or,” post­ed pho­tos from near the front of a Trump ral­ly and showed off a MAGA hat that was appar­ent­ly signed by the for­mer pres­i­dent.

After his sec­ond appear­ance at Trump’s club, he post­ed on social media, “Great time at Trump Bed­min­ster YET AGAIN!”
...

And then, to top it all, fol­low­ing the August Patri­ot Free­dom Project event where Hale-Cusanel­li gets his award from Ed Mar­tin, Trump holds a Bed­min­ster event ded­i­cat­ed to fight­ing anti­semitism:

...
The fol­low­ing day, Trump held an event at Bed­min­ster ded­i­cat­ed to fight­ing anti­semitism, where he said, “we believe that this vicious out­break of mil­i­tant anti­semitism — it’s very mil­i­tant — must be giv­en no quar­ter, no safe har­bor, no place in a civ­i­lized soci­ety.”
...

Was that just a ran­dom coin­ci­dence? An anti-anti­semitism event held just one day after a Nazi was giv­en an award at the same prop­er­ty? If so, it sounds a lot like the $14.88 ‘coin­ci­dence’.

But as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing arti­cles, the rela­tion­ship between the Patri­ot Free­dom Project and Trump White world isn’t lim­it­ed to the events at Bed­min­ster over the sum­mer and last year. For exam­ple, Cyn­thia Hugh­es has become a “War Room” reg­u­lar on Steve Ban­non’s pod­cast. Beyond that, Trump and Hugh­es have repeat­ed­ly made appear­ances at each oth­er’s events. For exam­ple, in Sep­tem­ber 2022, Hugh­es spoke at a Trump ral­ly. Video of the event was fea­tures promi­nent­ly on Patri­ot Free­dom Pro­jec­t’s home­page. On Decem­ber 1, Patri­ot Free­dom Project held an “open house” that includ­ed a talk by Trump. Lat­er that month, Trump donat­ed $10k to the group. Keep in mind that Decem­ber 2022 an espe­cial­ly tumul­tuous month for Trump after the Novem­ber 22, 2022, din­ner with Nick Fuentes and Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago. And he not only gave a talk at an “open house” but also donat­ed $10k.

And the entire time, Patri­ot Free­dom Project has been claim­ing non-par­ti­san 501(c)(3) tax deductible sta­tus. A bla­tant­ly false sta­tus that is nonethe­less still tol­er­at­ed by the IRS. Despite mul­ti­ple Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers of Con­gress open­ly call­ing on the IRS to crack down on this spe­cif­ic group. But as the fol­low­ing Feb­ru­ary 2022 NPR arti­cle describes, there’s one oth­er major area where Patri­ot Free­dom Project and MAGA world over­lap: being self-enrich­ing scams:

Nation­al Pub­lic Radio

A con­tro­ver­sial non­prof­it for Capi­tol riot defen­dants makes changes after crit­i­cism

Feb­ru­ary 10, 2022 6:01 AM ET
Tom Dreis­bach

The non­prof­it Patri­ot Free­dom Project became one of the most promi­nent groups sup­port­ing the “polit­i­cal pris­on­ers” crim­i­nal­ly charged in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capi­tol. Now — after fac­ing crit­i­cism from some on the pro-Trump right, fam­i­ly mem­bers of defen­dants and experts in char­i­ty law — the con­tro­ver­sial group has announced it is replac­ing mem­bers of its board of trustees and “revamp­ing” its web­site.

In Jan­u­ary, NPR first report­ed that fam­i­ly mem­bers of Capi­tol riot defen­dants felt the Patri­ot Free­dom Project was not trans­par­ent enough about how it was spend­ing the rough­ly $900,000 it had received in dona­tions. Char­i­ty experts also told NPR they saw “red flags” in the group’s prac­tices, such as the fact that the orga­ni­za­tion’s board of trustees con­sist­ed of three peo­ple: group pres­i­dent Cyn­thia Hugh­es, Hugh­es’ sis­ter-in-law, and Hugh­es’ 24-year-old son.

...

Since NPR’s sto­ry, how­ev­er, Hugh­es has said pub­licly said that her fam­i­ly mem­bers are no longer on the board.

The Patri­ot Free­dom Pro­jec­t’s web­site also now fea­tures an updat­ed doc­u­ment enti­tled “State­ment of Activ­i­ties.” The doc­u­ment was first uploaded to the group’s site in Decem­ber, but the con­tent of the doc­u­ment has changed since NPR’s sto­ry. (Despite the mod­i­fi­ca­tions, it still bears the date of Dec. 9, 2021.)

Among those changes: the doc­u­ment pre­vi­ous­ly includ­ed a sen­tence that stat­ed, “No one is going to get rich off the Foun­da­tion.”

That sen­tence no longer appears in the doc­u­ment on the group’s web­site.

The doc­u­ment cur­rent­ly on the group’s web­site also fea­tures a cau­tion to poten­tial donors that the group “can­not guar­an­tee” the IRS will grant the Patri­ot Free­dom Project tax-exempt sta­tus, so their dona­tions may not be deductible at tax time. The ear­li­er ver­sion of the doc­u­ment stat­ed the group was prepar­ing its appli­ca­tion for tax-exempt sta­tus and “con­tri­bu­tions are deductible.”

Some Capi­tol riot defen­dants and their fam­i­lies tell NPR they remain skep­ti­cal of Hugh­es and her orga­ni­za­tion. Con­cerns high­light­ed by char­i­ty experts have not all been addressed. And gov­ern­ment author­i­ties in four states told NPR they were exam­in­ing whether the Patri­ot Free­dom Project was com­ply­ing with their state’s laws on char­i­ta­ble reg­is­tra­tion.

A spokesper­son for the Patri­ot Free­dom Project did not respond to NPR’s detailed ques­tions for this sto­ry. Instead, the orga­ni­za­tion sent the same state­ment it pro­vid­ed in Jan­u­ary, which said, in part, “We will nev­er stop fight­ing for these peo­ple, their fam­i­lies and chil­dren, and if the gov­ern­ment fund­ed media does­n’t like it will do it even more.”

Chang­ing the board

After NPR’s ini­tial sto­ry on the Patri­ot Free­dom Project, Steve Ban­non invit­ed Hugh­es to respond on his pop­u­lar pro-Trump show, “War Room,” which is avail­able nation­wide as a pod­cast, online video stream, and even on satel­lite TV. Hugh­es has become a “War Room” reg­u­lar and Ban­non has pledged that a por­tion of “trans­ac­tion fees” from his lat­est cryp­tocur­ren­cy ven­ture will be donat­ed to the Patri­ot Free­dom Project.

In her inter­view, Hugh­es sug­gest­ed the deci­sion to install her fam­i­ly mem­bers on the three-mem­ber board of trustees was the result of mov­ing to set up the orga­ni­za­tion quick­ly.

“I had to come up with board mem­bers,” Hugh­es told Ban­non. “I put my son, my sis­ter-in-law — who is a Demo­c­rat, by the way — on the board.”

In gen­er­al, non­prof­it boards are sup­posed to pro­vide inde­pen­dent over­sight of the group’s activ­i­ties. Char­i­ty experts say hav­ing a board made up exclu­sive­ly of fam­i­ly mem­bers can cre­ate con­flicts of inter­est.

“They’re not on the board now,” Hugh­es told Ban­non. “We have diver­si­fied the board. We have two board mem­bers that are not relat­ed to me that will be released very soon.”

Since that inter­view on Ban­non’s show, which aired on Jan. 31, the group does not appear to have pub­licly iden­ti­fied the new board mem­bers, and did not pro­vide their names when NPR asked.

In her inter­view with Ban­non, Hugh­es also allud­ed to oth­er grow­ing pains for the group, which formed last sum­mer.

“In the begin­ning of this process, I did­n’t have good peo­ple around me,” Hugh­es said. “I had peo­ple who were not so hon­est with me. Now I have great peo­ple in my camp.”

...

The spokesper­son for the Patri­ot Free­dom Project pre­vi­ous­ly declined to com­ment to NPR regard­ing Hugh­es’ finan­cial sit­u­a­tion. On Ban­non’s show, Hugh­es said that her ear­li­er bank­rupt­cy stemmed from what she char­ac­ter­ized as an abu­sive pre­vi­ous mar­riage. “I had to file bank­rupt­cy because of the finan­cial prob­lems that this man brought to my life,” Hugh­es told Ban­non.

Now, Hugh­es said, “I don’t have finan­cial prob­lems.”

Hugh­es did not address the law­suits she has filed in recent years, in which she pub­licly dis­closed more cur­rent mon­ey trou­bles. For exam­ple, in 2018 she stat­ed in court doc­u­ments that her fam­i­ly had expe­ri­enced “seri­ous finan­cial hard­ship” in a law­suit against cred­it rat­ing agen­cies, demand­ing changes to her cred­it rat­ing and $15,000 in dam­ages. That law­suit result­ed in a set­tle­ment with one par­ty, and out­right dis­missal with the oth­ers.

Reg­is­ter­ing with state char­i­ty reg­u­la­tors

In her inter­view with Ban­non, Hugh­es also did not address the fact that the Patri­ot Free­dom Project, which is head­quar­tered in New Jer­sey and oper­ates under the legal name Hugh­es Advo­ca­cy Foun­da­tion, had not reg­is­tered with the state Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office. Under New Jer­sey law, char­i­ties are gen­er­al­ly required to reg­is­ter with the state with­in 30 days of rais­ing $10,000 in a fis­cal year.

Because the group solic­its dona­tions online and on nation­al plat­forms like Ban­non’s “War Room,” experts said the group also has to be mind­ful of char­i­ty reg­is­tra­tion require­ments in oth­er states, too.

“Most states have some require­ment of reg­is­ter­ing with­in their state,” said Philip Hack­ney, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh School of Law and an expert in non­prof­it law. “If you are solic­it­ing across radio and TV or even the inter­net, you’re pret­ty quick­ly solic­it­ing across 50 states.”

In some cas­es, those reg­is­tra­tion require­ments kick in before an orga­ni­za­tion starts rais­ing mon­ey. Reg­u­la­tors often “require advanced reg­is­tra­tion pri­or to solic­it­ing char­i­ta­ble dona­tions or hold­ing funds for char­i­ta­ble pur­pos­es in that par­tic­u­lar state,” said Erin Bradrick, an attor­ney with the NEO Law Group, who has worked in non­prof­it law for near­ly a decade.

“I think that we’re see­ing state Attor­neys Gen­er­al increas­ing­ly step into an expand­ed role in terms of data col­lec­tion and enforce­ment with respect to char­i­ties,” said Bradrick.

NPR checked with gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tors in places where the group appears to have solicit­ed or received dona­tions from local res­i­dents: Cal­i­for­nia, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, Flori­da, Illi­nois, and New York.

...

In Cal­i­for­nia, the state’s Depart­ment of Jus­tice issued a “Notice to Reg­is­ter” to the group on Feb. 1, request­ing that the orga­ni­za­tion pro­vide a set of detailed records with­in 30 days. The offices of attor­neys gen­er­al in Illi­nois and New York said they were exam­in­ing whether the group was com­ply­ing with state law. In Flori­da, the Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture and Con­sumer Ser­vices over­sees char­i­ties, and they said they were also eval­u­at­ing whether the orga­ni­za­tion need­ed to file a reg­is­tra­tion.

As for the orga­ni­za­tion’s home state of New Jer­sey, a spokesper­son for the Divi­sion of Con­sumer Affairs at the state Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office said the agency was “aware of reports regard­ing Patri­ot Free­dom Project,” but could nei­ther con­firm nor deny the exis­tence of an inves­ti­ga­tion, cit­ing gen­er­al pol­i­cy.

...

Polit­i­cal state­ments

There may be anoth­er obsta­cle to the Patri­ot Free­dom Project receiv­ing the IRS’ bless­ing as a tax-exempt enti­ty: its state­ments about pol­i­tics.

The IRS has “an absolute pro­hi­bi­tion” on 501(c)(3) tax-exempt orga­ni­za­tions inter­ven­ing in par­ti­san polit­i­cal cam­paigns, said Bradrick.

On Jan. 26, the group’s twit­ter account said “We need to...take down Chris Smith and the alleged [R]epublican Van­Drew!” Chris Smith and Jeff Van Drew are both Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress from New Jer­sey and are cur­rent­ly run­ning for re-elec­tion.

We need to do the same here in NJ and take down Chris Smith and the alleged repub­li­can Van­Drew! Chris Smith claims he is for vet­er­ans but yet refus­es to lift a fin­ger to help the 3 NJ men being held against their will at DC GITMO! We will nev­er achieve change with these RINOS! https://t.co/Q9SiC1T8ok— Real Cyn­thia Hugh­es (@realpfp) Jan­u­ary 26, 2022

“That’s exact­ly the type of thing that vio­lates the pro­hi­bi­tion on polit­i­cal cam­paign inter­ven­tion,” said Hack­ney.

The group has also tweet­ed state­ments sug­gest­ing Trump should run for Pres­i­dent again.

Because Trump has not offi­cial­ly declared that he is run­ning for office, Hack­ney said, it’s less clear whether those state­ments vio­late the law. Either way, the IRS may give those state­ments a close look when eval­u­at­ing whether to grant the Patri­ot Free­dom Project tax-exempt sta­tus.

“The IRS might say, ‘Sor­ry, you appear to be engaged in polit­i­cal cam­paign inter­ven­tion’ and deny your appli­ca­tion as a result,” Hack­ney said.

If the IRS does deny the group’s appli­ca­tion, the Patri­ot Free­dom Project may have to pay tax­es, and donors would not be able write off their con­tri­bu­tions to the group.

Response from Capi­tol riot defen­dants and their fam­i­lies

The Patri­ot Free­dom Project has received nation­al promi­nence and sup­port from lead­ing pro-Trump fig­ures such as Ban­non, U.S. Sen­ate can­di­date J.D. Vance, author and film­mak­er Dinesh D’Souza and radio host Clay Travis. But opin­ions of the group among actu­al Capi­tol riot defen­dants and their fam­i­lies remain divid­ed.

Some, such as Trish Priller, have pub­licly vouched for the group. Pros­e­cu­tors have said Priller’s hus­band, Christo­pher Wor­rell, is a mem­ber of far-right group the Proud Boys, and that he attacked police guard­ing the U.S. Capi­tol on Jan. 6, 2021 with a can of “pep­per spray gel.” Wor­rell has plead­ed not guilty. Priller told NPR in a mes­sage that the group “helped many wives & chil­dren pay their bills, home repairs, food, car repairs, dia­pers, Christ­mas and has also secured lawyers. If Cyn­thia did­n’t cre­ate the Patri­ot Free­dom Project many fam­i­lies would have suf­fered.”

Bon­nie Nichols, whose hus­band Ryan has plead­ed not guilty to alle­ga­tions that he used a chem­i­cal spray to assault police on Jan. 6, 2021, told the con­ser­v­a­tive web­site The Fed­er­al­ist that the group pro­vid­ed finan­cial assis­tance and emo­tion­al sup­port to her fam­i­ly. “I don’t know where we would be if we did­n’t have that sup­port,” she said.

Oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers remain high­ly crit­i­cal of the group. “I real­ly am pissed off,” said the fam­i­ly mem­ber of one defen­dant, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty due to fear of back­lash from the group. They were par­tic­u­lar­ly upset that the group said it may use a por­tion of the hun­dreds of thou­sands of donat­ed funds to hire employ­ees, rather than direct­ly sup­port defen­dants.

On its most recent “State­ment of Activ­i­ties” the group said that while, “no one has tak­en a salary” yet, “we will poten­tial­ly hire sev­er­al employ­ees, all of whom will be paid rea­son­able salaries for the work they are doing.”

...

Troy Smocks did not go to the Capi­tol on Jan. 6, but was present in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. that day. He plead­ed guilty to send­ing threats against pub­lic offi­cials on the social media plat­form Par­ler, and was recent­ly released from the D.C. jail. He said the Patri­ot Free­dom Project only seemed to sup­port a small frac­tion of all defen­dants.

“More than half of the guys [in jail] are not list­ed on their site,” he said. In fact, out of more than 700 Capi­tol riot defen­dants, only 40 are cur­rent­ly list­ed on the group’s web­site along with their indi­vid­ual fundrais­ing pages.

As of last Decem­ber, the group stat­ed that it held more than $500,000 that it had not yet spent. Though Smocks said he is deal­ing with seri­ous mon­ey trou­ble from being locked up, he said he had not received any sup­port from the Patri­ot Free­dom Project, and ques­tioned why the group had not pro­vid­ed aid to more defen­dants.

Smocks said he felt like groups like the Patri­ot Free­dom Project and oth­ers rais­ing mon­ey for these cas­es were more in it for them­selves than the defen­dants.

“They use the events of Jan. 6 and the detainees in order to pad their own resumes and enrich them­selves,” said Smocks.

...

———–

“A con­tro­ver­sial non­prof­it for Capi­tol riot defen­dants makes changes after crit­i­cism” by Tom Dreis­bach; Nation­al Pub­lic Radio; 02/10/2022

“In Jan­u­ary, NPR first report­ed that fam­i­ly mem­bers of Capi­tol riot defen­dants felt the Patri­ot Free­dom Project was not trans­par­ent enough about how it was spend­ing the rough­ly $900,000 it had received in dona­tions. Char­i­ty experts also told NPR they saw “red flags” in the group’s prac­tices, such as the fact that the orga­ni­za­tion’s board of trustees con­sist­ed of three peo­ple: group pres­i­dent Cyn­thia Hugh­es, Hugh­es’ sis­ter-in-law, and Hugh­es’ 24-year-old son.”

Yes, there’s no short­age of “red flags” when it comes to the char­i­ta­ble sta­tus of the Patri­ot Free­dom Project. Start­ing with the fact that the orig­i­nal board of trustees con­sist­ed of Cyn­thia Hugh­es, Hugh­es’ sis­ter-in-law, and Hugh­es’ 24-year-old son. But that ques­tion­able lead­er­ship com­po­si­tion is just the start of the red flags. As Jan­u­ary 6 defen­dants and their fam­i­ly mem­bers charge, the ‘char­i­ty’ is real­ly more of an exer­cise in self-enrich­ment:

...
A spokesper­son for the Patri­ot Free­dom Project pre­vi­ous­ly reject­ed any crit­i­cism of the group. The spokesper­son, who would only com­ment to NPR on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, insist­ed that the group was a mod­el of trans­paren­cy and argued that it was an asset that fam­i­ly mem­bers made up the Patri­ot Free­dom Pro­jec­t’s board, liken­ing it to a mom-and-pop oper­a­tion.

Since NPR’s sto­ry, how­ev­er, Hugh­es has said pub­licly said that her fam­i­ly mem­bers are no longer on the board.

The Patri­ot Free­dom Pro­jec­t’s web­site also now fea­tures an updat­ed doc­u­ment enti­tled “State­ment of Activ­i­ties.” The doc­u­ment was first uploaded to the group’s site in Decem­ber, but the con­tent of the doc­u­ment has changed since NPR’s sto­ry. (Despite the mod­i­fi­ca­tions, it still bears the date of Dec. 9, 2021.)

Among those changes: the doc­u­ment pre­vi­ous­ly includ­ed a sen­tence that stat­ed, “No one is going to get rich off the Foun­da­tion.”

That sen­tence no longer appears in the doc­u­ment on the group’s web­site.

The doc­u­ment cur­rent­ly on the group’s web­site also fea­tures a cau­tion to poten­tial donors that the group “can­not guar­an­tee” the IRS will grant the Patri­ot Free­dom Project tax-exempt sta­tus, so their dona­tions may not be deductible at tax time. The ear­li­er ver­sion of the doc­u­ment stat­ed the group was prepar­ing its appli­ca­tion for tax-exempt sta­tus and “con­tri­bu­tions are deductible.”

...

Bon­nie Nichols, whose hus­band Ryan has plead­ed not guilty to alle­ga­tions that he used a chem­i­cal spray to assault police on Jan. 6, 2021, told the con­ser­v­a­tive web­site The Fed­er­al­ist that the group pro­vid­ed finan­cial assis­tance and emo­tion­al sup­port to her fam­i­ly. “I don’t know where we would be if we did­n’t have that sup­port,” she said.

Oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers remain high­ly crit­i­cal of the group. “I real­ly am pissed off,” said the fam­i­ly mem­ber of one defen­dant, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty due to fear of back­lash from the group. They were par­tic­u­lar­ly upset that the group said it may use a por­tion of the hun­dreds of thou­sands of donat­ed funds to hire employ­ees, rather than direct­ly sup­port defen­dants.

On its most recent “State­ment of Activ­i­ties” the group said that while, “no one has tak­en a salary” yet, “we will poten­tial­ly hire sev­er­al employ­ees, all of whom will be paid rea­son­able salaries for the work they are doing.”
...

But the Patri­ot Free­dom Project has­n’t just been a fam­i­ly affair. Beyond the wide expo­sure giv­en to the group by Trump world icons like CNP mem­ber Steve Ban­non or Dinesh D’Souza, the group has been pro­mot­ed by JD Vance and Trump him­self. Patri­ot Free­dom Project is a Trump endorsed affair:

...
After NPR’s ini­tial sto­ry on the Patri­ot Free­dom Project, Steve Ban­non invit­ed Hugh­es to respond on his pop­u­lar pro-Trump show, “War Room,” which is avail­able nation­wide as a pod­cast, online video stream, and even on satel­lite TV. Hugh­es has become a “War Room” reg­u­lar and Ban­non has pledged that a por­tion of “trans­ac­tion fees” from his lat­est cryp­tocur­ren­cy ven­ture will be donat­ed to the Patri­ot Free­dom Project.

In her inter­view, Hugh­es sug­gest­ed the deci­sion to install her fam­i­ly mem­bers on the three-mem­ber board of trustees was the result of mov­ing to set up the orga­ni­za­tion quick­ly.

“I had to come up with board mem­bers,” Hugh­es told Ban­non. “I put my son, my sis­ter-in-law — who is a Demo­c­rat, by the way — on the board.”

In gen­er­al, non­prof­it boards are sup­posed to pro­vide inde­pen­dent over­sight of the group’s activ­i­ties. Char­i­ty experts say hav­ing a board made up exclu­sive­ly of fam­i­ly mem­bers can cre­ate con­flicts of inter­est.

“They’re not on the board now,” Hugh­es told Ban­non. “We have diver­si­fied the board. We have two board mem­bers that are not relat­ed to me that will be released very soon.”

Since that inter­view on Ban­non’s show, which aired on Jan. 31, the group does not appear to have pub­licly iden­ti­fied the new board mem­bers, and did not pro­vide their names when NPR asked.

...

The Patri­ot Free­dom Project has received nation­al promi­nence and sup­port from lead­ing pro-Trump fig­ures such as Ban­non, U.S. Sen­ate can­di­date J.D. Vance, author and film­mak­er Dinesh D’Souza and radio host Clay Travis. But opin­ions of the group among actu­al Capi­tol riot defen­dants and their fam­i­lies remain divid­ed.

Some, such as Trish Priller, have pub­licly vouched for the group. Pros­e­cu­tors have said Priller’s hus­band, Christo­pher Wor­rell, is a mem­ber of far-right group the Proud Boys, and that he attacked police guard­ing the U.S. Capi­tol on Jan. 6, 2021 with a can of “pep­per spray gel.” Wor­rell has plead­ed not guilty. Priller told NPR in a mes­sage that the group “helped many wives & chil­dren pay their bills, home repairs, food, car repairs, dia­pers, Christ­mas and has also secured lawyers. If Cyn­thia did­n’t cre­ate the Patri­ot Free­dom Project many fam­i­lies would have suf­fered.”
...

And as we should expect from all this Trump World-relat­ed, Patri­ot Free­dom Project is kind of a scam and only real­ly seems to sup­port a small frac­tion of the Jan­u­ary 6 defen­dants. That’s part of the con­text of Tim­o­thy Hale-Cusanel­li’s star­dom in this cir­cle. The Hitler looka­like was one of the few cham­pi­oned by the group. Which should make one won­der about the rest of defen­dants the group is cham­pi­oning:

...
Troy Smocks did not go to the Capi­tol on Jan. 6, but was present in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. that day. He plead­ed guilty to send­ing threats against pub­lic offi­cials on the social media plat­form Par­ler, and was recent­ly released from the D.C. jail. He said the Patri­ot Free­dom Project only seemed to sup­port a small frac­tion of all defen­dants.

Troy Smocks did not go to the Capi­tol on Jan. 6, but was present in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. that day. He plead­ed guilty to send­ing threats against pub­lic offi­cials on the social media plat­form Par­ler, and was recent­ly released from the D.C. jail. He said the Patri­ot Free­dom Project only seemed to sup­port a small frac­tion of all defen­dants.

“More than half of the guys [in jail] are not list­ed on their site,” he said. In fact, out of more than 700 Capi­tol riot defen­dants, only 40 are cur­rent­ly list­ed on the group’s web­site along with their indi­vid­ual fundrais­ing pages.

As of last Decem­ber, the group stat­ed that it held more than $500,000 that it had not yet spent. Though Smocks said he is deal­ing with seri­ous mon­ey trou­ble from being locked up, he said he had not received any sup­port from the Patri­ot Free­dom Project, and ques­tioned why the group had not pro­vid­ed aid to more defen­dants.

Smocks said he felt like groups like the Patri­ot Free­dom Project and oth­ers rais­ing mon­ey for these cas­es were more in it for them­selves than the defen­dants.

“They use the events of Jan. 6 and the detainees in order to pad their own resumes and enrich them­selves,” said Smocks.
...

Even Cyn­thia Hugh­es her­self seems to admit she “did­n’t have good peo­ple around me” when the group was first formed. Which appears to be a ref­er­ence to her ex-hus­band. But she assured the pub­lic that every­thing was cleaned up by that point:

...
In her inter­view with Ban­non, Hugh­es also allud­ed to oth­er grow­ing pains for the group, which formed last sum­mer.

“In the begin­ning of this process, I did­n’t have good peo­ple around me,” Hugh­es said. “I had peo­ple who were not so hon­est with me. Now I have great peo­ple in my camp.”

...

The spokesper­son for the Patri­ot Free­dom Project pre­vi­ous­ly declined to com­ment to NPR regard­ing Hugh­es’ finan­cial sit­u­a­tion. On Ban­non’s show, Hugh­es said that her ear­li­er bank­rupt­cy stemmed from what she char­ac­ter­ized as an abu­sive pre­vi­ous mar­riage. “I had to file bank­rupt­cy because of the finan­cial prob­lems that this man brought to my life,” Hugh­es told Ban­non.

Now, Hugh­es said, “I don’t have finan­cial prob­lems.”

Hugh­es did not address the law­suits she has filed in recent years, in which she pub­licly dis­closed more cur­rent mon­ey trou­bles. For exam­ple, in 2018 she stat­ed in court doc­u­ments that her fam­i­ly had expe­ri­enced “seri­ous finan­cial hard­ship” in a law­suit against cred­it rat­ing agen­cies, demand­ing changes to her cred­it rat­ing and $15,000 in dam­ages. That law­suit result­ed in a set­tle­ment with one par­ty, and out­right dis­missal with the oth­ers.
...

And than we get to the bla­tant­ly ille­gal part of this oper­a­tion. Typ­i­cal­ly ille­gal in the world of polit­i­cal ‘non-prof­its’: a 501(c)(3) char­i­ty like this can’t legal­ly advo­cate for can­di­dates. Some­thing Patri­ot Free­dom Project has been doing rou­tine­ly:

...
There may be anoth­er obsta­cle to the Patri­ot Free­dom Project receiv­ing the IRS’ bless­ing as a tax-exempt enti­ty: its state­ments about pol­i­tics.

The IRS has “an absolute pro­hi­bi­tion” on 501(c)(3) tax-exempt orga­ni­za­tions inter­ven­ing in par­ti­san polit­i­cal cam­paigns, said Bradrick.

On Jan. 26, the group’s twit­ter account said “We need to...take down Chris Smith and the alleged [R]epublican Van­Drew!” Chris Smith and Jeff Van Drew are both Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress from New Jer­sey and are cur­rent­ly run­ning for re-elec­tion.

We need to do the same here in NJ and take down Chris Smith and the alleged repub­li­can Van­Drew! Chris Smith claims he is for vet­er­ans but yet refus­es to lift a fin­ger to help the 3 NJ men being held against their will at DC GITMO! We will nev­er achieve change with these RINOS! https://t.co/Q9SiC1T8ok— Real Cyn­thia Hugh­es (@realpfp) Jan­u­ary 26, 2022

“That’s exact­ly the type of thing that vio­lates the pro­hi­bi­tion on polit­i­cal cam­paign inter­ven­tion,” said Hack­ney.

The group has also tweet­ed state­ments sug­gest­ing Trump should run for Pres­i­dent again.

Because Trump has not offi­cial­ly declared that he is run­ning for office, Hack­ney said, it’s less clear whether those state­ments vio­late the law. Either way, the IRS may give those state­ments a close look when eval­u­at­ing whether to grant the Patri­ot Free­dom Project tax-exempt sta­tus.

“The IRS might say, ‘Sor­ry, you appear to be engaged in polit­i­cal cam­paign inter­ven­tion’ and deny your appli­ca­tion as a result,” Hack­ney said.

If the IRS does deny the group’s appli­ca­tion, the Patri­ot Free­dom Project may have to pay tax­es, and donors would not be able write off their con­tri­bu­tions to the group.
...

That was the state of affairs in Feb­ru­ary of 2022. The Patri­ot Free­dom Project is anoth­er bla­tant MAGA world adja­cent scam. Per­son­al­ly endorse by Steve Ban­non and JD Vance and Trump. And that brings us to the fol­low­ing NPR piece from Jan­u­ary of 2024 updat­ing the sit­u­a­tion. Except there isn’t real­ly any­thing to update. It’s the same sit­u­a­tion. The only thing that’s new is Ed Mar­tin joined the board of trustees at some point. And mem­bers of Con­gress have been call­ing for the IRS to inves­ti­gate it:

Nation­al Pub­lic Radio

Law­mak­ers call for IRS scruti­ny of Trump-backed non­prof­it that aids Jan. 6 riot­ers

Jan­u­ary 17, 2024 12:43 PM ET
Tom Dreis­bach

Con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats are rais­ing alarms about a non­prof­it group that pro­vides finan­cial sup­port for defen­dants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capi­tol, ques­tion­ing whether the orga­ni­za­tion’s appar­ent sup­port for Don­ald Trump’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign may vio­late fed­er­al tax law.

The group, known as the Patri­ot Free­dom Project, launched in response to the arrest of a Jan. 6 riot­er known for pro­mot­ing extreme racist, anti­se­mit­ic and pro-Nazi views. The group’s lead­ers describe Jan. 6 defen­dants as “polit­i­cal pris­on­ers” and have devel­oped a close rela­tion­ship with Trump and his 2024 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. The for­mer pres­i­dent has embraced defen­dants charged in the attack on the U.S. Capi­tol, call­ing them “hostages” and promis­ing to issue par­dons to defen­dants if he wins the 2024 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

...

Because the Patri­ot Free­dom Project is orga­nized as a non­prof­it char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion under sec­tion 501(c)(3) of the tax code, it is “absolute­ly pro­hib­it­ed” by fed­er­al law from “direct­ly or indi­rect­ly” tak­ing part in par­ti­san polit­i­cal cam­paigns or endors­ing or oppos­ing can­di­dates.

As NPR pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, the founder and pres­i­dent of the Patri­ot Free­dom Project, Cyn­thia Hugh­es, encour­aged peo­ple to vote for Trump at one of the group’s events held at Trump Nation­al Golf Club Bed­min­ster in August 2023.

“When you go to the bal­lot box, don’t wor­ry about what you hear in the media. Wor­ry about what’s right for this coun­try. And the only thing that’s right for this coun­try is this gem,” said Hugh­es as she point­ed to Trump, who was stand­ing beside her, accord­ing to video of the event post­ed online.

NPR found oth­er instances in which the group expressed sup­port for Trump’s reelec­tion, took part in par­ti­san cam­paign events and encour­aged peo­ple to vote against polit­i­cal can­di­dates.

Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. of New Jer­sey over­sees the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice as the top Demo­c­rat on the House Ways and Means Sub­com­mit­tee on Over­sight. In response to NPR’s report­ing, Pascrell called on the agency to open an inves­ti­ga­tion into the Patri­ot Free­dom Project

“If this pur­port­ed non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion is using its pul­pit to pro­mote Don­ald Trump, the group is not just sup­port­ing the same author­i­tar­i­an­ism espoused by an insur­rec­tion­ist – it is also break­ing fed­er­al tax law and must be held account­able,” said Pascrell in a state­ment to NPR. “The IRS should inves­ti­gate this case imme­di­ate­ly and crack down on those poten­tial­ly abus­ing our tax code.”

Pascrel­l’s Repub­li­can coun­ter­part on the Sub­com­mit­tee on Over­sight, Rep. David Schweik­ert of Ari­zona, did not respond to NPR’s request for com­ment.

Sen. Shel­don White­house, D‑R.I., raised con­cerns about what he views as lax IRS enforce­ment of non­prof­its involved in polit­i­cal activ­i­ty.

“There are 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tions that open­ly flout the law and solic­it tax-deductible dona­tions to fund polit­i­cal activ­i­ties,” White­house told NPR in a state­ment. “These polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions mas­quer­ade as char­i­ties and brazen­ly ignore the law, because they don’t think the IRS will enforce it. Too often, they’re right. It’s long past time that the IRS crack down on these abus­es.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D‑Md., said in an inter­view that NPR’s report­ing had raised con­cerns for him about the Patri­ot Free­dom Pro­jec­t’s polit­i­cal activ­i­ty.

“I’m cer­tain­ly alarmed to learn that a 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tion is send­ing out direct polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy — mean­ing mes­sages telling peo­ple to vote for this can­di­date or vote against that can­di­date,” said Raskin, who served on the Jan. 6 select com­mit­tee in Con­gress. “That clear­ly cuts against the let­ter of the law. The resources and the pres­tige of the orga­ni­za­tion can­not be used for elec­toral pur­pos­es in any way.”

...

An IRS offi­cial declined to com­ment. Because the group is based in New Jer­sey, it is also reg­u­lat­ed by that state’s author­i­ties. A spokesper­son for the New Jer­sey Divi­sion of Con­sumer Affairs told NPR, “We can­not com­ment on hypo­thet­i­cal vio­la­tions of the law,” but not­ed that vio­la­tions of fed­er­al law could also lead to reper­cus­sions at the state lev­el.

What does the law say?

Non­prof­it char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions that are rec­og­nized by the IRS under sec­tion 501(c)(3) of the tax code are exempt from cer­tain fed­er­al, state and local tax­es. The gov­ern­ment allows donors to 501(c)(3) non­prof­its to deduct their char­i­ta­ble con­tri­bu­tions at tax time, which helps incen­tivize dona­tions. The Patri­ot Free­dom Project touts that perk on its web­site.

...

As the IRS puts it on the agen­cy’s web­site, “all sec­tion 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tions are absolute­ly pro­hib­it­ed from direct­ly or indi­rect­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in, or inter­ven­ing in, any polit­i­cal cam­paign on behalf of (or in oppo­si­tion to) any can­di­date for elec­tive pub­lic office.”

That means fed­er­al law pro­hibits 501(c)(3) groups from endors­ing or oppos­ing polit­i­cal can­di­dates and from mak­ing or dis­trib­ut­ing state­ments for or against polit­i­cal can­di­dates.

...

The IRS also instructs non­prof­its to tread care­ful­ly if they hold events with a polit­i­cal can­di­date. If the orga­ni­za­tion invites a can­di­date to speak, then it must take steps to ensure that it pro­vides “an equal oppor­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate to all polit­i­cal can­di­dates seek­ing the same office,” the IRS states, and the orga­ni­za­tion must ensure that it “does not indi­cate any sup­port for or oppo­si­tion to any can­di­date (includ­ing can­di­date intro­duc­tions and in com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­cern­ing any can­di­date’s atten­dance).”

The Patri­ot Free­dom Project acknowl­edged these legal require­ments when it applied for tax-exempt sta­tus, and it declared in its IRS paper­work that it would not “sup­port or oppose can­di­dates in polit­i­cal cam­paigns in any way.”

What has the Patri­ot Free­dom Project done?

NPR found sev­er­al speech­es, events and social media posts in which the Patri­ot Free­dom Project and its lead­er­ship took actions that raise ques­tions about whether the group may have vio­lat­ed the ban on polit­i­cal cam­paign activ­i­ty by 501(c)(3) non­prof­its.

Take, for exam­ple, the Patri­ot Free­dom Pro­jec­t’s home­page, which promi­nent­ly fea­tures a video of Trump at a cam­paign ral­ly in Sep­tem­ber 2022.

Hugh­es, the Patri­ot Free­dom Pro­jec­t’s pres­i­dent and founder, spoke at that ral­ly, which was held in sup­port of Repub­li­can U.S. Sen­ate can­di­date Mehmet Oz and guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Doug Mas­tri­ano, both of Penn­syl­va­nia. (Both Oz and Mas­tri­ano sub­se­quent­ly lost in the 2022 elec­tions.) At the event, Hugh­es iden­ti­fied her­self specif­i­cal­ly as the leader of the Patri­ot Free­dom Project and encour­aged peo­ple to sup­port the group.

Hugh­es went on to hold mul­ti­ple Patri­ot Free­dom Project events either fea­tur­ing Trump or where speak­ers pro­mot­ed Trump’s polit­i­cal cam­paign:

* In Decem­ber 2022, the Patri­ot Free­dom Project held an “open house” event where a senior advis­er to Trump’s Save Amer­i­ca polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee as well as Trump him­self spoke. That same month, Trump’s PAC donat­ed $10,000 to the Patri­ot Free­dom Project.

* In June 2023, the Patri­ot Free­dom Project held an event at Trump Nation­al Golf Club Bed­min­ster. Video of the event shows that Trump gave a speech in which he said, “We’re gonna win an elec­tion in 2024,” as Hugh­es and Patri­ot Free­dom Project board mem­ber Ed Mar­tin applaud­ed. Anoth­er speak­er at the said, “We have got to reelect Pres­i­dent Trump into the White House.”

* Lat­er that sum­mer, in August 2023, the Patri­ot Free­dom Project held anoth­er event at Trump Nation­al Golf Club Bed­min­ster where Hugh­es encour­aged peo­ple to vote for Trump and the for­mer pres­i­dent also spoke.

* At a Patri­ot Free­dom Project event to mark the third anniver­sary of the attack, on Jan. 6, 2024, the group fea­tured a speech from a pro-Trump attor­ney who said, “We need to keep the momen­tum strong behind Pres­i­dent Trump” in the 2024 elec­tion. Pho­tos and video of the event show a large table fea­tur­ing a “TRUMP 2024” flag, along­side flags depict­ing Trump as Super­man and Cap­tain Amer­i­ca.

On the social media plat­form X (for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter), the group’s offi­cial account also veered into pro­mot­ing and attack­ing polit­i­cal can­di­dates:

* The group’s offi­cial account post­ed the hash­tag “#Trump2024″ three times.

* One post stat­ed, “we need to ... take down” mul­ti­ple “RINOS” (an acronym for “Repub­li­cans in name only”) in Con­gress run­ning for reelec­tion.

* The account attacked the Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nor of New York and added, “Vote these rad­i­cals out!”

* The group repost­ed mes­sages from the offi­cial cam­paign account for a con­vict­ed Jan. 6 defen­dant now run­ning for Con­gress.

...

Accord­ing to finan­cial doc­u­ments post­ed on its web­site, the Patri­ot Free­dom Project has raised more than $2 mil­lion since its found­ing.

———–

“Law­mak­ers call for IRS scruti­ny of Trump-backed non­prof­it that aids Jan. 6 riot­ers” by Tom Dreis­bach; Nation­al Pub­lic Radio; 01/17/2024

“Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. of New Jer­sey over­sees the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice as the top Demo­c­rat on the House Ways and Means Sub­com­mit­tee on Over­sight. In response to NPR’s report­ing, Pascrell called on the agency to open an inves­ti­ga­tion into the Patri­ot Free­dom Project”

As the top Demo­c­rat on the House Ways and Means Sub­com­mit­tee on Over­sight who over­sees the IRS points out, IRS isn’t doing its job when it comes to the Patri­ot Free­dom Project. And Rep Pascrell isn’t the only mem­ber of Con­gress ask­ing the IRS to do its job. That’s part of the sto­ry here. This isn’t just a sto­ry about a sleazy MAGA non-prof­it. It’s also about the blank check effec­tive­ly issued to these orga­ni­za­tions by the IRS with its refusal to enforce the laws:

...
“If this pur­port­ed non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion is using its pul­pit to pro­mote Don­ald Trump, the group is not just sup­port­ing the same author­i­tar­i­an­ism espoused by an insur­rec­tion­ist – it is also break­ing fed­er­al tax law and must be held account­able,” said Pascrell in a state­ment to NPR. “The IRS should inves­ti­gate this case imme­di­ate­ly and crack down on those poten­tial­ly abus­ing our tax code.”

Pascrel­l’s Repub­li­can coun­ter­part on the Sub­com­mit­tee on Over­sight, Rep. David Schweik­ert of Ari­zona, did not respond to NPR’s request for com­ment.

Sen. Shel­don White­house, D‑R.I., raised con­cerns about what he views as lax IRS enforce­ment of non­prof­its involved in polit­i­cal activ­i­ty.

“There are 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tions that open­ly flout the law and solic­it tax-deductible dona­tions to fund polit­i­cal activ­i­ties,” White­house told NPR in a state­ment. “These polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions mas­quer­ade as char­i­ties and brazen­ly ignore the law, because they don’t think the IRS will enforce it. Too often, they’re right. It’s long past time that the IRS crack down on these abus­es.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D‑Md., said in an inter­view that NPR’s report­ing had raised con­cerns for him about the Patri­ot Free­dom Pro­jec­t’s polit­i­cal activ­i­ty.

“I’m cer­tain­ly alarmed to learn that a 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tion is send­ing out direct polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy — mean­ing mes­sages telling peo­ple to vote for this can­di­date or vote against that can­di­date,” said Raskin, who served on the Jan. 6 select com­mit­tee in Con­gress. “That clear­ly cuts against the let­ter of the law. The resources and the pres­tige of the orga­ni­za­tion can­not be used for elec­toral pur­pos­es in any way.”

...

An IRS offi­cial declined to com­ment. Because the group is based in New Jer­sey, it is also reg­u­lat­ed by that state’s author­i­ties. A spokesper­son for the New Jer­sey Divi­sion of Con­sumer Affairs told NPR, “We can­not com­ment on hypo­thet­i­cal vio­la­tions of the law,” but not­ed that vio­la­tions of fed­er­al law could also lead to reper­cus­sions at the state lev­el.
...

And note just how many events there have been on the last cou­ple of years, includ­ing a Decem­ber 1, 2022 “open house” Trump spoke along with a senior advis­er to Trump’s Save Amer­i­ca polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee. And lat­er that month Trump donat­ed $10k to the group. This is, of course, right when Trump was fac­ing scathing crit­i­cism even from Repub­li­cans over his deci­sion to have din­ner Nick Fuentes and Kanya West at Mar-a-Lago on Novem­ber 22 (the 59th anniver­sary of the JFK assas­si­na­tion). This was also short­ly after Trump announced his 2024 White House bid. So Trump was cud­dly up to the Patri­ot Free­dom Project while he was fac­ing the out­cry over Nick Fuentes:

...
NPR found sev­er­al speech­es, events and social media posts in which the Patri­ot Free­dom Project and its lead­er­ship took actions that raise ques­tions about whether the group may have vio­lat­ed the ban on polit­i­cal cam­paign activ­i­ty by 501(c)(3) non­prof­its.

Take, for exam­ple, the Patri­ot Free­dom Pro­jec­t’s home­page, which promi­nent­ly fea­tures a video of Trump at a cam­paign ral­ly in Sep­tem­ber 2022.

Hugh­es, the Patri­ot Free­dom Pro­jec­t’s pres­i­dent and founder, spoke at that ral­ly, which was held in sup­port of Repub­li­can U.S. Sen­ate can­di­date Mehmet Oz and guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Doug Mas­tri­ano, both of Penn­syl­va­nia. (Both Oz and Mas­tri­ano sub­se­quent­ly lost in the 2022 elec­tions.) At the event, Hugh­es iden­ti­fied her­self specif­i­cal­ly as the leader of the Patri­ot Free­dom Project and encour­aged peo­ple to sup­port the group.

Hugh­es went on to hold mul­ti­ple Patri­ot Free­dom Project events either fea­tur­ing Trump or where speak­ers pro­mot­ed Trump’s polit­i­cal cam­paign:

* In Decem­ber 2022, the Patri­ot Free­dom Project held an “open house” event where a senior advis­er to Trump’s Save Amer­i­ca polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee as well as Trump him­self spoke. That same month, Trump’s PAC donat­ed $10,000 to the Patri­ot Free­dom Project.

* In June 2023, the Patri­ot Free­dom Project held an event at Trump Nation­al Golf Club Bed­min­ster. Video of the event shows that Trump gave a speech in which he said, “We’re gonna win an elec­tion in 2024,” as Hugh­es and Patri­ot Free­dom Project board mem­ber Ed Mar­tin applaud­ed. Anoth­er speak­er at the said, “We have got to reelect Pres­i­dent Trump into the White House.”

* Lat­er that sum­mer, in August 2023, the Patri­ot Free­dom Project held anoth­er event at Trump Nation­al Golf Club Bed­min­ster where Hugh­es encour­aged peo­ple to vote for Trump and the for­mer pres­i­dent also spoke.

* At a Patri­ot Free­dom Project event to mark the third anniver­sary of the attack, on Jan. 6, 2024, the group fea­tured a speech from a pro-Trump attor­ney who said, “We need to keep the momen­tum strong behind Pres­i­dent Trump” in the 2024 elec­tion. Pho­tos and video of the event show a large table fea­tur­ing a “TRUMP 2024” flag, along­side flags depict­ing Trump as Super­man and Cap­tain Amer­i­ca.

...

Accord­ing to finan­cial doc­u­ments post­ed on its web­site, the Patri­ot Free­dom Project has raised more than $2 mil­lion since its found­ing.
...

$2 mil­lion raised since the group’s found­ing. And that was Jan­u­ary of this year. How much more mon­ey has Patri­ot Free­dom Project raised in this pres­i­den­tial elec­tion year? It’s pre­sum­ably been a ban­ner year of fundrais­ing for the group. All tax deductible. For char­i­ty, of course. Char­i­ty most­ly for the Hitler mus­tache guy, although his “adop­tive aunt” and her fam­i­ly has pre­sum­ably man­aged to eek out a bit of char­i­ty for them­selves. Cer­tain­ly enough to afford a few pil­lows on a spe­cial sale.

And that brings us to anoth­er Nazi-friend­ly indi­vid­ual who was also cel­e­brat­ed at the June 2023 Patri­ot Free­dom Project event at Bed­min­ster where Trump spoke: Der­rick Evans, a Repub­li­can can­di­date for West Virginia’s 1st Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict who also spent sev­er­al months in prison after livestream­ing him­self storm­ing the Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6. Guess who else attend­ed the event: Mike Lin­dell:

WV Statewide News

Der­rick Evans & Trump Speak at Patri­ot Free­dom Project Event

on June 29, 2023
By Staff Writer

Last week Der­rick Evans, can­di­date for West Virginia’s 1st Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict trav­eled to Bed­min­ster, NJ to speak along­side the for­mer Pres­i­dent. Pres­i­dent Trump spoke at an event for the Patri­ot Free­dom Project which was being held at his Trump Nation­al Golf Club.

Also attend­ing the event was Mike Lin­dell, CEO of My Pil­low. Lin­dell has been a long ally and friend of Don­ald Trump and an out­spo­ken cham­pi­on of elec­tion integri­ty and crit­ic of the 2020 elec­tion. After the event, Lin­dell issued a pub­lic endorse­ment of Evans’ can­di­da­cy for Con­gress.

“I’m hon­ored to have Mike Lindell’s sup­port in this fight,” Evans said. “He’s a true war­rior who under­stands that we’re going to have to stand and fight on our front foot rather than back on our heels like the RINO who cur­rent­ly rep­re­sent this dis­trict in D.C.”

...

———–

“Der­rick Evans & Trump Speak at Patri­ot Free­dom Project Event” By Staff Writer; WV Statewide News; 06/29/2023

As we should expect, Lin­dell is a big Patri­ot Free­dom Project fan. Imag­ine that.

So did Evans end up win­ning his pri­ma­ry race? Nope. He was defeat­ed by the incum­bent, Car­ol Miller, much to the plea­sure of Jew­ish Repub­li­cans. Why were Jews hap­py to see Evans lose? Well, it turns out Evans is kind of a Nazi. Or at least he’s the type of per­son who thinks it’s “good ques­tion” to ask “whether the Jews stole” the 2020 elec­tion and were actu­al­ly behind the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion:

The Times of Israel

GOP Jews hap­py as Capi­tol riot­er accused of anti­semitism defeat­ed in WV pri­ma­ry

15 May 2024, 5:00 am

The Repub­li­can Jew­ish Coali­tion is cel­e­brat­ing after a can­di­date it endorsed in West Virginia’s con­gres­sion­al pri­ma­ry beat out a chal­lenger accused of anti­semitism.

Car­ol Miller, who has rep­re­sent­ed West Virginia’s first dis­trict since 2019, man­aged to stave off a chal­lenge from Der­rick Evans, who served a three-month jail sen­tence after livestream­ing him­self par­tic­i­pat­ing in the storm­ing of the US Capi­tol.

“Repub­li­can vot­ers in West Vir­ginia and Nebras­ka sound­ly reject­ed extrem­ist can­di­dates,” the RJC says in a state­ment.

While the state­ment does not men­tion Evans by name, it appears to allude to past com­ments he has made ques­tion­ing if Jews were behind the Jan­u­ary 6 insur­rec­tion.

In Feb­ru­ary, Evans appeared on the show of far-right stream­er Stew Peters and appeared to endorse the idea that Israel may have “been behind Jan­u­ary 6.” He added that “whether the Jews stole the elec­tion” was a good ques­tion to ask.

...

———-

“GOP Jews hap­py as Capi­tol riot­er accused of anti­semitism defeat­ed in WV pri­ma­ry”; The Times of Israel; 05/15/2024

“In Feb­ru­ary, Evans appeared on the show of far-right stream­er Stew Peters and appeared to endorse the idea that Israel may have “been behind Jan­u­ary 6.” He added that “whether the Jews stole the elec­tion” was a good ques­tion to ask.”

That’s Mike Lin­del­l’s endorsed can­di­date for West Vir­gini­a’s 1st dis­trict. The “Israel was behind Jan­u­ary 6” guy. He did­n’t win his pri­ma­ry, but not for lack
help. Der­rik Evans has influ­en­tial fans with deep pock­ets. Pock­ets that are going to be a lit­tle bit deep­er by the end of the $14.88 pil­lows sale.

Not all Bibles are equal, at least when it comes to their edu­ca­tion­al val­ue. That’s the appar­ent log­ic under­ly­ing a new edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy out of the state of Okla­homa as part of the state’s new man­date to put a Bible in every pub­lic class­room in the state. In fact, just two Bibles make the cut based on the weird cri­te­ria set out by the state: Lee Greenwood’s ‘God Bless the U.S.A.’ Bible and the ‘We The Peo­ple’ Bible. Both Bibles sell for much more than a typ­i­cal Bible, $60 and $90, respec­tive­ly. Oh, and it turns out both Bibles hap­pen to be endorsed by Don­ald Trump. Trump even received $300,000 in roy­al­ties from the God Bless the U.S.A. Bible already. Imag­ine that.

The bid­ding for the con­tract to sup­ply the Bibles also appears to have been rigged. Instead of a stan­dard min­i­mum four week win­dow to sub­mit bids, the state left it open for just two weeks, cit­ing an urgency to get the Bibles into the class­room.

So is Okla­homa plan­ning on pay­ing those pre­mi­um prices for these Trump-endorsed Bibles? Appar­ent­ly so. At least that’s what we can con­clude from the fact that Okla­homa’s super­in­ten­dent of schools, Ryan Wal­ters, has already request $3 mil­lion to pur­chase 55,000 Bibles, which trans­lates to about $55 allo­cat­ed per Bible.

Beyond that, we’re told that Wal­ters has been pro­mot­ing the ‘Bible in every class­room’ ini­tia­tive with nation­al groups. And that brings us to the fact that Wal­ters just hap­pens to have major nation­al aspi­ra­tions includ­ing the goal of get­ting tapped to join Don­ald Trump’s cab­i­net in the next Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Keep in mind this isn’t the first sto­ry we’ve seen involv­ing Wal­ter­s’s loy­al­ty to the MAGA agen­da. Recall how it was Wal­ters who ruled that stu­dents in Okla­homa could­n’t be taught about the 1921 Tul­sa race mas­sacre unless they were taught that it was­n’t about race. This was part of the ‘anti-CRT’ hys­te­ria that has gripped the GOP in recent years.

Nor is the Trump Bible sto­ry the only exam­ple of Wal­ters cozy­ing up to the Trump cam­paign in antic­i­pa­tion of his nation­al ambi­tions. Wal­ter­s’s state agency has also been issu­ing some rather ques­tion­able con­tracts to two groups asso­ci­at­ed with none oth­er than Russ and Mary Vought. As we’ve seen, the Voughts are key play­ers in the CNP’s Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist agen­da, espe­cial­ly the ongo­ing Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme. Or as Her­itage’s Kevin Roberts put it, the “sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion”: Recall how Russ Vought was the only depart­ment head­er under the first Trump term to actu­al­ly attempt to imple­ment the Sched­ule F ini­tia­tive Trump enact­ed two weeks before the 2020 elec­tion day. Months lat­er, in March of 2021, Vought penned a piece of Newsweek where he defend­ed the con­cept of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism and decried how it was being smeared by detrac­tors. Flash for­ward to Feb­ru­ary of this year, and we got Politi­co reports about how the Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca (CRA) — head­ed by Vought — was active­ly plan­ning on imple­ment­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist poli­cies under the next Trump admin­is­tra­tion. As we’ve seen, the CRA is one of the many think tanks active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Project 2025 schem­ing. Also this year, Russ Vought was one of three peo­ple tapped to craft the offi­cial RNC plat­form. Russ Vought is a key play­er in the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy’s (CNP) theo­crat­ic ambi­tions. And, of course, Mary Vought is an assumed CNP mem­ber.

Mary Vought’s con­sult­ing firm, Vought Strate­gies, was hired this by Wal­ter­s’s state agency, osten­si­bly for the pur­pose of recruit­ing teach­ers. In real­i­ty, the firm appears to have focused on secur­ing nation­al media appear­ances for Wal­ters, espe­cial­ly in con­ser­v­a­tive media. And like the trun­cat­ed bid­ding win­dow for the Bible ven­dors, the bid­ding for this media con­sult­ing con­tract was also short­er than the state’s guide­lines (3 weeks instead of a min­i­mum of 4 weeks), with Vought Strate­gies sub­mit­ting the sole bid. The con­tract has unsur­pris­ing­ly received crit­i­cism. What’s more sur­pris­ing is that much of that crit­i­cism has come from Wal­ter­s’s fel­low elect­ed Repub­li­cans, includ­ing the Speak­er of the Okla­homa House Charles McCall. As McCall put it, “you should not be spend­ing state funds, tax­pay­er dol­lars, for per­son­al pro­mo­tion.”

Anoth­er Vought-con­nect­ed ques­tion con­tract involves the com­pa­ny Pre­ci­sion Out­reach, which also received a con­tract from Wal­ter­s’s agency around the same time Vought Strate­gies won its con­tract. Pre­ci­sion Out­reach had pre­vi­ous­ly worked for the agency prod­uct con­tent includ­ing an anti-teacher-union that was shown at a State Board of Edu­ca­tion meet­ing this year. The video infu­ri­at­ed teach­ers and par­ents. Anoth­er video pro­duced by the com­pa­ny implied trans­gen­der stu­dents are a threat to school safe­ty. The head of Pre­ci­sion Out­reach, Jess Fields, actu­al­ly ran for office in 2016, using the same cam­paign man­ag­er who man­ages Wal­ter­s’s cam­paigns: Matt Langston. Both Langston and Mary Vought have been polit­i­cal pals since the two worked in Sen­a­tor Ron John­son’s office back in 2011. Langston also cur­rent­ly serves as the chief pol­i­cy advi­sor for Wal­ter­s’s state edu­ca­tion agency.

That’s all part of the con­text of the ‘Trump Bible’ sto­ry. This isn’t just a sto­ry about a rogue state super­in­ten­dent try­ing to cozy up to Trump. This is a sto­ry about one of the lead­ing can­di­dates for Trump’s Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion who has appar­ent­ly teamed up/bought off the Voughts, them­selves key play­ers in the ongo­ing CNP theo­crat­ic agen­da on the cusp of get­ting put into action under the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme:

The Okla­homan

‘Trump Bible’ one of few that meet Wal­ters’ cri­te­ria for Okla­homa class­rooms

Jen­nifer Palmer, Paul Monies, Heather War­lick
Okla­homa Watch
Pub­lished 6:33 am CT Octo­ber 4, 2024 | Updat­ed 12:51 pm CT Oct 4, 2024

Super­in­ten­dent Ryan Wal­ters isn’t just talk­ing about buy­ing Bibles for schools.

Bids opened Mon­day for a con­tract to sup­ply the state Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion with 55,000 Bibles. Accord­ing to the bid doc­u­ments, ven­dors must meet cer­tain spec­i­fi­ca­tions: Bibles must be the King James Ver­sion; must con­tain the Old and New Tes­ta­ments; must include copies of the Pledge of Alle­giance, Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion and the Bill of Rights; and must be bound in leather or leather-like mate­r­i­al.

A sales­per­son at Mardel Chris­t­ian & Edu­ca­tion searched, and though they car­ry 2,900 Bibles, none fit the para­me­ters.

But one Bible fits per­fect­ly: Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the U.S.A. Bible, endorsed by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and com­mon­ly referred to as the Trump Bible. They cost $60 each online, with Trump receiv­ing fees for his endorse­ment.

Mardel doesn’t car­ry the God Bless the U.S.A. Bible or anoth­er Bible that could meet the spec­i­fi­ca­tions, the We The Peo­ple Bible, which was also endorsed by Don­ald Trump Jr. It sells for $90.

“The RFP on its face seems fair, but with addi­tion­al scruti­ny, we can see there are very few Bibles on the mar­ket that would meet these cri­te­ria, and all of them have been endorsed by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump,” Okla­homa Apple­seed Cen­ter for Law and Jus­tice Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Colleen McCar­ty said.

For­mer Okla­homa Attor­ney Gen­er­al Drew Edmond­son said the request for pro­pos­als might vio­late state law.

“It appears to me that this bid is any­thing but com­pet­i­tive,” Edmond­son said. “It adds to the basic spec­i­fi­ca­tion oth­er require­ments that have noth­ing to do with the text. The spe­cial bind­ing and inclu­sion of gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments will exclude almost all bid­ders. If the bid specs exclude most bid­ders unnec­es­sar­i­ly, I could con­sid­er that a vio­la­tion.”

Sep­a­ra­tion of church and state con­cerns aside, much less expen­sive Bibles are read­i­ly avail­able. +, less than 5% of what the Trump-endorsed Bible would cost. There are many free Bible apps, too.

Though Wal­ters has fre­quent­ly said he wants Bibles in every class­room, he has also clar­i­fied pub­licly that he wants them in class­es where the Bible might apply to aca­d­e­m­ic stan­dards, such as his­to­ry or lit­er­a­ture. The request for 55,000 copies doesn’t fit either sce­nario; there are only 43,000 class­room teach­ers in the state, and many few­er teach­ing just his­to­ry or lit­er­a­ture.

If the Bibles cost $60 each, and the state buys 55,000, that’s $3.3 mil­lion.

Wal­ters: No ‘extra things’

On Sept. 26, Wal­ters asked for $3 mil­lion to pur­chase Bibles for Okla­homa class­rooms as part of his agency’s fis­cal year 2026 bud­get request to the Okla­homa Leg­is­la­ture.

“We have talked about ensur­ing that our his­to­ry cours­es include the role the Bible played through­out Amer­i­can his­to­ry,” Wal­ters said. “We’ve talked about the efforts of left-wing groups and the teach­ers’ unions to dri­ve the Bible out of school. I believe it’s impor­tant for his­tor­i­cal con­text for our kids to under­stand the role the Bible played.”

...

“We don’t want extra things in there; his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments are fine,” Wal­ters said. “If it’s the King James ver­sion and the Con­sti­tu­tion, the Magna Car­ta, things like that, that are also in statute that can be used in the class­room, that’s fine. But we don’t want com­men­tary around the Bible because this is to serve as a his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ence doc­u­ment.”

Bid­ding opened to fast-track Okla­homa class­room Bibles

Wal­ters said find­ing a Bible ven­dor should go through the com­pet­i­tive bid­ding process because that would be the clean­est, eas­i­est way to choose.

The board did not dis­cuss pur­chas­ing Bibles with the cur­rent bud­get year appro­pri­a­tion. How­ev­er, the state issued the solic­i­ta­tion Mon­day, and it’s open for just two weeks. The Office of Man­age­ment and Enter­prise Ser­vices typ­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends at least four weeks.

Dan Isett, Wal­ters’ spokesman, said their inten­tion with the RFP is to get Bibles dis­trib­uted to class­rooms as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

...

At least 130 peo­ple have resigned or been fired since Wal­ters took office in 2023, accord­ing to The Okla­homan.

‘Trump has praised our efforts’

In June, Wal­ters announced a man­date that a Bible should be in every Okla­homa class­room, though it’s unlike­ly he would have the author­i­ty to enforce that. The Okla­homa Supreme Court affirmed that school dis­tricts main­tain local con­trol over cur­ric­u­la. Some super­in­ten­dents across the state have said they do not intend to add the Bible to their cur­ricu­lum.

“We will not be forc­ing our teach­ers to do this,” Bix­by Super­in­ten­dent Rob Miller said on News Nation on Aug. 12. “As a Chris­t­ian myself, the idea of dimin­ish­ing the word of God to a mere class­room prop is a lit­tle repul­sive to me, so we will not be com­ply­ing with that direc­tive of hav­ing a phys­i­cal Bible in every class­room.”

Wal­ters has been tout­ing his Bible plan to local and nation­al groups. In these inter­views, he talks more about Chris­tian­i­ty than his­to­ry.

In one inter­view this week, Wal­ters claimed Democ­rats plan to teach kids to hate their coun­try as well as Chris­tian­i­ty and Judaism and said his Bible ini­tia­tive is an anti­dote to that.

“We are going to be so proud here in Okla­homa to be the first state in the coun­try to bring the Bible back to every sin­gle class­room and every state should be doing this.… Pres­i­dent Trump praised our efforts. Pres­i­dent Trump has been the leader on this issue.”

Wal­ters is a fre­quent guest on con­ser­v­a­tive pod­casts, radio shows and TV sta­tions. His agency has a $60,000 per year con­tract with D.C.-based Vought Strate­gies to book him for nation­al inter­views week­ly.

Wal­ters endorsed Trump, and many onlook­ers sur­mise he’s angling for a cab­i­net posi­tion if Trump wins in Novem­ber.

Trump licens­es his name, image and like­ness to be used in the Green­wood Bible’s mar­ket­ing. The company’s web­site says it has no con­nec­tion to the Trump cam­paign.

Finan­cial dis­clo­sure forms filed by Trump at the Office of Gov­ern­men­tal Ethics show he does ben­e­fit from Green­wood Bible sales through a Trump com­pa­ny, CIC Ven­tures LLC. His lat­est dis­clo­sure, obtained by Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics in Wash­ing­ton, shows Trump received $300,000 in roy­al­ties from the God Bless the U.S.A. Bible.

...

———–

“ ‘Trump Bible’ one of few that meet Wal­ters’ cri­te­ria for Okla­homa class­rooms” by Jen­nifer Palmer, Paul Monies, Heather War­lick; The Okla­homan; 10/04/2024

“In June, Wal­ters announced a man­date that a Bible should be in every Okla­homa class­room, though it’s unlike­ly he would have the author­i­ty to enforce that. The Okla­homa Supreme Court affirmed that school dis­tricts main­tain local con­trol over cur­ric­u­la. Some super­in­ten­dents across the state have said they do not intend to add the Bible to their cur­ricu­lum. ”

A ‘Bible in every class­room’ man­date by Okla­homa’s super­in­ten­dent. That alone is con­tro­ver­sial enough. But it’s the details of the man­date to expose just how cor­rupt this deci­sion real­ly was: the only Bibles that fit the stat­ed require­ments are Trump-endorsed Bibles. It’s a peek into the Trumpi­fied Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist theoc­ra­cy in store for the US. Deep bla­tant cor­rup­tion under the guise of pub­lic pious­ness:

...
A sales­per­son at Mardel Chris­t­ian & Edu­ca­tion searched, and though they car­ry 2,900 Bibles, none fit the para­me­ters.

But one Bible fits per­fect­ly: Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the U.S.A. Bible, endorsed by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and com­mon­ly referred to as the Trump Bible. They cost $60 each online, with Trump receiv­ing fees for his endorse­ment.

Mardel doesn’t car­ry the God Bless the U.S.A. Bible or anoth­er Bible that could meet the spec­i­fi­ca­tions, the We The Peo­ple Bible, which was also endorsed by Don­ald Trump Jr. It sells for $90.

“The RFP on its face seems fair, but with addi­tion­al scruti­ny, we can see there are very few Bibles on the mar­ket that would meet these cri­te­ria, and all of them have been endorsed by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump,” Okla­homa Apple­seed Cen­ter for Law and Jus­tice Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Colleen McCar­ty said.

For­mer Okla­homa Attor­ney Gen­er­al Drew Edmond­son said the request for pro­pos­als might vio­late state law.

“It appears to me that this bid is any­thing but com­pet­i­tive,” Edmond­son said. “It adds to the basic spec­i­fi­ca­tion oth­er require­ments that have noth­ing to do with the text. The spe­cial bind­ing and inclu­sion of gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments will exclude almost all bid­ders. If the bid specs exclude most bid­ders unnec­es­sar­i­ly, I could con­sid­er that a vio­la­tion.”
...

And note how it’s not just that the only Bibles that meet in man­date hap­pen to be Trump endorsed Bibles. They’re also wild­ly over­priced Bibles that cost $60 each. A price Wal­ters appears to be plan­ning on hav­ing the state pay based on the $3 mil­lion request he made a cou­ple of weeks ago:

...
Sep­a­ra­tion of church and state con­cerns aside, much less expen­sive Bibles are read­i­ly avail­able. +, less than 5% of what the Trump-endorsed Bible would cost. There are many free Bible apps, too.

Though Wal­ters has fre­quent­ly said he wants Bibles in every class­room, he has also clar­i­fied pub­licly that he wants them in class­es where the Bible might apply to aca­d­e­m­ic stan­dards, such as his­to­ry or lit­er­a­ture. The request for 55,000 copies doesn’t fit either sce­nario; there are only 43,000 class­room teach­ers in the state, and many few­er teach­ing just his­to­ry or lit­er­a­ture.

If the Bibles cost $60 each, and the state buys 55,000, that’s $3.3 mil­lion.

Wal­ters: No ‘extra things’

On Sept. 26, Wal­ters asked for $3 mil­lion to pur­chase Bibles for Okla­homa class­rooms as part of his agency’s fis­cal year 2026 bud­get request to the Okla­homa Leg­is­la­ture.

“We have talked about ensur­ing that our his­to­ry cours­es include the role the Bible played through­out Amer­i­can his­to­ry,” Wal­ters said. “We’ve talked about the efforts of left-wing groups and the teach­ers’ unions to dri­ve the Bible out of school. I believe it’s impor­tant for his­tor­i­cal con­text for our kids to under­stand the role the Bible played.”

...

Trump licens­es his name, image and like­ness to be used in the Green­wood Bible’s mar­ket­ing. The company’s web­site says it has no con­nec­tion to the Trump cam­paign.

Finan­cial dis­clo­sure forms filed by Trump at the Office of Gov­ern­men­tal Ethics show he does ben­e­fit from Green­wood Bible sales through a Trump com­pa­ny, CIC Ven­tures LLC. His lat­est dis­clo­sure, obtained by Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics in Wash­ing­ton, shows Trump received $300,000 in roy­al­ties from the God Bless the U.S.A. Bible.
...

And then there’s the cor­rupt nature of the bid­ding process. A fast-tracked bid­ding process that only went for a cou­ple of weeks under the pre­tense that the state was in a huge rush:

...
“We don’t want extra things in there; his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments are fine,” Wal­ters said. “If it’s the King James ver­sion and the Con­sti­tu­tion, the Magna Car­ta, things like that, that are also in statute that can be used in the class­room, that’s fine. But we don’t want com­men­tary around the Bible because this is to serve as a his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ence doc­u­ment.”

Bid­ding opened to fast-track Okla­homa class­room Bibles

Wal­ters said find­ing a Bible ven­dor should go through the com­pet­i­tive bid­ding process because that would be the clean­est, eas­i­est way to choose.

The board did not dis­cuss pur­chas­ing Bibles with the cur­rent bud­get year appro­pri­a­tion. How­ev­er, the state issued the solic­i­ta­tion Mon­day, and it’s open for just two weeks. The Office of Man­age­ment and Enter­prise Ser­vices typ­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends at least four weeks.

Dan Isett, Wal­ters’ spokesman, said their inten­tion with the RFP is to get Bibles dis­trib­uted to class­rooms as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.
...

But then we get to the gross nation­al angle to the this sto­ry: Ryan Wal­ters is wide­ly seen as angling for a Trump cab­i­net posi­tion. Along those lines, he’s not only pitch­ing his Bible plan to nation­al groups but his agency has hired Vought Strate­gies to man­age his nation­al media expo­sure. This is, of course, the con­sult­ing firm of CNP mem­ber Mary Vought, wife of Russ Vought, a key play­er in the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot. In March of 2021, Vought penned a piece of Newsweek where he defend­ed the con­cept of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism and decried how it was being smeared by detrac­tors. This year, Politi­co report­ed on how the Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca (CRA) — head­ed by Vought — was active­ly plan­ning on imple­ment­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist poli­cies under the next Trump admin­is­tra­tion. As we’ve seen, the CRA is one of the many think tanks active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Project 2025 schem­ing. Also this year, Vought was one of three peo­ple tapped to craft the offi­cial RNC plat­form. So Wal­ter­s’s office hired Vought Strate­gies for con­sult­ing work at the same time Wal­ters is rig­ging the ‘Bibles in the class­room’ process to ensure only Trump Bibles can be used. Wal­ters real­ly wants that Trump cab­i­net position...presumably Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary, at which point we’ll pre­sum­ably seen plans for Trump Bibles in every class­room in the US:

...
“We will not be forc­ing our teach­ers to do this,” Bix­by Super­in­ten­dent Rob Miller said on News Nation on Aug. 12. “As a Chris­t­ian myself, the idea of dimin­ish­ing the word of God to a mere class­room prop is a lit­tle repul­sive to me, so we will not be com­ply­ing with that direc­tive of hav­ing a phys­i­cal Bible in every class­room.”

Wal­ters has been tout­ing his Bible plan to local and nation­al groups. In these inter­views, he talks more about Chris­tian­i­ty than his­to­ry.

In one inter­view this week, Wal­ters claimed Democ­rats plan to teach kids to hate their coun­try as well as Chris­tian­i­ty and Judaism and said his Bible ini­tia­tive is an anti­dote to that.

“We are going to be so proud here in Okla­homa to be the first state in the coun­try to bring the Bible back to every sin­gle class­room and every state should be doing this.… Pres­i­dent Trump praised our efforts. Pres­i­dent Trump has been the leader on this issue.”

Wal­ters is a fre­quent guest on con­ser­v­a­tive pod­casts, radio shows and TV sta­tions. His agency has a $60,000 per year con­tract with D.C.-based Vought Strate­gies to book him for nation­al inter­views week­ly.

Wal­ters endorsed Trump, and many onlook­ers sur­mise he’s angling for a cab­i­net posi­tion if Trump wins in Novem­ber.
...

And that $60k per year con­tract with Vought Strate­gies brings us to the fol­low­ing arti­cle from back in May about the crit­i­cisms Wal­ters was receiv­ing over that con­tract. Crit­i­cism from fel­low Repub­li­cans, includ­ing for­mer state audi­tor Gary Jones, House Speak­er Charles McCall, and state rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mark McBride. Part of the crit­i­cism is root­ed in the fact that the stat­ed rea­son for hir­ing Vought Strate­gies — aid­ing with teacher recruit­ment — does­n’t appear to be relat­ed to what the group has done for Wal­ters. Instead, the group has been book­ing media inter­views and writ­ing op-eds. As McCall put it, “My view of it is you should not be spend­ing state funds, tax­pay­er dol­lars, for per­son­al pro­mo­tion.”

Inter­est­ing­ly, Vought Strate­gies isn’t the only recip­i­ent of a seem­ing­ly cor­rupt con­tract from Wal­ter­s’s office: anoth­er firm hired to engage in media work, Pre­ci­sion Out­reach, hap­pens to be owned by Jess Fields, who ran for office in 2016 using the same cam­paign man­ag­er Ryan Wal­ters uses today: Matt Langston. Langston is now the state edu­ca­tion depart­men­t’s chief pol­i­cy advis­er and also hap­pens to be polit­i­cal pals with Mary Vought. So we have mul­ti­ple ques­tion­able con­tracts com­ing out of Wal­ter­s’s office involv­ing Vought. It’s clas­sic polit­i­cal patron­age at work, orches­trat­ed by the guy who clear­ly wants to be Trump Bibles to every pub­lic school in the US:

The Okla­homan

Ryan Wal­ters’ out­side PR con­tract should be banned, GOP law­mak­er says

Jen­nifer Palmer
Okla­homa Watch
Pub­lished 11:43 am CT May 24 2024

Super­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Instruc­tion Ryan Wal­ters would be barred from spend­ing state funds on a nation­al pub­lic­i­ty con­tract with Wash­ing­ton, D.C.-based Vought Strate­gies under spend­ing lim­its a Repub­li­can law­mak­er said he would intro­duce as part of the fis­cal 2025 state bud­get.

Their ser­vices aren’t an appro­pri­ate use of pub­lic mon­ey because they prop up Wal­ters’ polit­i­cal aspi­ra­tions, for­mer state audi­tor Gary Jones, House Speak­er Charles McCall, and oth­ers said.

Wal­ters hired Vought Strate­gies to book media inter­views and write op-eds for $200 per hour. The ini­tial con­tract is for four months with three one-year exten­sions pos­si­ble, for a poten­tial total of at least $210,000.

It could be sub­stan­tial­ly more. Vought’s bid for $5,000 per month, dat­ed Nov. 9, was made part of the con­tract as an attach­ment. Also incor­po­rat­ed in the con­tract is a more detailed pric­ing pro­pos­al dat­ed Nov. 14 total­ing $5,000 per week.

The con­tract says the more recent ver­sion super­sedes ear­li­er ver­sions.

The Okla­homa Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion paid Vought Strate­gies $20,000 for Sep­tem­ber to Jan­u­ary, before the con­tract went into effect, and agreed to $30,000 for the ini­tial con­tract peri­od of March through June, pub­lic records show.

Rep. Mark McBride, R‑Moore, wants to end that type of agency spend­ing. McBride pro­posed spend­ing lim­its tied to the fis­cal 2025 bud­get, includ­ing one to pro­hib­it the Edu­ca­tion Depart­ment and Board of Edu­ca­tion from spend­ing state mon­ey on third-par­ty ser­vices relat­ed to adver­tis­ing, secur­ing media inter­views, pub­lic rela­tions, or pub­lic pro­mo­tion.

Addi­tion­al spend­ing lim­its pro­posed by McBride, who is serv­ing his final term in the House due to term lim­its and is chair­man of the Appro­pri­a­tions and Bud­get Edu­ca­tion sub­com­mit­tee, relate to fed­er­al edu­ca­tion fund­ing.

...

“My view of it is you should not be spend­ing state funds, tax­pay­er dol­lars, for per­son­al pro­mo­tion,” McCall said. “I’m sure the House, this cycle, will cer­tain­ly com­mit to a lim­its bill, includ­ing the edu­ca­tion bud­get, to specif­i­cal­ly pro­hib­it that type of expen­di­ture going for­ward. But I’m cer­tain­ly very sur­prised to hear that mon­ey is being used for that any­where in state gov­ern­ment.”

Even Gov. Kevin Stitt, a staunch sup­port­er of Wal­ters, in response to ques­tions about the Vought con­tract, said all tax­pay­er spend­ing should be scru­ti­nized and that it’s a fair point to ask ques­tions of every agency that hires PR firms.

Ryan Wal­ters says the con­tract is need­ed for teacher recruit­ment. But pitch­es made do not address teacher recruit­ment

Wal­ters has said the con­tract is need­ed to help with teacher recruit­ment. None of the email pitch­es obtained by Okla­homa Watch and FOX 25 in a joint inves­ti­ga­tion pub­lished March 13 address that top­ic. Vought Strate­gies pitched inter­views about fen­tanyl and the south­ern bor­der, drag queens in the class­room, teacher unions, library books and his appoint­ment of Chaya Raichik, the far-right social media influ­encer behind Libs of Tik­Tok, to a library advi­so­ry com­mit­tee.

“There’s a big dif­fer­ence between hir­ing a PR firm to do pub­lic rela­tions for the state and hir­ing one to pro­mote your­self on a nation­al lev­el,” McBride said.

The con­tract went through the state’s com­pet­i­tive bid­ding process but failed to attract any com­pe­ti­tion. The pur­pose of com­pet­i­tive bid­ding is to pre­vent favoritism and cor­rup­tion, and save tax­pay­ers mon­ey.

The Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion issued a request for pro­pos­als in Octo­ber for nation­al media com­mu­ni­ca­tions. After a three-week win­dow to sub­mit bids (one week short­er than rec­om­mend­ed), Vought sub­mit­ted the only pro­pos­al.

The agency’s only ven­dor qual­i­fi­ca­tion was 10 years of expe­ri­ence plac­ing nation­al media book­ings.

Edu­ca­tion depart­ment staff pushed for approval of Vought, even though her firm lacked the nec­es­sary insur­ance, emails obtained under the Okla­homa Open Records Act revealed.

“The agency is urgent­ly in need of these ser­vices,” the department’s pro­cure­ment offi­cer, Rebec­ca Thomp­son, wrote in a Feb. 12 email to the Okla­homa Office of Man­age­ment and Enter­prise Ser­vices, known as OMES.

The agency’s legal coun­sel, Bryan Cleve­land, had object­ed because Vought Strate­gies didn’t have any lia­bil­i­ty insur­ance. At one point, the entire con­tract was put on hold. Ulti­mate­ly, Vought pro­vid­ed a cer­tifi­cate demon­strat­ing a $1 mil­lion pol­i­cy for work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion and employer’s lia­bil­i­ty. That fell short of the state’s require­ments, but the agency accept­ed the addi­tion­al risk.

The con­tract calls for a lia­bil­i­ty pol­i­cy lim­it of $5 mil­lion.

A dif­fer­ent con­tract was award­ed at about the same time under sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances. Pre­ci­sion Out­reach was the only bid­der for a con­tract to pro­duce videos and social media posts. The com­pa­ny, based in Texas, had already worked for the agency, pro­duc­ing the anti-teacher-union video shown at a State Board of Edu­ca­tion meet­ing May 25 that infu­ri­at­ed teach­ers and par­ents in the room, some of whom walked out in protest, as well as a video that implied trans­gen­der stu­dents are a threat to school safe­ty. The agency paid Pre­ci­sion Out­reach $22,500 last year for that work.

On March 4, the Depart­ment award­ed Pre­ci­sion Out­reach a con­tract esti­mat­ed at $50,000 to cre­ate 10 social media posts and two videos per month for $7,500 a month, accord­ing to records obtained by FOX 25 (KOKH-TV). It’s for the same time­frame as Vought’s con­tract.

Con­tracts go to polit­i­cal pals

Mary Vought, pres­i­dent and founder of Vought Strate­gies, is a polit­i­cal pal of Wal­ters’ right-hand man and cam­paign man­ag­er, Matt Langston.

Also con­nect­ed to Langston is Jess Fields, head of Texas-based Pre­ci­sion Out­reach.

...

Langston is the agency’s chief pol­i­cy advi­sor and Wal­ters’ cam­paign man­ag­er.

Wal­ters’ cam­paign has paid Langston’s com­pa­ny, Engage Right, a total of $21,500 since 2022, expen­di­ture reports show. The most recent pay­ment was $5,000 on March 4.

Vought and Langston have trav­eled in the same polit­i­cal cir­cles since at least 2011, when they both worked for U.S. Sen­a­tor Ron John­son.

Vought recent­ly joined The Her­itage Foun­da­tion, the con­ser­v­a­tive think tank behind Project 2025, a frame­work for ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­cy changes writ­ten for the poten­tial return of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. One of the main tenets of Project 2025 is elim­i­nat­ing the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion by mov­ing some pro­grams to oth­er fed­er­al agen­cies and shut­ter­ing oth­ers.

Vought’s hus­band is Rus­sell Vought, a close ally of Trump who served in his admin­is­tra­tion. Russ Vought has been a key advi­sor to the House Free­dom Cau­cus, a fac­tion of hard-right Repub­li­can law­mak­ers. He’s pres­i­dent of The Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca, a think tank prepar­ing for a sec­ond Trump term that is devel­op­ing poli­cies aligned with Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist ideas, accord­ing to Politi­co.

Fields, the own­er of Pre­ci­sion Out­reach, unsuc­cess­ful­ly ran for a House seat in Texas in 2016. Fields’ senior cam­paign advi­sor was Langston. Fields’ cam­paign paid more than $100,000 to Axiom Strate­gies, where Langston was vice pres­i­dent, and $9,000 to Matt Langston direct­ly, FOX 25 report­ed.

Claims of con­tract exten­sion were untrue

In a March inter­view with FOX 25 reporter Wendy Suares, Edu­ca­tion Depart­ment Spokesman Dan Isett said some email pitch­es pre-date the March 6 con­tract because the depart­ment had an ear­li­er con­tract. They didn’t. The depart­ment used its dis­cre­tionary spend­ing author­i­ty to hire Vought tem­porar­i­ly.

When asked about rules that bar bid­ders from com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the agency until a con­tract is final­ized, Isett told FOX 25 he had an email from cen­tral pur­chas­ing say­ing the agency could legal­ly con­tin­ue work­ing with Vought while com­pet­i­tive bid­ding was under­way. OMES con­duct­ed a thor­ough search of its emails at the request of Okla­homa Watch and didn’t locate an email that fits that descrip­tion.

The Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion has only par­tial­ly respond­ed to Okla­homa Watch’s requests under the Okla­homa Open Records Act that would pro­vide answers to ques­tions about the con­tract. A March 13 request for con­tracts and pay­ment records has been par­tial­ly filled; a request filed April 26 for com­mu­ni­ca­tions with Vought Strate­gies remains unfilled.

...

————–

“Ryan Wal­ters’ out­side PR con­tract should be banned, GOP law­mak­er says” by Jen­nifer Palmer; The Okla­homan; 05/24/2024

“Wal­ters has said the con­tract is need­ed to help with teacher recruit­ment. None of the email pitch­es obtained by Okla­homa Watch and FOX 25 in a joint inves­ti­ga­tion pub­lished March 13 address that top­ic. Vought Strate­gies pitched inter­views about fen­tanyl and the south­ern bor­der, drag queens in the class­room, teacher unions, library books and his appoint­ment of Chaya Raichik, the far-right social media influ­encer behind Libs of Tik­Tok, to a library advi­so­ry com­mit­tee. ”

Why did Wal­ter­s’s agency hire Vought Strate­gies? Teacher recruit­ment, accord­ing to Wal­ters. The only prob­lem is noth­ing Vought has done has any­thing to do with teacher recruit­ment. Instead, Vought Strate­gies appears to have been hired to pro­mote Wal­ter­s’s polit­i­cal career nation­al­ly:

...
Wal­ters hired Vought Strate­gies to book media inter­views and write op-eds for $200 per hour. The ini­tial con­tract is for four months with three one-year exten­sions pos­si­ble, for a poten­tial total of at least $210,000.

It could be sub­stan­tial­ly more. Vought’s bid for $5,000 per month, dat­ed Nov. 9, was made part of the con­tract as an attach­ment. Also incor­po­rat­ed in the con­tract is a more detailed pric­ing pro­pos­al dat­ed Nov. 14 total­ing $5,000 per week.

The con­tract says the more recent ver­sion super­sedes ear­li­er ver­sions.

The Okla­homa Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion paid Vought Strate­gies $20,000 for Sep­tem­ber to Jan­u­ary, before the con­tract went into effect, and agreed to $30,000 for the ini­tial con­tract peri­od of March through June, pub­lic records show.
...

And note the polit­i­cal fig­ures crit­i­ciz­ing Wal­ters for this ques­tion­able spend­ing: Wal­ter­s’s fel­low Repub­li­cans:

...
Their ser­vices aren’t an appro­pri­ate use of pub­lic mon­ey because they prop up Wal­ters’ polit­i­cal aspi­ra­tions, for­mer state audi­tor Gary Jones, House Speak­er Charles McCall, and oth­ers said.

...

Rep. Mark McBride, R‑Moore, wants to end that type of agency spend­ing. McBride pro­posed spend­ing lim­its tied to the fis­cal 2025 bud­get, includ­ing one to pro­hib­it the Edu­ca­tion Depart­ment and Board of Edu­ca­tion from spend­ing state mon­ey on third-par­ty ser­vices relat­ed to adver­tis­ing, secur­ing media inter­views, pub­lic rela­tions, or pub­lic pro­mo­tion.

Addi­tion­al spend­ing lim­its pro­posed by McBride, who is serv­ing his final term in the House due to term lim­its and is chair­man of the Appro­pri­a­tions and Bud­get Edu­ca­tion sub­com­mit­tee, relate to fed­er­al edu­ca­tion fund­ing.

...

“My view of it is you should not be spend­ing state funds, tax­pay­er dol­lars, for per­son­al pro­mo­tion,” McCall said. “I’m sure the House, this cycle, will cer­tain­ly com­mit to a lim­its bill, includ­ing the edu­ca­tion bud­get, to specif­i­cal­ly pro­hib­it that type of expen­di­ture going for­ward. But I’m cer­tain­ly very sur­prised to hear that mon­ey is being used for that any­where in state gov­ern­ment.”

...

And then there’s the now-famil­iar trun­cat­ed bid­ding process, which end­ed with the hir­ing of Vought Strate­gies despite the firm not hav­ing the required lia­bil­i­ty insur­ance:

...
The con­tract went through the state’s com­pet­i­tive bid­ding process but failed to attract any com­pe­ti­tion. The pur­pose of com­pet­i­tive bid­ding is to pre­vent favoritism and cor­rup­tion, and save tax­pay­ers mon­ey.

The Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion issued a request for pro­pos­als in Octo­ber for nation­al media com­mu­ni­ca­tions. After a three-week win­dow to sub­mit bids (one week short­er than rec­om­mend­ed), Vought sub­mit­ted the only pro­pos­al.

The agency’s only ven­dor qual­i­fi­ca­tion was 10 years of expe­ri­ence plac­ing nation­al media book­ings.

Edu­ca­tion depart­ment staff pushed for approval of Vought, even though her firm lacked the nec­es­sary insur­ance, emails obtained under the Okla­homa Open Records Act revealed.

“The agency is urgent­ly in need of these ser­vices,” the department’s pro­cure­ment offi­cer, Rebec­ca Thomp­son, wrote in a Feb. 12 email to the Okla­homa Office of Man­age­ment and Enter­prise Ser­vices, known as OMES.

The agency’s legal coun­sel, Bryan Cleve­land, had object­ed because Vought Strate­gies didn’t have any lia­bil­i­ty insur­ance. At one point, the entire con­tract was put on hold. Ulti­mate­ly, Vought pro­vid­ed a cer­tifi­cate demon­strat­ing a $1 mil­lion pol­i­cy for work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion and employer’s lia­bil­i­ty. That fell short of the state’s require­ments, but the agency accept­ed the addi­tion­al risk.

The con­tract calls for a lia­bil­i­ty pol­i­cy lim­it of $5 mil­lion.
...

But the hir­ing of Vought Strate­gies was just one exam­ple of Wal­ter­s’s agency engag­ing in what appears to be cor­rupt con­tracts: anoth­er firm hired to engage in media work, Pre­ci­sion Out­reach, hap­pens to be owned by Jess Fields, who ran for office in 2016 using the same cam­paign man­ag­er Ryan Wal­ters uses today: Matt Langston. Langston is now the state edu­ca­tion depart­men­t’s chief pol­i­cy advis­er and also hap­pens to be polit­i­cal pals with Mary Vought, going back to when they were both work­ing for Sen­a­tor Ron John­son in 2011:

...
A dif­fer­ent con­tract was award­ed at about the same time under sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances. Pre­ci­sion Out­reach was the only bid­der for a con­tract to pro­duce videos and social media posts. The com­pa­ny, based in Texas, had already worked for the agency, pro­duc­ing the anti-teacher-union video shown at a State Board of Edu­ca­tion meet­ing May 25 that infu­ri­at­ed teach­ers and par­ents in the room, some of whom walked out in protest, as well as a video that implied trans­gen­der stu­dents are a threat to school safe­ty. The agency paid Pre­ci­sion Out­reach $22,500 last year for that work.

On March 4, the Depart­ment award­ed Pre­ci­sion Out­reach a con­tract esti­mat­ed at $50,000 to cre­ate 10 social media posts and two videos per month for $7,500 a month, accord­ing to records obtained by FOX 25 (KOKH-TV). It’s for the same time­frame as Vought’s con­tract.

Con­tracts go to polit­i­cal pals

Mary Vought, pres­i­dent and founder of Vought Strate­gies, is a polit­i­cal pal of Wal­ters’ right-hand man and cam­paign man­ag­er, Matt Langston.

Also con­nect­ed to Langston is Jess Fields, head of Texas-based Pre­ci­sion Out­reach.

...

Langston is the agency’s chief pol­i­cy advi­sor and Wal­ters’ cam­paign man­ag­er.

Wal­ters’ cam­paign has paid Langston’s com­pa­ny, Engage Right, a total of $21,500 since 2022, expen­di­ture reports show. The most recent pay­ment was $5,000 on March 4.

Vought and Langston have trav­eled in the same polit­i­cal cir­cles since at least 2011, when they both worked for U.S. Sen­a­tor Ron John­son.

Vought recent­ly joined The Her­itage Foun­da­tion, the con­ser­v­a­tive think tank behind Project 2025, a frame­work for ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­cy changes writ­ten for the poten­tial return of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. One of the main tenets of Project 2025 is elim­i­nat­ing the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion by mov­ing some pro­grams to oth­er fed­er­al agen­cies and shut­ter­ing oth­ers.

Vought’s hus­band is Rus­sell Vought, a close ally of Trump who served in his admin­is­tra­tion. Russ Vought has been a key advi­sor to the House Free­dom Cau­cus, a fac­tion of hard-right Repub­li­can law­mak­ers. He’s pres­i­dent of The Cen­ter for Renew­ing Amer­i­ca, a think tank prepar­ing for a sec­ond Trump term that is devel­op­ing poli­cies aligned with Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist ideas, accord­ing to Politi­co.

Fields, the own­er of Pre­ci­sion Out­reach, unsuc­cess­ful­ly ran for a House seat in Texas in 2016. Fields’ senior cam­paign advi­sor was Langston. Fields’ cam­paign paid more than $100,000 to Axiom Strate­gies, where Langston was vice pres­i­dent, and $9,000 to Matt Langston direct­ly, FOX 25 report­ed.
...

This isn’t just a cor­rupt net­work. It’s cozi­ly cor­rupt. Or at least that’s how it appears. Exact­ly the kind of appear­ance of cozy cor­rup­tion that should appeal­ing great­ly to Don­ald Trump’s ego. In oth­er words, try not to be shocked when Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion Ryan Wal­ters rolls out his ‘MAGA Bibles in every class­room in Amer­i­ca!’ plan dur­ing the upcom­ing sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Well, at least try not to be sur­prised. And also try to not be sur­prised when you learn about how the scheme was exe­cut­ed in wild­ly cor­rupt man­ner that enrich­es then-Pres­i­dent Trump. All inno­cent­ly done in the name of pro­mot­ing the teach­ings of Jesus, of course.

He’s not a Black Nazi. No, no. He’s like an Allied sol­dier fight­ing the Nazis. It’s the media who are the real Nazis. That was the spin we got recent­ly from the GOP’s guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date for North Car­oli­na, Mark Robin­son, dur­ing an event last week. The lat­est “ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca” event orga­nized by Clary Clark and Michael Fly­nn, but also fea­tur­ing speak­ers like Eric Trump and close Trump fig­ures like Kash Patel. As Robin­son declared dur­ing the event:

I guar­an­tee you, CNN will not win that fight. They will not. Because we’re going to take them to task, folks. It’s high time that we stop being afraid of the news media. High time. Those boys in those Hig­gins boats weren’t afraid of those Ger­mans. Why in the hell should I be afraid of CNN?

It’s Robin­son and the Trump cam­paign vs CNN and the rest of the Nazis. That was the fram­ing on dis­play.

Or at least part of the fram­ing. Let’s not for­get how these ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca events have become the show­case for a very real Trump-cen­trist strain of prophet­ic Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism, where Don­ald Trump is pro­claimed an agent of God, sent to earth to fight the demon­ic agents of Satan. Jew­ish agents of Satan, in par­tic­u­lar. Recall that sto­ry about how the Trump-owned Doral Resort host­ed a ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca event back in May of 2023 fea­tur­ing QAnon fig­ures like vir­u­lent anti­semite Scott McK­ay.

But this ReAwak­en Amer­i­can event was­n’t the only recent ReAwak­en-relat­ed gath­er­ing involv­ing the Trump cam­paign. A pri­vate invi­ta­tion-only gath­er­ing of pas­tors was also orga­nized by Clark. But not just any pas­tors. Eric Trump specif­i­cal­ly request­ed “non­whack­adoo­dle” pas­tors who would be care­ful­ly vet­ted so his father could address them direct­ly. As we should expect, if the list of pas­tors who attend­ed are con­sid­ered ‘non­whack­adoo­dles’, it’s dif­fi­cult to imag­ine just how whacked out whack­adoo­dles must be.

But this isn’t just only report about the Trump cam­paign’s reli­gious out­reach via Clay Clark and Michael Fly­n­n’s efforts. We got anoth­er report about a very sur­pris­ing Trump boost­er. The kind of sur­prise that serves as a pow­er­ful reminder that fas­cist impuls­es can serve as a pow­er­ful social glue: the Mus­lim may­or of Ham­tram­ck, Michi­gan, Amer Ghal­ib, is a huge Trump boost­er. It’s a polit­i­cal alliance that has emerged in recent years as the may­or — who won office with the sup­port of much of Ham­tram­ck­’s white lib­er­al pop­u­lace — adopt­ed one anti-LGBTQ stance after anoth­er. But there was­n’t one fig­ure in par­tic­u­lar who appears to have helped bring Mr. Ghal­ib into the MAGA-fold: Michael Fly­nn. The same Michael Fly­nn who noto­ri­ous declared dur­ing a Novem­ber 2021 ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca event that “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one reli­gion. One nation under God and one reli­gion under God.”. Yes, the ‘Amer­i­ca is a Chris­t­ian-only nation’ guy is the per­son who played a role in build­ing a MAGA-Mus­lim alliance.

As we should prob­a­bly expect, Mr Ghal­ib has a his­to­ry of post­ing jokes hor­ri­bly dis­parag­ing of African Amer­i­cans on social media posts, although those posts sud­den­ly stopped after get­ting elect­ed. But as we should also expect, it appears May­or Ghal­ib is a big fan of not just Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan of Turkey but the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in gen­er­al. This is a good time to recall the GOP’s decades-old rela­tion­ship with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, as expem­pli­fied by Grover Norquist’s Islam­ic Insti­tute and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s ties to Mus­lim Broth­er­hood activist Sami al Ari­an. This isn’t new.

That said, George W Bush did­n’t try to imple­ment a Mus­lim ban like Trump, who has cam­paigned this year on bring­ing the Mus­lim ban back. And yet, despite all that, recent polls show Trump lead­ing Kamala Har­ris among Arab Amer­i­cans. That’s also part of the con­text of May­or Ghal­ib’s embrace of Trump. It real­ly could swing the elec­tion in Trump’s favor. It’s that close.

So while we have yet to see how the 2024 elec­tion is going to unfold, it’s pret­ty clear at this point that the­o­log­i­cal lead­er­ship is play­ing a major role in gal­va­niz­ing the pro-Trump forces in this race. Incred­i­bly bad-faithed the­o­log­i­cal lead­er­ship for a shock­ing vari­ety of bad-faithed lead­ers seem­ing­ly unit­ed under a shared deter­mi­na­tion to stamp out pro­gres­sive pol­i­tics for good:

Media Mat­ters for Amer­i­ca

At Team Trump-backed event, Mark Robin­son com­pares him­self fight­ing the news media to Allied sol­diers fight­ing Nazis

Writ­ten by Eric Hanano­ki

Pub­lished 10/22/24 4:01 PM EDT

North Car­oli­na Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al nom­i­nee Mark Robin­son recent­ly spoke on the Trump-backed “ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca” tour, where he com­pared fight­ing the news media to bat­tling Nazis at Nor­mandy Beach. His speech was well-received by Trump ally and ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca co-orga­niz­er Mike Fly­nn, who asked the audi­ence to donate to Robinson’s cam­paign.

Robinson’s rhetoric echoes that of for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, who has referred to the news media as the “ene­my of the Amer­i­can peo­ple.” Trump has also explic­it­ly threat­ened to use gov­ern­ment resources to tar­get news orga­ni­za­tions.

...

Despite Don­ald Trump’s con­nec­tions to Robin­son, includ­ing endors­ing his cam­paign, the for­mer pres­i­dent has recent­ly feigned igno­rance of Robin­son. But this past week­end, in a seem­ing­ly unan­nounced and lit­tle-noticed appear­ance, Robin­son spoke at the ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca tour’s stop in Sel­ma, North Car­oli­na, along­side mem­bers of Trump’s “inner cir­cle.”

The event fea­tured speech­es from Trump sur­ro­gates Eric Trump, Kash Patel, and Ali­na Hab­ba, along with sev­er­al extrem­ists who have pushed the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that Hur­ri­cane Helene was a con­trolled or manip­u­lat­ed weath­er event. (ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca events have also host­ed mul­ti­ple anti­se­mit­ic speak­ers.) Oth­er stops on the tour have been held at a Trump prop­er­ty.

Co-orga­niz­er Clay Clark recent­ly said that close friend Eric Trump and oth­ers request­ed the event because North Car­oli­na “is a state that we need to win to restore Pres­i­dent Don­ald J. Trump back into the White House.” Clark also orga­nized Don­ald Trump’s Octo­ber 21 event with pas­tors.

Robin­son appeared on the sec­ond day of the Sel­ma event on Octo­ber 19. Dur­ing his speech, Robin­son told the audi­ence about Allied forces fight­ing Nazi Ger­many dur­ing World War II, includ­ing at the Bat­tle of Nor­mandy. He then com­pared his “fight” against the news media to the D‑Day land­ings by Amer­i­can troops, stat­ing:

MARK ROBINSON: I guar­an­tee you, CNN will not win that fight. They will not. Because we’re going to take them to task, folks. It’s high time that we stop being afraid of the news media. High time. Those boys in those Hig­gins boats weren’t afraid of those Ger­mans. Why in the hell should I be afraid of CNN?

Fol­low­ing the speech, Clark said that Robin­son is “a real Amer­i­can hero.” Fly­nn, who is a poten­tial mem­ber of Trump’s sec­ond admin­is­tra­tion, also praised Robin­son, say­ing that “we need him in the gov­er­nor’s office,” and encour­aged peo­ple to donate to his cam­paign to com­bat the “demons” fight­ing against them.

———-

“At Team Trump-backed event, Mark Robin­son com­pares him­self fight­ing the news media to Allied sol­diers fight­ing Nazis” by Eric Hanano­ki; Media Mat­ters for Amer­i­ca; 10/22/2024

“Despite Don­ald Trump’s con­nec­tions to Robin­son, includ­ing endors­ing his cam­paign, the for­mer pres­i­dent has recent­ly feigned igno­rance of Robin­son. But this past week­end, in a seem­ing­ly unan­nounced and lit­tle-noticed appear­ance, Robin­son spoke at the ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca tour’s stop in Sel­ma, North Car­oli­na, along­side mem­bers of Trump’s “inner cir­cle.””

LOL! Who is this Mark Robin­son fel­low?! That was the Trump cam­paign’s response to Mark Robin­son’s “I’m a Black Nazi!” scan­dal. And then they held a Robin­son Ral­ly. At a ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca event, not less. Recall how it was a Novem­ber 2021 ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca event when Michael Fly­nn declared that “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one reli­gion. One nation under God and one reli­gion under God.”. Also recall how the Trump-owned Doral Resort host­ed a ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca event back in May of 2023 fea­tur­ing QAnon fig­ures like vir­u­lent anti­semite Scott McK­ay. Far right extrem­ism is the norm for ReAwak­en events. Hold­ing one for Mark Robin­son is very on brand:

...
The event fea­tured speech­es from Trump sur­ro­gates Eric Trump, Kash Patel, and Ali­na Hab­ba, along with sev­er­al extrem­ists who have pushed the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that Hur­ri­cane Helene was a con­trolled or manip­u­lat­ed weath­er event. (ReAwak­en Amer­i­ca events have also host­ed mul­ti­ple anti­se­mit­ic speak­ers.) Oth­er stops on the tour have been held at a Trump prop­er­ty.

...

Robin­son appeared on the sec­ond day of the Sel­ma event on Octo­ber 19. Dur­ing his speech, Robin­son told the audi­ence about Allied forces fight­ing Nazi Ger­many dur­ing World War II, includ­ing at the Bat­tle of Nor­mandy. He then com­pared his “fight” against the news media to the D‑Day land­ings by Amer­i­can troops, stat­ing:

MARK ROBINSON: I guar­an­tee you, CNN will not win that fight. They will not. Because we’re going to take them to task, folks. It’s high time that we stop being afraid of the news media. High time. Those boys in those Hig­gins boats weren’t afraid of those Ger­mans. Why in the hell should I be afraid of CNN?

Fol­low­ing the speech, Clark said that Robin­son is “a real Amer­i­can hero.” Fly­nn, who is a poten­tial mem­ber of Trump’s sec­ond admin­is­tra­tion, also praised Robin­son, say­ing that “we need him in the gov­er­nor’s office,” and encour­aged peo­ple to donate to his cam­paign to com­bat the “demons” fight­ing against them.
...

But this was­n’t the only ‘ReAwak­en’ event orga­nized by Clay Clark for the Trump cam­paign this month. Clark also orga­nized a ‘pas­tor event’ for Trump:

...
Co-orga­niz­er Clay Clark recent­ly said that close friend Eric Trump and oth­ers request­ed the event because North Car­oli­na “is a state that we need to win to restore Pres­i­dent Don­ald J. Trump back into the White House.” Clark also orga­nized Don­ald Trump’s Octo­ber 21 event with pas­tors.
...

And as the fol­low­ing piece describes, that ‘pas­tor event’ for Trump was­n’t just a gath­er­ing of any group of pas­tors. No, these were the prophet­ic pas­tors known for claims like Trump is ‘anoint­ed to be King’. But if that sounds like a gath­er­ing of “wack­adoo­dles” for Trump, note the detail Clark shared about the orga­niz­ing con­cept behind the gath­er­ing: accord­ing to Clark, Eric Trump approached him about orga­niz­ing the event with a request that the and “nonwack­adoo­dle” pas­tors sup­port­ing Trump be invit­ed so Don­ald Trump could address them. Eric Trump report­ed­ly added that it should be “an invi­ta­tion-only thing” event and “we’re vet­ting every­body very care­ful­ly.” So when you read the descrip­tions below of the unhinged pas­tors who attend­ed this event, keep in mind that these were the nonwack­adoo­dle vet­ted pas­tors:

Media Mat­ters for Amer­i­ca

Trump sched­uled to address right-wing media “prophets” and pas­tors who claim he’s “anoint­ed to be King”

The 11th Hour Faith Lead­ers Meet­ing is orga­nized by con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist Clay Clark, who once sug­gest­ed that Trump’s son-in-law might be a Chi­nese clone

Writ­ten by Pay­ton Arm­strong
Research con­tri­bu­tions from Eric Hanano­ki
Pub­lished 10/18/24 5:06 PM EDT

For­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is sched­uled to address a group of extreme right-wing media “prophets” and pas­tors who have claimed that “demon­ic forces” are behind the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the Har­ris cam­paign, declared that Trump is “anoint­ed to be king,” and said that Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Kamala Har­ris and vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Tim Walz “go to church­es that are syn­a­gogues of Satan” because they are Bap­tist and Luther­an.

The 11th Hour Faith Lead­ers Meet­ing, sched­uled for Octo­ber 21 in North Car­oli­na, is appar­ent­ly being orga­nized by Clay Clark, co-founder of the ReAwak­en Tour, which holds events across the coun­try that have fea­tured QAnon influ­encers, pro-Trump “prophets,” Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists, and fig­ures who have praised Hitler. Clark has pro­mot­ed numer­ous con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, includ­ing that Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kush­n­er, may have been replaced by a clone cre­at­ed by the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment and that the U.S. gov­ern­ment cre­at­ed or wors­ened Hur­ri­cane Helene through “weath­er manip­u­la­tion.”

Clark revealed in a recent inter­view that Eric Trump had asked him to orga­nize the event because “we need to get togeth­er the nonwack­adoo­dles.” “That was the phrase Eric used, ‘nonwack­adoo­dles,’” said Clark, “the seri­ous faith lead­ers, the peo­ple that are actu­al­ly com­mit­ted to sav­ing this coun­try. And he said, ‘Clay, we need to get them togeth­er, my father needs to be able to address this com­mu­ni­ty.’” He added that the event is “an invi­ta­tion-only thing” and “we’re vet­ting every­body very care­ful­ly.”

Clark claimed in an inter­view with Piz­za­gate con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist Jack Poso­biec (who also stat­ed dur­ing the inter­view that he will attend the event) that “of the faith lead­ers and the pas­tors that are com­mit­ted to com­ing to this event — which is an invite-only, you can’t buy a tick­et — so far, we have over 300 mil­lion YouTube sub­scribers rep­re­sent­ed in the audi­ence, so that means we have some of the biggest, nee­dle-mov­ing pas­tors and faith lead­ers that are com­ing from all across Amer­i­ca to hear direct­ly from Don­ald J. Trump.”

...

The fig­ures Clark men­tions as plan­ning to attend notably stem from an influ­en­tial “prophet­ic” charis­mat­ic Chris­t­ian move­ment that has been mobi­liz­ing sup­port­ers ahead of the elec­tion and report­ed­ly believes reelect­ing Trump is part of a spir­i­tu­al war against demons.

Here are some of the extreme media fig­ures and sup­posed “nonwack­adoo­dles” that Trump will be address­ing, accord­ing to Clark:

* Jonathan Cahn is a “dooms­day prophet” and author who has claimed that the Bible pre­dict­ed Trump’s 2016 elec­tion and sug­gest­ed that pro­gres­sive cul­tur­al change is a result of ancient gods influ­enc­ing cul­tur­al shifts. Cahn has claimed that an ancient god­dess is “seek­ing to pos­sess an entire gen­er­a­tion” into sup­port­ing LGBTQ rights and com­pared abor­tion to “child sac­ri­fice.” He also recent­ly spoke at the “Mil­lion Women” wor­ship ral­ly in Wash­ing­ton D.C., where he used a sledge­ham­mer to hit a “pagan altar to ‘Ishtar,’ an ancient Mes­sopo­ti­ami­an god­dess whom he claims is behind ‘the sex­u­al immoral­i­ty that that enslaves this cul­ture,’” per Rolling Stone. In an inter­view with Poso­biec, Clark con­firmed that Cahn is “going to be one of the speak­ers.”

* Robin Bul­lock is a pas­tor and self-pro­claimed “prophet” who has said that “Trump was anoint­ed to be king twice,” claim­ing that Trump has “been pres­i­dent this whole time” and “heav­en rec­og­nizes him as pres­i­dent.” Bul­lock also bizarrely claimed to have trav­eled into the future and pre­vent­ed an assas­si­na­tion attempt against Trump. He has also claimed that he “watched [God] cre­ate the world one time,” pre­dict­ed that the “glo­ry” of God “will invade the halls of Con­gress” and “demon-pos­sessed con­gress­men are going to man­i­fest,” and said that there are “witch­es and war­locks employed” at the U.N. “advis­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials.”

* Aman­da Grace is a self-pro­claimed “prophet” who shares her prophet­ic visions, which she claims come from God, on YouTube and oth­er stream­ing plat­forms. Grace has said that the “Lord warned” her that an assas­si­na­tion against Trump would hap­pen and likened Trump to David avoid­ing assas­si­na­tion in the Bible. She has also pushed bizarre rhetoric, warn­ing of high­ly tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced “mer­maids and water peo­ple” spread­ing “wicked­ness” and call­ing for “hand-to-hand com­bat.”

* Steve Shultz is the host of Eli­jah­Streams, an online stream­ing out­let that hosts “prophets” and “prophet­ic guests” who have pushed extreme rhetoric on the pro­gram, includ­ing guests who attrib­uted the Maui wild­fires to “demon­ic attack” by a fire-breath­ing drag­on upset over the legal­i­ty of abor­tion and who invoked QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. Shultz him­self has pushed con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, includ­ing link­ing the 2024 solar eclipse to CERN’s Large Hadron Col­lid­er restart­ing and a comet sup­pos­ed­ly pass­ing on the same day, claim­ing it was an “occul­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty” for them “to open up a gate­way for Satan to come out.”

* Mark Driscoll is a right-wing pas­tor who pre­vi­ous­ly resigned from a pas­tor­ship after being accused of bul­ly­ing and mis­man­age­ment of church funds. He recent­ly sug­gest­ed that “demon­ic forces” are “dri­ving the surge” behind the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the Harris/Walz cam­paign. He also attacked Har­ris for being Bap­tist and Walz for being Luther­an, declar­ing that “they go to church­es that are syn­a­gogues of Satan.”

...

Since Don­ald Trump left office, he and his fam­i­ly and allies have increas­ing­ly engaged with and embraced extreme prophet­ic media, includ­ing fig­ures who have assert­ed that Trump has been “anoint­ed” by God. Clark even bragged last year that “Trump’s inner cir­cle is embrac­ing the prophets.”

...

———-

“Trump sched­uled to address right-wing media “prophets” and pas­tors who claim he’s “anoint­ed to be King”” by Pay­ton Arm­strong; Media Mat­ters for Amer­i­ca; 10/18/2024

“Clark revealed in a recent inter­view that Eric Trump had asked him to orga­nize the event because “we need to get togeth­er the nonwack­adoo­dles.” “That was the phrase Eric used, ‘nonwack­adoo­dles,’” said Clark, “the seri­ous faith lead­ers, the peo­ple that are actu­al­ly com­mit­ted to sav­ing this coun­try. And he said, ‘Clay, we need to get them togeth­er, my father needs to be able to address this com­mu­ni­ty.’” He added that the event is “an invi­ta­tion-only thing” and “we’re vet­ting every­body very care­ful­ly.””

Behold the nonwack­adoo­dles assem­bled by Clay Clark for this spe­cial invite-only gath­er­ing. Nonwack­adoo­dles like Mark Driscoll, who has attacked Har­ris for being Bap­tist and Walz for being Luther­an, declar­ing that “they go to church­es that are syn­a­gogues of Satan”:

...
Here are some of the extreme media fig­ures and sup­posed “nonwack­adoo­dles” that Trump will be address­ing, accord­ing to Clark:

* Jonathan Cahn is a “dooms­day prophet” and author who has claimed that the Bible pre­dict­ed Trump’s 2016 elec­tion and sug­gest­ed that pro­gres­sive cul­tur­al change is a result of ancient gods influ­enc­ing cul­tur­al shifts. Cahn has claimed that an ancient god­dess is “seek­ing to pos­sess an entire gen­er­a­tion” into sup­port­ing LGBTQ rights and com­pared abor­tion to “child sac­ri­fice.” He also recent­ly spoke at the “Mil­lion Women” wor­ship ral­ly in Wash­ing­ton D.C., where he used a sledge­ham­mer to hit a “pagan altar to ‘Ishtar,’ an ancient Mes­sopo­ti­ami­an god­dess whom he claims is behind ‘the sex­u­al immoral­i­ty that that enslaves this cul­ture,’” per Rolling Stone. In an inter­view with Poso­biec, Clark con­firmed that Cahn is “going to be one of the speak­ers.”

* Robin Bul­lock is a pas­tor and self-pro­claimed “prophet” who has said that “Trump was anoint­ed to be king twice,” claim­ing that Trump has “been pres­i­dent this whole time” and “heav­en rec­og­nizes him as pres­i­dent.” Bul­lock also bizarrely claimed to have trav­eled into the future and pre­vent­ed an assas­si­na­tion attempt against Trump. He has also claimed that he “watched [God] cre­ate the world one time,” pre­dict­ed that the “glo­ry” of God “will invade the halls of Con­gress” and “demon-pos­sessed con­gress­men are going to man­i­fest,” and said that there are “witch­es and war­locks employed” at the U.N. “advis­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials.”

* Aman­da Grace is a self-pro­claimed “prophet” who shares her prophet­ic visions, which she claims come from God, on YouTube and oth­er stream­ing plat­forms. Grace has said that the “Lord warned” her that an assas­si­na­tion against Trump would hap­pen and likened Trump to David avoid­ing assas­si­na­tion in the Bible. She has also pushed bizarre rhetoric, warn­ing of high­ly tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced “mer­maids and water peo­ple” spread­ing “wicked­ness” and call­ing for “hand-to-hand com­bat.”

* Steve Shultz is the host of Eli­jah­Streams, an online stream­ing out­let that hosts “prophets” and “prophet­ic guests” who have pushed extreme rhetoric on the pro­gram, includ­ing guests who attrib­uted the Maui wild­fires to “demon­ic attack” by a fire-breath­ing drag­on upset over the legal­i­ty of abor­tion and who invoked QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. Shultz him­self has pushed con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, includ­ing link­ing the 2024 solar eclipse to CERN’s Large Hadron Col­lid­er restart­ing and a comet sup­pos­ed­ly pass­ing on the same day, claim­ing it was an “occul­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty” for them “to open up a gate­way for Satan to come out.”

* Mark Driscoll is a right-wing pas­tor who pre­vi­ous­ly resigned from a pas­tor­ship after being accused of bul­ly­ing and mis­man­age­ment of church funds. He recent­ly sug­gest­ed that “demon­ic forces” are “dri­ving the surge” behind the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the Harris/Walz cam­paign. He also attacked Har­ris for being Bap­tist and Walz for being Luther­an, declar­ing that “they go to church­es that are syn­a­gogues of Satan.”
...

It’s not sub­tle. Trump isn’t just run­ning an overt­ly theo­crat­ic cam­paign. He’s run­ning a cam­paign where he is cast as some­one per­son­al­ly cho­sen by God to ush­er in a new era of Chris­t­ian dom­i­nance over all of Amer­i­can soci­ety. The kind of Chris­t­ian dom­i­nance where Bap­tists and Luther­ans are seen as syn­a­gogues of Satan. And that brings us to a most remark­able twist in this sto­ry about the ris­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist alliance behind Don­ald Trump’s third pres­i­den­tial run: Amer Ghal­ib, the MAGA Mus­lim may­or of Ham­tram­ck, Michi­gan. As we’ll see, not only is Ghal­ib is huge Trump backer, but he appears to have arrived at this posi­tion thanks to the efforts of none oth­er than Michael Fly­nn, some­one with a his­to­ry of call­ing for Chris­tian­i­ty to be enshrined as the offi­cial reli­gion of the Unit­ed States:

The New York Times

A Mus­lim May­or Endors­es Trump, and a City of Immi­grants Finds Itself Undone

The endorse­ment has roiled Ham­tram­ck, Mich., anger­ing many in the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty, as well as long­time res­i­dents who wel­comed the new­com­ers.

By Kurt Streeter
Report­ing from Ham­tram­ck, Mich.
Oct. 26, 2024, 5:03 a.m. ET

Amer Ghal­ib has made a lot of nation­al news as the leader of a small, Mid­west­ern city.

His elec­tion in 2021 as may­or of Ham­tram­ck, Mich., was itself a head­line. Mr. Ghal­ib, who is from Yemen, became the first Arab Amer­i­can and first Mus­lim to gov­ern the city. And he was work­ing with what was believed to be the first all-Mus­lim City Coun­cil in the coun­try.

Two years lat­er, Mr. Ghal­ib cre­at­ed anoth­er stir when he and oth­er social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Mus­lims banned the L.G.B.T.Q. Pride flag from pub­licly owned flag­poles, alarm­ing lib­er­als who said the move was dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and harm­ful to the city’s wel­com­ing rep­u­ta­tion.

Their fears only height­ened last month, after Mr. Ghal­ib endorsed Don­ald J. Trump, who as pres­i­dent had ush­ered in what is known as the Mus­lim ban, block­ing immi­grants from sev­en major­i­ty-Mus­lim nations, includ­ing Mr. Ghalib’s home coun­try. Adding to the ten­sions was a vis­it by Mr. Trump, who hoped the mayor’s sup­port could peel off a mean­ing­ful num­ber of Mus­lim vot­ers in Michi­gan, a swing state.

Explain­ing his sup­port, Mr. Ghal­ib point­ed to a dis­taste for lib­er­al social views, anger at Pres­i­dent Biden’s sup­port of Israel and a belief that Mr. Trump will end the con­flict in the Mid­dle East.

In Ham­tram­ck (pro­nounced “ham-tram-ick”), many long­time lib­er­al res­i­dents, includ­ing mem­bers of the L.G.B.T.Q. com­mu­ni­ty, say they were deject­ed.

Over the years, they had active­ly encour­aged the city of 30,000 res­i­dents, just north of down­town Detroit, to wel­come immi­grants. When Mus­lims won a major­i­ty of seats in the six-mem­ber City Coun­cil in 2015, they cheered the change as a rebuke to the anti-immi­grant rhetoric used by Mr. Trump.

...

In this elec­tion year, when immi­gra­tion has been debat­ed, dis­tort­ed and vil­i­fied, Ham­tram­ck offers an exam­ple of how the issue can cut in polit­i­cal­ly com­plex and sur­pris­ing ways. The city’s long­time res­i­dents, com­mit­ted to diver­si­ty and lib­er­al val­ues, cel­e­brat­ed the new­com­ers. But Mr. Ghal­ib, along with some oth­er immi­grants, brought to Ham­tram­ck their own prin­ci­ples, pri­or­i­ties and ambi­tions.

Mr. Ghal­ib, in par­tic­u­lar, found more in com­mon with MAGA Repub­li­cans, who active­ly court­ed him, than with Democ­rats.

“Lan­guages and cul­tur­al dis­tinc­tions cre­ate their own bar­ri­ers,” said Saeed Khan, a pro­fes­sor of Near East and Asian stud­ies at Wayne State Uni­ver­si­ty in Detroit.

“In Ham­tram­ck, you have peo­ple from Bangladesh who have a par­tic­u­lar cul­tur­al per­spec­tive, as do the Yeme­nis, as do the Bosni­ans,” he said. “And because their expe­ri­ences as immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties dif­fer so wide­ly, that plays out on the streets when it comes to civic and polit­i­cal engage­ment.”

...

Karen Majew­s­ki, the for­mer may­or, is part­ly respon­si­ble for the city’s vibe.

In 2004, she was sworn into the City Coun­cil as part of a lib­er­al move­ment wrest­ing gov­ern­ment con­trol from a long-estab­lished, Pol­ish Amer­i­can pow­er base that was solid­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic, but also more social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive. Elect­ed may­or in 2005, she main­tained con­trol for 16 years and was the last of a con­tin­u­ous, cen­tu­ry-old line of eth­nic Poles to hold the office.

In an inter­view at her home, Ms. Majew­s­ki recalled how white pro­gres­sives in Ham­tram­ck wel­comed Arabs and Mus­lims with open arms. Today, the city swells with Mus­lims from Yemen, Bangladesh, Bosnia and Alba­nia. About a quar­ter of res­i­dents have roots in Yemen. Near­ly anoth­er quar­ter are from Bangladesh.

“This was part of Hamtramck’s iden­ti­ty,” she said. “We’ve always prid­ed our­selves on immi­gra­tion as a source of our iden­ti­ty and dis­tinct­ness, on being a place that wel­comed peo­ple from all over the world.”

In the ear­ly 2000s, Ms. Majew­s­ki was a mem­ber of the City Hall lead­er­ship that cod­i­fied the right of mosques to broad­cast the call to prayer out­doors, for all to hear.

After Mr. Trump won the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion with a promise to get tough on immi­gra­tion, Ms. Majew­s­ki, as may­or, post­ed a mes­sage under­scor­ing that Ham­tram­ck would remain a safe place for every­one. “And most specif­i­cal­ly,” Ms. Majew­s­ki recalled, “the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty.”

When Mr. Trump announced the Mus­lim ban in 2017, lib­er­als in Ham­tram­ck were part of local protests.

How do she and her friends feel now that their Yemeni-born may­or has got­ten behind the for­mer pres­i­dent?

“Dis­il­lu­sioned, pissed off,” Ms. Majew­s­ki said. “There’s a lot of out­rage and a lot of dis­gust.”

Lat­er, she not­ed that lib­er­als have large­ly stopped going to City Coun­cil meet­ings because their voic­es were not being ade­quate­ly heard. “The feel­ing is pret­ty much, why both­er?” she said.

For his part, Mr. Ghal­ib, 44, said he hoped his endorse­ment, and Mr. Trump’s vis­it, would “help the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty come togeth­er and stop neg­a­tive rhetoric toward Repub­li­cans.”

But short­ly after the mayor’s endorse­ment, Mohammed Has­san, a city coun­cil­man and a leader with­in the city’s Bangladeshi Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty, pub­licly backed Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris.

...

The coun­cil­man not­ed he works with the may­or on many issues. But not this time. He vowed to ener­gize most Ben­galis to vote for Ms. Har­ris, while pick­ing off votes from the mayor’s base. “One-third of Yeme­nis lis­ten to me all the time,” Mr. Has­san said.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic poli­cies, he said, help the poor and mid­dle class, while Mr. Trump scape­goats immi­grants. Mr. Has­san also believes Ms. Har­ris would bet­ter han­dle nego­ti­a­tions over the war in the Mid­dle East, part­ly because of her com­po­sure: “She is not crazy like him,” he said.

Mr. Ghal­ib has been the cen­ter of con­tro­ver­sy before, main­ly over social media posts that he now dis­avows or says were tak­en out of con­text by lib­er­als.

He told The Times that he began turn­ing toward Repub­li­cans when, as may­or, he faced bit­ter divi­sion in his city over social issues, main­ly over L.G.B.T.Q. rights.

He not­ed that in 2022, he stood behind con­ser­v­a­tive Mus­lim par­ents who com­plained about L.G.B.T.Q. books in school libraries. The books, he said, were part of the “gay agen­da.”

The Pride flag, Mr. Ghal­ib said, need­ed to be tak­en down in the name of neu­tral­i­ty, so the city could avoid being forced to fly ban­ners from hate groups.

Ms. Majew­s­ki, the for­mer may­or, called its removal “com­plete­ly about big­otry.”

Repub­li­cans seized on the infight­ing by reach­ing out to Mr. Ghal­ib.

In July 2023, Mr. Ghal­ib appeared on a pod­cast host­ed by Tudor Dixon, the evan­gel­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can who had recent­ly lost the Michi­gan governor’s race to Gretchen Whit­mer. On the pod­cast, Mr. Ghal­ib com­plained about aggres­sive behav­ior and abu­sive attacks from lib­er­al oppo­si­tion. He sent a warn­ing: If you “dis­con­tin­ue sup­port­ing me, why do you think I’ll con­tin­ue to sup­port you?”

Then Mr. Ghal­ib led a meet­ing with Mus­lim lead­ers and Gen. Michael T. Fly­nn, the con­ser­v­a­tive fire­brand and con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist who briefly served as nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er dur­ing the Trump pres­i­den­cy. Mr. Fly­nn, who had pre­vi­ous­ly called Islam “a can­cer,” now spoke of form­ing a con­ser­v­a­tive coali­tion between Chris­tians and Mus­lims.

Soon, emis­saries for Mr. Trump were reach­ing out to the may­or. Even­tu­al­ly, Mr. Ghal­ib said, the two had a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion at a Trump ral­ly.

Mr. Ghal­ib told The Times that he and oth­er Mus­lim Amer­i­cans feel dis­missed and over­looked by Democ­rats. He cit­ed the Biden administration’s sup­port for Israel in its war with Hamas, and not­ed that more than 100,000 peo­ple protest­ed by vot­ing uncom­mit­ted in Michigan’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry. But, he said, “noth­ing changed” in terms of Mr. Biden’s poli­cies.

Mr. Ghal­ib, smil­ing proud­ly, said Mr. Trump showed him respect.

Mr. Trump has den­i­grat­ed Pales­tini­ans, called Mid­dle East­ern immi­grants “known ter­ror­ists” and encour­aged Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu of Israel to “fin­ish the job” in Gaza.

None of that swayed Mr. Ghalib’s con­fi­dence in the for­mer pres­i­dent. “He kept repeat­ing to me that his goal is to end the chaos in the Mid­dle East,” the may­or said.

Though he does not agree with Mr. Trump on every­thing, Mr. Ghal­ib called him a “deci­sive and fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed per­son” who is “very prin­ci­pled.”

Remind­ed of Mr. Trump’s fre­quent spread­ing of dis­in­for­ma­tion, as well as his con­vic­tion for cov­er­ing up an affair with a porn star, Mr. Ghal­ib said such mat­ters were in “the media,” but “who knows?”

“I hope he will not dis­ap­point me,” Mr. Ghal­ib said. “We’ll see.”

————

“A Mus­lim May­or Endors­es Trump, and a City of Immi­grants Finds Itself Undone” By Kurt Streeter; The New York Times; 10/26/2024

“For his part, Mr. Ghal­ib, 44, said he hoped his endorse­ment, and Mr. Trump’s vis­it, would “help the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty come togeth­er and stop neg­a­tive rhetoric toward Repub­li­cans.””

He’s clear­ly keen on win­ning Don­ald Trump’s favor, even if it’s not entire­ly clear what prin­ci­ple Amer Ghal­ib is adher­ing to with his embrace of Don­ald Trump. Although it looks like a shared dis­dain for the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty is what served as the polit­i­cal ice-break­er:

...
Mr. Ghal­ib has been the cen­ter of con­tro­ver­sy before, main­ly over social media posts that he now dis­avows or says were tak­en out of con­text by lib­er­als.

He told The Times that he began turn­ing toward Repub­li­cans when, as may­or, he faced bit­ter divi­sion in his city over social issues, main­ly over L.G.B.T.Q. rights.

He not­ed that in 2022, he stood behind con­ser­v­a­tive Mus­lim par­ents who com­plained about L.G.B.T.Q. books in school libraries. The books, he said, were part of the “gay agen­da.”

The Pride flag, Mr. Ghal­ib said, need­ed to be tak­en down in the name of neu­tral­i­ty, so the city could avoid being forced to fly ban­ners from hate groups.

Ms. Majew­s­ki, the for­mer may­or, called its removal “com­plete­ly about big­otry.”

Repub­li­cans seized on the infight­ing by reach­ing out to Mr. Ghal­ib.
...

And then we get to Mr Ghal­ib’s expla­na­tions for why he does­n’t seem to have a prob­lem with Don­ald Trump’s stance regard­ing Gaza or Trump’s com­plete sup­port for any mil­i­tary actions tak­en by Israel. Along with Ghal­ib’s expla­na­tions for why Trump’s abun­dant moral fail­ings can be dis­missed. Bad faith expla­na­tions that point to a very ambi­tious politi­cian who has deter­mined that being the token ‘MAGA Mus­lim’ is his path to future polit­i­cal for­tune:

...
Mr. Ghal­ib told The Times that he and oth­er Mus­lim Amer­i­cans feel dis­missed and over­looked by Democ­rats. He cit­ed the Biden administration’s sup­port for Israel in its war with Hamas, and not­ed that more than 100,000 peo­ple protest­ed by vot­ing uncom­mit­ted in Michigan’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry. But, he said, “noth­ing changed” in terms of Mr. Biden’s poli­cies.

Mr. Ghal­ib, smil­ing proud­ly, said Mr. Trump showed him respect.

Mr. Trump has den­i­grat­ed Pales­tini­ans, called Mid­dle East­ern immi­grants “known ter­ror­ists” and encour­aged Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu of Israel to “fin­ish the job” in Gaza.

None of that swayed Mr. Ghalib’s con­fi­dence in the for­mer pres­i­dent. “He kept repeat­ing to me that his goal is to end the chaos in the Mid­dle East,” the may­or said.

Though he does not agree with Mr. Trump on every­thing, Mr. Ghal­ib called him a “deci­sive and fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed per­son” who is “very prin­ci­pled.”

Remind­ed of Mr. Trump’s fre­quent spread­ing of dis­in­for­ma­tion, as well as his con­vic­tion for cov­er­ing up an affair with a porn star, Mr. Ghal­ib said such mat­ters were in “the media,” but “who knows?”

“I hope he will not dis­ap­point me,” Mr. Ghal­ib said. “We’ll see.”
...

And look who we find­ing as the kind of match mak­er between May­or Ghal­ib and Don­ald Trump: Michael Fly­nn, the same per­son who has called Islam “a can­cer”, but who now speaks about form­ing a coali­tion of con­ser­v­a­tive Mus­lims and Chris­tians. A coali­tion pre­sum­ably ded­i­cat­ed to per­se­cut­ing the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty:

...

In July 2023, Mr. Ghal­ib appeared on a pod­cast host­ed by Tudor Dixon, the evan­gel­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can who had recent­ly lost the Michi­gan governor’s race to Gretchen Whit­mer. On the pod­cast, Mr. Ghal­ib com­plained about aggres­sive behav­ior and abu­sive attacks from lib­er­al oppo­si­tion. He sent a warn­ing: If you “dis­con­tin­ue sup­port­ing me, why do you think I’ll con­tin­ue to sup­port you?”

Then Mr. Ghal­ib led a meet­ing with Mus­lim lead­ers and Gen. Michael T. Fly­nn, the con­ser­v­a­tive fire­brand and con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist who briefly served as nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er dur­ing the Trump pres­i­den­cy. Mr. Fly­nn, who had pre­vi­ous­ly called Islam “a can­cer,” now spoke of form­ing a con­ser­v­a­tive coali­tion between Chris­tians and Mus­lims.

Soon, emis­saries for Mr. Trump were reach­ing out to the may­or. Even­tu­al­ly, Mr. Ghal­ib said, the two had a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion at a Trump ral­ly.
...

It’s a remark­able set of alliances. Although not real­ly all that remark­able when you con­sid­er how fas­cists of dif­fer­ent per­sua­sions have long formed seem­ing­ly unlike­ly alliances. Let’s not for­get that Ghal­ib’s ties to MAGA world more has a prece­dent in the long-stand­ing rela­tion­ship between the Repub­li­can Par­ty and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Which is why we should­n’t be sur­prised to learn that Ghal­ib not only has a long his­to­ry of mak­ing hor­ri­bly dis­parag­ing jokes about African Amer­i­cans, but he’s also appar­ent­ly a big Mus­lim Broth­er­hood sup­port­er. In fact, when he first won elect­ed office, Ghal­ib attrib­uted his win, in part, to o “young peo­ple from the Salafi move­ment” who “urged the peo­ple” to elect him:

Mid­dle East Forum

Exclu­sive: Islamist Ham­tram­ck Mayor’s Big­otry and Appar­ent Vot­er Fraud

July 7, 2022
Ben­jamin Baird, Hany Ghora­ba
Focus on West­ern Islamism

In Jan­u­ary, the city of Ham­tram­ck, Michi­gan, became the first munic­i­pal­i­ty in the Unit­ed States to be gov­erned entire­ly by Mus­lim Amer­i­cans. May­or Amer Ghal­ib was sworn into office with an all-Mus­lim city coun­cil on Jan­u­ary 2, after promis­ing to rep­re­sent the entire com­mu­ni­ty, “no mat­ter your faith, your back­ground, who you love, or your polit­i­cal views.”

Yet, Hamtramck’s new may­or does not live up to his inclu­sive pledge. Ghalib’s Face­book account includes deeply racist, anti-black state­ments. He vicious­ly mocked black jus­tice demon­stra­tions and endorsed a com­ment that referred to African Amer­i­cans as “ani­mal” and “inhu­man.”

...

In oth­er posts, Hamtramck’s may­or insults Arab world lead­ers he holds in low regard by claim­ing they have “become Jew­ish,” and he “liked” a com­ment refer­ring to Jews as “mon­keys” who levy tax­es on “the air we breathe.” Describ­ing Chris­tians, Ghal­ib used an Ara­bic pejo­ra­tive word and wrote that “Jews and Nazarenes” have “only been con­tent with Arab kings and despots.” Yet, he has defend­ed Mid­dle East­ern dic­ta­tors, includ­ing a geno­ci­dal war crim­i­nal, and offered praise to hard­line Islamist sects and orga­ni­za­tions.

[see screen­shot of social media post]

Ghal­ib, who is very active on social media, post­ed these offen­sive mes­sages in the months lead­ing up to his 2020 may­oral cam­paign, when most of his big­ot­ed and extreme state­ments sud­den­ly stopped. Nev­er­the­less, the mayor’s recent social media his­to­ry seri­ous­ly calls into ques­tion his suit­abil­i­ty for pub­lic office.

The 42-year-old Yemeni immi­grant is Hamtramck’s first non-Pol­ish may­or in the city’s 100-year his­to­ry after defeat­ing incum­bent may­or Karen Majew­s­ki last Novem­ber. He is a polit­i­cal novice who cred­its his vic­to­ry, in part, to “young peo­ple from the Salafi move­ment,” an ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive strain of Sun­ni Islam, who “urged the peo­ple” to elect him.

Bangladeshi and Yemeni fam­i­lies began immi­grat­ing to Ham­tram­ck in recent decades, and Mus­lims now make up as much as 50 per­cent of the city, accord­ing to some esti­mates. Thanks to a con­tro­ver­sial city ordi­nance, the call to Islam­ic prayer is blast­ed over loud­speak­ers and rever­ber­ates through Hamtramck’s dense­ly-packed neigh­bor­hoods.

Despite lead­ing a city coun­cil that does not rep­re­sent Hamtramck’s diverse cit­i­zen­ry, the new may­or said he plans to “rep­re­sent and serve ALL cor­ners of our com­mu­ni­ty.”

How­ev­er, Ghal­ib mocked African Amer­i­cans fol­low­ing the death of George Floyd at the hands of Min­neapo­lis police. On June 1, 2020, he post­ed an offen­sive online image of a black man car­ry­ing an exces­sive quan­ti­ty of liquor, his pock­ets bulging and pants sag­ging low from the pre­sum­ably stolen spir­its.

Ghal­ib invent­ed cap­tions for the African Amer­i­can sub­ject and a near­by Asian onlook­er: “After the protests and rob­bing it’s as if the black man is say­ing, ‘We’ve done our duty and now we’ll take our sabar,’” he wrote, explain­ing that “sabar” means “essen­tial food” in an ancient Yemeni lan­guage.

“And the Asian looks at him and says: ‘Is this the rea­son we came out [protest­ed], Mr. Heineken?’” Ghal­ib wrote.

The impli­ca­tion from the mayor’s post, it seems, is that black Amer­i­cans jus­ti­fied the loot­ing of busi­ness­es by claim­ing that they only took what was nec­es­sary for their sur­vival – in this case, gal­lons of hard liquor. To make mat­ters worse, he “liked” sev­er­al cru­el and big­ot­ed com­ments made in response to his post.

“This vio­lence showed their [African Amer­i­cans] ani­mal and inhu­man instincts, and they will nev­er behave unless they are gov­erned by law, force, and the police who know them very well,” reads one com­ment. “Black peo­ple cel­e­brate their day like there’s no tomor­row, but the most impor­tant thing for them is alco­hol,” anoth­er com­menter wrote. Ghal­ib endorsed both state­ments by “lik­ing” them,

While he respond­ed to Floyd’s death with big­otry, Ghalib’s future con­stituents in Ham­tram­ck unit­ed in sup­port of black jus­tice and police account­abil­i­ty, hold­ing a ral­ly in front of a Bangladeshi-owned restau­rant and march­ing on city hall. Mus­lim Amer­i­can law­mak­ers and can­di­dates joined their African Amer­i­can neigh­bors in sol­i­dar­i­ty, denounc­ing police vio­lence and black oppres­sion.

...

One of the most dis­turb­ing dis­cus­sions cap­tured from Ghalib’s social media his­to­ry is laced with anti-Semit­ic invec­tive. It also may amount to involve­ment in a seri­ous crime.

In a March 8, 2020, Face­book post dis­cussing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­maries, Ghal­ib begins by the­o­riz­ing that, “Maybe this unprece­dent­ed excite­ment among Arabs and Mus­lims in the state of Michi­gan about the Jew­ish Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date Bernie Sanders will stir Amer­i­cans’ rage. It’ll make them back the nom­i­na­tion of his Demo­c­ra­t­ic rival Joe Biden, just to spite Mus­lims and Arabs.”

Ghalib’s fear that Michi­gan Democ­rats would rush to the polls mere­ly to thwart the Mus­lim vote prompt­ed him to act. “I did my duty and vot­ed ear­ly for Sanders. There were twen­ty peo­ple around me plan­ning to vote for Biden because they loved Oba­ma (since Biden was Obama’s VP),” he explained.

“I got them to vote for Sanders and did their fam­i­lies’ bal­lot cards myself. Pray for the Jew­ish guy, don’t let him down,” wrote Ghal­ib, adding three laugh­ing emo­jis, appar­ent­ly to sig­nal irony regard­ing his sup­port for a Jew­ish politi­cian.

Under Michi­gan elec­tion laws, “A per­son present while an absent vot­er is vot­ing an absent vot­er bal­lot shall not sug­gest or in any man­ner attempt to influ­ence the absent vot­er on how he or she should vote.” Each offense is pun­ish­able as a felony.

[see screen­shots of social media posts]

Hamtramck’s may­or is a stu­dent and admir­er of rad­i­cal Islamist move­ments, includ­ing Salafism, a Sun­ni revival­ist tra­di­tion that is often asso­ci­at­ed with vio­lence and ter­ror­ism, although many adher­ents are polit­i­cal qui­etists who avoid con­fronta­tion with gov­ern­ment author­i­ties. “Most of my sheikhs and teach­ers whom I learned from are from the Salafi move­ment, and I am proud of that and they hold a high posi­tion for me,” he wrote on Face­book.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the may­or has glo­ri­fied the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, a pan-Islamist, activist brand of Sun­ni Islam respon­si­ble for vio­lence and rad­i­cal­iza­tion around the world. His oth­er role mod­els appear to include “the Mar­tyr Sad­dam Hus­sein,” Iraq’s late geno­ci­dal dic­ta­tor, and Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan, whom Ghal­ib prais­es for agi­tat­ing against the West.

Ghalib’s Islamist beliefs may explain why there were no women at his elec­tion vic­to­ry par­ty. The new­ly-elect­ed may­or told CNN that women from his com­mu­ni­ty “don’t go out at night most­ly” as “part of the cul­ture,” adding that “there is still some seg­re­ga­tion even when they attend [events].” As a may­oral can­di­date, Ghal­ib opposed fly­ing a gay pride flag in a city park, and he claimed that a 2008 Human Rights Ordi­nance (sub­se­quent­ly over­turned) meant to pro­tect LGBT res­i­dents cre­at­ed “con­stant con­flict among peo­ple.”

Last year, Michi­gan Attor­ney Gen­er­al Dana Nes­sel charged three indi­vid­u­als with elec­tion-relat­ed offens­es, includ­ing alle­ga­tions of fill­ing out absen­tee bal­lots on behalf of rel­a­tives and elder­ly per­sons. “We will not hes­i­tate to pros­e­cute any­one – regard­less of polit­i­cal par­ty – who attempts to under­mine our elec­tions,” Nes­sel said.

How­ev­er, state author­i­ties have respond­ed with indif­fer­ence when pre­sent­ed with links and images that show Hamtramck’s may­or admit­ting to influ­enc­ing vot­ers and fill­ing out their bal­lots. In fact, an inves­ti­ga­tor at the Michi­gan Sec­re­tary of State’s Office was appar­ent­ly unaware of state laws for­bid­ding any­one from influ­enc­ing an absen­tee vot­er in the process of fill­ing out their bal­lot.

...

Even with­out evi­dence of pos­si­ble vot­er fraud, Ghalib’s hate­ful online com­men­tary should dis­qual­i­fy him from pub­lic ser­vice and calls for his res­ig­na­tion should begin with Hamtramck’s his­toric city coun­cil.

———–

“Exclu­sive: Islamist Ham­tram­ck Mayor’s Big­otry and Appar­ent Vot­er Fraud” by Ben­jamin Baird and Hany Ghora­ba; Mid­dle East Forum; 07/07/2022

“The 42-year-old Yemeni immi­grant is Hamtramck’s first non-Pol­ish may­or in the city’s 100-year his­to­ry after defeat­ing incum­bent may­or Karen Majew­s­ki last Novem­ber. He is a polit­i­cal novice who cred­its his vic­to­ry, in part, to “young peo­ple from the Salafi move­ment,” an ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive strain of Sun­ni Islam, who “urged the peo­ple” to elect him.”

He cred­it­ed his vic­to­ry, in part, to “young peo­ple from the Salafi move­ment.” It’s the kind of detail that goes a long way to explain how a politi­cian who won with the back­ing of the city’s white pro­gres­sive demo­graph­ic end­ed up align­ing with the MAGA move­ment. May­or Ghal­ib has a strong Islamist ori­en­ta­tion. And he appears to be a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood fan in par­tic­u­lar, which might explain his fan­dom of Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan, him­self a major Mus­lim Broth­er­hood fig­ure. And as we’ve seen, the when it comes to polit­i­cal odd cou­ples, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has had a fas­ci­nat­ing rela­tion­ship with the Repub­li­can Par­ty going back decades, as exem­pli­fied by Grover Norquist’s Islam­ic Insti­tute and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s ties to Mus­lim Broth­er­hood activist Sami al Ari­an. So when we see May­or Ghal­ib shock his pro­gres­sive con­stituents with what appears to be a far right polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy and an embrace of Repub­li­cans, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that we’ve seen this before:

...
Hamtramck’s may­or is a stu­dent and admir­er of rad­i­cal Islamist move­ments, includ­ing Salafism, a Sun­ni revival­ist tra­di­tion that is often asso­ci­at­ed with vio­lence and ter­ror­ism, although many adher­ents are polit­i­cal qui­etists who avoid con­fronta­tion with gov­ern­ment author­i­ties. “Most of my sheikhs and teach­ers whom I learned from are from the Salafi move­ment, and I am proud of that and they hold a high posi­tion for me,” he wrote on Face­book.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the may­or has glo­ri­fied the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, a pan-Islamist, activist brand of Sun­ni Islam respon­si­ble for vio­lence and rad­i­cal­iza­tion around the world. His oth­er role mod­els appear to include “the Mar­tyr Sad­dam Hus­sein,” Iraq’s late geno­ci­dal dic­ta­tor, and Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan, whom Ghal­ib prais­es for agi­tat­ing against the West.

Ghalib’s Islamist beliefs may explain why there were no women at his elec­tion vic­to­ry par­ty. The new­ly-elect­ed may­or told CNN that women from his com­mu­ni­ty “don’t go out at night most­ly” as “part of the cul­ture,” adding that “there is still some seg­re­ga­tion even when they attend [events].” As a may­oral can­di­date, Ghal­ib opposed fly­ing a gay pride flag in a city park, and he claimed that a 2008 Human Rights Ordi­nance (sub­se­quent­ly over­turned) meant to pro­tect LGBT res­i­dents cre­at­ed “con­stant con­flict among peo­ple.”
...

But note how May­or Ghal­ib has­n’t just embraced an overt­ly anti-Mus­lim politi­cian like Don­ald Trump. He has a his­to­ry of open­ly dis­parag­ing African Amer­i­cans with the worst kind of racist humor and he shared this for years on social media. Until he ran for office and it all sud­den­ly stopped:

...
Yet, Hamtramck’s new may­or does not live up to his inclu­sive pledge. Ghalib’s Face­book account includes deeply racist, anti-black state­ments. He vicious­ly mocked black jus­tice demon­stra­tions and endorsed a com­ment that referred to African Amer­i­cans as “ani­mal” and “inhu­man.”

...

In oth­er posts, Hamtramck’s may­or insults Arab world lead­ers he holds in low regard by claim­ing they have “become Jew­ish,” and he “liked” a com­ment refer­ring to Jews as “mon­keys” who levy tax­es on “the air we breathe.” Describ­ing Chris­tians, Ghal­ib used an Ara­bic pejo­ra­tive word and wrote that “Jews and Nazarenes” have “only been con­tent with Arab kings and despots.” Yet, he has defend­ed Mid­dle East­ern dic­ta­tors, includ­ing a geno­ci­dal war crim­i­nal, and offered praise to hard­line Islamist sects and orga­ni­za­tions.

[see screen­shot of social media post]

Ghal­ib, who is very active on social media, post­ed these offen­sive mes­sages in the months lead­ing up to his 2020 may­oral cam­paign, when most of his big­ot­ed and extreme state­ments sud­den­ly stopped. Nev­er­the­less, the mayor’s recent social media his­to­ry seri­ous­ly calls into ques­tion his suit­abil­i­ty for pub­lic office.

...

Despite lead­ing a city coun­cil that does not rep­re­sent Hamtramck’s diverse cit­i­zen­ry, the new may­or said he plans to “rep­re­sent and serve ALL cor­ners of our com­mu­ni­ty.”

How­ev­er, Ghal­ib mocked African Amer­i­cans fol­low­ing the death of George Floyd at the hands of Min­neapo­lis police. On June 1, 2020, he post­ed an offen­sive online image of a black man car­ry­ing an exces­sive quan­ti­ty of liquor, his pock­ets bulging and pants sag­ging low from the pre­sum­ably stolen spir­its.

Ghal­ib invent­ed cap­tions for the African Amer­i­can sub­ject and a near­by Asian onlook­er: “After the protests and rob­bing it’s as if the black man is say­ing, ‘We’ve done our duty and now we’ll take our sabar,’” he wrote, explain­ing that “sabar” means “essen­tial food” in an ancient Yemeni lan­guage.

“And the Asian looks at him and says: ‘Is this the rea­son we came out [protest­ed], Mr. Heineken?’” Ghal­ib wrote.

The impli­ca­tion from the mayor’s post, it seems, is that black Amer­i­cans jus­ti­fied the loot­ing of busi­ness­es by claim­ing that they only took what was nec­es­sary for their sur­vival – in this case, gal­lons of hard liquor. To make mat­ters worse, he “liked” sev­er­al cru­el and big­ot­ed com­ments made in response to his post.

“This vio­lence showed their [African Amer­i­cans] ani­mal and inhu­man instincts, and they will nev­er behave unless they are gov­erned by law, force, and the police who know them very well,” reads one com­ment. “Black peo­ple cel­e­brate their day like there’s no tomor­row, but the most impor­tant thing for them is alco­hol,” anoth­er com­menter wrote. Ghal­ib endorsed both state­ments by “lik­ing” them,

While he respond­ed to Floyd’s death with big­otry, Ghalib’s future con­stituents in Ham­tram­ck unit­ed in sup­port of black jus­tice and police account­abil­i­ty, hold­ing a ral­ly in front of a Bangladeshi-owned restau­rant and march­ing on city hall. Mus­lim Amer­i­can law­mak­ers and can­di­dates joined their African Amer­i­can neigh­bors in sol­i­dar­i­ty, denounc­ing police vio­lence and black oppres­sion.
...

Final­ly, note the supreme­ly iron­ic take Ghal­ib had in 2020, when he appar­ent­ly com­mit­ted a pos­si­ble elec­toral crime by pres­sur­ing a num­ber of peo­ple who were fill­ing out their absen­tee bal­lots to vote for Bernie Sanders in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry. Why Sanders? Well, accord­ing to Ghal­ib’s rea­son­ing, if Michi­gan vot­ers dis­cov­er that a bunch of Mus­lims sup­port­ed Sanders, they might vote for Joe Biden in an angry response. And now, here we are in 2024, with Ghal­ib show­cas­ing his sup­port for Trump:

...
One of the most dis­turb­ing dis­cus­sions cap­tured from Ghalib’s social media his­to­ry is laced with anti-Semit­ic invec­tive. It also may amount to involve­ment in a seri­ous crime.

In a March 8, 2020, Face­book post dis­cussing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­maries, Ghal­ib begins by the­o­riz­ing that, “Maybe this unprece­dent­ed excite­ment among Arabs and Mus­lims in the state of Michi­gan about the Jew­ish Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date Bernie Sanders will stir Amer­i­cans’ rage. It’ll make them back the nom­i­na­tion of his Demo­c­ra­t­ic rival Joe Biden, just to spite Mus­lims and Arabs.”

Ghalib’s fear that Michi­gan Democ­rats would rush to the polls mere­ly to thwart the Mus­lim vote prompt­ed him to act. “I did my duty and vot­ed ear­ly for Sanders. There were twen­ty peo­ple around me plan­ning to vote for Biden because they loved Oba­ma (since Biden was Obama’s VP),” he explained.

“I got them to vote for Sanders and did their fam­i­lies’ bal­lot cards myself. Pray for the Jew­ish guy, don’t let him down,” wrote Ghal­ib, adding three laugh­ing emo­jis, appar­ent­ly to sig­nal irony regard­ing his sup­port for a Jew­ish politi­cian.

Under Michi­gan elec­tion laws, “A per­son present while an absent vot­er is vot­ing an absent vot­er bal­lot shall not sug­gest or in any man­ner attempt to influ­ence the absent vot­er on how he or she should vote.” Each offense is pun­ish­able as a felony.
...

Will any anti-Mus­lim Michi­gan vot­ers have sec­ond thoughts after see­ing all this suport for Trump? Who knows, but it’s not to imag­ine plen­ty of Ham­tram­ck­’s Mus­lim pro-Trump vot­ers expe­ri­enc­ing seri­ous vot­er regret after Trump returns to office and car­ries out his nation­al purge. It’s not hard to imag­ine a fas­cist Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist purge will tar­get many of the mem­bers of the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty those con­ser­v­a­tive Mus­lim vot­ers might dis­dain. But it’s very hard to imag­ine it’s going to end there, regard­less of what Michael ‘this is a Chris­t­ian nation only’ Fly­nn may have told Mr Ghal­ib dur­ing their pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions. Will the ‘non-whack­adoo­dle’ ‘prophets’ be satisi­fied after their purges of the gays and the jour­nal­ists and decide to leave the Mus­lims to live in peace? May­or Ghal­ib’s con­stituents had bet­ter hope so.

At the same time, it’s not hard to imag­ine that Mr Ghal­ib, per­son­al­ly, will be treat­ed very nice­ly by the purge enforcers of a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion. He’s a ‘good MAGA Mus­lim’, at this point. His con­stituents, not so much. They’re going to utter­ly screwed. But May­or Ghal­ib him­self could cer­tain­ly find a favored spot in post-purge MAG­A­mer­i­ca. Most­ly as a token Mus­lim who explains to the pub­lic why all the upcom­ing purg­ing of his con­stituents was actu­al­ly ok and worth it in order to deal with all those LGBTQ peo­ple, jour­nal­ists, and the oth­er Nazis who pose the real threat to Amer­i­ca.

As the Trump cab­i­net picks get announced, one after anoth­er, a clear pat­tern has emerged: for all the breath­less head­lines about the sur­pris­ing ide­o­log­i­cal diver­si­ty of Don­ald Trump’s cab­i­net nom­i­na­tions, the net­work of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist oper­a­tives behind Project 2025 and the Amer­i­can First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute (AFPI) have done very well. Pam Bon­di, Russ Vought, Brooke Rollins, Tom Homan, Stephen Miller, Bren­dan Carr, Pete Hoek­stra, John Rat­cliffe have all been tapped for key roles. All part of Project 2025 or the AFPI alums. The forces behind Project 2025 are set to have a very ful­fill­ing 4 years. Which, of course, also means Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ists are set to have a very ful­fill­ing 4 years. Project 2025 is a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist domin­ion­ist project, after all. Yes, it’s a fas­cist cor­po­ratist project too. But this is ulti­mate­ly a domin­ion­ist endeav­or. Fas­cism real­ly is com­ing to Amer­i­can wrapped in a flag, car­ry­ing a cross. The emerg­ing Trump cab­i­net is that metaphor com­ing to life.

And that all brings us to the cab­i­net pick that is arguably the most in per­il at this point fol­low­ing Matt Gaet­z’s deci­sion to with­draw him­self from con­sid­er­a­tion over ques­tions about under­age sex traf­fick­ing alle­ga­tions. That would be Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth’s nom­i­na­tion as Sec­re­tary of Defense. The nom­i­na­tion has­n’t gone well, in part because it turns out Hegseth nev­er dis­closed to the Trump tran­si­tion team that he was accused of sex­u­al assault in 2017. Hegseth does­n’t deny he had sex with the woman accus­ing him of drug­ging and rap­ing her, but insists it was con­sen­su­al. Hegseth also acknowl­edges pay­ing the woman in order to pre­vent her from fil­ing a law­suit that could dam­age his career. Keep in mind that Hegseth has a his­to­ry of cheat­ing on all three of his wives, so this is real­ly a sto­ry about a ser­i­al cheater get­ting accused of rape and pay­ing the woman to keep qui­et. It’s the kind of sor­did scan­dal that would have already sunk a nom­i­na­tion in the past. But this is the Trump era. Hegseth still might get approved. We’ll see.

But as the fol­low­ing set of arti­cles remind us, Hegseth’s lack of qual­i­fi­ca­tions for lead­ing the Defense Depart­ment go far beyond his his­to­ry as a ser­i­al cheater and accused rapist. He’s also a rad­i­cal Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist with a phi­los­o­phy and the­ol­o­gy that appears to be very much in line with the kind of Domin­ion­ist the­ol­o­gy ani­mat­ing much of Project 2025. The same Domin­ion­ist the­ol­o­gy that has long ani­mat­ed the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) in its decades long quest to effec­tive role back the social gains of the 20th and 21st cen­turies.

And don’t for­get the dis­turb­ing warn­ings we’ve got­ten from Russ Vought about his eager­ness to deploy the US mil­i­tary in the streets of US cities in response to antic­i­pat­ed large left-wing protests against the poli­cies they are plan­ning on imple­ment­ing under Project 2025. Putting a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist zealot in charge of the Depart­ment of Defense is a key ele­ment of those plans.

So what is the evi­dence for Hegseth’s the­o­log­i­cal extrem­ism? Well, we can start with the fact that Hegseth him­self has stat­ed that, when serv­ing in the Nation­al Guard dur­ing Joe Biden’s inau­gu­ra­tion, his own unit mem­bers and lead­er­ship deter­mined that he rep­re­sent­ed an extrem­ist threat. As Hegseth put it, “I was in the nation­al guard dur­ing the inau­gu­ra­tion of Joe Biden...But ulti­mate­ly, mem­bers of my unit and in lead­er­ship deemed that I was an extrem­ist, or a white nation­al­ist.” Maybe it was his ‘Cru­sad­er’ tat­toos. Or maybe it was the book he pub­lished in 2020 char­ac­ter­iz­ing left­ists as some sort of exis­ten­tial threat to the Unit­ed States. Or maybe it was his intense hatred of ‘diver­si­ty’ in the US mil­i­tary. We don’t know what exact­ly caused Hegseth’s unit mem­bers and lead­ers to con­clude he was a dan­ger­ous white suprema­cist extrem­ist. But we know they felt that way because he’s told us about it. And now he’s set to lead the Depart­ment of Defense.

But the signs of Hegseth’s ide­o­log­i­cal extrem­ism aren’t lim­it­ed to his tat­toos or pub­li­ca­tions. It also turns out Hegseth is a mem­ber of a Nashville, Ten­nessee, area church that’s part of a nation­al net­work of domin­ion­ist con­gre­ga­tions.

But when it comes to the grow­ing list of red flags about Hegseth’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions to lead the Depart­ment of Defense, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that the “Amer­i­can Cru­sade” Hegseth is call­ing for is a Domin­ion­ist cru­sade and has the ascend­ing Domin­ion­ist move­ment behind it. Hegseth isn’t just a nom­i­nee who has admit­ted to pay­ing a woman who threat­ened to sue him for sex­u­al assault and rape. He’s a Domin­ion­ist too. And his Nashville area Christ Church con­gre­ga­tion is part of a nation­al net­work of con­gre­ga­tions with Domin­ion­ist goals in mind: The Com­mu­nion of Reformed Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es, or CREC. A net­work led by Moscow, Ida­ho, Pas­tor Doug Wil­son, who advo­cates for no sep­a­ra­tion of church and state and open Domin­ion­ism. In oth­er words, if Hegseth does end up mak­ing it through the nom­i­na­tion process and ends up as Sec­re­tary of Defense, it will be a BIG win for this domin­ion­ist move­ment. Get­ting domin­ion­ists in posi­tions of pow­er is the whole goal, after all. And what could be bet­ter for a com­ing theo­crat­ic coup than hav­ing a mem­ber of your extrem­ist move­ment as the head of the mil­i­tary?

And that brings us to anoth­er Nashville-area sto­ry of grow­ing domin­ion­ism that is also part of Doug Wilson’s CREC move­ment: a project to build a real life domin­ion­ist com­mu­ni­ty in Jack­son Coun­ty, Ten­nessee, just a 90 minute dri­ve from Nashville. The project is being lead by two Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist pod­cast­ers, Andrew Isker and C. Jay Engel, from Min­neso­ta and Cal­i­for­nia, respec­tive­ly. The pair have decid­ed to move to Gains­boro, TN, a small town in the mid­dle of Jack­son Coun­ty, with the goal of encour­ag­ing as many oth­er like-mind­ed domin­ion­ists to join them. The idea being that they will take con­trol of the town, then the coun­ty, and even­tu­al­ly the state. And then turn the area into a domin­ion­ist mod­el to be repli­cat­ed every­where. A soci­ety that promis­es to return Amer­i­ca to an idyl­lic past, albeit only “Her­itage Amer­i­cans” are wel­come. That would be Amer­i­cans of Euro­pean ances­try or African Amer­i­cans who can prove they descend­ed from slaves. Although the remain­ing African Amer­i­cans will have to promise to not get too uppi­ty, with racial seg­re­ga­tion also return­ing under the ‘right to free asso­ci­a­tion’. Every­one else is to be kicked out. Includ­ing Vivek Ramaswamy, despite the fact that he was born in the US and is an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen. Birthright cit­i­zen­ship is to be stripped and non-Her­itage Amer­i­cans are to have their cit­i­zen­ship ‘reviewed’. It’s the “remi­ga­tion” plans Stephen Miller and Don­ald Trump were hint­ing at a month before Elec­tion Day. It’s unclear what’s to hap­pen to the Native Amer­i­cans, although it seems like­ly they’ll be sent back to the reser­va­tions.

Col­lege edu­cat­ed women gar­ner an extra intense form or ire from the pod­cast­ing pair, with women and minori­ties seen as a threat to con­ser­v­a­tive rule. As a result, Isker and Engle are not big fans of democ­ra­cy. Instead, they more enam­ored with the idea of a Protes­tant Fran­co or Appalachi­an Pinochet. It’s a sen­ti­ment shared by anoth­er pair of fig­ures impor­tant in this effort: Nate Fis­ch­er and Josh Abbotoy, the prop­er­ty devel­op­ers who have already pur­chased 500 acres of land in Jack­son Coun­ty along with anoth­er 100 acres near down­town Gains­boro where a new pod­cast­ing stu­dio has been set up. At this point, they are just look­ing for devel­op­ers to come in and build­ing the infra­struc­ture for this domin­ion­ist project. As Fis­ch­er puts it, the prin­ci­ples of US Con­sti­tu­tion are “long gone” and Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism “rep­re­sents a pos­i­tive Chris­t­ian vision for gov­ern­ment,” while Abbotoy has tweet­ed that “Amer­i­ca is going to need a Protes­tant Fran­co.” Engle has sim­i­lar­ly expressed sup­port for a “Protes­tant Fran­co or Appalachi­an Pinochet,” on social media.

And, again, this is a nation­al domin­ion­ist project. And to get an idea of that nation­al sup­port, just take a look at the guest list on Isker and Engle’s pod­cast on elec­tion night: Dusty Deev­ers, Charles Hay­wood, Stephen Wolfe and William Wolfe.

As we saw, not only is William E. Wolfe a for­mer Trump offi­cial but he also hap­pens to be a close asso­ciate of Russ Vought, the Project 2025 archi­tect who will resume his role in Trump’s cab­i­net as Trump’s head of OMB nom­i­nee, it was Octo­ber of 2023 when Wolfe was been warn­ing that “we are get­ting close” to a point where Chris­tians will have to “heed the call to arms.”. And in April of 2024, Wolfe argued that Trump is hid­ing his real intent and plans on a much more rad­i­cal sec­ond admin­is­tra­tion along Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism lines than he was let­ting on at the time. Stephen Wolfe authored the book The Case for Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism that came out 2022. Deev­ers is now an Okla­homa pas­tor who became a state sen­a­tor in 2023 with 55 per­cent of the vote after cam­paign­ing on a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist plat­form that includ­ed an abor­tion abo­li­tion ‘life begins at con­cep­tion’ stance that would charge doc­tors and moth­ers both with mur­der any abor­tion at all. And Charles Hay­wood is the mil­i­tant busi­ness­man who was seen as a ris­ing right-wing media per­son­al­i­ty, until it was revealed that he was the per­son behind an online per­sona who long called for an ‘Amer­i­can Cae­sar’. Hay­wood is now open­ly plan­ning on becom­ing an Amer­i­can ‘war­lord’ oper­at­ing an ‘armed patron­age net­work’ in the event of the break­down of gov­ern­ment rule. And as we’ve also seen, Hay­wood was one of the fig­ures work­ing with the now-indict­ed John East­man in devel­op­ing the “79 Days Report” in 2020, where sce­nar­ios involv­ing mass polit­i­cal vio­lence that pre­vent­ed the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the vote on Jan­u­ary 6 were gamed out. Oth­er par­tic­i­pants in this ‘exer­cise’ includ­ed Kevin Roberts, now the head of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion. The whole ‘sim­u­la­tion’ was ran by the Clare­mont Insti­tute and Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion. This was like a celebri­ty pan­el of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist mil­i­tants. Cel­e­brat­ing Trump’s vic­to­ry.

What are their plans now that they are poised to have near com­plete con­trol at the fed­er­al lev­el? We’ll find out. But these are the forces behind this new Domin­ion­ist ‘mod­el city/county/state’ project. Very seri­ous mil­i­tant domin­ion­ists have very big plans. And as we can see, they also hap­pen to be Pete Hegseth’s the­o­log­i­cal fel­low trav­el­ers:

The Guardian

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Pen­ta­gon pick, sparks alarm over far-right extrem­ism

Experts con­cerned over the Fox & Friends host, his Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist ide­ol­o­gy and mil­i­tant lan­guage

Alice Her­man
Fri 15 Nov 2024 11.17 EST

Extrem­ism experts are sound­ing the alarm about Pete Hegseth, Don­ald Trump’s pick for sec­re­tary of defense, whose writ­ings and online pres­ence reveal some­one immersed in a cul­ture of rightwing Chris­tian­i­ty, polit­i­cal extrem­ism and vio­lent ideation.

The Fox & Friends host, who has served in the US army but has no expe­ri­ence in gov­ern­ment, drew shock from Pen­ta­gon offi­cials when Trump nom­i­nat­ed him. Hegseth’s books on Amer­i­can cul­ture and the mil­i­tary, his com­men­tary on Fox and his fre­quent posts on social media show­case his far-right ide­ol­o­gy. On these plat­forms, Hegseth telegraphs para­noia and anger toward “left­ists”, an ultra-mas­cu­line Maga per­sona and appar­ent revul­sion toward ser­vice mem­bers who do not fit his vision – includ­ing women.

“The thing that real­ly wor­ries me, is both the ide­ol­o­gy of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism and what that’s going to mean for the kind of poli­cies he tries to put in place for the defense depart­ment,” said Thomas Lecaque, a his­to­ri­an focus­ing on reli­gion and polit­i­cal vio­lence.

Researchers who focus on the Chris­t­ian right were quick to flag Hegseth’s tat­toos, which fea­ture a tapes­try of sym­bols wide­ly embraced by Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists, includ­ing a Jerusalem cross on his chest, an Amer­i­can flag with 13 stars part­ly obscured by an assault weapon below his shoul­der and the words “Deus Vult” (“God wills it”) on his biceps.

Deus Vult is “a first Cru­sade bat­tle cry”, said Lecaque. “There is no oth­er way you can inter­pret this. This is not some warm and fuzzy, ‘we should, you know, pray and do acts of ser­vice’ – this is a call to reli­gious vio­lence.”

...

Hegseth’s tat­toos are just one aspect of the tele­vi­sion presenter’s Chris­t­ian, hyper-mas­cu­line and hard-right per­sona.

In one Insta­gram post pro­mot­ing an ammu­ni­tion com­pa­ny, Hegseth dips his hands into a buck­et of bul­lets and lets them pour through his closed fists while shout­ing: “free­dom!” In anoth­er, he shows off a T‑shirt embla­zoned with the words “A Pledge a Day Keeps the Com­mies Away” super­im­posed on an Amer­i­can flag.

Much of Hegseth’s social media con­tent is pro­mo­tion­al. He reg­u­lar­ly adver­tis­es an ammu­ni­tion com­pa­ny, a cof­fee com­pa­ny and the pro-gun group Right to Bear on Insta­gram. In a Novem­ber 2023 post, he pro­mot­ed an Advent song­book pub­lished by the Forge Press, which is described on its web­site as an orga­ni­za­tion that “arms Chris­tians with weapons to build, defend, and expand the new Chris­ten­dom”. It also offers the pod­cast Red Pill Ref­or­ma­tion, with episode titles such as “Ref­or­ma­tion vs. Rev­o­lu­tion: A Chris­t­ian Vision for World Con­quest.”

...

Hegseth has also embraced the upside-down Amer­i­can flag, which he has worn on a hat and used as cov­er art for his 2024 book, The War on War­riors: Behind the Betray­al of the Men Who Keep Us Free. His­tor­i­cal­ly flown by sailors to sig­nal dis­tress, the upside-down flag has been wide­ly appro­pri­at­ed by Trump sup­port­ers who reject­ed the out­come of the 2020 elec­tion and protest­ed against his crim­i­nal con­vic­tions.

****

In his books and inter­views, Hegseth reg­u­lar­ly demo­nizes his polit­i­cal oppo­nents and lays out hard­line posi­tions – often in explic­it­ly mil­i­tant terms.

“In more ways than you can imag­ine, left­ists have sur­round­ed tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can patri­ots on all sides, ready to close in for the kill: killing our founders, killing our flag, and killing cap­i­tal­ism,” he writes in his 2020 book, Amer­i­can Cru­sade: Our Fight to Stay Free.

For Hegseth, “left­ists” – pro­po­nents of LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights and racial jus­tice – lurk around every cor­ner, pos­ing an exis­ten­tial threat to the Unit­ed States. In Amer­i­can Cru­sade, Hegseth writes that he believes the US faces a moment of “irrec­on­cil­able dif­fer­ences between the Left and the Right in Amer­i­ca lead­ing to per­pet­u­al con­flict that can­not be resolved through the polit­i­cal process”. He adds: “No, I’m not call­ing for vio­lence, I’m just point­ing out the real­i­ty.”

Despite many such caveats in the book, Hegseth fre­quent­ly pro­pos­es vio­lent ideas.

“This time in our his­to­ry calls for an Amer­i­can Cru­sade,” he writes in the book’s intro­duc­tion. “Yes, a holy war for the right­eous cause of human free­dom.”

The cen­tral premise of Amer­i­can Cru­sade is the idea that there exists some­thing called “Amer­i­can­ism”, which he char­ac­ter­izes essen­tial­ly as rightwing pop­ulism, and then there is every­thing else: fem­i­nism, glob­al­ism, Marx­ism, pro­gres­sivism. In Hegseth’s nar­ra­tive, “Amer­i­can­ism” must pre­vail, or “death” will.

“Amer­i­ca is under the scourge of left­ism. Our sit­u­a­tion is bad, very bad. We are in the fight of our lives for the soul of our coun­try,” writes Hegseth. “You must be think­ing, ‘Pete, you laid this out in pret­ty sim­ple terms. Us ver­sus them. Amer­i­ca ver­sus the left. Good ver­sus evil. You’re over­play­ing your hand. It’s not that bad.’ Read on, and think again.”

In media appear­ances and on social media, Hegseth fre­quent­ly express­es oth­er com­mon tropes of the far-right – includ­ing the idea that the US is not a democ­ra­cy, but a “con­sti­tu­tion­al repub­lic”. (It is both.)

“Democ­ra­cy, it’s every­where, right?” said Hegseth in a May 2024 inter­view, rail­ing against sec­u­lar pub­lic edu­ca­tion and teach­ers’ appar­ent obses­sion with the idea of democ­ra­cy. “Democ­ra­cy, democ­ra­cy, defend the democ­ra­cy. Do you know what our founders did not want us to be? A democ­ra­cy.”

****

Hegseth has also joined efforts by rightwing groups to dis­cred­it an ear­ly push by the Biden admin­is­tra­tion to address extrem­ism in the mil­i­tary.

A vet­er­an of the US army, hav­ing served in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guan­tá­namo Bay with the Min­neso­ta nation­al guard, Hegseth takes offense at the notion that ser­vice mem­bers could be vul­ner­a­ble to the sway of extrem­ist polit­i­cal ide­olo­gies.

“Root­ing out ‘extrem­ism,’ today’s gen­er­als push rank-and-file patri­ots out of their for­ma­tions,” writes Hegseth in his 2024 book, The War on War­riors.

Hegseth is far from alone in oppos­ing efforts to counter extrem­ism with­in the ranks of the mil­i­tary. Less than three years after the cre­ation of the coun­ter­ing extrem­ism work­ing group, the mil­i­tary qui­et­ly dropped the project – report­ed­ly the result of a Repub­li­can push to quash it.

...

Hegseth says that he was per­son­al­ly labeled as an extrem­ist by the US army – a claim the Guardian could not ver­i­fy.

“I was in the nation­al guard dur­ing the inau­gu­ra­tion of Joe Biden,” said Hegseth in a 4 June inter­view. “But ulti­mate­ly, mem­bers of my unit and in lead­er­ship deemed that I was an extrem­ist, or a white nation­al­ist.”

At the heart of Hegseth’s griev­ances about the mod­ern US mil­i­tary is his oppo­si­tion to diver­si­ty and inclu­sion, and he has open­ly dis­missed swaths of ser­vice mem­bers as inad­e­quate based on their gen­der or sex­u­al­i­ty.

“I’m straight up just say­ing, we shouldn’t have women in com­bat roles,” Hegseth said in a recent pod­cast.

Hegseth pro­pos­es upend­ing the mil­i­tary estab­lish­ment and purg­ing mem­bers of the “gen­er­al-class” who sup­port diver­si­ty and inclu­sion prin­ci­ples. “The next pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States needs to fire them all – or at least most of them – and install lead­ers with real fideli­ty to the Con­sti­tu­tion,” Hegseth writes in War on War­riors.

The pro­pos­al to purge the mil­i­tary of offi­cers he deems too lib­er­al reflects Trump’s cam­paign mantra of tar­get­ing “ene­mies with­in” the state.

“The tat­toos – I get why we talk about them, and we should – but there’s also the project of sweep­ing out the gen­er­al staff,” said Jeff Sharlet, an author who has cov­ered Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ism and the far right. “That’s what you do in a coup.”

———-
“Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Pen­ta­gon pick, sparks alarm over far-right extrem­ism” by Alice Her­man; The Guardian; 11/15/2024

““I was in the nation­al guard dur­ing the inau­gu­ra­tion of Joe Biden,” said Hegseth in a 4 June inter­view. “But ulti­mate­ly, mem­bers of my unit and in lead­er­ship deemed that I was an extrem­ist, or a white nation­al­ist.””

Well, while Pete Hegseth does­n’t think he’s an extrem­ist, his fel­low nation­al guard mem­bers and lead­ers appar­ent­ly had a very dif­fer­ent opin­ion of him while he was serv­ing dur­ing the Biden inau­gu­ra­tion. His words. Keep in mind this would have been just a cou­ple weeks fol­low­ing the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion, so a height­ened lev­el of sen­si­tiv­i­ty about extrem­ists in the ranks was very much war­rant­ed. Was it the Cru­sad­er tat­toos that left that impres­sion or some­thing more?

...
Researchers who focus on the Chris­t­ian right were quick to flag Hegseth’s tat­toos, which fea­ture a tapes­try of sym­bols wide­ly embraced by Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists, includ­ing a Jerusalem cross on his chest, an Amer­i­can flag with 13 stars part­ly obscured by an assault weapon below his shoul­der and the words “Deus Vult” (“God wills it”) on his biceps.

Deus Vult is “a first Cru­sade bat­tle cry”, said Lecaque. “There is no oth­er way you can inter­pret this. This is not some warm and fuzzy, ‘we should, you know, pray and do acts of ser­vice’ – this is a call to reli­gious vio­lence.”

...

Hegseth says that he was per­son­al­ly labeled as an extrem­ist by the US army – a claim the Guardian could not ver­i­fy.
...

And it’s hard to imag­ine his fel­low Nation­al Guard mem­bers were par­tic­u­lar­ly shocked to learn that Hegseth pro­ceed­ed to join efforts to dis­cred­it the Biden admin­is­tra­tion’s moves to address extrem­ism in mil­i­tary. Efforts that will pre­sum­ably be reversed entire­ly should Hegseth assume the role of Sec­re­tary of Defense:

...
Hegseth has also joined efforts by rightwing groups to dis­cred­it an ear­ly push by the Biden admin­is­tra­tion to address extrem­ism in the mil­i­tary.

A vet­er­an of the US army, hav­ing served in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guan­tá­namo Bay with the Min­neso­ta nation­al guard, Hegseth takes offense at the notion that ser­vice mem­bers could be vul­ner­a­ble to the sway of extrem­ist polit­i­cal ide­olo­gies.

“Root­ing out ‘extrem­ism,’ today’s gen­er­als push rank-and-file patri­ots out of their for­ma­tions,” writes Hegseth in his 2024 book, The War on War­riors.

Hegseth is far from alone in oppos­ing efforts to counter extrem­ism with­in the ranks of the mil­i­tary. Less than three years after the cre­ation of the coun­ter­ing extrem­ism work­ing group, the mil­i­tary qui­et­ly dropped the project – report­ed­ly the result of a Repub­li­can push to quash it.

...

The pro­pos­al to purge the mil­i­tary of offi­cers he deems too lib­er­al reflects Trump’s cam­paign mantra of tar­get­ing “ene­mies with­in” the state.

“The tat­toos – I get why we talk about them, and we should – but there’s also the project of sweep­ing out the gen­er­al staff,” said Jeff Sharlet, an author who has cov­ered Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ism and the far right. “That’s what you do in a coup.”
...

And as we can see from Hegseth’s overt Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist views, Hegseth isn’t just some Cru­sad­er fan boy. He’s an advo­cate for “an Amer­i­can Crusade...Yes, a holy war for the right­eous cause of human free­dom.” A cru­sade against all the things Hegseth views as in oppo­si­tion to “Amer­i­can­ism”: fem­i­nism, glob­al­ism, Marx­ism, pro­gres­sivism. As he puts it, “Amer­i­can­ism” must pre­vail, or “death” will. Hegseth isn’t minc­ing words. He real­ly does view this as a “Us ver­sus them. Amer­i­ca ver­sus the left. Good ver­sus evil,” kind of exis­ten­tial con­flict:

...
In one Insta­gram post pro­mot­ing an ammu­ni­tion com­pa­ny, Hegseth dips his hands into a buck­et of bul­lets and lets them pour through his closed fists while shout­ing: “free­dom!” In anoth­er, he shows off a T‑shirt embla­zoned with the words “A Pledge a Day Keeps the Com­mies Away” super­im­posed on an Amer­i­can flag.

Much of Hegseth’s social media con­tent is pro­mo­tion­al. He reg­u­lar­ly adver­tis­es an ammu­ni­tion com­pa­ny, a cof­fee com­pa­ny and the pro-gun group Right to Bear on Insta­gram. In a Novem­ber 2023 post, he pro­mot­ed an Advent song­book pub­lished by the Forge Press, which is described on its web­site as an orga­ni­za­tion that “arms Chris­tians with weapons to build, defend, and expand the new Chris­ten­dom”. It also offers the pod­cast Red Pill Ref­or­ma­tion, with episode titles such as “Ref­or­ma­tion vs. Rev­o­lu­tion: A Chris­t­ian Vision for World Con­quest.”

...

Hegseth has also embraced the upside-down Amer­i­can flag, which he has worn on a hat and used as cov­er art for his 2024 book, The War on War­riors: Behind the Betray­al of the Men Who Keep Us Free. His­tor­i­cal­ly flown by sailors to sig­nal dis­tress, the upside-down flag has been wide­ly appro­pri­at­ed by Trump sup­port­ers who reject­ed the out­come of the 2020 elec­tion and protest­ed against his crim­i­nal con­vic­tions.

****

In his books and inter­views, Hegseth reg­u­lar­ly demo­nizes his polit­i­cal oppo­nents and lays out hard­line posi­tions – often in explic­it­ly mil­i­tant terms.

“In more ways than you can imag­ine, left­ists have sur­round­ed tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can patri­ots on all sides, ready to close in for the kill: killing our founders, killing our flag, and killing cap­i­tal­ism,” he writes in his 2020 book, Amer­i­can Cru­sade: Our Fight to Stay Free.

For Hegseth, “left­ists” – pro­po­nents of LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights and racial jus­tice – lurk around every cor­ner, pos­ing an exis­ten­tial threat to the Unit­ed States. In Amer­i­can Cru­sade, Hegseth writes that he believes the US faces a moment of “irrec­on­cil­able dif­fer­ences between the Left and the Right in Amer­i­ca lead­ing to per­pet­u­al con­flict that can­not be resolved through the polit­i­cal process”. He adds: “No, I’m not call­ing for vio­lence, I’m just point­ing out the real­i­ty.”

Despite many such caveats in the book, Hegseth fre­quent­ly pro­pos­es vio­lent ideas.

“This time in our his­to­ry calls for an Amer­i­can Cru­sade,” he writes in the book’s intro­duc­tion. “Yes, a holy war for the right­eous cause of human free­dom.”

The cen­tral premise of Amer­i­can Cru­sade is the idea that there exists some­thing called “Amer­i­can­ism”, which he char­ac­ter­izes essen­tial­ly as rightwing pop­ulism, and then there is every­thing else: fem­i­nism, glob­al­ism, Marx­ism, pro­gres­sivism. In Hegseth’s nar­ra­tive, “Amer­i­can­ism” must pre­vail, or “death” will.

“Amer­i­ca is under the scourge of left­ism. Our sit­u­a­tion is bad, very bad. We are in the fight of our lives for the soul of our coun­try,” writes Hegseth. “You must be think­ing, ‘Pete, you laid this out in pret­ty sim­ple terms. Us ver­sus them. Amer­i­ca ver­sus the left. Good ver­sus evil. You’re over­play­ing your hand. It’s not that bad.’ Read on, and think again.”
...

But when it comes to the grow­ing list of red flags about Hegseth’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions to lead the Depart­ment of Defense, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that the “Amer­i­can Cru­sade” Hegseth is call­ing for is a Domin­ion­ist cru­sade and has the ascend­ing Domin­ion­ist move­ment behind it. Hegseth isn’t just a nom­i­nee who has admit­ted to pay­ing a woman who threat­ened to sue him for sex­u­al assault and rape. He’s a Domin­ion­ist too. And his Nashville area Christ Church con­gre­ga­tion is part of a nation­al net­work of con­gre­ga­tions with Domin­ion­ist goals in mind. The Com­mu­nion of Reformed Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es, or CREC. A net­work led by Moscow, Ida­ho, Pas­tor Doug Wil­son, who advo­cates for no sep­a­ra­tion of church and state and open Domin­ion­ism. And as we can imag­ine, get­ting like-mind­ed peo­ple in posi­tions of pow­er and influ­ence is a key goal of this net­work. Key posi­tions like Sec­re­tary of Defense:

Ida­ho Cap­i­tal Sun

Trump’s Defense sec­re­tary nom­i­nee has close ties to Ida­ho Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists

Pete Hegseth is a mem­ber of a Ten­nessee con­gre­ga­tion affil­i­at­ed with Moscow-based Christ Church

By: Heath Druzin — Novem­ber 21, 2024 1:18 pm

Pete Hegseth, pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump’s nom­i­nee for sec­re­tary of Defense, has close ties to an Ida­ho-based Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist church that aims to turn Amer­i­ca into a theoc­ra­cy.

Hegseth is a mem­ber of a Ten­nessee con­gre­ga­tion affil­i­at­ed with Christ Church, a con­tro­ver­sial con­gre­ga­tion in Moscow, Ida­ho, that has become a leader in the move­ment to get more Chris­tian­i­ty in the pub­lic sphere.

In an appear­ance last year on the Christ Church-con­nect­ed stream­ing show “Crosspolitic,” Hegseth talked about how build­ing up fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian edu­ca­tion sys­tems is impor­tant in what he sees as a “spir­i­tu­al bat­tle” with the sec­u­lar world. He sees Chris­t­ian stu­dents as foot sol­diers in that war and refers to Chris­t­ian schools as “boot camp.”

“We’re in mid­dle phase one right now, which is effec­tive­ly a tac­ti­cal retreat where you regroup, con­sol­i­date and reor­ga­nize and as you do so, you build your army under­ground with the oppor­tu­ni­ty lat­er on of tak­ing offen­sive oper­a­tions – and obvi­ous­ly all of this is metaphor­i­cal and all that good stuff,” he said on the show.

...

Hegseth has spo­ken pos­i­tive­ly about Christ Church Pas­tor Doug Wilson’s writ­ings

Christ Church is led by Pas­tor Doug Wil­son, who found­ed the Calvin­ist group of church­es called the Com­mu­nion of Reformed Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es, or CREC. CREC has con­gre­ga­tions in near­ly all 50 states and sev­er­al for­eign coun­tries. Hegseth’s church is a mem­ber of CREC, and Hegseth has spo­ken pos­i­tive­ly of Wilson’s writ­ings.

Wil­son and his allies have a rigid patri­ar­chal belief sys­tem and don’t believe in the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. They sup­port tak­ing away the right to vote from most women, bar­ring non-Chris­tians from hold­ing office and crim­i­nal­iz­ing the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty.

Recent­ly, Wil­son has increased his influ­ence nation­al­ly as he’s built a reli­gious, edu­ca­tion­al and media empire. His Asso­ci­a­tion of Clas­si­cal Chris­t­ian Schools has hun­dreds of fun­da­men­tal­ist schools around the coun­try, and his pub­lish­ing out­fit Canon Press churns out dozens of titles a year as well as pop­u­lar stream­ing shows that high­light unyield­ing social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive ideals.

In the recent­ly released pod­cast, “Extreme­ly Amer­i­can” (cre­at­ed by this reporter), Wil­son says one of his goals is to get like-mind­ed peo­ple into posi­tions of influ­ence. In an emailed response for this sto­ry, he said he’s clos­er to that post-elec­tion and that he sup­ports Hegseth’s nom­i­na­tion, though he down­played any influ­ence he has on him.

...

Hegseth nom­i­na­tion could threat­en cohe­sion, diver­si­ty of U.S. mil­i­tary, experts say

That’s what wor­ries Air Force vet­er­an Mikey Wein­stein, who is the pres­i­dent of the Mil­i­tary Reli­gious Free­dom Foun­da­tion. Wein­stein says Hegseth, if con­firmed as sec­re­tary of Defense, would threat­en the cohe­sion of a reli­gious­ly and racial­ly diverse U.S. mil­i­tary.

“Pete Hegseth is a poster child for lit­er­al­ly every­thing that would be the oppo­site of what you would want to have for some­one who’s con­trol­ling the tech­no­log­i­cal­ly most lethal orga­ni­za­tion in the his­to­ry of this coun­try,” he said.

Wein­stein sees Hegseth’s nom­i­na­tion as an exam­ple of the dan­gers of Project 2025, a 900-page pol­i­cy paper writ­ten by far-right polit­i­cal activists. It lays out a plan to gut the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and install Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist ideals.

“Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism is an absolute fatal can­cer metas­ta­siz­ing at light speed (for) the nation­al secu­ri­ty of this coun­try,” he said. “It is a Chris­t­ian ver­sion of the Tal­iban.”

Matthew D. Tay­lor, senior schol­ar at the Insti­tute for Islam­ic, Chris­t­ian and Jew­ish Stud­ies, said Hegseth is “one of the most extreme far right fig­ures ever nom­i­nat­ed to a cab­i­net post, at least in mod­ern mem­o­ry.”

...

“I think we should expect a pro­found degra­da­tion of our demo­c­ra­t­ic norms of the rule of law, and I think we are edg­ing clos­er to a de fac­to Anglo Protes­tant estab­lish­ment, of the kind where Anglo Protes­tant Chris­tian­i­ty as the de fac­to offi­cial reli­gion in the Unit­ed States,” he said.

Hegseth faces some head­winds in his nom­i­na­tion process due to mul­ti­ple mar­i­tal sex scan­dals and the recent rev­e­la­tion that he paid a woman who accused him of sex­u­al assault in exchange for her not speak­ing about it. He denies he assault­ed her but admits he paid her. He’s also got­ten crit­i­cism for tat­toos that are sym­bols of the Cru­sades and wrote a book titled “Amer­i­can Cru­sade,” where he derides Mus­lims.

Before becom­ing a TV per­son­al­i­ty, Hegseth led the con­ser­v­a­tive vet­er­ans group Con­cerned Vet­er­ans for Amer­i­ca, which advo­cat­ed for increased pri­va­ti­za­tion of vet­er­ans’ health care.

He has also said that women should not be allowed to serve in com­bat roles in the mil­i­tary, and has com­plained about what he terms “woke” poli­cies in the mil­i­tary.

———

“Trump’s Defense sec­re­tary nom­i­nee has close ties to Ida­ho Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists” By Heath Druzin; Ida­ho Cap­i­tal Sun; 11/21/2024

“Hegseth faces some head­winds in his nom­i­na­tion process due to mul­ti­ple mar­i­tal sex scan­dals and the recent rev­e­la­tion that he paid a woman who accused him of sex­u­al assault in exchange for her not speak­ing about it. He denies he assault­ed her but admits he paid her. He’s also got­ten crit­i­cism for tat­toos that are sym­bols of the Cru­sades and wrote a book titled “Amer­i­can Cru­sade,” where he derides Mus­lims.”

As we can see, Pete Hegseth is quite the bun­dle of con­tra­dic­tions. On the one hand, he’s an open advo­cate for a kind of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist holy war against ‘the left’. Wrote a whole book about it. On the oth­er hand, he’s a self-admit­ted ser­i­al adul­ter­er and accused rapist. So when we learn that he’s the mem­ber of a Ten­nessee con­gre­ga­tion affil­i­at­ed with the Com­mu­nion of Reformed Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es (CREC), lead by Pas­tor Doug Wil­son, keep in mind that Hegseth’s bun­dle of moral con­tra­dic­tions isn’t just some per­son­al quirk. He’s a lead­ing fig­ure in an extrem­ist Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist move­ment with chap­ters in every US state. A move­ment the­o­log­i­cal­ly align with the Domin­ion­ist spir­it ani­mat­ing Project 2025. A Domin­ion­ist spir­it high­ly aligned with the kind of corporatist/fascist goals that have long the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s mega-donor base. In oth­er words, the Domin­ion­ist ambi­tions of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, the group cur­rent­ly poised to real­ize its decades-long goals under the next Trump admin­is­tra­tion. That’s the broad­er con­text of Hegseth’s extrem­ism. Hegseth’s the­o­log­i­cal fel­low trav­el­ers are the most pow­er­ful force in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics today. A cor­po­ratist Domin­ion coali­tion with detailed plans to rede­fine Amer­i­ca gov­ern­ment and soci­ety as a kind of overt­ly fas­cist theoc­ra­cy, with no sep­a­ra­tion of church and state but also now sep­a­ra­tion behind pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tions and state. It’s a fusion of pow­er. Which will have a mil­i­tary that’s pre­sum­ably ready and will­ing to deploy that mil­i­tary pow­er domes­ti­cal­ly as part of some sort of MAGA ‘holy war’ under a Sec­re­tary of Defense Hegseth:

...
Hegseth is a mem­ber of a Ten­nessee con­gre­ga­tion affil­i­at­ed with Christ Church, a con­tro­ver­sial con­gre­ga­tion in Moscow, Ida­ho, that has become a leader in the move­ment to get more Chris­tian­i­ty in the pub­lic sphere.

In an appear­ance last year on the Christ Church-con­nect­ed stream­ing show “Crosspolitic,” Hegseth talked about how build­ing up fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian edu­ca­tion sys­tems is impor­tant in what he sees as a “spir­i­tu­al bat­tle” with the sec­u­lar world. He sees Chris­t­ian stu­dents as foot sol­diers in that war and refers to Chris­t­ian schools as “boot camp.”

“We’re in mid­dle phase one right now, which is effec­tive­ly a tac­ti­cal retreat where you regroup, con­sol­i­date and reor­ga­nize and as you do so, you build your army under­ground with the oppor­tu­ni­ty lat­er on of tak­ing offen­sive oper­a­tions – and obvi­ous­ly all of this is metaphor­i­cal and all that good stuff,” he said on the show.

...

Hegseth has spo­ken pos­i­tive­ly about Christ Church Pas­tor Doug Wilson’s writ­ings

Christ Church is led by Pas­tor Doug Wil­son, who found­ed the Calvin­ist group of church­es called the Com­mu­nion of Reformed Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es, or CREC. CREC has con­gre­ga­tions in near­ly all 50 states and sev­er­al for­eign coun­tries. Hegseth’s church is a mem­ber of CREC, and Hegseth has spo­ken pos­i­tive­ly of Wilson’s writ­ings.

Wil­son and his allies have a rigid patri­ar­chal belief sys­tem and don’t believe in the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. They sup­port tak­ing away the right to vote from most women, bar­ring non-Chris­tians from hold­ing office and crim­i­nal­iz­ing the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty.

...

Recent­ly, Wil­son has increased his influ­ence nation­al­ly as he’s built a reli­gious, edu­ca­tion­al and media empire. His Asso­ci­a­tion of Clas­si­cal Chris­t­ian Schools has hun­dreds of fun­da­men­tal­ist schools around the coun­try, and his pub­lish­ing out­fit Canon Press churns out dozens of titles a year as well as pop­u­lar stream­ing shows that high­light unyield­ing social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive ideals.

...

That’s what wor­ries Air Force vet­er­an Mikey Wein­stein, who is the pres­i­dent of the Mil­i­tary Reli­gious Free­dom Foun­da­tion. Wein­stein says Hegseth, if con­firmed as sec­re­tary of Defense, would threat­en the cohe­sion of a reli­gious­ly and racial­ly diverse U.S. mil­i­tary.

“Pete Hegseth is a poster child for lit­er­al­ly every­thing that would be the oppo­site of what you would want to have for some­one who’s con­trol­ling the tech­no­log­i­cal­ly most lethal orga­ni­za­tion in the his­to­ry of this coun­try,” he said.

Wein­stein sees Hegseth’s nom­i­na­tion as an exam­ple of the dan­gers of Project 2025, a 900-page pol­i­cy paper writ­ten by far-right polit­i­cal activists. It lays out a plan to gut the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and install Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist ideals.

“Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism is an absolute fatal can­cer metas­ta­siz­ing at light speed (for) the nation­al secu­ri­ty of this coun­try,” he said. “It is a Chris­t­ian ver­sion of the Tal­iban.”

...

Before becom­ing a TV per­son­al­i­ty, Hegseth led the con­ser­v­a­tive vet­er­ans group Con­cerned Vet­er­ans for Amer­i­ca, which advo­cat­ed for increased pri­va­ti­za­tion of vet­er­ans’ health care.

He has also said that women should not be allowed to serve in com­bat roles in the mil­i­tary, and has com­plained about what he terms “woke” poli­cies in the mil­i­tary.
...

And don’t for­get, this is a nation­al net­work of domin­ion­ist con­gre­ga­tions. Which brings us to the alarm­ing sto­ry about anoth­er branch of this net­work that’s cur­rent­ly being built in Jack­son Coun­ty, Ten­nessee, just a 90 minute dri­ve from Nashville, where an ambi­tious new Domin­ion­ist project affil­i­at­ed with Doug Wilson’s CREC net­work of con­gre­ga­tions is tak­ing shape: first, the Domin­ion­ist takeover of the small town of Gains­boro, fol­lowed by the Domin­ion­ist takeover of Jack­son Coun­ty, with eyes on turn­ing the whole state of Ten­nessee into a Domin­ion­ist state. Theocrats will be in pub­lic offices and Domin­ion­ist laws will reign supreme.

That’s the vision for the new­ly announced project, with two Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist pod­cast­ers lead­ing effort: Andrew Isker and C. Jay Engel, one from Cal­i­for­nia and one from Min­neso­ta. And while it’s an effort focused on Jack­son Coun­ty, TN, it’s real­ly a nation­al effort. Peo­ple from around the US are encour­aged to relo­cate to the area...as long as they’re white con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cals with a desire to roll the US back to the 19th cen­tu­ry. Because it’s not just a plan for a Domin­ion­ist cap­ture of gov­ern­ment. It’s also a project to main­stream 19th Cen­tu­ry norms, includ­ing the pro­mo­tion of the idea that Amer­i­ca for “Her­itage Amer­i­cans” only, as defined by Euro­pean Amer­i­cans or those Africans who can estab­lish they are descen­dants of slaves. Every­one else has to go. In oth­er words, the “remi­ga­tion” plans Stephen Miller and Don­ald Trump were hint­ing at a month before Elec­tion Day are very much in line with this “Her­itage Amer­i­cans” idea. Cit­i­zen or not. Racial seg­re­ga­tion, or the right of free asso­ci­a­tion, as Isker and Engle frame it, will also be return­ing, and the blacks who are allowed to stay are expect­ed to not get too uppi­ty about it.

Col­lege edu­cat­ed women gar­ner an extra intense form or ire from the pod­cast­ing pair, with women and minori­ties seen as a threat to con­ser­v­a­tive rule. As a result, Isker and Engle are not big fans of democ­ra­cy. Instead, they more enam­ored with the idea of a Protes­tant Fran­co or Appalachi­an Pinochet. It’s a sen­ti­ment shared by anoth­er pair of fig­ures impor­tant in this effort: Nate Fis­ch­er and Josh Abbotoy, the prop­er­ty devel­op­ers who have already pur­chased 500 acres of land in Jack­son Coun­ty along with anoth­er 100 acres near down­town Gains­boro where a new pod­cast­ing stu­dio has been set up. At this point, they are just look­ing for devel­op­ers to come in and build­ing the infra­struc­ture for this domin­ion­ist project. As Fis­ch­er puts it, the prin­ci­ples of US Con­sti­tu­tion are “long gone” and Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism “rep­re­sents a pos­i­tive Chris­t­ian vision for gov­ern­ment,” while Abbotoy has tweet­ed that “Amer­i­ca is going to need a Protes­tant Fran­co.” Engle has sim­i­lar­ly expressed sup­port for a “Protes­tant Fran­co or Appalachi­an Pinochet,” on social media.

And while the for­mal legal return of these 19th cen­tu­ry norms may not hap­pen imme­di­ate­ly, a big part of this effort involves sim­ply main­stream­ing the ideals. Open talk about deport­ing almost all non-“Heritage Amer­i­cans”, over­turn­ing democ­ra­cy, and set­ting up a soci­ety that sure sounds like Gilead from A Hand­maid­’s Tale. And, again, this is all hap­pen­ing under the umbrel­la of Doug Wilson’s nation­al CREC net­work of domin­ion­ist con­gre­ga­tions. It’s a nation­al domin­ion­ist project. In fact, as we’re going to see, Isker and Engle had an elec­tion night pan­el for their pod­cast that was almost like a ‘Who’s Who’ of mil­i­tant Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ists: Dusty Deev­ers, Charles Hay­wood, Stephen Wolfe and William Wolfe were all there. The rad­i­cal­iza­tion of ‘Main Street’ might be start­ing in Jack­son Coun­ty, Ten­nessee, but isn’t an attempt to build an iso­lat­ed enclave. They are build­ing a mod­el for state cap­ture that is to be emu­lat­ed across the nation:

News Chan­nel 5 Nashville

Aim­ing to ‘rad­i­cal­ize Main Street,’ Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists set sights on tiny Jack­son Coun­ty, Ten­nessee

“My job is to nor­mal­ize dis­si­dent right-wing talk­ing points to the normies.... We will tear off Lib­er­al scales from their eyes and rad­i­cal­ize Main Street,” said Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist C. Jay Engel.

Post­ed 9:09 AM, Nov 18, 2024
updat­ed
By: Phil Williams

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — They want to go back to an Amer­i­ca before the civ­il rights move­ment “ruined every­thing.” They want to kick out legal immi­grants even if they became U.S. cit­i­zens decades ago. And they want to put women back where they think they belong.

If nec­es­sary to achieve their goals, they are pre­pared to accept a Protes­tant dic­ta­tor who will rule accord­ing to their own inter­pre­ta­tion of what it means to be a Chris­t­ian.

Now, an exclu­sive NewsChan­nel 5 inves­ti­ga­tion has dis­cov­ered that those Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists have set their sights on a remote Mid­dle Ten­nessee coun­ty, hop­ing to attract hun­dreds, even thou­sands, of like-mind­ed peo­ple from across the coun­try as part of efforts, in the words of one activist, to “rad­i­cal­ize Main Street.”

That effort — with Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist pod­cast­ers Andrew Isker and C. Jay Engel lead­ing the way — is tar­get­ing tiny Jack­son Coun­ty and the coun­ty seat of Gaines­boro, locat­ed about 90 min­utes north­east of Nashville in the foothills of the Appalachi­an Moun­tains. Cen­sus data shows Jack­son Coun­ty is home to an esti­mat­ed 12,711 peo­ple.

“We’re build­ing a town, right? We’re build­ing a com­mu­ni­ty there,”Isker said dur­ing a July pod­cast when he and Engel first announced their move to Ten­nessee.

...

“The ques­tion is, is there room for like-mind­ed Chris­tians and patri­ots in Ten­nessee? Yes, there’s an imper­a­tive for like-mind­ed Chris­tians to gath­er and fight with us,”Engel said dur­ing an Octo­ber pod­cast from Gaines­boro.

“We need Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism in one state.”

Isker and Engel deny that their views are racist, while also claim­ing that “the very con­cept of ‘racism’ was lit­er­al­ly a cre­ation of com­mu­nists.”

But NewsChan­nel 5’s three-month inves­ti­ga­tion — review­ing hours of pod­casts and por­ing over hun­dreds of social media posts — found that their views are not so dif­fer­ent from the ideas espoused by the neo-Nazis and oth­er white suprema­cists seen march­ing down Nashville streets in the past year, although they dress up their con­tro­ver­sial notions with intel­lec­tu­al buzz words and call it Chris­t­ian.

“If you strip it all down, they’re say­ing the same thing – they are just say­ing it in a way that may be more accept­able to peo­ple,” said Kevin Rig­gs, pas­tor of Franklin Com­mu­ni­ty Church. “At the end of the day, it’s the same tired ide­ol­o­gy of white suprema­cy.”

Rig­gs, who has been sound­ing the alarm for years about the rise of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism in Mid­dle Ten­nessee, described Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism as “a Chris­tian­ized-type of Sharia law.”

Anoth­er Moscow, Ida­ho?

In its approach, the Jack­son Coun­ty project appears sim­i­lar to the much-pub­li­cized efforts by Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist pas­tor Doug Wil­son to turn Moscow, Ida­ho, into a “church town.” Isker grad­u­at­ed from a min­is­te­r­i­al train­ing pro­gram cre­at­ed by Wilson’s Christ Church.

The real estate com­po­nent of the project is led by two relat­ed com­pa­nies, New Found­ing and RidgeRun­ner, that promise buy­ers the poten­tial to “be part of build­ing a com­mu­ni­ty with peo­ple who share your val­ues.” The com­pa­nies began with an ini­tial project in near­by Burkesville, Ken­tucky, before announc­ing the Jack­son Coun­ty phase ear­li­er this month.

New Found­ing CEO Nate Fis­ch­er has declared the prin­ci­ples of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion are “long gone” and that Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism “rep­re­sents a pos­i­tive Chris­t­ian vision for gov­ern­ment.” Fischer’s part­ner, Josh Abbotoy, has claimed to have mixed feel­ings on the issue, although he tweet­ed that “Amer­i­ca is going to need a Protes­tant Fran­co.”

Fran­cis­co Fran­co was a Catholic dic­ta­tor who ruled over Spain from 1939 to 1975 and made Catholi­cism the offi­cial reli­gion of the coun­try.

...

Accord­ing to prop­er­ty records, Abbotoy bought up 500 acres in the rolling hills on the Macon-Jack­son Coun­ty line, while a relat­ed cor­po­ra­tion pur­chased an addi­tion­al 100 acres near down­town Gaines­boro. That cor­po­ra­tion has also bought a small office build­ing on East Hull Avenue in Gaines­boro.

Isker and Engel, who are set­ting up a pod­cast stu­dio in that office build­ing, appear to have been recruit­ed as ambas­sadors for the project. The pair claim their “Con­tra Mundum” pod­cast is the “Num­ber One Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Pod­cast in the World.”

Amer­i­ca for ‘Her­itage Amer­i­cans’

As Isker and Engel see it, the only peo­ple who have a legit­i­mate right to a home­land in the Unit­ed States are “Her­itage Amer­i­cans,” which they typ­i­cal­ly depict on their social media posts with old Nor­man Rock­well images of White peo­ple, espe­cial­ly White men.

In a post that was pinned to the top of his X pro­file, Engel explained that his con­cept of Her­itage Amer­i­ca “affirms the dom­i­na­tion and pre-emi­nence of Euro­pean derived peo­ples, their insti­tu­tions and their way of life.” He also defined it as “an actu­al body of insti­tu­tions cre­at­ed by a nexus of spe­cif­ic peo­ple, dom­i­nat­ed and defined by Ang­los and their chil­dren.”

Still, Engel said his idea of Her­itage Amer­i­ca also “includes the blacks of the Old South.”

“I would imag­ine, in most of those Nor­man Rock­well pic­tures, there aren’t any depic­tions of peo­ple who look like me,” said Chris Williamson, the African-Amer­i­can pas­tor of the mul­tira­cial Strong Tow­er Bible Church in Nashville.

“Accord­ing to them, if you are a descen­dant of slaves, you get to stay,” NewsChan­nel 5 Inves­ti­gates not­ed.

“So, they are defin­ing my lega­cy, my entire lega­cy real­ly on slav­ery,” Williamson respond­ed. “I get to stay — even though I was brought here against my will and treat­ed hor­ri­ble through chat­tel slav­ery for near­ly 250 years, but that’s my her­itage.”

Even then, Engel wrote that his accep­tance of Black Amer­i­cans as “Her­itage Amer­i­cans” assumes they will not try to “lever­age their expe­ri­ence for the pur­pos­es of polit­i­cal guilt.”

...

Pas­tor Rig­gs said he would put Isker and Engle into the cat­e­go­ry of “white Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists,” although the pair insists their views are about cul­ture, not race.

‘The 1960s ruined every­thing’

Still, Engel com­plained in one pod­cast that “all of our heroes were way more racist than we’re allowed to be today.”

The two White men have denounced the efforts of Civ­il Rights leader Mar­tin Luther King – and the Civ­il Rights move­ment, in gen­er­al.

“You can­not have both MLK and Her­itage Amer­i­ca,” Engel wrote in one social media post.

Isker argued — in all caps — “WE SHOULD TURN CIVIL RIGHTS BACK TO THE STATES.”

They have cel­e­brat­ed images of Whites-only din­ers in the 1950s, with Engel pro­claim­ing that “the 1960s ruined every­thing” and defend­ing racial dis­crim­i­na­tion.

“Yeah, it’s called free­dom of asso­ci­a­tion,” Engel wrote.

And they mock his­tor­i­cal inci­dents like the kid­nap­ping and lynch­ing of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955.

Yet, they dis­miss any crit­i­cism as peo­ple tak­ing them too seri­ous­ly.

In one pod­cast, Engel read one critic’s ref­er­ence to “Isker’s objec­tions to the Civ­il Rights Act, his dis­mis­sive­ness of the Emmett Till mur­der and the broad­er racial issues.”

Isker broke into pro­longed laugh­ter.

“Yeah, that’s fun­ny,” Engel agreed. “That’s fun­ny because that whole con­tro­ver­sy was like entire­ly a meme con­tro­ver­sy.”

“I know,” Isker answered. “It’s like fun, man. Like, yeah, any­way.”

“You get in trou­ble for hav­ing fun,” Engel con­tin­ued.

...

For Black His­to­ry Month ear­li­er this year, Engel respond­ed with his own cel­e­bra­tion of what he called “Her­itage His­to­ry Month,” hold­ing up white suprema­cist Sam Fran­cis as some­one “who either shaped or defend­ed our Euro­pean and Amer­i­can her­itage.”

Among his writ­ings, Fran­cis sug­gest­ed that “if whites want­ed to do so, they could dic­tate a solu­tion to the racial prob­lem tomor­row,” part­ly by “impos­ing fer­til­i­ty con­trols on non-whites.” He called for “an uncom­pro­mis­ing asser­tion of white will” in the coun­try.

...

‘Amer­i­ca for Amer­i­cans’

Engel’s dis­taste for peo­ple who don’t look like him even extends to Vivek Ramaswamy. The for­mer GOP pres­i­den­tial can­di­date’s Hin­du par­ents immi­grat­ed to the U.S. from India.

In one pod­cast, Engel expressed sup­port for Ramaswamy’s ideas but declared that he was still “hes­i­tant” about him, giv­en his Indi­an her­itage.

“I wish we had some­one – a Her­itage Amer­i­can – that was as pas­sion­ate about, you know, our peo­ple,” he added.

In a social media post, Engel also sug­gest­ed Ramaswamy might be a “plant” who would “fin­ish the con­quest of Amer­i­ca by the non-West­ern world.”

“Peo­ples like Indi­ans, or South East (sic) Asians or Ecuado­ri­ans or immi­grat­ed Africans are the least capa­ble of fit­ting in and should be sent home imme­di­ate­ly,” Engel wrote in the post pinned to his X pro­file.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Isker has post­ed, “For­eign­ers out, for­eign­ers out, Amer­i­ca for Amer­i­cans, for­eign­ers out.”

He also appeared to endorse the idea that any for­eign-born per­son grant­ed cit­i­zen­ship since 1965 should be “sub­ject to review,” includ­ing whether they have worked “for Left caus­es.”

“Deport­ed for anti-Her­itage Amer­i­can activ­i­ties,” Isker added.

Rig­gs said such talk appears to be moti­vat­ed by what has been called the “brown­ing of Amer­i­ca.”

“Part of this is com­ing out of fear because we are mov­ing clos­er and clos­er to that day where the White Euro­pean Chris­t­ian is the minor­i­ty or the new minor­i­ty when you add up all the oth­er minori­ties,” the Franklin pas­tor added.

“So, they are los­ing pow­er, and they are try­ing to stop that, as well.”

Isker and Engel’s rhetoric – “They hate White Chris­t­ian men, peri­od, end of sto­ry” – is some­times rem­i­nis­cent of the neo-Nazis who marched through Nashville ear­li­er this year chant­i­ng, “They hate White men, deport every Mex­i­can.”

...

‘I hate democ­ra­cy’

“Peo­ple who call me racist are innate­ly inca­pable of com­pre­hend­ing the extent to which I detest the spe­cif­ic impact of col­lege-edu­cat­ed White women on the cul­ture of the world around me,” Engel said in a social media post.

He also cel­e­brat­ed the fact that he had nev­er had a female boss.

“They’re obnox­ious and emo­tion­al,” Engel wrote, say­ing he knows “how women are, espe­cial­ly work­ing ones.” Men, he argued, “need to pro­pa­gan­dize your wife, train­ing her to like the things you do.”

Isker wrote: “You can have either women’s lib­er­a­tion or civ­i­liza­tion, not both”

Engel agreed, say­ing: “I think it’s polit­i­cal­ly best to have con­ser­v­a­tives in pow­er. And blacks and women vote lib­er­al more often than White men.”

They reject any notion of Jew­ish­ness in mod­ern soci­ety. Isker claimed in one post that “Jew and Gen­tile as cat­e­gories of peo­ple has ceased to exist. There are now only Chris­tians and unbe­liev­ers.” He fol­lowed up, “Jesus was the final, true Jew.”

And they are offend­ed by the idea of mosques blast­ing out the Mus­lim call to prayer.

“That stuff can­not be hap­pen­ing in your coun­try, right? — they have to go back,” Isker said in a pod­cast.

Both have said that they “hate democ­ra­cy.” Engel said democ­ra­cy had “destroyed my way of life and my her­itage and my free­doms.”

On social media, Engel has expressed sup­port for a “Protes­tant Fran­co or Appalachi­an Pinochet,” and he applaud­ed Texas leg­is­la­tion “to make it vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble for Democ­rats to ever win an elec­tion in the state.”

On LGBTQ issues, Engel has stat­ed: “Gay peo­ple need to work on not being gay and then we can employ them. Pret­ty sim­ple.”

And he has advo­cat­ed “mak­ing the jour­nal­ists con­cerned,” claimed that jour­nal­ists are “bare­ly human” and argued for a new Trail of Tears for “relo­cat­ing the jour­nal­ists.”

“My job is to nor­mal­ize dis­si­dent right-wing talk­ing points to the normies,” Engel wrote in a post on X. “This is the func­tion of the van­guard; this is the strat­e­gy of instill­ing a counter-rev­o­lu­tion­ary ethos in Mid­dle Amer­i­ca.

“We will tear off Lib­er­al scales from their eyes and rad­i­cal­ize Main Street.”

Engel also post­ed, “Many of us actu­al­ly sup­port the breakup and crush­ing of the Unit­ed States regime, and we are will­ing to use polit­i­cal means to do it.”

And Isker wrote, “The insti­tu­tions mat­ter. The main­line church­es mat­ter. One day we will retake them. By force if nec­es­sary.”

Gain­ing influ­ence in Ten­nessee

For the pod­cast­ers, the Jack­son Coun­ty project is not just about mov­ing to a place where the peo­ple look and think like them. They also imag­ine cre­at­ing a polit­i­cal force that has an impact on com­mu­ni­ties like Gaines­boro, even­tu­al­ly extend­ing their reach statewide.”

“If you have towns that we’re going to be build­ing — where there are a lot of peo­ple that are very polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed and very well orga­nized and are out-punch­ing, you know, their weight class in terms of influ­ence — you can have as much influ­ence as one of the big cities in Ten­nessee,” Isker said.

Engel has already had “lunch with fel­low patri­ots in Nashville” about ways to counter what he calls “the Great Replace­ment,” and he promised a “mul­ti-year project to put immense pres­sure on the Ten­nessee GOP and the gov­er­nor on immi­gra­tion issues specif­i­cal­ly.”

And on elec­tion night, the pair host­ed a near­ly nine-hour pod­cast from Gaines­boro, bring­ing in some of the biggest names from the Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing Dusty Deev­ers, Charles Hay­wood, Stephen Wolfe and William Wolfe.

As a poten­tial­ly deci­sive Don­ald Trump vic­to­ry became clear, William Wolfe cel­e­brat­ed the prospect for the author­i­tar­i­an “Red Cae­sar” that some Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists hope will arise.

“If he does that then, you know, Red Cae­sar, man­date from heav­en, rock and roll, let’s go,” said Wolfe, who served in senior roles in the first Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

Dur­ing that pod­cast, devel­op­er Josh Abbotoy also made live appear­ances from an elec­tion watch par­ty that he said his group host­ed for the Jack­son Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty.

...

“I don’t want to be a doom and gloom type of per­son – my hope is still in Christ,” Rig­gs said. “But what I see on a prac­ti­cal lev­el scares me if this kind of thing keeps grow­ing and takes root in our coun­try.”

Williamson agreed.

“When I hear peo­ple talk about Jesus and their Jesus does not invite peo­ple to the table of grace, when their Jesus excludes peo­ple, they are not preach­ing the gospel of Jesus. That’s some­thing else,” he added.

“I don’t rec­og­nize that, and I don’t want that kind of Jesus lead­ing our nation.”

...

———-

“Aim­ing to ‘rad­i­cal­ize Main Street,’ Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists set sights on tiny Jack­son Coun­ty, Ten­nessee” By Phil Williams; News Chan­nel 5 Nashville; 11/18/2024

“In its approach, the Jack­son Coun­ty project appears sim­i­lar to the much-pub­li­cized efforts by Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist pas­tor Doug Wil­son to turn Moscow, Ida­ho, into a “church town.” Isker grad­u­at­ed from a min­is­te­r­i­al train­ing pro­gram cre­at­ed by Wilson’s Christ Church.”

Oh look, a new Nashville-area Christ Church con­gre­ga­tion that hap­pens to be a mem­ber of Doug Wilson’s Com­mu­nion of Reformed Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es (CREC). Found­ed by a pair for out of state pas­tors from Cal­i­for­nia and Min­neso­ta, Andrew Isker and C. Jay Engel, who have decid­ed to turn the small town of Gains­boro isn’t their Domin­ion­ist state head­quar­ters. The plans start in Gains­boro, but don’t end there. Plans pre­sum­ably to com­plete­ly take over the local gov­ern­ment and turn the area in as much of a Domin­ion­ist enclave as they legal­ly get away. And as pod­cast­ers they’re going to be attract­ing peo­ple from all over the US to the cause. the Gains­boro area is about to get an influx of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist zealots ready to fight the kind of holy war writes about.

But when we look at their guest list for their elec­tion night pod­cast, it’s clear that the pair have major sway in the world of Domin­ion­ist media. Dusty Deev­ers, Charles Hay­wood, Stephen Wolfe and William Wolfe. Isker and Engle host­ed a pan­el of nation­al­ly promi­nent mil­i­tant Chris­t­ian fas­cists for their pod­cast on elec­tion night. It points to a cru­cial ele­ment to keep in mind with this Domin­ion­ist coun­ty/s­tate-build­ing project cen­tered around Jack­son Coun­ty, Ten­nessee: it’s actu­al­ly a nation­al Domin­ion­ist project with nation­al sup­port:

...
That effort — with Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist pod­cast­ers Andrew Isker and C. Jay Engel lead­ing the way — is tar­get­ing tiny Jack­son Coun­ty and the coun­ty seat of Gaines­boro, locat­ed about 90 min­utes north­east of Nashville in the foothills of the Appalachi­an Moun­tains. Cen­sus data shows Jack­son Coun­ty is home to an esti­mat­ed 12,711 peo­ple.

“We’re build­ing a town, right? We’re build­ing a com­mu­ni­ty there,”Isker said dur­ing a July pod­cast when he and Engel first announced their move to Ten­nessee.

...

“The ques­tion is, is there room for like-mind­ed Chris­tians and patri­ots in Ten­nessee? Yes, there’s an imper­a­tive for like-mind­ed Chris­tians to gath­er and fight with us,”Engel said dur­ing an Octo­ber pod­cast from Gaines­boro.

“We need Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism in one state.”

...

For the pod­cast­ers, the Jack­son Coun­ty project is not just about mov­ing to a place where the peo­ple look and think like them. They also imag­ine cre­at­ing a polit­i­cal force that has an impact on com­mu­ni­ties like Gaines­boro, even­tu­al­ly extend­ing their reach statewide.”

“If you have towns that we’re going to be build­ing — where there are a lot of peo­ple that are very polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed and very well orga­nized and are out-punch­ing, you know, their weight class in terms of influ­ence — you can have as much influ­ence as one of the big cities in Ten­nessee,” Isker said.

Engel has already had “lunch with fel­low patri­ots in Nashville” about ways to counter what he calls “the Great Replace­ment,” and he promised a “mul­ti-year project to put immense pres­sure on the Ten­nessee GOP and the gov­er­nor on immi­gra­tion issues specif­i­cal­ly.”

And on elec­tion night, the pair host­ed a near­ly nine-hour pod­cast from Gaines­boro, bring­ing in some of the biggest names from the Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing Dusty Deev­ers, Charles Hay­wood, Stephen Wolfe and William Wolfe.

As a poten­tial­ly deci­sive Don­ald Trump vic­to­ry became clear, William Wolfe cel­e­brat­ed the prospect for the author­i­tar­i­an “Red Cae­sar” that some Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists hope will arise.

“If he does that then, you know, Red Cae­sar, man­date from heav­en, rock and roll, let’s go,” said Wolfe, who served in senior roles in the first Trump admin­is­tra­tion.
...

As we should expect, this is the the kind of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist project that more or less sounds exact­ly like the kind of ‘nation build­ing’ project we hear from over Nazi white nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tions. It real­ly is fas­cism wrapped in a flag, car­ry­ing a cross. Actu­al­ly car­ry­ing a lot of cross­es. At least one for every­one. The mil­i­tary will be sure you get yours if you have any issues:

...
Isker and Engel deny that their views are racist, while also claim­ing that “the very con­cept of ‘racism’ was lit­er­al­ly a cre­ation of com­mu­nists.”

But NewsChan­nel 5’s three-month inves­ti­ga­tion — review­ing hours of pod­casts and por­ing over hun­dreds of social media posts — found that their views are not so dif­fer­ent from the ideas espoused by the neo-Nazis and oth­er white suprema­cists seen march­ing down Nashville streets in the past year, although they dress up their con­tro­ver­sial notions with intel­lec­tu­al buzz words and call it Chris­t­ian.

“If you strip it all down, they’re say­ing the same thing – they are just say­ing it in a way that may be more accept­able to peo­ple,” said Kevin Rig­gs, pas­tor of Franklin Com­mu­ni­ty Church. “At the end of the day, it’s the same tired ide­ol­o­gy of white suprema­cy.”

Rig­gs, who has been sound­ing the alarm for years about the rise of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism in Mid­dle Ten­nessee, described Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism as “a Chris­tian­ized-type of Sharia law.”
...

But Isker and Engel are just one part of the plans for Gains­boro. Prop­er­ty devel­op­ers Nate Fish­er and Josh Abbotoy of New Found­ing are pro­vid­ing the infra­struc­ture, with 500 acres already pur­chased along the Macon-Jack­son Coun­ty Line and an addi­tion­al 100 acres near down­town Gains­boro where Isker and Engel set up a set pod­cast stu­dio where they’ll be pro­mot­ing the project glob­al­ly. They are plan­ning on very pub­lic pres­ence. Gains­boro is going to be devel­oped for Domin­ion­ism. So it’s only a mat­ter of time before we get reports about a new ‘Protes­tant Fran­co or Appalachi­an Pinochet’ fas­cist may­or get­ting elect­ed to office in Gains­boro and sur­round­ing areas and enact­ing leg­is­lat­ing seem­ing­ly designed to pre­vent pro­gres­sives from ever win­ning office. Seri­ous mon­ey is being poured into this:

...
The real estate com­po­nent of the project is led by two relat­ed com­pa­nies, New Found­ing and RidgeRun­ner, that promise buy­ers the poten­tial to “be part of build­ing a com­mu­ni­ty with peo­ple who share your val­ues.” The com­pa­nies began with an ini­tial project in near­by Burkesville, Ken­tucky, before announc­ing the Jack­son Coun­ty phase ear­li­er this month.

New Found­ing CEO Nate Fis­ch­er has declared the prin­ci­ples of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion are “long gone” and that Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism “rep­re­sents a pos­i­tive Chris­t­ian vision for gov­ern­ment.” Fischer’s part­ner, Josh Abbotoy, has claimed to have mixed feel­ings on the issue, although he tweet­ed that “Amer­i­ca is going to need a Protes­tant Fran­co.”

Fran­cis­co Fran­co was a Catholic dic­ta­tor who ruled over Spain from 1939 to 1975 and made Catholi­cism the offi­cial reli­gion of the coun­try.

...

Accord­ing to prop­er­ty records, Abbotoy bought up 500 acres in the rolling hills on the Macon-Jack­son Coun­ty line, while a relat­ed cor­po­ra­tion pur­chased an addi­tion­al 100 acres near down­town Gaines­boro. That cor­po­ra­tion has also bought a small office build­ing on East Hull Avenue in Gaines­boro.

Isker and Engel, who are set­ting up a pod­cast stu­dio in that office build­ing, appear to have been recruit­ed as ambas­sadors for the project. The pair claim their “Con­tra Mundum” pod­cast is the “Num­ber One Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Pod­cast in the World.”

...

On social media, Engel has expressed sup­port for a “Protes­tant Fran­co or Appalachi­an Pinochet,” and he applaud­ed Texas leg­is­la­tion “to make it vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble for Democ­rats to ever win an elec­tion in the state.”

...

Dur­ing that pod­cast, devel­op­er Josh Abbotoy also made live appear­ances from an elec­tion watch par­ty that he said his group host­ed for the Jack­son Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty.
...

But it isn’t just a project about relo­cat­ing Domin­ion­ists to Jack­son Coun­ty, TN, and build­ing a Domin­ion­ist mod­el coun­ty to serve as a beach­head for turn­ing the entire state of Ten­nessee into a mod­el Domin­ion­ist state. It’s like domi­noes for democ­ra­cy, but start with small domi­noes that keep grow­ing big­ger and big­ger:

...
As Isker and Engel see it, the only peo­ple who have a legit­i­mate right to a home­land in the Unit­ed States are “Her­itage Amer­i­cans,” which they typ­i­cal­ly depict on their social media posts with old Nor­man Rock­well images of White peo­ple, espe­cial­ly White men.

In a post that was pinned to the top of his X pro­file, Engel explained that his con­cept of Her­itage Amer­i­ca “affirms the dom­i­na­tion and pre-emi­nence of Euro­pean derived peo­ples, their insti­tu­tions and their way of life.” He also defined it as “an actu­al body of insti­tu­tions cre­at­ed by a nexus of spe­cif­ic peo­ple, dom­i­nat­ed and defined by Ang­los and their chil­dren.”

Still, Engel said his idea of Her­itage Amer­i­ca also “includes the blacks of the Old South.”

“I would imag­ine, in most of those Nor­man Rock­well pic­tures, there aren’t any depic­tions of peo­ple who look like me,” said Chris Williamson, the African-Amer­i­can pas­tor of the mul­tira­cial Strong Tow­er Bible Church in Nashville.

“Accord­ing to them, if you are a descen­dant of slaves, you get to stay,” NewsChan­nel 5 Inves­ti­gates not­ed.

“So, they are defin­ing my lega­cy, my entire lega­cy real­ly on slav­ery,” Williamson respond­ed. “I get to stay — even though I was brought here against my will and treat­ed hor­ri­ble through chat­tel slav­ery for near­ly 250 years, but that’s my her­itage.”

Even then, Engel wrote that his accep­tance of Black Amer­i­cans as “Her­itage Amer­i­cans” assumes they will not try to “lever­age their expe­ri­ence for the pur­pos­es of polit­i­cal guilt.”
...

And like their Nazi fel­low trav­el­ers, Isker and Engle aren’t just inter­est­ed in draw­ing large num­bers of peo­ple to live in a new Domin­ion­ist mod­el coun­ty. They have to also dri­ve away all the non-“Heritage Amer­i­cans” out. Which is every­one appar­ent­ly who isn’t a white Domin­ion­ist or the descen­dant of a slave who promis­es not to get too uppi­ty. And yes, it will be very much seg­re­gat­ed between these two groups of “Her­itage Amer­i­cans”. That’s part of the her­itage they are try­ing to put into law. Also, when we see Isker and Engle cite Sam Fran­cis the kind of thinker they are mod­el­ing their ide­al god­ly soci­ety after, keep in mind that Fran­cis was­n’t just a colum­nist for Jared Tay­lor’s white nation­al Amer­i­can Renais­sance pub­li­ca­tion as well as the edi­tor of the Coun­cil of Con­ser­v­a­tive Cit­i­zens’ newslet­ter. He was a colum­nist for the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church-owned Wash­ing­ton Times too. At least he a colum­nist for the Wash­ing­ton Times until he was fired over his remarks about white supe­ri­or­i­ty at a 1995 Amer­i­can Renais­sance con­fer­ence were pub­licly noticed. In oth­er words, Sam Fran­cis is a shin­ing exam­ple of the kind of main­stream­ing of extrem­ist ideas that Isker and Engle have as their core goals. Except they want to get to the point where Fran­cis won’t get fired for speak­ing at the Amer­i­can Renais­sance con­fer­ence. That’s also part of the con­text of Pete Hegseth’s nom­i­na­tion as Sec­re­tary of Defense: If his nom­i­na­tion goes through, it’s also shin­ing exam­ple of a ‘return to the pre-Civ­il Rights norms’ that Sam Fran­cis was like­ly advo­cat­ing dur­ing that 1995 Amer­i­can Renais­sance speech. It was­n’t a kum­baya moment, but Hegseth’s nom­i­na­tion is proof that it’s win­ning in the long-run:

...
Pas­tor Rig­gs said he would put Isker and Engle into the cat­e­go­ry of “white Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists,” although the pair insists their views are about cul­ture, not race.

‘The 1960s ruined every­thing’

Still, Engel com­plained in one pod­cast that “all of our heroes were way more racist than we’re allowed to be today.”

The two White men have denounced the efforts of Civ­il Rights leader Mar­tin Luther King – and the Civ­il Rights move­ment, in gen­er­al.

“You can­not have both MLK and Her­itage Amer­i­ca,” Engel wrote in one social media post.

Isker argued — in all caps — “WE SHOULD TURN CIVIL RIGHTS BACK TO THE STATES.”

They have cel­e­brat­ed images of Whites-only din­ers in the 1950s, with Engel pro­claim­ing that “the 1960s ruined every­thing” and defend­ing racial dis­crim­i­na­tion.

“Yeah, it’s called free­dom of asso­ci­a­tion,” Engel wrote.

...

For Black His­to­ry Month ear­li­er this year, Engel respond­ed with his own cel­e­bra­tion of what he called “Her­itage His­to­ry Month,” hold­ing up white suprema­cist Sam Fran­cis as some­one “who either shaped or defend­ed our Euro­pean and Amer­i­can her­itage.”

Among his writ­ings, Fran­cis sug­gest­ed that “if whites want­ed to do so, they could dic­tate a solu­tion to the racial prob­lem tomor­row,” part­ly by “impos­ing fer­til­i­ty con­trols on non-whites.” He called for “an uncom­pro­mis­ing asser­tion of white will” in the coun­try.
...

So how are Isker and Engle plan­ning on achiev­ing that under­ly­ing objec­tive to reestab­lish­ing overt white suprema­cy and basi­cal­ly to an ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry demo­graph­ic make­up of an over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of Euro­peans and a minor Africans? Depor­ta­tions for non-white non-cit­i­zens and Even Vivek Ramaswamy is sub­ject to depor­ta­tion, and he’s a cit­i­zen. In oth­er words, rem­i­gra­tion is the plan. Rem­i­gra­tion cou­pled with a revok­ing of birthright cit­i­zen­ship. Chil­dren of immi­grants are now sub­ject to depor­ta­tion. At least the chil­dren of non-white immi­grants. The white ones can pre­sum­ably stay. And let’s not for­get that rem­i­gra­tion is the same slo­gan Stephen Miller — slat­ed to be the deputy chief of staff for pol­i­cy — was tout­ing as ‘the plan’, with Trump’s endorse­ment, a month before elec­tion day. Cit­i­zen­ship is about to become high­ly revo­ca­ble, but not just nat­u­ral­ized cit­i­zens who immi­grat­ed here but the chil­dren of immi­grants born here too. Also, what about Native Amer­i­cans? Are they “Her­itage Amer­i­cans” or are they sent off to the reser­va­tions? We’ll all find out, invol­un­tar­i­ly:

...
Engel’s dis­taste for peo­ple who don’t look like him even extends to Vivek Ramaswamy. The for­mer GOP pres­i­den­tial can­di­date’s Hin­du par­ents immi­grat­ed to the U.S. from India.

In one pod­cast, Engel expressed sup­port for Ramaswamy’s ideas but declared that he was still “hes­i­tant” about him, giv­en his Indi­an her­itage.

“I wish we had some­one – a Her­itage Amer­i­can – that was as pas­sion­ate about, you know, our peo­ple,” he added.

In a social media post, Engel also sug­gest­ed Ramaswamy might be a “plant” who would “fin­ish the con­quest of Amer­i­ca by the non-West­ern world.”

“Peo­ples like Indi­ans, or South East (sic) Asians or Ecuado­ri­ans or immi­grat­ed Africans are the least capa­ble of fit­ting in and should be sent home imme­di­ate­ly,” Engel wrote in the post pinned to his X pro­file.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Isker has post­ed, “For­eign­ers out, for­eign­ers out, Amer­i­ca for Amer­i­cans, for­eign­ers out.”

He also appeared to endorse the idea that any for­eign-born per­son grant­ed cit­i­zen­ship since 1965 should be “sub­ject to review,” includ­ing whether they have worked “for Left caus­es.”

“Deport­ed for anti-Her­itage Amer­i­can activ­i­ties,” Isker added.
...

Also note the inher­ent bad faith nature of this project, where crit­i­cism of the open­ly racist, misog­y­nis­tic, theo­crat­ic agen­da is han­dled with the same kind cyn­i­cal ‘awe shucks, we’re just jok­ing about these extreme mea­sures we keep talk­ing about’ decep­tion that was embrace by the ‘Alt Right’ dur­ing its ‘com­ing out’ phase back in 2015–2017, dur­ing Trump’s ini­tial polit­i­cal ascen­dance and the lead up to the Unite the Right event in Char­lottesville. It’s both out in the open, but also hid­ing behind ‘you can’t take a joke’ trolling, just like the rest of their fel­low trav­el­ers. Because it’s an effec­tive tech­nique:

...
And they mock his­tor­i­cal inci­dents like the kid­nap­ping and lynch­ing of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955.

Yet, they dis­miss any crit­i­cism as peo­ple tak­ing them too seri­ous­ly.

In one pod­cast, Engel read one critic’s ref­er­ence to “Isker’s objec­tions to the Civ­il Rights Act, his dis­mis­sive­ness of the Emmett Till mur­der and the broad­er racial issues.”

Isker broke into pro­longed laugh­ter.

“Yeah, that’s fun­ny,” Engel agreed. “That’s fun­ny because that whole con­tro­ver­sy was like entire­ly a meme con­tro­ver­sy.”

“I know,” Isker answered. “It’s like fun, man. Like, yeah, any­way.”

“You get in trou­ble for hav­ing fun,” Engel con­tin­ued.
...

Beyond the desire to purge the Unit­ed States of all non-“Heritage Amer­i­cans”, the rejec­tion of all things Jew­ish is anoth­er expect­ed fea­ture of the the­ol­o­gy. Not just because of the heavy over­lap with Nazi ide­ol­o­gy. Recall how Domin­ion­ist bil­lion­aire king­pin Tim Dunn is infa­mous for tell the then-Repub­li­can Speak­er of the Texas House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Joe Straus, how he felt like Jews should­n’t be in posi­tions of pow­er. A tar­get­ing of Jews is part of the Domin­ion­ist pack­age too, along with the whole Chris­t­ian Zion­ist quest to have Israel destroyed in an epic End Times con­flict to bring about the Sec­ond Com­ing of Jesus. A Jesus that, if tak­en at his word, would­n’t be very approv­ing of a Domin­ion­ist white suprema­cist the­ol­o­gy . But that’s the dan­ger­ous­ly wild nature of this move­ment. It’s all about Jesus and yet some­how not about the actu­al­ly teach­ings of Jesus at all:

...
They reject any notion of Jew­ish­ness in mod­ern soci­ety. Isker claimed in one post that “Jew and Gen­tile as cat­e­gories of peo­ple has ceased to exist. There are now only Chris­tians and unbe­liev­ers.” He fol­lowed up, “Jesus was the final, true Jew.”

And they are offend­ed by the idea of mosques blast­ing out the Mus­lim call to prayer.

“That stuff can­not be hap­pen­ing in your coun­try, right? — they have to go back,” Isker said in a pod­cast.
...

But the rescind­ing of rights and cit­i­zen­ship isn’t lim­it­ed to non-whites and Jews. Women aren’t sup­posed to be in posi­tions of author­i­ty either. Or col­lege edu­cat­ed, appar­ent­ly. Too much edu­ca­tion makes women lib­er­al. That’s the ethos guid­ing this theo­crat­ic Coun­ty-shap­ing project. “You can have either women’s lib­er­a­tion or civ­i­liza­tion, not both.” It’s not exact­ly the kind of thing one gen­er­al­ly asso­ciates with Jesus:

...
“Peo­ple who call me racist are innate­ly inca­pable of com­pre­hend­ing the extent to which I detest the spe­cif­ic impact of col­lege-edu­cat­ed White women on the cul­ture of the world around me,” Engel said in a social media post.

He also cel­e­brat­ed the fact that he had nev­er had a female boss.

“They’re obnox­ious and emo­tion­al,” Engel wrote, say­ing he knows “how women are, espe­cial­ly work­ing ones.” Men, he argued, “need to pro­pa­gan­dize your wife, train­ing her to like the things you do.”

Isker wrote: “You can have either women’s lib­er­a­tion or civ­i­liza­tion, not both”

Engel agreed, say­ing: “I think it’s polit­i­cal­ly best to have con­ser­v­a­tives in pow­er. And blacks and women vote lib­er­al more often than White men.”
...

And while Jesus did­n’t real­ly have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­ment about Democ­ra­cy, it’s a good bet he would­n’t be a big fan of Isker and Engle’s out­right rejec­tion of it. Blacks and women tend to not vote con­ser­v­a­tive. That’s a prob­lem with democ­ra­cy. Con­ser­v­a­tives must be in pow­er under a Domin­ion­ist state. Which obvi­ous­ly does­n’t bode well for Jack­son Coun­ty Democ­rats. Or any­one who enjoys liv­ing under a democ­ra­cy:

...
Both have said that they “hate democ­ra­cy.” Engel said democ­ra­cy had “destroyed my way of life and my her­itage and my free­doms.”

...

On LGBTQ issues, Engel has stat­ed: “Gay peo­ple need to work on not being gay and then we can employ them. Pret­ty sim­ple.”

And he has advo­cat­ed “mak­ing the jour­nal­ists con­cerned,” claimed that jour­nal­ists are “bare­ly human” and argued for a new Trail of Tears for “relo­cat­ing the jour­nal­ists.”

“My job is to nor­mal­ize dis­si­dent right-wing talk­ing points to the normies,” Engel wrote in a post on X. “This is the func­tion of the van­guard; this is the strat­e­gy of instill­ing a counter-rev­o­lu­tion­ary ethos in Mid­dle Amer­i­ca.

“We will tear off Lib­er­al scales from their eyes and rad­i­cal­ize Main Street.”

Engel also post­ed, “Many of us actu­al­ly sup­port the breakup and crush­ing of the Unit­ed States regime, and we are will­ing to use polit­i­cal means to do it.”

And Isker wrote, “The insti­tu­tions mat­ter. The main­line church­es mat­ter. One day we will retake them. By force if nec­es­sary.”
...

And if it seems like this is the kind of project that could only suc­ceed if every Domin­ion­ist in the US decides to move to Jack­son Coun­ty, think again. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, while research by the Pub­lic Reli­gion Research Insti­tute (PRRI) in 2023 found that 30 per­cent of Amer­i­cans viewed them­selves as either Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism adher­ents (10 per­cent) or sym­pa­thiz­ers (20 per­cent), in Ten­nessee that sup­port lev­el is clos­er to 45 per­cent. It’s a state poised for a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist major­i­ty:

Newsweek

Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Pod­cast­ers Want to Take Over Ten­nessee Coun­ty

By Dan Good­ing
Live News Reporter
Pub­lished Nov 18, 2024 at 5:56 PM EST
Updat­ed Nov 18, 2024 at 9:39 PM EST

Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists say they want to take a Ten­nessee coun­ty back to before the civ­il rights move­ment, vow­ing to build a new com­mu­ni­ty where peo­ple look and think like them.

Two pod­cast­ers and evan­gel­i­cal writ­ers, Pas­tor Andrew Isker and C. Jay Engel, told WTVF in Nashville that they want to attract hun­dreds or even thou­sands to Jack­son Coun­ty.

“The ques­tion is, is there room for like-mind­ed Chris­tians and patri­ots in Ten­nessee? Yes, there’s an imper­a­tive for like-mind­ed Chris­tians to gath­er and fight with us,” Engel said dur­ing an episode in Octo­ber. “We need Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism in one state.”

WTVF spent months review­ing episodes of the pair’s show, Con­tra Mundum, in which they dis­cuss how God made men to lead, and that the cur­rent demo­c­ra­t­ic set­up of the coun­try has ruined it.

Isker, who is a pas­tor in Min­neso­ta, and Engel, who moved to Ten­nessee from Cal­i­for­nia, say they want to build a town led by some­one who will lead by what they see as the Chris­t­ian ideals they believe in.

In an episode in July, Isker announced the plan, say­ing he was “all in” and that both men were going to live in Ten­nessee, cit­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tion passed to ben­e­fit immi­grants or pro­tect abor­tion as rea­sons to leave Min­neso­ta and Cal­i­for­nia.

...

Research by non­prof­it Pub­lic Reli­gion Research Insti­tute (PRRI) in 2023 found that 30 per­cent of Amer­i­cans viewed them­selves as either Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism adher­ents (10 per­cent) or sym­pa­thiz­ers (20 per­cent), while the rest said they were skep­tics or rejec­tors.

Those who lived in Repub­li­can states were more like­ly to hold Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist beliefs than those in Demo­c­ra­t­ic ones. In Ten­nessee, 45 per­cent of those sur­veyed iden­ti­fied as being in sup­port of the move­ment and 61 per­cent vot­ed for Don­ald Trump in 2020.

More than half of those who iden­ti­fied with Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist beliefs thought there was a “storm com­ing” that would sweep away the elites who were in pow­er and “restore the right­ful lead­ers,” researchers found.

“Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism is a very cen­trist, mod­er­ate, lib­er­al­ly ori­ent­ed polit­i­cal endeav­or,” Engel said in Octo­ber.

...

———-

“Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Pod­cast­ers Want to Take Over Ten­nessee Coun­ty” By Dan Good­ing; Newsweek; 11/18/2024

“WTVF spent months review­ing episodes of the pair’s show, Con­tra Mundum, in which they dis­cuss how God made men to lead, and that the cur­rent demo­c­ra­t­ic set­up of the coun­try has ruined it.”

Mod­ern democ­ra­cy has ruined the Unit­ed States. That’s the dis­tilled mes­sage WTVF reporters found after review­ing months of episodes of Iske and Engle’s pod­cast, Con­tra Mundum (which trans­lates to Against the World). If Amer­i­ca could just go back to how it was before all the non-white immi­grants arrived and wom­en’s march to equal­i­ty began, every­thing would be fixed. That’s the mes­sage they are sell­ing to the white evan­gel­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty of the entire Untied States through their pod­cast. A mes­sage to both move to Jack­son Coun­ty to build this ide­al Domin­ion­ist coun­ty then state, but also a mes­sage to the rest of the world to emu­late their mod­el. Or at least a mes­sage for white men around the world to emu­late. And note how more than half of the self-iden­ti­fied Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ists in this poll also expressed sup­port for beliefs that sound awful­ly close to QAnon-style rhetoric. Belief in a “storm com­ing” that would sweep away the elites who were in pow­er and “restore the right­ful lead­ers.” Which is a reminder that this project to main­stream Domin­ion­ism dou­bles as a project to main­stream QAnon:

...
Research by non­prof­it Pub­lic Reli­gion Research Insti­tute (PRRI) in 2023 found that 30 per­cent of Amer­i­cans viewed them­selves as either Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism adher­ents (10 per­cent) or sym­pa­thiz­ers (20 per­cent), while the rest said they were skep­tics or rejec­tors.

Those who lived in Repub­li­can states were more like­ly to hold Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist beliefs than those in Demo­c­ra­t­ic ones. In Ten­nessee, 45 per­cent of those sur­veyed iden­ti­fied as being in sup­port of the move­ment and 61 per­cent vot­ed for Don­ald Trump in 2020.

More than half of those who iden­ti­fied with Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist beliefs thought there was a “storm com­ing” that would sweep away the elites who were in pow­er and “restore the right­ful lead­ers,” researchers found.

“Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism is a very cen­trist, mod­er­ate, lib­er­al­ly ori­ent­ed polit­i­cal endeav­or,” Engel said in Octo­ber.
...

How many QAnon adher­ents does it take to over­throw a democ­ra­cy and install a fas­cist theoc­ra­cy? It’s not a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion any­more. “The storm” is com­ing, at least in Ten­nessee. The kind of ‘storm’ that would undoubt­ed­ly ben­e­fit from a mil­i­tary led by a fel­low domin­ion­ist. Will Pete Hegseth — the proud Chris­t­ian ser­i­al adul­ter­er — be that key domin­ion­ist ally, ready to call in the mil­i­tary to quell civil­ian protests at a momen­t’s notice? We’ll see, but we know the domes­tic deploy­ment of the mil­i­tary is a sce­nario not just open­ly hoped for by Russ Vought but active­ly planned for with steps like set­ting up a ‘shad­ow’ Office of Legal Coun­sel for the White House. We can pre­dict with a rea­son­ably high degree of con­fi­dence that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion will at least try to deploy the mil­i­tary domes­ti­cal­ly. That’s the plan. Which is why Pete Hegseth with either the night­mare or dream can­di­date for this office, depend­ing on one’s views on the need for a domin­ion­ist “storm” to sweep out all the non-“Heritage Amer­i­cans”.

The Mili­tia and the Mole
by Joshua Kaplan
Jan. 4, 5 a.m. EST

ProP­ub­li­ca is a non­prof­it news­room that inves­ti­gates abus­es of pow­er. Sign up to receive our biggest sto­ries as soon as they’re pub­lished.

https://www.propublica.org/article/ap3-oath-keepers-militia-mole

I Secret­ly Joined a MAGA Mili­tia… SCARY TRUTH EXPOSED

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TXyENjgNqAM&t=383s&pp=2AH_ApACAQ%3D%3D

@Robert_Maldonado: That is a dis­turbing­ly appro­pri­ate report to come out on the ties between mili­tias and law enforce­ment in light of the twin New Years Day ter­ror attacks. In par­tic­u­lar, the bizarre Trump Hotel act of Cybertruck self-immo­la­tion by active duty spe­cial forces sol­dier Matthew Livels­berg­er.

Or rather, it was­n’t a ter­ror attack but instead a wake up call for the Amer­i­can pub­lic. At least that’s how Livels­berg­er char­ac­ter­ized his actions in a man­i­festo that would seem to give clar­i­ty on Livels­berg­er’s motives. A man­i­festo that, as we’re going to see below, called for a mass mil­i­tary vet and mili­tia occu­pa­tion of Wash­ing­ton DC for the pur­pose of “culling” the US gov­ern­ment of all Democ­rats. Peace­ful means are to be attempt­ed at first, but force should be used if nec­es­sary. That appears to be the core mes­sage Livels­berg­er intend­ed to deliv­er to the Amer­i­can pub­lic. It was basi­cal­ly a call for a 2025 ver­sion of the 1934 coup plot.

But the Livels­berg­er man­i­festo was­n’t exclu­sive­ly a call for a “culling” of Democ­rats from gov­ern­ment. There was a broad­er call for a kind of cul­tur­al renew­al around a mas­culin­i­ty-pro­mot­ing war­rior cul­ture, along with a warn­ing that the US was fac­ing war with Chi­na, Rus­sia, Iran, and North Korea by 2030 and needs to get the pop­u­la­tion in shape and ready for the fight. As Livels­berg­er put it, “Focus on strength and win­ning. Mas­culin­i­ty is good and men must be lead­ers. Strength is a deter­rent and fear is the prod­uct.” It’s a mes­sage very rem­i­nis­cent of the ethos espoused by Charles Hay­wood, the mil­i­tant Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist busi­ness­man who was seen as a ris­ing right-wing media per­son­al­i­ty, until it was revealed that he was the per­son behind an online per­sona who long called for an ‘Amer­i­can Cae­sar’. Hay­wood is now open­ly plan­ning on becom­ing an Amer­i­can ‘war­lord’ oper­at­ing an ‘armed patron­age net­work’ in the event of the break­down of gov­ern­ment rule. And as we’ve also seen, Hay­wood was one of the fig­ures work­ing with the now-indict­ed John East­man in devel­op­ing the “79 Days Report” in 2020, where sce­nar­ios involv­ing mass polit­i­cal vio­lence that pre­vent­ed the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the vote on Jan­u­ary 6 were gamed out. Oth­er par­tic­i­pants in this ‘exer­cise’ includ­ed Kevin Roberts, the head of Project 2025. The whole ‘sim­u­la­tion’ was ran by the Clare­mont Insti­tute and Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion. Mili­tias like the Oath Keep­ers and Three Per­centers were envi­sioned as work­ing in coor­di­na­tion with law enforce­ment to help quell the protests under these sim­u­la­tions. We almost have to ask if Livels­berg­er was some­how involved with Hay­wood’s ‘armed patron­age net­work’ move­ment. They clear­ly had a lot in com­mon.

And while the man­i­festo does­n’t make any direct ref­er­ences to reli­gion — the clos­est it gets is a pass­ing ref­er­ence to a loss of “fam­i­ly val­ues” — it’s notable just how much over­lap there is with world­view described in that man­i­festo and the rhetoric we tend to hear from domin­ion­ist Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist move­ments. Livels­berg­er even took the time to call out ‘DEI’ as a ‘can­cer’ in the man­i­festo. And, impor­tant­ly, the same kind of rhetoric we hear from the move­ments behind the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot. Project 2025 is char­ac­ter­ized by its advo­cates as a plan for nation­al renew­al, after all. And recall how much of that plot is inspired by the vision of Cur­tis “Men­cious Mold­bug” Yarvin and his dream of a mass ‘anti-left’ insti­tu­tion­al purge across soci­ety. Yarvin and Livels­berg­er would pre­sum­ably have a lot in com­mon, ide­o­log­i­cal­ly speak­ing. We don’t know if Livels­berg­er was a mil­i­tant Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist, but his call to arms was very mil­i­tant Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist-friend­ly.

It’s also worth keep­ing in mind that, with Repub­li­can con­trol of all three cham­bers of gov­ern­ment, it’s very unclear why exact­ly Livels­berg­er felt the urgent need for Democ­rats to be culled from gov­ern­ment. And yet, again, don’t for­get that using full con­trol of gov­ern­ment to impose an insti­tu­tion­al culling of Democ­rats from posi­tions of influ­ence and left-wing poli­cies and cul­ture is very much what Project 2025 is all about. This real­ly was an odd­ly pro-Project 2025 pub­lic spec­ta­cle. Includ­ing the call for prepar­ing for WWIII. Don’t for­get that Project 2025 includes mas­sive increas­es to defense spend­ing.

Also recall how Project 2025 is like­ly to be unpop­u­lar enough that mass protests real­ly could be a fea­ture of the next four years. The kind of mass protests the Project 2025 archi­tects have antic­i­pat­ed, hence all the empha­sis on mak­ing it as easy as pos­si­ble for Pres­i­dent Trump to deploy the mil­i­tary domes­ti­cal­ly. If Trump does end up deploy­ing the mil­i­tary domes­ti­cal­ly it’s going to be very inter­est­ing to see how Livels­berg­er’s stunt plays into that, in par­tic­u­lar when it comes to the kind of tur­moil we could expect inside the mil­i­tary under those kinds of orders. Livels­berg­er’s man­i­festo includes a call to ignore ‘weak’ senior lead­er­ship in the mil­i­tary too, after all.

Inter­est­ing­ly, the man­i­festo includes a num­ber of what are tra­di­tion­al left-wing cri­tiques of the US, include ref­er­ences to gross income inequal­i­ty and state­ments like, “We are crum­bling because of a lack of self respect, morales, and respect for oth­ers. Greed and glut­tony has con­sumed us. The top 1% decid­ed long ago they weren’t going to bring every­one else with them. You are cat­tle to them.” It’s the kind of state­ment we might have expect­ed in Lui­gi Man­gione’s man­i­festo. And yet, it’s quite clear that Livels­berg­er’s pre­scrip­tion for these ills isn’t left-wing poli­cies. No, it’s a forced culling of all Democ­rats from gov­ern­ment. Which makes this man­i­festo a chill­ing indi­ca­tion of how easy it is for the far right to adopt and warp tra­di­tion­al­ly pro­gres­sive social cri­tiques. All of the prob­lems of Amer­i­can cap­i­tal­ism are appar­ent­ly a prod­uct of weak greedy Demo­c­ra­t­ic elites, accord­ing to this world­view. Only a nation­al culling and a strong MAGA rule can renew us. Which, again, is basi­cal­ly the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Project 2025 agen­da.

And that Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist ori­en­ta­tion to Livels­berg­er’s man­i­festo brings us to anoth­er very inter­est­ing detail we’ve learned: as we saw, Livels­berg­er was in con­tact with mul­ti­ple mil­i­tary pun­dits in the days lead­ing up to the blast. And it turns out that not only was one of those pun­dits, Shawn Ryan, offered a Decem­ber 31st inter­view with Livels­berg­er, but he was also asked if he could put Livels­berg­er in con­tact via Sig­nal with Fox News, cit­ing Pete Hegseth as some­one he would also like to have involved. As we’ve seen, beyond being a vet­er­an and Fox News host tapped by Don­ald Trump to be the next Sec­re­tary of Defense, Hegseth is also a mem­ber of domin­ion­ist evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty that has as its goal the same kind of soci­ety-wide purges of ‘Democ­rats’ that Livels­berg­er advo­cat­ed. So it would appear that Livels­berg­er was envi­sion­ing a Fox News and/or Hegseth inter­view as part of his fas­cist sui­ci­dal pub­lic­i­ty stunt.

And that intent to turn his death into a kind of mili­tia ral­ly­ing cry rais­es anoth­er very curi­ous aspect of this whole sto­ry: while Livels­berg­er was appar­ent­ly email­ing mil­i­tary pun­dits like Shawn Ryan or Sam Shoe­mate in the days lead­ing up to the bomb­ing, includ­ing an email to Shoe­mate warn­ing about Chi­nese gravitic drones and US war crimes in Afghanistan, the man­i­festo call­ing for a mili­tia occu­pa­tion of DC and a culling of Democ­rats from gov­ern­ment was only dis­cov­ered on a phone found in the Cybertruck. Why would some­one who was plan­ning an elab­o­rate pub­lic sui­cide for the pur­pose of get­ting the pub­lic’s atten­tion not ensure their man­i­festo is already avail­able to the pub­lic? There was no guar­an­tee offi­cials were going to release that man­i­festo, after all. Or what if the phone end­ed up too dam­aged for the man­i­festo to be found at all? We know he had inter­net access. Why not just post it on social media right before shoot­ing him­self? It’s all quite strange.

It’s also rather notable that, while the email to Sam Shoe­mate had all these warn­ings about Chi­nese drones with drone propul­sion tech­nol­o­gy and the immi­nent threat posed by such tech­nol­o­gy, there is no men­tion of Chi­nese UFOs in the man­i­festo found on his phone. Per­haps he decid­ed Chi­nese grav­i­ty-dri­ve drone tech­nol­o­gy was too much for a man­i­festo, which, if true, would only fur­ther raise ques­tions as to why he did­n’t post it online before set­ting him­self ablaze.

And as Josh Mar­shall observes in the fol­low­ing piece, one of the fac­tors adding to the strange­ness of it all is the fact that the media has by and large ignored the mili­tia ral­ly­ing cry nature of Livels­berg­ers man­i­festo. Which, again, under­scores the odd­ness of the deci­sion to not post the man­i­festo before­hand. It would be a lot hard­er for the media to ignore his call to occu­py DC if we did­n’t have to wait days for author­i­ties to find and release the man­i­festo.

All in all, the more we’re learn­ing, the weird­er this sto­ry gets. And let’s not for­get that Livels­berg­er’s ‘wake up call’ came just hours after anoth­er inex­plic­a­ble ter­ror attack in New Orleans by a US Army vet­er­an seem­ing­ly rad­i­cal­ized into a jihadist. And yet, for all the bizarreness, we are see­ing a famil­iar pic­ture emerge. Because, in the end, it’s look­ing like Matthew Livels­berg­er held pret­ty stan­dard Amer­i­can fas­cist views. Views that are very much aligned with the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist move­ment behind the sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion and the dri­ving force behind the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot to ‘cull’ Amer­i­ca. So as we watch the cov­er­age of this sto­ry con­tin­ue to gloss over Livel­berg­ers calls for a nation­al culling, it’s going to be worth keep­ing in mind that a much more orga­nized Project 2025 nation­al culling is just weeks away from get­ting under­way:

Talk­ing Points Memo

Why Are Pub­li­ca­tions Sug­ar-Coat­ing Livelsberger’s Polit­i­cal Minifestos?

By Josh Mar­shall
Jan­u­ary 4, 2025 10:51 a.m.

Over the last four days, the bizarre Cybertruck fire out­side a Trump hotel in Las Vegas has run from com­i­cal inter­lude to pos­si­ble ter­ror­ist inci­dent to trag­ic sui­cide of anoth­er vet­er­an of America’s for­ev­er wars. Each of these descrip­tions still cap­tures an impor­tant part of the sto­ry. As I not­ed yes­ter­day, while Matthew Livels­berg­er appears to have had a series of com­bustible and like­ly abu­sive rela­tion­ships going back many years he also appears to have suf­fered from PTSD and pos­si­bly a trau­mat­ic brain injury since return­ing from a tour of duty in 2019. (I’m ten­ta­tive on the spousal abuse front only because for now the direct evi­dence for that that I’m aware of comes only from the friend of his ex-wife.) But at least for the moment there is a pret­ty strik­ing lack of atten­tion to the polit­i­cal motives he expressed in at least two doc­u­ments or what I guess we might call minifestos that inves­ti­ga­tors found on his iPhone.

Those doc­u­ments denounce Democ­rats and demand they be “culled” from Wash­ing­ton, by vio­lence if nec­es­sary, and express the hope that his own death will serve as a kind of bell clap for a nation­al rebirth of mas­culin­i­ty under the lead­er­ship of Don­ald Trump, Elon Musk and Bob­by Kennedy Jr.

...

Most head­lines I’d seen in the news report only that he warned of nation­al decline and bore “no ill will toward Mr. Trump,” in the words of one of the inves­ti­ga­tors. That gloss on Don­ald Trump is, shall we say, a bit of an under­state­ment, as you can see in these excerpts.

Mil­i­tary and vets move on DC start­ing now. Mili­tias facil­i­tate and aug­ment this activ­i­ty.
Occu­py every major road along fed build­ings and the cam­pus of fed build­ings by the hun­dreds of thou­sands.
Lock the high­ways around down with semis right after every­body gets in. Hold until the purge is com­plete.
Try peace­ful means first, but be pre­pared to fight to get the Dems out of the fed gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary by any means nec­es­sary. They all must go and a hard reset must occur for our coun­try to avoid col­lapse.

We must end the war in Ukraine with nego­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment. It is the only way.
Focus on strength and win­ning. Mas­culin­i­ty is good and men must be lead­ers. Strength is a deter­rent and fear is the prod­uct.

Stop obsess­ing over diver­si­ty. We are all diverse and DEI is a can­cer.
Thank­ful­ly we reject­ed the DEI can­di­date and will have a real Pres­i­dent instead of Week­end at Bernie’s.

Con­sid­er this last sun­set of ‘24 and my actions the end of our sick­ness and a new chap­ter of health for our peo­ple. Ral­ly around the Trump, Musk, Kennedy, and ride this wave to the high­est hege­mo­ny for all Amer­i­cans! We are sec­ond to no one.

I encour­age you to read the two minifestos all the way through. They’re not long. I excerpt­ed at least half above. You can find them here.

I should note they cap­ture what we might call the ide­o­log­i­cal­ly poly­glot — or what appears to many of us as ide­o­log­i­cal­ly poly­glot — think­ing of many of these peo­ple. He also rails against the 1%, exces­sive screen time for kids, wars with no clear strate­gic pur­pose, obe­si­ty. We should also note explic­it­ly that Livels­berg­er can both be a vio­lent extrem­ist and a vic­tim of PTSD, and in a broad­er sense part of the human col­lat­er­al dam­age of the wars that occu­pied the U.S. mil­i­tary through the first two decades of the 21st cen­tu­ry. Our minds should be big enough for both those real­i­ties. But the through-line is pret­ty clear: If you’re a Demo­c­rat or some­one who is Demo­c­rat-cod­ed, Livelsberger’s ver­sion of nation­al rebirth prob­a­bly isn’t a fun one for you.

At least when I looked last night the only places I saw these parts of Livelsberger’s writ­ings in any detail were rel­a­tive­ly obscure pub­li­ca­tions. I was wor­ried that maybe they were hoax doc­u­ments that had some­how found their way into a few pub­li­ca­tions. So I traced them back to yesterday’s police press con­fer­ence. They are indeed real.

As a final point, let me return to the ques­tion we’ve dis­cussed over the last few days: what was the polit­i­cal mes­sage of torch­ing a Cybertruck in front of a Trump hotel? He actu­al­ly answers that more or less clear­ly in the sec­ond minifesto: “This was not a ter­ror­ist attack, it was a wake up call. Amer­i­cans only pay atten­tion to spec­ta­cles and vio­lence. What bet­ter way to get my point across than a stunt with fire­works and explo­sives?”

...

———-

“Why Are Pub­li­ca­tions Sug­ar-Coat­ing Livelsberger’s Polit­i­cal Minifestos?” By Josh Mar­shall; Talk­ing Points Memo; 01/04/2025

“Most head­lines I’d seen in the news report only that he warned of nation­al decline and bore “no ill will toward Mr. Trump,” in the words of one of the inves­ti­ga­tors. That gloss on Don­ald Trump is, shall we say, a bit of an under­state­ment, as you can see in these excerpts.”

Livels­berg­er was just a vet who decid­ed to kill him­self in a Cybertruck out­side a Trump Hotel. But he did­n’t hate Trump. That was gen­er­al take from the media on this bizarre sto­ry in the days fol­low­ing the New Years Day explo­sion. That’s despite the fact that the notes alleged­ly left by Liv­ers­berg­er sound like a mili­tia ral­ly­ing cry for some sort of fas­cist purge of the Unites States. The kind of purge where Democ­rats and those opposed to rule by mas­culin­i­ty are “culled” from Wash­ing­ton DC, by force if nec­es­sary. Matthew Livels­berg­er may have been a dec­o­rate sol­dier. But if these let­ters were authen­tic, he was also a gross fas­cist. And yet, remark­ably, this cen­tral point of this event has most­ly been shrugged off in the media cov­er­age. Kind of like Stephen Pad­dock­’s Sov­er­eign Cit­i­zen motive for the 2017 Las Vegas mas­sacre. Some top­ics are just too sen­si­tive for straight­for­ward wide­spread media cov­er­age in the US media. Like far right domes­tic ter­ror­ism:

...
Those doc­u­ments denounce Democ­rats and demand they be “culled” from Wash­ing­ton, by vio­lence if nec­es­sary, and express the hope that his own death will serve as a kind of bell clap for a nation­al rebirth of mas­culin­i­ty under the lead­er­ship of Don­ald Trump, Elon Musk and Bob­by Kennedy Jr.

...

I should note they cap­ture what we might call the ide­o­log­i­cal­ly poly­glot — or what appears to many of us as ide­o­log­i­cal­ly poly­glot — think­ing of many of these peo­ple. He also rails against the 1%, exces­sive screen time for kids, wars with no clear strate­gic pur­pose, obe­si­ty. We should also note explic­it­ly that Livels­berg­er can both be a vio­lent extrem­ist and a vic­tim of PTSD, and in a broad­er sense part of the human col­lat­er­al dam­age of the wars that occu­pied the U.S. mil­i­tary through the first two decades of the 21st cen­tu­ry. Our minds should be big enough for both those real­i­ties. But the through-line is pret­ty clear: If you’re a Demo­c­rat or some­one who is Demo­c­rat-cod­ed, Livelsberger’s ver­sion of nation­al rebirth prob­a­bly isn’t a fun one for you.

At least when I looked last night the only places I saw these parts of Livelsberger’s writ­ings in any detail were rel­a­tive­ly obscure pub­li­ca­tions. I was wor­ried that maybe they were hoax doc­u­ments that had some­how found their way into a few pub­li­ca­tions. So I traced them back to yesterday’s police press con­fer­ence. They are indeed real.
...

And when we look at the man­i­festo found on Livels­berg­er’s phone, it’s hard not to notice how he isn’t just call­ing for a purge of “Democ­rats” and the ‘weak and feck­less lead­er­ship’ in Wash­ing­ton DC. He’s call­ing for the kind of wide­spread nation­al social purge, with an empha­sis on oppos­ing ‘DEI’, that actu­al­ly sounds very much in like with the kind of deep purge advo­cates of the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 plot have long called for, and in par­tic­u­lar the more extreme ver­sion of that plot that goes far beyond gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions, as long advo­cat­ed by pro-monar­chist Cur­tis Yarvin, along with calls for prepa­ra­tions for war with Chi­na, Rus­sia, North Korea, and Iran. In oth­er words, prepa­ra­tions to fight WWIII. And yet the man­i­festo is also filled with the kinds of cri­tiques of the “top 1%” and income inequal­i­ty that we might expect to to have found in Lui­gi Man­gione’s man­i­festo. Which is a reminder that it’s not at all dif­fi­cult for the ‘anti-elite’ sen­ti­ments that appar­ent­ly drove Man­gione’s actions in the assas­si­na­tion of Unit­ed­Health CEO Bri­an Thomp­son to be redi­rect­ed into a far right social purge that is very much aligned with the goals of Project 2025. Along with the goals of any­one eager to see the US fight WWIII soon­er rather than lat­er:

Fel­low Ser­vice­mem­bers, Vet­er­ans, and all Amer­i­cans,

TIME TO WAKE UP!

We are being led by weak and feck­less lead­er­ship who only serve to enrich them­selves.

Mil­i­tary and vets move on DC start­ing now. Mili­tias facil­i­tate and aug­ment this activ­i­ty.

Occu­py every major road along fed build­ings and the cam­pus of fed build­ings by the hun­dreds of thou­sands.

Lock the high­ways around down with semis right after every­body gets in. Hold until the purge is com­plete.

Try peace­ful means first, but be pre­pared to fight to get the Dems out of the fed gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary by any means nec­es­sary. They all must go and a hard reset must occur for our coun­try to avoid col­lapse.

-MSG Matt Livels­berg­er 18Z, 10th Spe­cial Forces Group

We are the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, the best coun­try peo­ple to ever exist! But right now we are ter­mi­nal­ly ill and head­ed toward col­lapse.

We are crum­bling because of a lack of self respect, morales, and respect for oth­ers. Greed and glut­tony has con­sumed us. The top 1% decid­ed long ago they weren’t going to bring every­one else with them. You are cat­tle to them.

We have strayed from fam­i­ly val­ues and cor­rupt­ed our minds and I am a prime exam­ple of hav­ing it all but it nev­er being enough.

A lot of us are just sit­ting around wait­ing to die. No sun­light, no steps, no fresh air, no hope. Our chil­dren are addict­ed to screens by the age of two. We are fill­ing our bod­ies with processed foods.

Our pop­u­la­tion is too fat to join the mil­i­tary yet we are fac­ing a war with Chi­na, Rus­sia, North Korea and Iran before 2030.

We must take these actions if we are going to make it past the next few years in one piece:

We must end the war in Ukraine with nego­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment. It is the only way.

Focus on strength and win­ning. Mas­culin­i­ty is good and men must be lead­ers. Strength is a deter­rent and fear is the prod­uct.

Weed­ed out those in our gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary who do not ide­al­ize #2.

The income inequal­i­ty in this coun­try and cost-of-liv­ing is out­ra­geous. The num­ber of home­less on our street is embar­rass­ing and dis­gust­ing. Have some pride and take care of this.

Stop obsess­ing over diver­si­ty. We are all diverse and DEI is a can­cer.

Thank­ful­ly we reject­ed the DEI can­di­date and will have a real Pres­i­dent instead of Week­end at Bernie’s.

We must move on from the cul­ture of weak­ness and self enrich­ment per­pet­u­at­ed by our senior polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary lead­ers. We are done with the bla­tant cor­rup­tion. Our sol­diers are done fight­ing wars with­out end states or clear objec­tives.

This was not a ter­ror­ist attack, it was a wake up call. Amer­i­cans only pay atten­tion to spec­ta­cles and vio­lence. What bet­ter way to get my point across than a stunt with fire­works and explo­sives?

Why did I per­son­al­ly do it now? I need­ed to cleanse my mind of the broth­ers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the bur­den of the lives I took.

Con­sid­er this last sun­set of ‘24 and my actions the end of our sick­ness and a new chap­ter of health for our peo­ple. Ral­ly around the Trump, Musk, Kennedy, and ride this wave to the high­est hege­mo­ny for all Amer­i­cans! We are sec­ond to no one.

————-

Matthew Livels­berg man­i­festo; Neva­da Cur­rent; 01/03/2025

“This was not a ter­ror­ist attack, it was a wake up call. Amer­i­cans only pay atten­tion to spec­ta­cles and vio­lence. What bet­ter way to get my point across than a stunt with fire­works and explo­sives?”

A ‘wake up call’ designed to get the pub­lic’s atten­tion. For a mes­sage call­ing for a purge of ‘Democ­rats’ and prepa­ra­tions for war with Chi­na, Rus­sia, North Korea, and Iran. A call for the ele­va­tion of mas­culin­i­ty as some sort of lead­er­ship man­date, and a return to “fam­i­ly val­ues”. Along with a gen­er­al cri­tique of income inequal­i­ty, the top 1%, and things like processed foods. Fas­cism and pop­ulist rhetoric are a potent mix:

...
We are the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, the best coun­try peo­ple to ever exist! But right now we are ter­mi­nal­ly ill and head­ed toward col­lapse.

We are crum­bling because of a lack of self respect, morales, and respect for oth­ers. Greed and glut­tony has con­sumed us. The top 1% decid­ed long ago they weren’t going to bring every­one else with them. You are cat­tle to them.

We have strayed from fam­i­ly val­ues and cor­rupt­ed our minds and I am a prime exam­ple of hav­ing it all but it nev­er being enough.

A lot of us are just sit­ting around wait­ing to die. No sun­light, no steps, no fresh air, no hope. Our chil­dren are addict­ed to screens by the age of two. We are fill­ing our bod­ies with processed foods.

Our pop­u­la­tion is too fat to join the mil­i­tary yet we are fac­ing a war with Chi­na, Rus­sia, North Korea and Iran before 2030.

We must take these actions if we are going to make it past the next few years in one piece:

We must end the war in Ukraine with nego­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment. It is the only way.

Focus on strength and win­ning. Mas­culin­i­ty is good and men must be lead­ers. Strength is a deter­rent and fear is the prod­uct.

Weed­ed out those in our gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary who do not ide­al­ize #2.

The income inequal­i­ty in this coun­try and cost-of-liv­ing is out­ra­geous. The num­ber of home­less on our street is embar­rass­ing and dis­gust­ing. Have some pride and take care of this.

Stop obsess­ing over diver­si­ty. We are all diverse and DEI is a can­cer.

Thank­ful­ly we reject­ed the DEI can­di­date and will have a real Pres­i­dent instead of Week­end at Bernie’s.

We must move on from the cul­ture of weak­ness and self enrich­ment per­pet­u­at­ed by our senior polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary lead­ers. We are done with the bla­tant cor­rup­tion. Our sol­diers are done fight­ing wars with­out end states or clear objec­tives.
...

It’s writ­ten like a man­i­festo con­tain­ing all of the cen­tral points Livels­berg­er want­ed to com­mu­ni­cate to the pub­lic. And yet, as the fol­low­ing Military.com notes, this man­i­festo was­n’t post­ed online or even emailed to one of the pun­dits he was con­tact­ing. Instead, inves­ti­ga­tor found it on a phone inside the burned out Cybertruck. Which rais­es the ques­tion as to why some­one who was plan­ning on a major ‘event’ to grab pub­lic atten­tion for his mili­tia ral­ly­ing cry would leave the ral­ly­ing cry mes­sage on a phone in the car they were plan­ning on turn­ing into an infer­no for inves­ti­ga­tors to maybe dis­cov­er and dis­sem­i­nate lat­er:

Military.com

Green Beret Who Det­o­nat­ed Cybertruck Left Note Call­ing Attack a ‘Wake-Up Call’

Military.com | By Kon­stan­tin Toropin and Steve Beynon
Pub­lished Jan­u­ary 03, 2025 at 6:42pm ET

The active-duty Green Beret sol­dier who died after blow­ing up a Tes­la Cybertruck in front of a Trump hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day left a note call­ing the attack a “wake-up call” for the coun­try, inves­ti­ga­tors said Fri­day.

“Amer­i­cans only pay atten­tion to spec­ta­cles and vio­lence. What bet­ter way to get my point across than a stunt with fire­works and explo­sives?” Mas­ter Sgt. Matthew Livels­berg­er, the career Spe­cial Forces oper­a­tive who det­o­nat­ed the rent­ed Cybertruck and died from a self-inflict­ed gun­shot wound, wrote in the recov­ered note. “Why did I per­son­al­ly do it now? I need to cleanse my mind of the broth­ers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the bur­den of the lives I took.”

The note was released as the lat­est detail in an inves­ti­ga­tion that had sought a motive in the vehi­cle bomb­ing by Livels­berg­er, who was assigned to the 10th Spe­cial Forces Group head­quar­tered at Fort Car­son, Col­orado, and sta­tioned in Stuttgart, Ger­many. In what appeared Fri­day to be a bizarre coin­ci­dence, an Army vet­er­an killed 14 peo­ple cel­e­brat­ing in New Orleans in the ear­ly morn­ing of New Year’s Day using a rental truck with an Islam­ic State ter­ror­ist group flag.

“Although this inci­dent is more pub­lic and more sen­sa­tion­al than usu­al, it ulti­mate­ly appears to be a trag­ic case of sui­cide involv­ing a heav­i­ly dec­o­rat­ed com­bat vet­er­an who is strug­gling with PTSD and oth­er issues,” FBI agent Spencer Evans told reporters at a press con­fer­ence late Fri­day in Las Vegas, speak­ing about Livels­berg­er and post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der.

...

The rea­son Livels­berg­er chose the Trump hotel and a Tes­la Cybertruck was still unclear on Fri­day. Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump is set to be sworn into office lat­er this month, and he was elect­ed with the help of the world’s rich­est man, Elon Musk, who owns Tes­la. Livels­berg­er was report­ed­ly a sup­port­er of Trump.

Mean­while, offi­cials stressed that, despite the tim­ing and shared mil­i­tary back­grounds, there has been no direct link found between Livels­berg­er and the Army vet­er­an attack­er on Bour­bon Street, Sham­sud-Din Jab­bar, who had a raft of per­son­al issues includ­ing divorces that may have led to the dead­ly attack, which end­ed with him being killed by police.

The par­al­lels are strik­ing: Both men were Afghanistan War vet­er­ans, both uti­lized rent­ed vehi­cles from the same com­pa­ny to car­ry out vio­lent pub­lic acts on the same day, and both were sta­tioned at Fort Lib­er­ty, North Car­oli­na, dur­ing their careers.

But the sim­i­lar­i­ties may stop there.

Jab­bar, who left the mil­i­tary in 2020, was a civil­ian at the time of his attack. He also served only in con­ven­tion­al units at Fort Lib­er­ty and Fort Richard­son, Alas­ka. Livels­berg­er, on the oth­er hand, was still serv­ing in the Army with 10th Spe­cial Forces Group in Ger­many and was just months away from com­plet­ing the 20 years of ser­vice required for a full retire­ment pack­age. He also had no obvi­ous con­nec­tions to rad­i­cal ide­olo­gies. Defense offi­cials say the two men nev­er served in the same unit.

“I’m not track­ing there’s an over­lap in their ser­vice record,” Pen­ta­gon Press Sec­re­tary Sab­ri­na Singh said Fri­day, adding that no evi­dence of col­lab­o­ra­tion or shared ide­ol­o­gy has emerged.

Las Vegas offi­cials, after review­ing data on one of Livels­berg­er’s phones, said that they found two let­ters that were “vary­ing on the spec­trum in terms of polit­i­cal griev­ances, issues … domes­tic issues, soci­etal issues, a vari­ety of oth­er things includ­ing per­son­al chal­lenges as well.”

On Fri­day, “The Shawn Ryan Show,” a pop­u­lar pod­cast about the mil­i­tary com­mu­ni­ty, also shared what it claimed was an email from Livels­berg­er, sent on the morn­ing of Dec. 31. In the email, Livels­berg­er alleged­ly detailed con­spir­a­to­r­i­al fears that he was being fol­lowed by fed­er­al agents. He also ref­er­enced being part of U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan that he claimed killed civil­ians — an event he implied was being cov­ered up.

The email veered into unsub­stan­ti­at­ed claims about recent drone activ­i­ty that had made news head­lines, alleg­ing they were of Chi­nese ori­gin and employed new, advanced tech­nol­o­gy. Livels­berg­er also wrote that his vehi­cle had already been rigged to explode, say­ing his bomb was keep­ing fed­er­al agents from approach­ing him, near­ly 24 hours before the det­o­na­tion out­side the Trump-brand­ed hotel.

Las Vegas offi­cials said that they were “very well aware” that the pod­cast had the email, and Evans said that they had “strong evi­dence to sug­gest that it was the sub­ject that wrote it, but we haven’t con­clu­sive­ly proven that yet.”

Two defense offi­cials, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, told Military.com that Livels­berg­er had been expe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ties recent­ly, describ­ing signs of appar­ent men­tal dis­tress. How­ev­er, it remains unclear whether he received for­mal treat­ment.

On Thurs­day evening, the Las Vegas police announced that the Clark Coun­ty coro­ner ruled Livels­berg­er’s death a sui­cide from a gun­shot wound to the mouth. CNN report­ed Fri­day that he had been diag­nosed with depres­sion.

...

Pub­lic records show that he mar­ried his first wife in 2012 in Ohio. How­ev­er, the cou­ple end­ed up divorc­ing about five years lat­er, accord­ing to the wife’s friend who spoke with mul­ti­ple media out­lets and described Livels­berg­er as con­trol­ling and unsup­port­ive.

A for­mer girl­friend also told mul­ti­ple out­lets that Livels­berg­er’s behav­ior changed in 2019 after he returned from a Mid­dle East deploy­ment with a trau­mat­ic brain injury, say­ing that he became iso­lat­ed and strug­gled with men­tal issues.

He had at least three com­bat deploy­ments, earn­ing numer­ous awards for val­or. That, in addi­tion to the high cadence of train­ing in spe­cial oper­a­tions units, would’ve like­ly exposed him to blasts that can cause brain injuries. Those injuries have become the sig­na­ture wound of the mil­i­tary in recent years and in some cas­es can be more severe than the phys­i­cal wounds typ­i­cal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with war.

Military.com has report­ed exten­sive­ly on the impacts and dev­as­tat­ing symp­toms that brain injuries result­ing from blasts are caus­ing for ser­vice mem­bers and vet­er­ans, and the fact that they are linked to an increased risk of sui­cide.

Pub­lic records show that Livels­berg­er end­ed up remar­ry­ing anoth­er woman, and social media posts reveal that the cou­ple had a child togeth­er this year.

How­ev­er, accord­ing to the New York Post, which spoke with law enforce­ment sources, that mar­riage was also falling apart over alle­ga­tions of infi­deli­ty.

The Post report­ed that Livels­berg­er’s new wife accused him of infi­deli­ty around Christ­mas, and she end­ed the rela­tion­ship six days before his death in Las Vegas.

...

Jab­bar’s life also start­ed to unrav­el as he end­ed his Army ser­vice.

He filed for the first of two divorces in 2012, accord­ing to North Car­oli­na court records. Once he left active-duty ser­vice and tran­si­tioned to the Army Reserve in 2015, his first wife told The New York Times on Wednes­day, he “strug­gled with adjust­ing to civil­ian life.”

Despite remar­ry­ing a few years lat­er, Jab­bar still strug­gled with per­son­al rela­tion­ships and mon­ey became a prob­lem.

The sec­ond mar­riage also end­ed in divorce, and court records show that Jab­bar was strug­gling finan­cial­ly. In the same year, he was dis­charged from the Army reserves for “unsat­is­fac­to­ry par­tic­i­pa­tion,” Army records show.

Finan­cial dis­clo­sures filed by Jab­bar por­trayed the cou­ple as rel­a­tive­ly impov­er­ished, with most of their bank accounts com­plete­ly emp­ty despite him hav­ing a job with the con­sult­ing com­pa­ny Deloitte that paid him a salary of more than $120,000 a year.

Jab­bar said that he was per­son­al­ly spend­ing near­ly $9,000 a month — with around $2,000 of that just on cred­it card debt and stu­dent loans — while tak­ing home only around $7,500.

Mean­while, his sec­ond wife, in her fil­ings, said that Jab­bar had been wast­ing their mon­ey, includ­ing “exces­sive cash with­drawals, gifts to para­mours, unrea­son­able and unnec­es­sary spend­ing, and the improp­er accu­mu­la­tion of debt.”

The divorce was grant­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2022.

The FBI told reporters that, in one of the videos he post­ed online, Jab­bar said “he orig­i­nal­ly planned to harm his fam­i­ly and friends but was con­cerned that news head­lines would not focus on the ‘war between the believ­ers and the dis­be­liev­ers.’ ”

———-

“Green Beret Who Det­o­nat­ed Cybertruck Left Note Call­ing Attack a ‘Wake-Up Call’ ” By Kon­stan­tin Toropin and Steve Beynon; Military.com; 01/03/2025

“Las Vegas offi­cials, after review­ing data on one of Livels­berg­er’s phones, said that they found two let­ters that were “vary­ing on the spec­trum in terms of polit­i­cal griev­ances, issues … domes­tic issues, soci­etal issues, a vari­ety of oth­er things includ­ing per­son­al chal­lenges as well.””

So there were report­ed­ly two let­ters found on Livels­berg­er’s phones. Let­ters char­ac­ter­ized as “vary­ing on the spec­trum in terms of polit­i­cal griev­ances, issues … domes­tic issues, soci­etal issues, a vari­ety of oth­er things includ­ing per­son­al chal­lenges as well.” And that seems to include the above man­i­festo, which does­n’t appear to have been sent out to any­one. Instead, it was just found on his phone in the burn­ing Cybertruck, which is a rather odd place to keep a man­i­festo if the whole point of doing this act was to draw atten­tion to the ‘wake up call’ mes­sage. What guar­an­tee would he have that the man­i­festo would be found or released?

Adding to the bizarreness of the phone man­i­festo is the fact that Livels­berg­er appar­ent­ly sent his email about UFOs and Afghan war crimes to mul­ti­ple pod­cast­ers, like Shawn Ryan, a day before the explo­sion. Why not just send them the final man­i­festo too?

...
On Fri­day, “The Shawn Ryan Show,” a pop­u­lar pod­cast about the mil­i­tary com­mu­ni­ty, also shared what it claimed was an email from Livels­berg­er, sent on the morn­ing of Dec. 31. In the email, Livels­berg­er alleged­ly detailed con­spir­a­to­r­i­al fears that he was being fol­lowed by fed­er­al agents. He also ref­er­enced being part of U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan that he claimed killed civil­ians — an event he implied was being cov­ered up.

The email veered into unsub­stan­ti­at­ed claims about recent drone activ­i­ty that had made news head­lines, alleg­ing they were of Chi­nese ori­gin and employed new, advanced tech­nol­o­gy. Livels­berg­er also wrote that his vehi­cle had already been rigged to explode, say­ing his bomb was keep­ing fed­er­al agents from approach­ing him, near­ly 24 hours before the det­o­na­tion out­side the Trump-brand­ed hotel.

Las Vegas offi­cials said that they were “very well aware” that the pod­cast had the email, and Evans said that they had “strong evi­dence to sug­gest that it was the sub­ject that wrote it, but we haven’t con­clu­sive­ly proven that yet.”
...

Also note how we have two defense offi­cials speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty telling Military.com that Livels­berg­er had been expe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ties recent­ly. Now, we’ve already had report­ing on how his cur­rent wife had just left him rough­ly a week ear­li­er over infi­deli­ty alle­ga­tions. But you have to won­der if the anony­mous dis­clo­sure by these defense offi­cials sug­gests we should­n’t be sur­prised if we even­tu­al­ly learn that the mil­i­tary knew he was expe­ri­enc­ing some sort of men­tal episode before going on leave and before his wife left him. Either that or, per­haps, there was some sort of aware­ness inside the mil­i­tary that Livels­berg­er had become a rad­i­cal­ized extrem­ist. Recall how he appar­ent­ly expressed fears of being tracked by the gov­ern­ment. Did he have those fears of being tracked pre­ced­ed his deci­sion to go on this ‘wake up call’ road trip?

...
Two defense offi­cials, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, told Military.com that Livels­berg­er had been expe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ties recent­ly, describ­ing signs of appar­ent men­tal dis­tress. How­ev­er, it remains unclear whether he received for­mal treat­ment.

On Thurs­day evening, the Las Vegas police announced that the Clark Coun­ty coro­ner ruled Livels­berg­er’s death a sui­cide from a gun­shot wound to the mouth. CNN report­ed Fri­day that he had been diag­nosed with depres­sion.

...

Pub­lic records show that he mar­ried his first wife in 2012 in Ohio. How­ev­er, the cou­ple end­ed up divorc­ing about five years lat­er, accord­ing to the wife’s friend who spoke with mul­ti­ple media out­lets and described Livels­berg­er as con­trol­ling and unsup­port­ive.

A for­mer girl­friend also told mul­ti­ple out­lets that Livels­berg­er’s behav­ior changed in 2019 after he returned from a Mid­dle East deploy­ment with a trau­mat­ic brain injury, say­ing that he became iso­lat­ed and strug­gled with men­tal issues.

...

Pub­lic records show that Livels­berg­er end­ed up remar­ry­ing anoth­er woman, and social media posts reveal that the cou­ple had a child togeth­er this year.

How­ev­er, accord­ing to the New York Post, which spoke with law enforce­ment sources, that mar­riage was also falling apart over alle­ga­tions of infi­deli­ty.

The Post report­ed that Livels­berg­er’s new wife accused him of infi­deli­ty around Christ­mas, and she end­ed the rela­tion­ship six days before his death in Las Vegas.
...

Also note how Livels­berg­er was just months away from com­plete­ly 20 being able to retire with full ben­e­fits. That’s part of the con­text in assess­ing his men­tal state. He was only 37 years old and had decades of either lucra­tive work in the defense sec­tor or just retire­ment ahead of him:

...
Mean­while, offi­cials stressed that, despite the tim­ing and shared mil­i­tary back­grounds, there has been no direct link found between Livels­berg­er and the Army vet­er­an attack­er on Bour­bon Street, Sham­sud-Din Jab­bar, who had a raft of per­son­al issues includ­ing divorces that may have led to the dead­ly attack, which end­ed with him being killed by police.

The par­al­lels are strik­ing: Both men were Afghanistan War vet­er­ans, both uti­lized rent­ed vehi­cles from the same com­pa­ny to car­ry out vio­lent pub­lic acts on the same day, and both were sta­tioned at Fort Lib­er­ty, North Car­oli­na, dur­ing their careers.

But the sim­i­lar­i­ties may stop there.

Jab­bar, who left the mil­i­tary in 2020, was a civil­ian at the time of his attack. He also served only in con­ven­tion­al units at Fort Lib­er­ty and Fort Richard­son, Alas­ka. Livels­berg­er, on the oth­er hand, was still serv­ing in the Army with 10th Spe­cial Forces Group in Ger­many and was just months away from com­plet­ing the 20 years of ser­vice required for a full retire­ment pack­age. He also had no obvi­ous con­nec­tions to rad­i­cal ide­olo­gies. Defense offi­cials say the two men nev­er served in the same unit.

“I’m not track­ing there’s an over­lap in their ser­vice record,” Pen­ta­gon Press Sec­re­tary Sab­ri­na Singh said Fri­day, adding that no evi­dence of col­lab­o­ra­tion or shared ide­ol­o­gy has emerged.
...

Inter­est­ing­ly, while it sounds like Livels­berg­er and Sham­sud-Din Jab­bar both dealt with rela­tion­ship tur­moil, Livels­berg­er being months away from retir­ing with full ben­e­fits con­trasts sharply with the finan­cial sta­tus of Jab­bar, who we are told was fac­ing finan­cial tur­moil despite a $120,000 salary. And then there’s the bizarre deci­sion by Jab­ber to include in a video the fact that he ini­tial­ly planned on just killing his fam­i­ly and friends but decid­ed against that because then the head­lines would­n’t focus on the ‘war between the believ­ers and the dis­be­liev­ers.’ Why even include a detail like this in your weird man­i­festo video? It’s like we got two New Years Day ter­ror attacks car­ried out by very con­fused ter­ror­ists:

...
Jab­bar’s life also start­ed to unrav­el as he end­ed his Army ser­vice.

He filed for the first of two divorces in 2012, accord­ing to North Car­oli­na court records. Once he left active-duty ser­vice and tran­si­tioned to the Army Reserve in 2015, his first wife told The New York Times on Wednes­day, he “strug­gled with adjust­ing to civil­ian life.”

Despite remar­ry­ing a few years lat­er, Jab­bar still strug­gled with per­son­al rela­tion­ships and mon­ey became a prob­lem.

The sec­ond mar­riage also end­ed in divorce, and court records show that Jab­bar was strug­gling finan­cial­ly. In the same year, he was dis­charged from the Army reserves for “unsat­is­fac­to­ry par­tic­i­pa­tion,” Army records show.

Finan­cial dis­clo­sures filed by Jab­bar por­trayed the cou­ple as rel­a­tive­ly impov­er­ished, with most of their bank accounts com­plete­ly emp­ty despite him hav­ing a job with the con­sult­ing com­pa­ny Deloitte that paid him a salary of more than $120,000 a year.

Jab­bar said that he was per­son­al­ly spend­ing near­ly $9,000 a month — with around $2,000 of that just on cred­it card debt and stu­dent loans — while tak­ing home only around $7,500.

Mean­while, his sec­ond wife, in her fil­ings, said that Jab­bar had been wast­ing their mon­ey, includ­ing “exces­sive cash with­drawals, gifts to para­mours, unrea­son­able and unnec­es­sary spend­ing, and the improp­er accu­mu­la­tion of debt.”

The divorce was grant­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2022.

The FBI told reporters that, in one of the videos he post­ed online, Jab­bar said “he orig­i­nal­ly planned to harm his fam­i­ly and friends but was con­cerned that news head­lines would not focus on the ‘war between the believ­ers and the dis­be­liev­ers.’ ”
...

And when it comes to all the ques­tions about why Livels­berg­er decid­ed to leave his man­i­festo in a burn­ing vehi­cle for inves­ti­ga­tors to find instead of broad­cast­ing it to the world, that brings us to anoth­er inter­est­ing detail we’re get­ting from Shawn Ryan, one of the mil­i­tary pod­cast­ers Livels­berg­er reached out to before the blast: Livels­berg­er was­n’t just inter­est­ed in sit­ting down for an inter­view with Ryan. He was also hop­ing to get in con­tact with Fox News’s Pete Hegseth. As we’ve seen, Hegseth isn’t just a Fox News host. He’s a vir­u­lent Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism domin­ion­ist. So when we see Livels­berg­er call­ing for a mili­tia-led culling of Democ­rats, keep in mind he like­ly had a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist culling specif­i­cal­ly in mind. Which is fur­ther evi­dence that Livels­berg­er’s grand plan is more or less a vari­a­tion on what the Project 2025 folks had been plan­ning all along:

Newsweek

Matthew Livelsberger—More Mes­sages Alleged­ly From Cybertruck Sus­pect Shared

Pub­lished Jan 04, 2025 at 12:55 PM EST
Updat­ed Jan 05, 2025 at 8:33 AM EST
By Natal­ie Vene­gas

Pod­cast­er Shawn Ryan and retired U.S. Army intel­li­gence offi­cer Sam Shoe­mate have shared more mes­sages on social media alleged­ly from Matthew Livels­berg­er, a Green Beret and the main sus­pect in the Cybertruck explo­sion in Las Vegas after his alleged man­i­festo was emailed.

...

Why It Mat­ters

Fire­work mor­tars and camp fuel can­is­ters were found inside the Tes­la Cybertruck that explod­ed out­side Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel ear­ly Wednes­day. The blast result­ed in a sin­gle casu­al­ty, the sus­pect inside the vehi­cle, and sparked nation­al atten­tion and a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion into poten­tial ter­ror­ism.

On Thurs­day, author­i­ties iden­ti­fied the vic­tim as Livels­berg­er, 37, who report­ed­ly shot him­self in the head moments before the explo­sion. Sev­en oth­ers, mean­while, were injured in the inci­dent. Author­i­ties found sev­er­al charred items inside the truck includ­ing a hand­gun at Livels­berg­er’s feet, anoth­er firearm, a pass­port, a mil­i­tary ID, cred­it cards, an iPhone and a smart­watch.

...

What To Know

Shoe­mate, an intel­li­gence ana­lyst, who said he received an email from Livels­berg­er with his alleged man­i­festo just days before the car bomb explod­ed, has since tak­en to social media and The Shawn Ryan Show pod­cast to share more about the email and mes­sages alleged­ly from Livels­berg­er.

In a Sat­ur­day post on X, for­mer­ly Twit­ter, Shoe­mate said that while some may be skep­ti­cal that Livels­berg­er was the one who sent the email, he would share screen­shots of the chain mes­sages from Livels­berg­er.

“I don’t think peo­ple are doubt­ing the emails exist. I think they’re doubt­ing whether they were sent by Matt or some­one imper­son­at­ing him. For what it’s worth, here’s the chain though,” Shoe­mate wrote on X with four screen­shots of the mes­sages.

The alleged mes­sages, also being shared by Ryan, a for­mer Navy SEAL, show the ini­tial con­tact Livels­berg­er made with Shoe­mate as one mes­sage states,” Send­ing with a vpn active on wifi only. Do not mes­sage me. I will send out updates via both sig­nal and email but trust me you’re going to want to be involved.”

Anoth­er mes­sage states, “Can I get a Fox News con­tact on Sig­nal as well as shawns show. [Pete] Hegseth would be good too.”

Hegseth is Trump’s nom­i­nee to lead the Depart­ment of Defense (DOD).

In anoth­er post on X, Ryan shared how he also received mes­sages from the same email address Shoe­mate had received mes­sages from.

“The same email address that mes­saged @samosauralso sent a mes­sage to the Shawn Ryan Show,” Ryan wrote.

The email reads, “Hey man this is an activ­i­ty duty sf tm sgt out of 10th. I want to blow the whis­tle on our activ­i­ties in a cer­tain place. I’m will­ing to sit down with you on the 31st in Flagstaff or do it remote­ly via phone. Must be done before the 31st as I’ll be leav­ing.”

This comes after Ryan announced that he would be dis­ap­pear­ing for a “few days” before he pub­lished a new episode about the alleged man­i­festo.

At 2:57 p.m. ET Fri­day, Ryan post­ed a warn­ing that he would be “dis­ap­pear­ing for a few days” with his fam­i­ly, cit­ing con­cerns about the “mind bog­gling” rev­e­la­tions that would be in his newest episode.

Half an hour after the release of the episode, Ryan’s account post­ed a screen­shot of the email Shoe­mate received from the sender, who claimed to be Livels­berg­er. The email details two major claims.

First, the email said the mys­tery drones that have been spot­ted over New Jer­sey in Novem­ber and Decem­ber 2024 were of Chi­nese ori­gin and used “gravitic propul­sion sys­tems” that are “the most dan­ger­ous threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty that has ever exist­ed.”

Sec­ond, the email detailed alleged war crimes, such as an airstrike in the Afghanistan province of Nim­ruz in 2019 that Livels­berg­er claims he helped cov­er up.

Ryan and Shoe­mate repeat­ed dur­ing the show that they have not been able to ver­i­fy any of the claims that the email raised, but they would work to do so.

...

———–

“Matthew Livelsberger—More Mes­sages Alleged­ly From Cybertruck Sus­pect Shared” By Natal­ie Vene­gas; Newsweek; 01/04/2025

“On Thurs­day, author­i­ties iden­ti­fied the vic­tim as Livels­berg­er, 37, who report­ed­ly shot him­self in the head moments before the explo­sion. Sev­en oth­ers, mean­while, were injured in the inci­dent. Author­i­ties found sev­er­al charred items inside the truck includ­ing a hand­gun at Livels­berg­er’s feet, anoth­er firearm, a pass­port, a mil­i­tary ID, cred­it cards, an iPhone and a smart­watch.”

An iPhone and a smart­watch were both recov­ered in the car. For some­one who feared being tracked, Livels­berg­er did­n’t seem to have much of a fear over car­ry­ing around mul­ti­ple devices that were track­ing his loca­tion. And yet, as is also pret­ty obvi­ous, it’s also not like Livels­berg­er would have had any dif­fi­cul­ty in post­ing his final man­i­festo to social media or send­ing it to his media con­tacts like Shawn Ryan or Sam Shoe­mate right before set­ting off the explo­sive. He was clear­ly capa­ble of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the world. That curi­ous behav­ior regard­ing what appeared to be is ‘offi­cial’ man­i­festo found on his phone only makes the com­mu­ni­ca­tions with fig­ures like Shawn Ryan and Same Shoe­mate all the more intrigu­ing. Why did­n’t he send them, or some­one, his offi­cial man­i­festo?

And that ques­tion brings us to anoth­er poten­tial­ly rel­e­vant detail: when Livels­berg­er reached out to Shoe­mate, he appar­ent­ly want­ed to get in con­tact Fox News and, specif­i­cal­ly, Pete Hegseth. As we’ve seen, Hegseth isn’t just a vet­er­an-turned-Fox News host who was tapped by Trump to be the next Sec­re­tary of Defense. Hegseth is also a mem­ber of domin­ion­ist evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty that has as its goal the same kind of soci­ety-wide purges of ‘Democ­rats’ that Livels­berg­er advo­cat­ed. So it would appear that Livels­berg­er was, at one point in the days lead­ing up to the explo­sion, hop­ing to be some sort of Fox News guest, where he could pre­sum­ably make his mili­tia ral­ly­ing cry to occu­py DC:

...
Shoe­mate, an intel­li­gence ana­lyst, who said he received an email from Livels­berg­er with his alleged man­i­festo just days before the car bomb explod­ed, has since tak­en to social media and The Shawn Ryan Show pod­cast to share more about the email and mes­sages alleged­ly from Livels­berg­er.

In a Sat­ur­day post on X, for­mer­ly Twit­ter, Shoe­mate said that while some may be skep­ti­cal that Livels­berg­er was the one who sent the email, he would share screen­shots of the chain mes­sages from Livels­berg­er.

“I don’t think peo­ple are doubt­ing the emails exist. I think they’re doubt­ing whether they were sent by Matt or some­one imper­son­at­ing him. For what it’s worth, here’s the chain though,” Shoe­mate wrote on X with four screen­shots of the mes­sages.

The alleged mes­sages, also being shared by Ryan, a for­mer Navy SEAL, show the ini­tial con­tact Livels­berg­er made with Shoe­mate as one mes­sage states,” Send­ing with a vpn active on wifi only. Do not mes­sage me. I will send out updates via both sig­nal and email but trust me you’re going to want to be involved.”

Anoth­er mes­sage states, “Can I get a Fox News con­tact on Sig­nal as well as shawns show. [Pete] Hegseth would be good too.”

Hegseth is Trump’s nom­i­nee to lead the Depart­ment of Defense (DOD).
...

And as anoth­er indi­ca­tion of Livels­berg­er’s desire to do some sort of inter­view, he explic­it­ly offered to sit down with Shawn Ryan for a Decem­ber 31st inter­view:

...
In anoth­er post on X, Ryan shared how he also received mes­sages from the same email address Shoe­mate had received mes­sages from.

“The same email address that mes­saged @samosauralso sent a mes­sage to the Shawn Ryan Show,” Ryan wrote.

The email reads, “Hey man this is an activ­i­ty duty sf tm sgt out of 10th. I want to blow the whis­tle on our activ­i­ties in a cer­tain place. I’m will­ing to sit down with you on the 31st in Flagstaff or do it remote­ly via phone. Must be done before the 31st as I’ll be leav­ing.”

This comes after Ryan announced that he would be dis­ap­pear­ing for a “few days” before he pub­lished a new episode about the alleged man­i­festo.

At 2:57 p.m. ET Fri­day, Ryan post­ed a warn­ing that he would be “dis­ap­pear­ing for a few days” with his fam­i­ly, cit­ing con­cerns about the “mind bog­gling” rev­e­la­tions that would be in his newest episode.

Half an hour after the release of the episode, Ryan’s account post­ed a screen­shot of the email Shoe­mate received from the sender, who claimed to be Livels­berg­er. The email details two major claims.

First, the email said the mys­tery drones that have been spot­ted over New Jer­sey in Novem­ber and Decem­ber 2024 were of Chi­nese ori­gin and used “gravitic propul­sion sys­tems” that are “the most dan­ger­ous threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty that has ever exist­ed.”

Sec­ond, the email detailed alleged war crimes, such as an airstrike in the Afghanistan province of Nim­ruz in 2019 that Livels­berg­er claims he helped cov­er up.
...

Matthew Livels­berg­er clear­ly had a mes­sage he want­ed to deliv­er to the Amer­i­can peo­ple. But also a rather rough dead­line. He knew he was going to ‘leave’ soon. And in the end he nev­er got his inter­view. But he did get a lot of atten­tion. Most­ly con­fused atten­tion by a pub­lic that had no idea why some­one would do such a thing, thanks to the fact that he appar­ent­ly decid­ed to leave the man­i­festo explain­ing the whole thing on a phone found in the burn­ing truck.

It seems pret­ty unlike­ly that Livels­berg­er’s mili­tia call to arms isn’t going to hap­pen. Again, why would it? Repub­li­cans are set to be in full con­trol, now, albeit with just a sliv­er of a major­i­ty. The only thing stand­ing in the way of Project 2025 is the Repub­li­cans them­selves. Which is also a reminder that, for all the fas­cist rhetoric tar­get­ing Democ­rats these days, it’s Repub­li­can offi­cials who are prob­a­bly the most at risk of intim­i­da­tion by mili­tias and oth­er vio­lent extrem­ist move­ments. In oth­er words, if there is a culling just around the cor­ner, it’s like­ly going to start with what remains of any Repub­li­can resis­tance to Don­ald Trump’s author­i­tar­i­an whims. Whims that, despite his denials, very much include the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist Project 2025 agen­da. An agen­da that, again, already includes the deploy­ment of the mil­i­tary, and maybe even mili­tias, domes­ti­cal­ly for a culling when the ‘renewed Amer­i­ca’ gets too unpop­u­lar with Amer­i­cans.

It’s pret­ty dark to think about, but we almost have to hope Matthew Livels­berg­er real­ly was plan­ning on tak­ing his own life for pure­ly per­son­al rea­sons and just decid­ed to glom on a big polit­i­cal stunt after the fact. Because oth­er­wise he killed him­self call­ing for a fas­cist purge already poised to start in a few weeks. This is already a weird sad sto­ry, but that that would be super extra sad.

What was he think­ing, real­ly? After a week and a half of report­ing, that remains the ques­tion that looms over the sto­ry of the New Years Day Trump Hotel Cybertruck sui­cide bomb­ing in Las Vegas. A bomb­ing that, as we’ve seen, was car­ried out by Matthew Livels­berg, an elite mem­ber of the US spe­cial forces who described him­self as not just extreme­ly pro-Trump but also pro-Musk and high­ly sup­port­ive of the over­all MAGA agen­da. Why did a MAGA super-fan super-sol­dier decide to kill him­self by blow­ing up a Cybertruck in front of a Trump Hotel on New Year’s Day?

Now, as we’ve also seen, the osten­si­ble rea­son for this sui­ci­dal act was to grab pub­lic atten­tion for his mes­sage. A mes­sage on the need to cull the US gov­ern­ment and senior lead­ers in the mil­i­tary of weak and feck­less Democ­rats so the US can embrace mas­cu­line lead­er­ship and pre­pare for war against Chi­na, Rus­sia, Iran, and North Korea. A mes­sage that was very much in line with the Project 2025 fas­cist agen­da.

And yet, that mes­sage — which empha­sized how this was­n’t intend­ed to be a ter­ror­ist attack but instead a ‘wake up call’ for the Amer­i­can pub­lic — was jux­ta­posed with the real­i­ty that the Cybertruck was­n’t sim­ply filled with rac­ing fuel and fire­works. It had large vol­umes of Tan­ner­ite — an explo­sive com­pound used to make bombs and even explod­ing vehi­cles — along with 75 pounds of bird­shot, some­thing fre­quent­ly added to IEDs to make them more lethal.

Adding to that ‘this was­n’t a ter­ror attack’ con­tra­dic­tion is the fact that his mes­sage to the pub­lic was rather mut­ed. We know about the emails he sent to mil­i­tary pun­dits like Sam Shoe­mate and Shawn Ryan, where Livels­berg­er claimed the New Jer­sey drones were Chi­nese gravitic propul­sion drones that posed an unprece­dent­ed nation­al secu­ri­ty threat while also assert­ing his desire to bring to light US war crimes he was involved with in Afghanistan in 2019. But the doc­u­ments where he makes the call for a culling of Democ­rats, and that sure read like a kind of man­i­festo, were nev­er actu­al­ly sent out to the pub­lic. Instead, they were released by inves­ti­ga­tors after being found on a notes app on a phone found in the burn­ing Cybertruck wreck­age. So for some­one who had a mes­sage to deliv­er to the pub­lic, it’s rather con­fus­ing that he nev­er direct­ly pub­lished his man­i­festo and instead just left it sit­ting on a phone in the burn­ing wreck­age.

And now it looks like we’re get­ting the con­tent of anoth­er 6‑page man­i­festo found on the phone found in the burn­ing Cybertruck, along with a jour­nal. A jour­nal that starts on Decem­ber 21st and ends on Decem­ber 31st, the day Livels­berg­er decid­ed to make a “final com­mit” at the Grand Canyon. But the jour­nal only men­tions this “final com­mit” on the last entry. It’s most­ly filled with descrip­tions of a group of peo­ple he is observ­ing fol­low­ing him from the moment he arrives at the air­port to be picked up by his fam­i­ly on the 21st.

And while it’s pos­si­ble he’s describ­ing the para­noid delu­sions of some­one detached from real­i­ty, it sure sounds like he’s see­ing the same gen­er­al group of peo­ple fol­low him from one loca­tion to the next. Impor­tant­ly, the whole thing is writ­ten as if he assumes they have good rea­son to fol­low him. He nev­er quite explains why, but laments at one point how he regrets if he has to use force against the peo­ple fol­low­ing him because they are just doing their jobs.

He starts the jour­nal off men­tion­ing see­ing a man at the air­port who appeared to be scan­ning the crowd and react­ing to Livels­berg­er’s appear­ance and then see­ing that man again in the pas­sen­ger pick­up area, along with a woman who seemed out of place. He describes being fol­lowed to the fam­i­ly home by vehi­cles. The next day, a man in a green bomber jack­et was seen walk­ing around out­side on the block seem­ing to observe the area. Livels­berg­er reports see­ing this man at least eight more times over the course of the jour­nal, includ­ing in the city of Leadsville on the 27th, which appears to be the first city he trav­els to after leav­ing the fam­i­ly home and head­ing on his final jour­ney, and again on the 28th out­side the hotel in what was like­ly some­where in the Den­ver area. The sus­pi­cious woman from the air­port also appar­ent­ly made an appear­ance, walk­ing a dog, out­side the fam­i­ly home on the 24th before he left. There are var­i­ous oth­er peo­ple he sus­pects of fol­low­ing him but the man in the bomber jack­et and the woman from the air­port are the two that show up mul­ti­ple time in mul­ti­ple cities.

Was that all a delu­sion? Because, again, he seemed to be ful­ly expect­ing to be tracked based on the tone of the jour­nal. It’s as if some­thing was set in motion before he start­ed his return flight from Ger­many, but he’s nev­er clear on what exact­ly he already did. Also impor­tant­ly, he was fear­ful of being appre­hend­ed, and at one point sus­pect­ed a near­by van in a park­ing lot had peo­ple who were going to pop out and snatch him.

But there’s anoth­er large ques­tion that looms large over this bizarre sto­ry: was he plan­ning on sui­cide the whole time? Because when we read care­ful­ly his writ­ings and this jour­nal, it sure sounds like he was­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly intent on dying but instead on not get­ting caught alive and poten­tial­ly flee­ing to the US-Mex­i­can bor­der. Based on these ear­li­er writ­ings, the Cybertruck bomb was more a ‘I won’t be tak­en alive’ threat against the unnamed agents try­ing to appre­hend. For exam­ple, in the email he sent to Sam Shoe­mate on the morn­ing of Decem­ber 31st, Livels­berg­er twice indi­cates plans to cross into Mex­i­co, writ­ing:

...
“In case I do not make it to my deci­sion point or on to the Mex­i­co bor­der I am send­ing this now. Please do not release this until 1JAN and keep my iden­ti­ty pri­vate until then.

... .

“I’ve been fol­lowed for over a week now from like­ly home­land or FBI, and they are look­ing to move on me and are unlike­ly going to let me cross into Mex­i­co, but won’t because they know I am armed and I have a mas­sive VBIED. I’ve been try­ing to main­tain a very vis­i­ble pro­file and have kept my phone and they are def­i­nite­ly dig­i­tal­ly track­ing me.
...

That was his mes­sage to Shoe­mate just one day before the Trump Hotel explo­sion. And as we’re going to see in the final jour­nal entry, also from Decem­ber 31st, Livels­berg­er describes reach­ing his deci­sion point” and con­clud­ing that he will make some sort of last stand at the Grand Canyon. What exact­ly he was plan­ning remains unclear, but he seemed to be hope­ful that he would be able to ‘get his mes­sage out’ before being some­how stopped. He also makes a ref­er­ence to a “trans­fer” or some sort that the peo­ple track­ing him might attempt to stop, adding “I hope I get enough space and time to send out my mes­sage before com­mit­ting.” Based on that last entry, Livels­berg­er appear to have aban­doned the Mex­i­co plan and resigned him­self to some sort of pub­lic ‘mes­sage’ and/or ‘trans­fer’ at the Grand Canyon:

...
I reached my deci­sion point when dri­ving and chose to com­mit to the Grand Canyon for the final com­mit or not. Im not sure at this point if they are going to inter­dict if I com­mit to an act or they are just assigned to see this trans­fer through, if they even know about it. My next deci­sion point 4 will be sur­veil­lance going to the glass walk­way bridge park­ing area. I’m going to ID the launch route on foot and send it if I am still hot. This is prob­a­bly going to end bad­ly for me but I’m not going down with­out a fight. I hope I get enough space and time to send out my mes­sage before com­mit­ting. This is going to be my last log because there’s too much to prep.
...

And yet, as we’ve seen, he did­n’t end up going to the Grand Canyon or send­ing out his mes­sage. After a last minute change of plans, he made anoth­er very sig­nif­i­cant last minute change of plans that appears to have includ­ed drop­ping the plans to send out his ‘mes­sage’. Again, oth­er than the emails sent to Shoe­mate and Shawn Ryan, it appears that all of the oth­er con­tent we’ve seen with a ‘mes­sage’ to the pub­lic was released by inves­ti­ga­tors after being found on the phone in the burn­ing Cybertruck. It’s as if he just gave up on the ‘send­ing the mes­sage’ part, which makes the deci­sion to blow him­self up in front of a Trump Hotel all the more baf­fling.

Now, it’s also the case that we are told by inves­ti­ga­tors that oth­er notes found on the phone explained how he was very sup­port­ive of not just Trump but also Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., which appears to be the pri­ma­ry rea­son inves­ti­ga­tors have con­clud­ed that he was ulti­mate­ly chose the Trump Hotel and the Cybertruck as a kind of iron­ic show of sup­port. But that brings us to one of the oth­er very inter­est­ing angles to this sto­ry that might help explain the odd last minute change in plans: Livels­berg­er’s para­noid deci­sion to make a last stand for Trump hap­pens to coin­cide with the exact time when a ‘civ­il war’ was break­ing out in MAGA-world over the issue of H1B work­er visas, some­thing many in MAGA world vehe­ment­ly opposed. And it’s not sim­ply the case that Elon Musk came out force­ful­ly in favor of H1B visas, threat­en­ing “I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you can­not pos­si­bly com­pre­hend.” Don­ald Trump soon fol­lowed suit, back­ing Musk and defend­ing H1B visas. This is the MAGA-world con­tro­ver­sy that was play­ing out in the final days of 2024, right when Livels­berg­er was plan­ning his big pro-Trump pub­lic spec­ta­cle.

So it’s worth ask­ing: what were Livels­berg­er’s views on immi­gra­tion and H1B visas? Was he, by chance, an intense oppo­nent of immi­gra­tion in gen­er­al? We know he was a Trump super-fan, but that does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly indi­cate he was anti-immi­grant. But it’s cer­tain­ly a sign he might be. Some­one will­ing to die to deliv­er a pro-Trump mes­sage to the world prob­a­bly was­n’t a huge immi­gra­tion pro­po­nent. Espe­cial­ly when his ‘wake up call’ includ­ed warn­ings about loom­ing war with Chi­na, Rus­sia, Iran, and North Korea.

Which is why, in turn, we have to ask whether or not Livels­berg­er’s last minute change of plans may have been impact­ed by this MAGA ‘civ­il war’ that was lit­er­al­ly erupt­ing at the exact same time Livels­berg­er was plan­ning some grand pro-Trump pub­lic spec­ta­cle. Because some sort of last minute sense of betray­al just might explain the last minute change of plans. Livels­berg­er was seem­ing­ly ful­ly com­mit­ted to deliv­er­ing some sort of mes­sage to the Amer­i­can pub­lic and ready to die to deliv­er that mes­sage. And then he makes this deci­sion, seem­ing­ly on the last day, to rad­i­cal­ly change his plans and just kill him­self out­side of the Trump Hotel with­out real­ly deliv­er­ing the mes­sage at all. Sure, he sent those emails to Shawn Ryan and Sam Shoe­mate that par­tial­ly explained some of his mes­sage. But the ‘wake up call’ mes­sages focused on the need for a culling of Democ­rats and military/militia occu­pa­tion of the Capi­tol was nev­er ulti­mate­ly deliv­ered to the pub­lic. We only learned about them because they were con­tained on phones found in the burn­ing Cybertruck. In the end, Livels­berg­er blew him­self up with­out deliv­er­ing his ‘wake up call’ at all. Some­thing caused a very last minute and sig­nif­i­cant change of plans. Some­thing that was intend­ed to be as pub­lic spec­ta­cle to deliv­er an impor­tant mes­sage to the pub­lic turned into a pub­lic sui­cide with no clear mes­sage at all. Was MAGA-despair and a sense of betray­al the ulti­mate rea­son?

Ok, first, here’s a piece in Newsweek that con­tains the entire email sent to Sam Shoe­mate on the morn­ing of Decem­ber 31st. And as we can see, he appeared to be still plan­ning on cross­ing the US-Mex­i­co bor­der at that point. Now, as we’re going to see in the final jour­nal entry below, he decid­ed lat­er that day to make some sort of last stand at the Grand Canyon. But as of that morn­ing, he was sig­nal­ing an appar­ent desire to flee to Mex­i­co, and pre­sum­ably not kill him­self. Plans that obvi­ous­ly changed rad­i­cal­ly over the fol­low­ing 24 hours:

Newsweek

Matthew Livels­berg­er Alleged Man­i­festo: Read Full Email Sent to Retired Sol­dier

Pub­lished Jan 03, 2025 at 5:55 PM EST
Updat­ed Jan 05, 2025 at 8:36 AM EST
By Jesus Mesa

Matthew Livels­berg­er, a Green Beret and the main sus­pect in the Cybertruck attack in Las Vegas, report­ed­ly sent a man­i­festo-like email to retired U.S. Army intel­li­gence offi­cer Sam Shoe­mate just days before a car bomb explod­ed in front of Trump Inter­na­tion­al Hotel.

Shoe­mate revealed the email on The Shawn Ryan Show pod­cast, describ­ing its con­tents as alle­ga­tions of advanced drone tech­nol­o­gy, a cov­er-up of a 2019 airstrike in Afghanistan, and claims of being under U.S. gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance.

...

What To Know

Livels­berg­er alleged­ly sent an email to retired U.S. Army intel­li­gence offi­cer Sam Shoe­mate, detail­ing con­cerns about advanced drones using “GDIC propul­sion sys­tems,” which he described as anti-grav­i­ty tech­nol­o­gy.

In the email, read on “The Shawn Ryan Pod­cast,” Livels­berg­er claimed that the U.S. and Chi­na devel­oped and deployed the drones. He alleged that Chi­na launched them from sub­marines along the U.S. East Coast, call­ing them “the most dan­ger­ous threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty” because of their stealth, abil­i­ty to evade detec­tion and unlim­it­ed pay­load capac­i­ty.

Livels­berg­er also ref­er­enced his involve­ment in a 2019 U.S. airstrike in Nim­ruz Province, Afghanistan. He claimed the oper­a­tion, which tar­get­ed drug facil­i­ties, caused civil­ian casu­al­ties, includ­ing women and chil­dren, and was cov­ered up by U.S. author­i­ties. The alle­ga­tions align with a 2019 U.N. report crit­i­ciz­ing the strikes as unlaw­ful. Livels­berg­er said the inci­dent pushed him to speak out.

Addi­tion­al­ly, he accused the FBI and Home­land Secu­ri­ty of mon­i­tor­ing and track­ing him, describ­ing efforts to avoid being detained.

The only per­son who died as a result of the inci­dent was the sus­pect, from a self-inflict­ed gun­shot, accord­ing to police.

Is Man­i­festo Real?

After the alleged man­i­festo began cir­cu­lat­ing on social media fol­low­ing the pod­cast, reporters asked Las Vegas police and the FBI at a press con­fer­ence if the sus­pect had writ­ten it. Author­i­ties said they believe the let­ter shared by Shawn Ryan was authored by the bomb­ing sus­pect.

What Does Man­i­festo Say?

Shoe­mate said Fri­day that he received an email from Livels­berg­er on Tues­day. Accord­ing to Shoe­mate, the email said:

“In case I do not make it to my deci­sion point or on to the Mex­i­co bor­der I am send­ing this now. Please do not release this until 1JAN and keep my iden­ti­ty pri­vate until then.

“First off I am not under duress or hos­tile influ­ence or con­trol. My first car was a 2006 Black Ford Mus­tang V6 for ver­i­fi­ca­tion.

“What we have been see­ing with “drones” is the oper­a­tional use of gravitic propul­sion sys­tems pow­ered air­craft by most recent­ly Chi­na in the east coast, but through­out his­to­ry, the US. Only we and Chi­na have this capa­bil­i­ty. Our OPEN loca­tion for this activ­i­ty in the box is below.

“Chi­na has been launch­ing them from the Atlantic from sub­marines for years, but this activ­i­ty recent­ly has picked up. As of now, it is just a show of force and they are using it sim­i­lar to how they used the bal­loon for sig­int and isr, which are also part of the inte­grat­ed coms sys­tem. There are dozens of those bal­loons in the air at any giv­en time.

“The so what is because of the speed and stealth of these unmanned AC, they are the most dan­ger­ous threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty that has ever exist­ed. They basi­cal­ly have an unlim­it­ed pay­load capac­i­ty and can park it over the WH if they want­ed. It’s check­mate.

“USG needs to give the his­to­ry of this, how we are employ­ing it and weaponiz­ing it, how Chi­na is employ­ing them and what the way for­ward is. Chi­na is poised to attack any­where in the east coast

“I’ve been fol­lowed for over a week now from like­ly home­land or FBI, and they are look­ing to move on me and are unlike­ly going to let me cross into Mex­i­co, but won’t because they know I am armed and I have a mas­sive VBIED. I’ve been try­ing to main­tain a very vis­i­ble pro­file and have kept my phone and they are def­i­nite­ly dig­i­tal­ly track­ing me.

“I have knowl­edge of this pro­gram and also war crimes that were cov­ered up dur­ing airstrikes in Nim­ruz province Afghanistan in 2019 by the admin, DoD, DEA and CIA. I con­duct­ed tar­get­ing for these strikes of over 125 build­ings (65 were struck because of CIVCAS) that killed hun­dreds of civil­ians in a sin­gle day. USFORA con­tin­ued strikes after spot­ting civil­ians on ini­tial ISR, it was sup­posed to take 6 min­utes and scram­ble all air­craft in CENTCOM. The UN basi­cal­ly called these war crimes, but the admin­is­tra­tion made them dis­ap­pear. I was part of that cov­er-up with USFORA and Agent [Redact­ed] of the DEA. So I don’t know if my abduc­tion attempt is relat­ed to either. I worked with GEN Millers 10 staff on this as well as the response to Bala Murghab. AOB‑S Com­man­der at the time. [Redact­ed] can val­i­date this.

“You need to ele­vate this to the media so we avoid a world war because this is a mutu­al­ly assured destruc­tion sit­u­a­tion.

“For vet­ting my Linkedin is Matt Berg or Matthew Livels­berg­er, an active duty 18Z out of 1–10 my pro­file is pub­lic. I have an active TSSCI with UAP USAP access.”

———–

“Matthew Livels­berg­er Alleged Man­i­festo: Read Full Email Sent to Retired Sol­dier” By Jesus Mesa; Newsweek; 01/03/2025

“Addi­tion­al­ly, he accused the FBI and Home­land Secu­ri­ty of mon­i­tor­ing and track­ing him, describ­ing efforts to avoid being detained.”

Livels­berg­er’s email to Shoe­mate was­n’t just describ­ing a series of top­ics he was keen on bring­ing to the pub­lic’s atten­tion. It also men­tioned being tracked by the FBI and DHS, and efforts to avoid being detained. Livels­berg­er was behav­ing like a fugi­tive on the run. Specif­i­cal­ly, on the run to the US-Mex­i­co bor­der, which he men­tions twice in the email. In fact, it sounds like the deci­sion to turn his Cybertruck into an armed “VBIED” was large­ly as a means of avoid­ing that detain­ment. A threat to blow him­self up, and any­one try­ing to detain him, only if nec­es­sary. That appears to be the mes­sage he was deliv­er­ing to Shoe­mate, and, in turn, the pub­lic at large:

...
Shoe­mate said Fri­day that he received an email from Livels­berg­er on Tues­day. Accord­ing to Shoe­mate, the email said:

“In case I do not make it to my deci­sion point or on to the Mex­i­co bor­der I am send­ing this now. Please do not release this until 1JAN and keep my iden­ti­ty pri­vate until then.

...

“I’ve been fol­lowed for over a week now from like­ly home­land or FBI, and they are look­ing to move on me and are unlike­ly going to let me cross into Mex­i­co, but won’t because they know I am armed and I have a mas­sive VBIED. I’ve been try­ing to main­tain a very vis­i­ble pro­file and have kept my phone and they are def­i­nite­ly dig­i­tal­ly track­ing me.

“I have knowl­edge of this pro­gram and also war crimes that were cov­ered up dur­ing airstrikes in Nim­ruz province Afghanistan in 2019 by the admin, DoD, DEA and CIA. I con­duct­ed tar­get­ing for these strikes of over 125 build­ings (65 were struck because of CIVCAS) that killed hun­dreds of civil­ians in a sin­gle day. USFORA con­tin­ued strikes after spot­ting civil­ians on ini­tial ISR, it was sup­posed to take 6 min­utes and scram­ble all air­craft in CENTCOM. The UN basi­cal­ly called these war crimes, but the admin­is­tra­tion made them dis­ap­pear. I was part of that cov­er-up with USFORA and Agent [Redact­ed] of the DEA. So I don’t know if my abduc­tion attempt is relat­ed to either. I worked with GEN Millers 10 staff on this as well as the response to Bala Murghab. AOB‑S Com­man­der at the time. [Redact­ed] can val­i­date this.

“You need to ele­vate this to the media so we avoid a world war because this is a mutu­al­ly assured destruc­tion sit­u­a­tion.

“For vet­ting my Linkedin is Matt Berg or Matthew Livels­berg­er, an active duty 18Z out of 1–10 my pro­file is pub­lic. I have an active TSSCI with UAP USAP access.”
...

Impor­tant­ly, this was the mes­sage Livels­berg­er had as of the morn­ing of Decem­ber 31st. As we’re going to see, his plans evolved quite a bit at that point. Accord­ing to his jour­nal record, he decid­ed at some point that day to make his last stand at the Grand Canyon. A loca­tion that obvi­ous­ly was­n’t where he ulti­mate­ly chose to make his last stand. What made Livels­berg­er ulti­mate­ly choose to blow him­self up at the Trump Hotel instead of the Grand Canyon? And why did­n’t he post a man­i­festo online before blow­ing him­self up instead of just leav­ing all these doc­u­ments on a phone that could have burned up? We don’t know and prob­a­bly nev­er will know. But it’s worth not­ing that the last few days of Decem­ber over­lap with anoth­er sto­ry of tur­moil in the MAGA-world that poten­tial­ly could have impact­ed Livels­berg­er’s MAGA-fer­vor: the MAGA ‘civ­il war’ that erupt­ed over the issue of H1B visas, led by Elon Musk:

CNN

What the visa feud says about the com­ing Trump admin­is­tra­tion

Analy­sis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updat­ed 7:19 AM EST, Mon Decem­ber 30, 2024

CNN —

Don­ald Trump’s sid­ing with Elon Musk over visas for high-tech work­ers is the most sig­nif­i­cant exam­ple yet of the pres­i­dent-elect favor­ing pow­er­ful ele­ments in his new MAGA coali­tion over his base’s anti-immi­grant DNA that he twice tapped in his rise to pow­er.

The boil­ing hol­i­day feud over H‑1B visas exposed new fis­sures across Trump’s broad­ened sup­port base and reflect­ed the con­tra­dic­tions between his pop­ulist ide­ol­o­gy and the self-inter­ests of many of the key play­ers in his refash­ioned inner cir­cle.

After sev­er­al days of silence over the con­tro­ver­sy, the pres­i­dent-elect stepped in, mak­ing clear he sup­port­ed Musk’s argu­ment for recruit­ment flex­i­bil­i­ty for the tech indus­try.

Musk, the rich­est man in the world, made his case in a series of out­spo­ken posts on X. “The rea­son I’m in Amer­i­ca along with so many crit­i­cal peo­ple who built SpaceX, Tes­la and hun­dreds of oth­er com­pa­nies that made Amer­i­ca strong is because of H1B,” he wrote to one crit­ic on the plat­form that he owns. “I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you can­not pos­si­bly com­pre­hend.”

The visa issue erupt­ed into a full-blown storm fol­low­ing com­ments by Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk’s co-chair of the Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment Effi­cien­cy, which Trump has set up to slash the size of fed­er­al oper­a­tions. The for­mer GOP pres­i­den­tial can­di­date crit­i­cized Amer­i­can cul­ture, edu­ca­tion stan­dards and children’s TV that he said “ven­er­at­ed medi­oc­rity over excel­lence for way too long.” The com­ments came per­ilous­ly close to an elitist’s dis­dain for mil­lions of Amer­i­cans and their cul­ture that Repub­li­cans have long accused Democ­rats of pro­mot­ing.

On the oth­er side of the debate, Steve Ban­non, who served in the first Trump admin­is­tra­tion, blast­ed H‑1B visas on his “War Room” pod­cast as a “scam” by Sil­i­con Val­ley oli­garchs that are about “tak­ing Amer­i­can jobs and bring­ing over what essen­tial­ly become inden­tured ser­vants at low­er wages.”

Why the H‑1B visa issue has divid­ed the MAGA move­ment

H‑1B visas allow the bright­est for­eign work­ers, many of them engi­neers and com­put­er sci­en­tists, to live and work in the US. Sup­port­ers say they’re vital to ensur­ing Sil­i­con Val­ley inno­va­tion con­tin­ues to lead the world. The issue has become broad­er than a mere eco­nom­ic ques­tion: because of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and new gen­er­a­tion com­put­ing, the indus­try is now crit­i­cal to US defense and nation­al secu­ri­ty.

But some of Trump’s most vocal and com­mit­ted MAGA sup­port­ers have blast­ed the visas as incon­sis­tent with the Amer­i­ca First and anti-immi­gra­tion phi­los­o­phy on which the pres­i­dent-elect built his appeal. Some crit­ics of the sys­tem also argue that by import­ing for­eign work­ers, the US gov­ern­ment blocks the path to advance­ment for Amer­i­can work­ers and col­lege grad­u­ates, includ­ing minori­ties.

One case is insuf­fi­cient evi­dence to judge whether Trump’s favor­ing of the Tes­la and SpaceX pio­neer will set the tone for a pres­i­den­cy over which Musk already holds con­sid­er­able sway. And Trump defies pat­terns by act­ing on his gut and keep­ing oppo­nents off-bal­ance, so it would be risky to see the H1‑B visa issue as a wider metaphor for how the admin­is­tra­tion will unfold.

How­ev­er, Musk’s capac­i­ty to use X to spread his mes­sage, as well as Trump’s even­tu­al bless­ing for his argu­ment, under­scores the huge pow­er he com­mands as the ubiq­ui­tous but unelect­ed side­kick of the pres­i­dent-elect. Ear­li­er this month, for exam­ple, Musk came out ahead of Trump and used his plat­form to help tank a bipar­ti­san fund­ing bill in the House, send­ing the gov­ern­ment per­ilous­ly close to a shut­down.

His influ­ence could have impli­ca­tions beyond immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy. Musk’s vast busi­ness before the US gov­ern­ment — across mul­ti­ple sec­tors of the space indus­try, elec­tric vehi­cles and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence — could quick­ly cause mul­ti­ple con­flicts of inter­est. And he has enor­mous sway abroad — includ­ing in coun­tries like Chi­na, where the hawk­ish views of some of Trump’s top Cab­i­net picks also risk col­lid­ing with the tech mogul’s pri­or­i­ties.

...

In iso­la­tion, attempts to expand the H‑1B visa pro­gram would not seem incom­pat­i­ble with Trump’s hard­line immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy and promise of a mass depor­ta­tion of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants to begin soon after he’s sworn in next month.

But near­ly two decades of bipar­ti­san attempts to over­haul and solid­i­fy the H‑1B pro­gram have large­ly failed, often as broad immi­gra­tion reform plans foundered on the polar­iza­tion of immi­gra­tion pol­i­tics that Trump used to fuel his rise to pow­er in 2016 and again in 2024.

Trump has now made clear he agrees with Musk and said he’d some­times used H‑1B visas in his busi­ness­es, although he’s more fre­quent­ly employed tem­po­rary part-time for­eign work­ers on H‑2B visas at his golf resorts and hotels.

“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” Trump told The New York Post on Sat­ur­day about the H‑1B sys­tem.

Musk made the case for expand­ing the pro­gram in one of his less explo­sive posts on X. “We should great­ly increase legal immi­gra­tion of any­one who is hard-work­ing, hon­est and loves Amer­i­ca,” he wrote. “Every such per­son is an asset to the coun­try. But mas­sive ille­gal immi­gra­tion of peo­ple we know noth­ing about is insane.”

...

‘Pres­i­dent Musk?’

The uproar over tech visas also revived one of the transition’s most intrigu­ing ques­tions. How long will Trump tol­er­ate Musk’s capac­i­ty to dom­i­nate polit­i­cal debate in a way that only he can match? Skep­tics are con­vinced that the pres­i­dent-elect will soon tire of Musk’s ubiq­ui­ty. Democ­rats have already tried to frac­ture their rela­tion­ship by refer­ring to “Pres­i­dent Musk.” And the les­son of Trump’s first term is that those who over­shad­ow him soon find them­selves exit­ing his orbit or becom­ing a scape­goat when things go wrong.

This may be how things devel­op. But both Trump and Musk have huge incen­tives to stick togeth­er. Musk will nev­er be able to repli­cate the inside gov­ern­ment perch that he can use to pro­mote his inter­ests. And Repub­li­cans will be bank­ing on the SpaceX chief’s finan­cial might as the midterm elec­tions approach after he poured tens of mil­lions of dol­lars into Trump’s 2024 cam­paign.

But a deep­er real­i­ty may post­pone a pos­si­ble schism between Trump and Musk. Each has the capac­i­ty to wreak destruc­tion on the oth­er. The pres­i­dent-elect will soon be able to wield the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment as an instru­ment of revenge. But some­one as social media savvy as Trump, who’s spun false­hoods into a real­i­ty to which mil­lions of Amer­i­cans are com­mit­ted, would sure­ly balk at mak­ing an ene­my of the man who con­trols X.

———-

“What the visa feud says about the com­ing Trump admin­is­tra­tion” by Stephen Collinson; CNN; 12/30/2024

“Musk, the rich­est man in the world, made his case in a series of out­spo­ken posts on X. “The rea­son I’m in Amer­i­ca along with so many crit­i­cal peo­ple who built SpaceX, Tes­la and hun­dreds of oth­er com­pa­nies that made Amer­i­ca strong is because of H1B,” he wrote to one crit­ic on the plat­form that he owns. “I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you can­not pos­si­bly com­pre­hend.””

Elon Musk was­n’t minc­ing words. He will “go to war” on the H1B visa is an issue “the likes of which you can­not pos­si­bly com­pre­hend”. That’s the threat Musk was issu­ing to MAGA world, in the days lead­ing up to the Trump Hotel bomb­ing. Days when Livels­berg­er seemed to be chang­ing his plans sig­nif­i­cant­ly, start­ing with plans for some sort of high pro­file whistle­blow­ing spec­ta­cle but end­ing with a bizarre blast at the Trump Hotel and with no pub­licly released man­i­festo. Was Livels­berg­er’s sud­den change in plans impact­ed by this MAGA ‘civ­il war’?

Also note how this whole con­tro­ver­sy was trig­gered by com­ments made by Vivek Ramaswamy derid­ed Amer­i­can cul­ture as one that “ven­er­at­ed medi­oc­rity over excel­lence for way too long.” Com­ments that have a num­ber of par­al­lels the calls Livels­berg­er made in one of the doc­u­ments found on the phone in the Cybertruck decry­ing how greed and glut­tony and a lack of mas­culin­i­ty has plagued Amer­i­can soci­ety, along with warn­ings that the US must pre­pare for war with Chi­na, Rus­sia, Iran, and North Korea by 2030. How was Livels­berg­er’s moti­va­tion to car­ry out a pro-Trump sui­cide bomb­ing impact­ed by this MAGA ‘civ­il war’ that was play­ing out at the exact time he was for­mu­lat­ing and exe­cut­ing this plot?

...
The visa issue erupt­ed into a full-blown storm fol­low­ing com­ments by Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk’s co-chair of the Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment Effi­cien­cy, which Trump has set up to slash the size of fed­er­al oper­a­tions. The for­mer GOP pres­i­den­tial can­di­date crit­i­cized Amer­i­can cul­ture, edu­ca­tion stan­dards and children’s TV that he said “ven­er­at­ed medi­oc­rity over excel­lence for way too long.” The com­ments came per­ilous­ly close to an elitist’s dis­dain for mil­lions of Amer­i­cans and their cul­ture that Repub­li­cans have long accused Democ­rats of pro­mot­ing.

On the oth­er side of the debate, Steve Ban­non, who served in the first Trump admin­is­tra­tion, blast­ed H‑1B visas on his “War Room” pod­cast as a “scam” by Sil­i­con Val­ley oli­garchs that are about “tak­ing Amer­i­can jobs and bring­ing over what essen­tial­ly become inden­tured ser­vants at low­er wages.”
...

Those ques­tions bring us to the fol­low­ing arti­cle that hap­pens to con­tain excerpts of what inves­ti­ga­tors describe as a 6 page man­i­festo found on one of a phone in the Cybertruck along with what appears to be his entire jour­nal. A jour­nal that has entries from Decem­ber 21st to Decem­ber 31st and seems to cap­ture the evo­lu­tion of his plans over the course of a week and half. An evo­lu­tion that seems to start with Livels­berg­er intent on pri­mar­i­ly avoid­ing appre­hen­sion by the gov­ern­ment forces he is con­vinced are track­ing him, but ends sud­den­ly on Decem­ber 31st with a deci­sion to make some sort of last stand at the Grand Canyon:

8NewsNow.com

Cybertruck dri­ver used Chat­G­PT to plan Las Vegas attack, police say

Man­i­festo found on phone showed Las Vegas not orig­i­nal tar­get

by: Stephanie Over­ton, Car­o­line Bleak­ley, David Charns

Post­ed: Jan 7, 2025 / 12:18 PM PST
Updat­ed: Jan 7, 2025 / 05:34 PM PST

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Police found a six-page man­i­festo on Matthew Livelsberger’s phone and said he used Chat­G­PT to plan his New Year’s Day bomb­ing at the Trump Inter­na­tion­al Hotel in Las Vegas, Sher­iff Kevin McMahill said at a news con­fer­ence Tues­day.

Livels­berg­er, 37, shot him­self in the head just before fire­works and oth­er explo­sive mate­r­i­al det­o­nat­ed in the back of a Tes­la Cybertruck parked at the front entrance of the hotel. Livels­berg­er, a Green Beret in the U.S. Army Spe­cial Forces, was home on leave in Col­orado Springs, Col­orado, when he rent­ed the Cybertruck and drove to Las Vegas.

The explo­sion was set off using rac­ing fuel and bird­shot, the ATF said Tues­day. The blast was not trig­gered by a det­o­na­tor but by an unknown “flame,” which could include the gun­shot Livels­berg­er used to kill him­self.

Police sus­pect Livels­berg­er ini­tial­ly planned an attack at the Grand Canyon, poten­tial­ly to launch off the glass sky­walk there, but divert­ed to Las Vegas, police said based off more doc­u­ments dis­cov­ered on his phone. LVMPD Asst. Sher­iff Dori Koren said police still do not know why he chose Trump Tow­er instead.

...

In the man­i­festo, police found a “vari­ance of griev­ances” includ­ing polit­i­cal and social issues, such as crit­i­cisms of the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion.

Livels­berg­er wrote he had “graph­ic encoun­ters” replay­ing in his head from the Army and that he only intend­ed to kill him­self. Asst. Sher­iff Koren said this added to the evi­dence pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed that Livels­berg­er like­ly suf­fered from PTSD.

On Tues­day evening, LVMPD offi­cials released a jour­nal of Livelsberger’s trip that inves­ti­ga­tors dis­cov­ered.

Police also said Livels­berg­er used Chat­G­PT to help plan out the attack. A few of the entries post­ed in the appli­ca­tion includ­ed “How much Tan­ner­ite is equiv­a­lent to 1 pound of TNT?” and “What pis­tol could set it off?”

Oth­er ques­tions asked to Chat­G­PT includ­ed where to buy fire­works and the loca­tion of the largest gun store in Den­ver.

...

————

“Cybertruck dri­ver used Chat­G­PT to plan Las Vegas attack, police say” by Stephanie Over­ton, Car­o­line Bleak­ley, David Charns; 8NewsNow.com; 01/07/20925

“Police sus­pect Livels­berg­er ini­tial­ly planned an attack at the Grand Canyon, poten­tial­ly to launch off the glass sky­walk there, but divert­ed to Las Vegas, police said based off more doc­u­ments dis­cov­ered on his phone. LVMPD Asst. Sher­iff Dori Koren said police still do not know why he chose Trump Tow­er instead.”

Plans to “launch” off the Grand Canyon’s glass sky­walk? That’s appar­ent­ly what Livels­berg­er ini­tial­ly had in mind. Which make his deci­sion to turn that Cybertruck into a rolling IED all the more inter­est­ing. Was he going to jump off the sky­bridge? Attempt to dri­ve the Cybertruck off it? That remains unclear, despite what is at this point a num­ber of dif­fer­ent doc­u­ments released by inves­ti­ga­tors con­tain­ing Livels­berg­ers writ­ings, like a 6‑page man­i­festo and a jour­nal:

...
Police found a six-page man­i­festo on Matthew Livelsberger’s phone and said he used Chat­G­PT to plan his New Year’s Day bomb­ing at the Trump Inter­na­tion­al Hotel in Las Vegas, Sher­iff Kevin McMahill said at a news con­fer­ence Tues­day.

...

In the man­i­festo, police found a “vari­ance of griev­ances” includ­ing polit­i­cal and social issues, such as crit­i­cisms of the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion.

Livels­berg­er wrote he had “graph­ic encoun­ters” replay­ing in his head from the Army and that he only intend­ed to kill him­self. Asst. Sher­iff Koren said this added to the evi­dence pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed that Livels­berg­er like­ly suf­fered from PTSD.

On Tues­day evening, LVMPD offi­cials released a jour­nal of Livelsberger’s trip that inves­ti­ga­tors dis­cov­ered.
...

And as the arti­cle reminds us, the explo­sion did­n’t just include rac­ing fuel and fire­works. Bird­shot was also part of the mix. 75 pounds of bird­shot, as we saw, which is exact­ly the kind of ingre­di­ent one adds to an IED to make it extra lethal. The con­tra­dic­to­ry facts in this sto­ry keep pil­ing up:

...
Livels­berg­er, 37, shot him­self in the head just before fire­works and oth­er explo­sive mate­r­i­al det­o­nat­ed in the back of a Tes­la Cybertruck parked at the front entrance of the hotel. Livels­berg­er, a Green Beret in the U.S. Army Spe­cial Forces, was home on leave in Col­orado Springs, Col­orado, when he rent­ed the Cybertruck and drove to Las Vegas.

The explo­sion was set off using rac­ing fuel and bird­shot, the ATF said Tues­day. The blast was not trig­gered by a det­o­na­tor but by an unknown “flame,” which could include the gun­shot Livels­berg­er used to kill him­self.
...

So are all these doc­u­ments pro­vid­ing at least some clar­i­ty on what Livels­berg­er was plan­ning? Sort of. For exam­ple, when we look at the below excerpts from the man­i­festo pub­lished in the above arti­cle, we find state­ments like, “As much as the MSM will paint me out be some ter­ror­ist mon­ster, I had no intent on tak­ing out any­one but myself if that hap­pens,” which is the kind of state­ment that sug­gests he did­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly intend on killing him­self.

Lat­er in the man­i­festo, we get anoth­er state­ment that hints at a will­ing­ness to die but not nec­es­sar­i­ly a plan to die: “I repeat I am not get­ting cap­tured alive and I will also use the Cybertruck as a mas­sive VBIED with a blast radius of 100m+ if need­ed.. it will have sig­nif­i­cant shrap­nel.” So based on that state­ment, Livels­berg­er seemed to only be plan­ning on det­o­nat­ing the Cybertruck as a kind of last resort threat. He was­n’t going to be tak­en alive, but he was­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly going to kill him­self. That’s the mes­sage he seemed to be send­ing in these pub­lished parts of his man­i­festo.

But as we’re going to see in the longer jour­nal text below, Livels­berg­er was very con­vinced his devices were being bugged and mon­i­tored. Which is notable when it comes to the fol­low­ing man­i­festo because all of these doc­u­ments were found on his phone and nev­er direct­ly deliv­ered to the pub­lic. A phone that he assumed was prob­a­bly bugged. Which makes this both a man­i­festo and a form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the gov­ern­ment he believed were stalk­ing him at the time:

...
There was not a time dur­ing my two years in Afghanistan where I had a clear under­stand­ing or ratio­nal feel­ing in my heart of why my broth­ers were fight­ing and dying. We failed and the cred­i­bil­i­ty of mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal lead­er­ship was shred­ded when no one was held account­able.

As much as the MSM will paint me out be some ter­ror­ist mon­ster, I had no intent on tak­ing out any­one but myself if that hap­pens. I am deeply sor­ry to any­one that gets hurt. I served my coun­try for my entire adult life and I got caught up in some crazi­ness and have out­run my head­lights.

I am going to make this as pub­lic as pos­si­ble. Im head­ed for the canyon and peo­ple are going to see me going down fight­ing. SEND IT! Fit­ting because every­one is look­ing for drones and UFOs, and I am loaded up on boom and fire­works and New Years.

...

I will be as detailed ori­ent­ed as to assist inves­ti­ga­tions so that we can focus on the task at hand- remov­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty ele­ments in the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion and future remain­ing Gen­er­als in the mil­i­tary and Joint Chiefs.

When writ­ing this I was super high on weed and drink­ing because if I they are going to take me out I’m going to do the drugs I’ve been miss­ing out on.

I repeat I am not get­ting cap­tured alive and I will also use the Cybertruck as a mas­sive VBIED with a blast radius of 100m+ if need­ed.. it will have sig­nif­i­cant shrap­nel.

I will be trav­el­ing slow because I have to use the charg­ing sta­tions (bad choice flee­ing in a Cybertruck).

These graph­ic encoun­ters replay in my head every day, all day and it has ruined my rela­tion­ships with my fam­i­ly and friends. I am now a shell of a human being with noth­ing to live for, it has all been tak­en away by my affil­i­a­tions.

———–

Matthew Livels­berg­er man­i­festo excerpts; 8NewsNow.com; 01/07/20925

“I am going to make this as pub­lic as pos­si­ble. Im head­ed for the canyon and peo­ple are going to see me going down fight­ing. SEND IT! Fit­ting because every­one is look­ing for drones and UFOs, and I am loaded up on boom and fire­works and New Years.”

Livels­berg­er was going to make “this” as pub­lic as pos­si­ble at the Grand Canyon, with the pub­lic see­ing him “going down fight­ing”. That was his think­ing when he wrote that con­tent. When exact­ly he wrote that con­tent is unclear, although when he states “I will be trav­el­ing slow because I have to use the charg­ing sta­tions (bad choice flee­ing in a Cybertruck),” it implies he wrote this before arriv­ing in Las Vegas and pos­si­bly before leav­ing Den­ver. Which also sug­gests he wrote this man­i­festo before he decid­ed to go to Las Vegas and blow him­self up at the Trump Hotel at all. That’s a poten­tial­ly impor­tant piece of con­text when read­ing these “man­i­festo” excerpts: we have rea­son to sus­pect it was writ­ten before he changed plans and decid­ed to blow him­self up at the Trump Hotel.

And as the fol­low­ing jour­nal makes clear, the exact day he wrote some­thing is a pret­ty impor­tant detail when it comes to assess­ing his mind­set at the time he wrote some­thing. Because it was only on Decem­ber 31st, one day before the bomb­ing, that he made the deci­sion to “go down fight­ing” at the Grand Canyon. And yet the let­ter he sent to Sam Shoe­mate was sent on the morn­ing of Decem­ber 31st, and in that email he sug­gest­ed he was plan­ning on trav­el­ing to the US-Mex­i­co bor­der. So if we take these com­mu­ni­ca­tions at face val­ue, it would appear Livels­berg­er start­ed Decem­ber 31st plan­ning to go to the US-Mex­i­co, then changed his mind to make a “final com­mit” at the Grand Canyon, which sounds like a shift in decid­ing whether or not he even was plan­ning on escap­ing alive. Because a run to the US-Mex­i­can bor­der is some­thing you would do if you were plan­ning on liv­ing as a fugi­tive. A last stand at the Grand Canyon is plans for a pub­lic sui­cide.

But as the jour­nal entries also make clear, Livels­berg­er was­n’t just suf­fer­ing from a vague gen­er­al para­noia that he was being tracked. His jour­nal entries are filled with descrip­tions of sus­pi­cious indi­vid­u­als he spot­ted repeat­ed dur­ing his time in Col­orado, start­ing with his arrival at the air­port but includ­ing the areas around his fam­i­ly home. Some indi­vid­u­als seen repeat­ed­ly. He even describes being fol­lowed by this group dur­ing his wind­ing road trip from Den­ver to Vegas. Which rais­es the intrigu­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty that this elite spe­cial forces sol­dier who was intent on some sort of high-pro­file whistle­blow­ing over US war crimes in Afghanistan real­ly was being fol­lowed. As the say­ing goes, just because you’re para­noid does­n’t mean they aren’t after you:

21 Decem­ber

Sur­veil­lance began at the air­port, where I noticed a man lin­ger­ing near the exit cor­ri­dor, hold­ing what appeared to be a two-way radio. He was of aver­age build, 5′10″ wear­ing jeans and some­thing white on top. His pos­ture was casu­al, but his eyes con­tin­u­al­ly swept the crowd, paus­ing briefly on indi­vid­u­als before mov­ing on. He seemed be com­mu­ni­cat­ing with some­one through the radio, the ear­piece bare­ly vis­i­ble. When he spot­ted me he adjust­ed his pos­ture and quick­ly looked away. After leav­ing the ter­mi­nal and going to bag­gage claim, I spot­ted him again out­side, lean­ing about 50m away in tempm­park­ing against a sil­ver sedan. As I exit­ed the air­port and moved towards my moth­er and laws car, I saw a sec­ond out of place indi­vid­ual nearby‑a woman wear­ing a tan coat, jeans, and black boots. She was stand­ing 25m beyond my pick­up point, engrossed in her phone, but her occa­sion­al glances in my direc­tion. She did­n’t appear to have lug­gage or a rea­son to be there.

We drove off, keep­ing an eye on vehi­cles fol­low­ing and noticed the a sedan pulling out behind us in the rear view as we left the exit tick­et sta­tion.

Once on the high­way, I saw a third indi­vid­ual involved. This man was dri­ving a blue or black SUV with tint­ed win­dows. His vehi­cle fol­lowed us from 100m away for sev­er­al miles, always keep­ing one or two cars between us but def a man.

After exit­ing the high­way onto Mark Shef­fel we nav­i­gat­ed through our res­i­den­tial area, a vehi­cle fol­lowed about 15 sec­onds behind us and con­tin­ued onto our devel­op­ment but prob­a­bly saw us pull in. Anoth­er vehi­cle took up posi­tion a block away about ten min after we arrived with view of the front of our house for the remain­der of the night I do not know if it was occu­pied.

22 Decem­ber

Dur­ing our morn­ing walk a man in a green bomber jack­et was spot­ted walk­ing down the street, car­ry­ing a small bag. He glanced over his shoul­der every few steps but kept a casu­al pace. I do not believe they fol­lowed us much when walk­ing the dog because we cross a high­way and go into a neigh­bor­hood where fol­low­ing would be obvi­ous.

Lat­er in the day, I saw a man in the bomber jack­et again, now wear­ing a dark bean­ing and a black leather jack­et. He walked with pur­pose but kept an eye on his sur­round­ings. He was walk­ing towards a white sedan parked near a dri­ve­way about 300m from our bed­room win­dow. A woman in a blue win­ter jack­et approached him briefly, exchanged a few words, and walked away. He got into the white sedan and drove off.

23 Decem­ber

I noticed the pre­vi­ous man in the green bomber jack­er near a cor­ner of Stet­son, walk­ing a dog this time. His move­ments were cau­tious, check­ing behind him, as though expect­ing some­one. Lat­er, the man in the bomber jack­et was walk­ing down the street again, this time with a new man about 6′ and thing and a black jack­et-some­one I had­n’t seen before. Both of them had back­packs on. The new man got into a blue sedan and drove off.

24 Decem­ber

The man in the bomber jack­et appeared again, wear­ing a brown leather jack­et and dark jeans. He was walk­ing along the block, occa­sion­al­ly look­ing over his shoul­der as he moved. A black sedan parked near the curb, and he approached it, but he did­n’t enter. Instead, he stood by the car for a few min­utes on his phone before walk­ing out of sight.

I saw the man in the bomber jack­et again, now walk­ing with a tall fig­ure pos­si­bly the one from the morn­ing. They spoke awk­ward­ly in short turns. The man in the bomber jack­et moved toward a dif­fer­ent vehi­cle, a blue SUV this time, and drove off. The woman from the air­port reap­peared soon after, car­ry­ing a small bag and walk­ing a dog. She took a dif­fer­ent path but still stayed close to our res­i­den­tial area.

25 Decem­ber

I did note see sur­veil­lance but I was but I was engaged with my fam­i­ly and wife’s fam­i­ly most the day. I don’t think they fol­lowed us to either of our Cmas.

26 Decem­ber

The man in the bomber jack­et was spot­ted again, wear­ing a light gray jack­et seat­ed in a black SUV in visu­al range from our house. At this point I start­ed pack­ing up to evade while my wife was still out. I took an [redact­ed] to [redact­ed]. A new man fol­lowed me into [redact­ed] and gen­er­al­ly avoid­ed eye con­tact-I’m not pos­i­tive on this call but what­ev­er.

As I made my way to Leadville I had a con­stant rota­tion of the pre­vi­ous­ly spot­ted cars through­out the long route. It’s clear that they weren’t pre­pared to go so far and long because they were ducks in a row at times and did not rotate well.

27 Decem­ber

The man in the bomber jack­et, now in a gray hood­ie and black jeans, walked down the street the air bnb was on while car­ry­ing a back­pack. He 3 glanced around sev­er­al times, as though check­ing for any­thing sus­pi­cious. There were foot­prints in the fresh snow around my car rear and dri­vers side. He entered a white sedan when I was near­ly out of view down on the piz­za spot side of the road. At this point I had con­firmed sur­veil­lance and pro­ceed­ed to skip my meet­ing with [redact­ed] from [redact­ed] in Breck­en­ridge. I con­tin­ued to Den­ver and made a bunch of SDR stops and con­duct­ed a car dropoff with [redact­ed] in down­town Den­ver. I was too checked out to care at this point and did­n’t real­ly pay atten­tion if any­body fol­lowed me to all these places. One stop was a gun­shop where I sub­mit­ted a back­ground clear­ance for a .50 AE Desert Eagle and a 7.62 AR pis­tol brace. It was a three day wait so I made plans to stick around Den­ver until pick­up to be able to defend myself because these weren’t local cops and they’d have just arrest­ed me straight away. They were wait­ing for an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get me alone and they’d have to know I’d be leav­ing the coun­try on my return flight on 4JAN. When I got back to my hotel some­one had entered the room to do an “evening stage” clos­ing the blinds and turn­ing on the tv. I imme­di­ate­ly con­duct­ed a bug sweep and locat­ed what appeared to be a micro audio and video trans­mit­ter pos­si­bly with WiFi abil­i­ty with a small anten­na but no cam­era, I assume that was else­where. I left it in place.

28 Decem­ber

Today, the man in the bomber jack­et, now dressed in a dark gray jack­et, was soon at a bench across the are et from the hotel when I went to break­fast two doors down from the hotel. His move­ments were pre­cise, con­stant­ly check­ing his sur­round­ings. I def­i­nite­ly was fol­lowed by dis­mounts to all of my stops lat­er on 16th St mall via walk­ing and scoot­er, but again I stopped real­ly car­ing about details, more about just con­firm­ing it because it was they were fol­low­ing to main­tain con­stant con­tact because of the city. I believe they rotat­ed out peo­ple watch­ing from the couch­es in the lob­by as well. My Turo dropped the Cybertruck at 1400 and trained me up on it. I took a imme­di­ate trip to [redact­ed] to get some bags and tan­ner­ite and was fol­lowed there, into the store,and back home. It seemed a lot more close fol­low­ing for longer and more obvi­ous today. I think the Cybertruck def­i­nite­ly raised my heat lev­el.

29 Decem­ber

I stayed in the room most of the day mak­ing sure my tech­ni­cal secu­ri­ty was on point. No doubt they have my devices and are attempt­ing to mon­i­tor. I did go to [redact­ed] and pick up some camp­ing great and a bunch of white gas. A large tan van with a new shag­gy look­ing guy was in the obscure cor­ner of the [redact­ed] park­ing lot when I arrived back at the truck, posi­tioned to make a quick turn to pop doors and snatch me up, and mul­ti­ple vehi­cles one with a female dri­ver drove slow­ly behind me as I unloaded the fuel. Very out of the way and obvi­ous. I thought that an abduc­tion force was going to make their move at this time because I was exposed for quite awhile.

30 Decem­ber

They like­ly knew I was sched­uled to pick up my guns before 1300 today because of my check­out times the three day gun pur­chase manda­to­ry wait and the machine gun store clos­ing ear­ly on Mon­day. They def­i­nite­ly did not have any­one in the shop but they had plen­ty of time to plant devices or just use the stores because this would be evi­dence of me want­i­ng to do harm to myself or oth­ers. I can’t believe they let me leave that shop.

I got on my way to Albe­querque and had the same pre­vi­ous vehi­cles and pos­si­bly anoth­er fol­low me all the way there , pret­ty obvious.j I picked up some fire­works and picked a mas­sive air bnb in the rich sub­urbs just as a f[redacted] you to my sur­veil­lance. I’m hot now because they know I have all the com­po­nents I need for a VBIED and I’m clear­ly mak­ing it for the bor­der. Dri­ving six hours must have been real­ly frus­trat­ing because I did­n’t see any­one when I pulled in to the street of the air bnb. They prob­a­bly assumed I was doing a provoca­tive leg. Who fu[redacted] cares at this point, it’s like­ly going to be on when I’m in the desert with these [redacted]holes. It sucks because they are just doing their job. I but­toned up the house and wait­ed for an assault force to make breach but nobody came. Too spooky?

31 Decem­ber

I reached my deci­sion point when dri­ving and chose to com­mit to the Grand Canyon for the final com­mit or not. Im not sure at this point if they are going to inter­dict if I com­mit to an act or they are just assigned to see this trans­fer through, if they even know about it. My next deci­sion point 4 will be sur­veil­lance going to the glass walk­way bridge park­ing area. I’m going to ID the launch route on foot and send it if I am still hot. This is prob­a­bly going to end bad­ly for me but I’m not going down with­out a fight. I hope I get enough space and time to send out my mes­sage before com­mit­ting. This is going to be my last log because there’s too much to prep.

———–

Matthew Livels­berg­er jour­nal; 8NewsNow.com; 01/07/20925

“Sur­veil­lance began at the air­port, where I noticed a man lin­ger­ing near the exit cor­ri­dor, hold­ing what appeared to be a two-way radio. He was of aver­age build, 5′10″ wear­ing jeans and some­thing white on top. His pos­ture was casu­al, but his eyes con­tin­u­al­ly swept the crowd, paus­ing briefly on indi­vid­u­als before mov­ing on. He seemed be com­mu­ni­cat­ing with some­one through the radio, the ear­piece bare­ly vis­i­ble. When he spot­ted me he adjust­ed his pos­ture and quick­ly looked away. After leav­ing the ter­mi­nal and going to bag­gage claim, I spot­ted him again out­side, lean­ing about 50m away in tempm­park­ing against a sil­ver sedan. As I exit­ed the air­port and moved towards my moth­er and laws car, I saw a sec­ond out of place indi­vid­ual nearby‑a woman wear­ing a tan coat, jeans, and black boots. She was stand­ing 25m beyond my pick­up point, engrossed in her phone, but her occa­sion­al glances in my direc­tion. She did­n’t appear to have lug­gage or a rea­son to be there.”

The track­ing start­ed at the air­port but that was just the start. That’s the expe­ri­ence laid out in the Decem­ber 21st-31st jour­nal found on Livels­berg­er’s phone. And as we can see, the woman Livels­berg­er spot­ted as out of place and sus­pi­cious at the air­port appeared again out­side the home he was stay­ing at on Christ­mas Eve, briefly inter­act­ing with the ‘bomber jack­et’ man kept see­ing on his street. Was Livels­berg­er actu­al­ly being mon­i­tored? Chi­nese drone claims aside, he did seem to be plan­ning on some sort of high pro­file war crimes whistle­blow­ing. It’s not incon­ceiv­able that he real­ly was being tracked:

...
21 Decem­ber

...

We drove off, keep­ing an eye on vehi­cles fol­low­ing and noticed the a sedan pulling out behind us in the rear view as we left the exit tick­et sta­tion.

Once on the high­way, I saw a third indi­vid­ual involved. This man was dri­ving a blue or black SUV with tint­ed win­dows. His vehi­cle fol­lowed us from 100m away for sev­er­al miles, always keep­ing one or two cars between us but def a man.

After exit­ing the high­way onto Mark Shef­fel we nav­i­gat­ed through our res­i­den­tial area, a vehi­cle fol­lowed about 15 sec­onds behind us and con­tin­ued onto our devel­op­ment but prob­a­bly saw us pull in. Anoth­er vehi­cle took up posi­tion a block away about ten min after we arrived with view of the front of our house for the remain­der of the night I do not know if it was occu­pied.

22 Decem­ber

Dur­ing our morn­ing walk a man in a green bomber jack­et was spot­ted walk­ing down the street, car­ry­ing a small bag. He glanced over his shoul­der every few steps but kept a casu­al pace. I do not believe they fol­lowed us much when walk­ing the dog because we cross a high­way and go into a neigh­bor­hood where fol­low­ing would be obvi­ous.

Lat­er in the day, I saw a man in the bomber jack­et again, now wear­ing a dark bean­ing and a black leather jack­et. He walked with pur­pose but kept an eye on his sur­round­ings. He was walk­ing towards a white sedan parked near a dri­ve­way about 300m from our bed­room win­dow. A woman in a blue win­ter jack­et approached him briefly, exchanged a few words, and walked away. He got into the white sedan and drove off.

23 Decem­ber

I noticed the pre­vi­ous man in the green bomber jack­er near a cor­ner of Stet­son, walk­ing a dog this time. His move­ments were cau­tious, check­ing behind him, as though expect­ing some­one. Lat­er, the man in the bomber jack­et was walk­ing down the street again, this time with a new man about 6′ and thing and a black jack­et-some­one I had­n’t seen before. Both of them had back­packs on. The new man got into a blue sedan and drove off.

24 Decem­ber

The man in the bomber jack­et appeared again, wear­ing a brown leather jack­et and dark jeans. He was walk­ing along the block, occa­sion­al­ly look­ing over his shoul­der as he moved. A black sedan parked near the curb, and he approached it, but he did­n’t enter. Instead, he stood by the car for a few min­utes on his phone before walk­ing out of sight.

I saw the man in the bomber jack­et again, now walk­ing with a tall fig­ure pos­si­bly the one from the morn­ing. They spoke awk­ward­ly in short turns. The man in the bomber jack­et moved toward a dif­fer­ent vehi­cle, a blue SUV this time, and drove off. The woman from the air­port reap­peared soon after, car­ry­ing a small bag and walk­ing a dog. She took a dif­fer­ent path but still stayed close to our res­i­den­tial area.
...

And as we can see, Livels­berg­ers plans to flee appear to have emerged by Decem­ber 26, when he start­ed “pack­ing to evade while my wife was still out” and start­ed mak­ing his way to Leadville, Col­orado, dur­ing which he appar­ent­ly saw the same cars fol­low­ing him that had fol­lowed him ear­li­er. Was this real? Or just the delu­sions of some­one going through a men­tal health episode? The guy did seem to be gen­uine­ly plan­ning on some sort of big war crimes rev­e­la­tion:

...
25 Decem­ber

I did note see sur­veil­lance but I was but I was engaged with my fam­i­ly and wife’s fam­i­ly most the day. I don’t think they fol­lowed us to either of our Cmas.

26 Decem­ber

The man in the bomber jack­et was spot­ted again, wear­ing a light gray jack­et seat­ed in a black SUV in visu­al range from our house. At this point I start­ed pack­ing up to evade while my wife was still out. I took an [redact­ed] to [redact­ed]. A new man fol­lowed me into [redact­ed] and gen­er­al­ly avoid­ed eye con­tact-I’m not pos­i­tive on this call but what­ev­er.

As I made my way to Leadville I had a con­stant rota­tion of the pre­vi­ous­ly spot­ted cars through­out the long route. It’s clear that they weren’t pre­pared to go so far and long because they were ducks in a row at times and did not rotate well.
...

The Decem­ber 27 post­ed is pre­sum­ably out of Leadville, where Livels­berg­er appears to have picked out an airbnb. And there’s the ‘bomber jack­et’ guy again, walk­ing down the street. Again, was this real? Because if so, he real­ly does appear to have been tracked at that point. Also note that we appear to be get­ting some sort of expla­na­tion for why he trav­eled to Leadville in the first place: he had a meet­ing with [redact­ed] from [redact­ed] in Breck­en­ridge, which is near­by Leadville. But he appar­ent­ly decid­ed to skip that meet­ing after “con­firm­ing” that he was indeed being sur­veilled by the ‘bomber jack­et’ guy. But he does decide to make a stop at a gun store where he fills out the forms for a back­ground check to pur­chase the 0.50 AE Desert Eagle (which was pre­sum­ably to be used to ignite the tan­ner­ite he was plan­ning on buy­ing). And note this line from the jour­nal that would seem to indi­cate he was­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly plan­ning on killing him­self: “It was a three day wait so I made plans to stick around Den­ver until pick­up to be able to defend myself because these weren’t local cops and they’d have just arrest­ed me straight away. They were wait­ing for an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get me alone and they’d have to know I’d be leav­ing the coun­try on my return flight on 4JAN.” Is that a ref­er­ence to fly­ing back to Ger­many on Jan­u­ary 4th? We don’t know, but he seemed to have gen­er­al plans on sur­viv­ing until Jan­u­ary 4th at this point:

...
27 Decem­ber

The man in the bomber jack­et, now in a gray hood­ie and black jeans, walked down the street the air bnb was on while car­ry­ing a back­pack. He 3 glanced around sev­er­al times, as though check­ing for any­thing sus­pi­cious. There were foot­prints in the fresh snow around my car rear and dri­vers side. He entered a white sedan when I was near­ly out of view down on the piz­za spot side of the road. At this point I had con­firmed sur­veil­lance and pro­ceed­ed to skip my meet­ing with [redact­ed] from [redact­ed] in Breck­en­ridge. I con­tin­ued to Den­ver and made a bunch of SDR stops and con­duct­ed a car dropoff with [redact­ed] in down­town Den­ver. I was too checked out to care at this point and did­n’t real­ly pay atten­tion if any­body fol­lowed me to all these places. One stop was a gun­shop where I sub­mit­ted a back­ground clear­ance for a .50 AE Desert Eagle and a 7.62 AR pis­tol brace. It was a three day wait so I made plans to stick around Den­ver until pick­up to be able to defend myself because these weren’t local cops and they’d have just arrest­ed me straight away. They were wait­ing for an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get me alone and they’d have to know I’d be leav­ing the coun­try on my return flight on 4JAN. When I got back to my hotel some­one had entered the room to do an “evening stage” clos­ing the blinds and turn­ing on the tv. I imme­di­ate­ly con­duct­ed a bug sweep and locat­ed what appeared to be a micro audio and video trans­mit­ter pos­si­bly with WiFi abil­i­ty with a small anten­na but no cam­era, I assume that was else­where. I left it in place.
...

Then, on Decem­ber 28, he sees the ‘bomber jack­et’ guy again, this time out­side of a hotel where he was stay­ing. This was the day he picked up the Cybertruck, along with the Tan­ner­ite. So the plans to turn the Cybertruck into a bomb were clear­ly already in place at that point:

...
28 Decem­ber

Today, the man in the bomber jack­et, now dressed in a dark gray jack­et, was soon at a bench across the street from the hotel when I went to break­fast two doors down from the hotel. His move­ments were pre­cise, con­stant­ly check­ing his sur­round­ings. I def­i­nite­ly was fol­lowed by dis­mounts to all of my stops lat­er on 16th St mall via walk­ing and scoot­er, but again I stopped real­ly car­ing about details, more about just con­firm­ing it because it was they were fol­low­ing to main­tain con­stant con­tact because of the city. I believe they rotat­ed out peo­ple watch­ing from the couch­es in the lob­by as well. My Turo dropped the Cybertruck at 1400 and trained me up on it. I took a imme­di­ate trip to [redact­ed] to get some bags and tan­ner­ite and was fol­lowed there, into the store,and back home. It seemed a lot more close fol­low­ing for longer and more obvi­ous today. I think the Cybertruck def­i­nite­ly raised my heat lev­el.
...

Decem­ber 29th appear to be a day of more wait­ing for his back­ground check to clear. But note how he is express­ing con­fi­dence that the peo­ple track­ing him are attempt­ing to mon­i­tor his devices. Which is reminder that when he made all these doc­u­ments left on his phone, he may have assumed he was talk­ing to the peo­ple mon­i­tor­ing him. It’s part of what makes the inter­pre­ta­tion of these doc­u­ments a some­what tricky:

...
29 Decem­ber

I stayed in the room most of the day mak­ing sure my tech­ni­cal secu­ri­ty was on point. No doubt they have my devices and are attempt­ing to mon­i­tor. I did go to [redact­ed] and pick up some camp­ing great and a bunch of white gas. A large tan van with a new shag­gy look­ing guy was in the obscure cor­ner of the [redact­ed] park­ing lot when I arrived back at the truck, posi­tioned to make a quick turn to pop doors and snatch me up, and mul­ti­ple vehi­cles one with a female dri­ver drove slow­ly behind me as I unloaded the fuel. Very out of the way and obvi­ous. I thought that an abduc­tion force was going to make their move at this time because I was exposed for quite awhile.
...

Then we get to this Decem­ber 30th entry, the day he picked up his guns from the Den­ver gun­shop and began his trip to Vegas. A trip that seemed to start off with not Vegas, but Albu­querque, as the des­ti­na­tion. Keep in mind that if Livels­berg­er real­ly was plan­ning on get­ting to the US-Mex­i­co bor­der, a dri­ve straight South from Den­ver to Albu­querue would be the most direct path. And as we can see from this Decem­ber 30th entry, he had all the com­po­nents need­ed to turn the Cybertruck into a truck bomb and described how he was “clear­ly mak­ing it for the bor­der”:

...
30 Decem­ber

They like­ly knew I was sched­uled to pick up my guns before 1300 today because of my check­out times the three day gun pur­chase manda­to­ry wait and the machine gun store clos­ing ear­ly on Mon­day. They def­i­nite­ly did not have any­one in the shop but they had plen­ty of time to plant devices or just use the stores because this would be evi­dence of me want­i­ng to do harm to myself or oth­ers. I can’t believe they let me leave that shop.

I got on my way to Albe­querque and had the same pre­vi­ous vehi­cles and pos­si­bly anoth­er fol­low me all the way there , pret­ty obvi­ous. I picked up some fire­works and picked a mas­sive air bnb in the rich sub­urbs just as a f[redacted] you to my sur­veil­lance. I’m hot now because they know I have all the com­po­nents I need for a VBIED and I’m clear­ly mak­ing it for the bor­der. Dri­ving six hours must have been real­ly frus­trat­ing because I did­n’t see any­one when I pulled in to the street of the air bnb. They prob­a­bly assumed I was doing a provoca­tive leg. Who fu[redacted] cares at this point, it’s like­ly going to be on when I’m in the desert with these [redacted]holes. It sucks because they are just doing their job. I but­toned up the house and wait­ed for an assault force to make breach but nobody came. Too spooky?
...

Then, final­ly, on Decem­ber 31st, we get this one final update about how he has reached a deci­sion point and decid­ed to head to the Grand Canyon from “the final com­mit or not”. He also makes a ref­er­ence to a “trans­fer” that the peo­ple fol­low­ing him may or may not want to pre­vent. And then we get this omi­nous mes­sage: ” hope I get enough space and time to send out my mes­sage before com­mit­ting.” So as of Decem­ber 31st, he was plan­ning on doing some­thing at the Grand Canyon involv­ing send­ing out a mes­sage:

...
31 Decem­ber

I reached my deci­sion point when dri­ving and chose to com­mit to the Grand Canyon for the final com­mit or not. Im not sure at this point if they are going to inter­dict if I com­mit to an act or they are just assigned to see this trans­fer through, if they even know about it. My next deci­sion point 4 will be sur­veil­lance going to the glass walk­way bridge park­ing area. I’m going to ID the launch route on foot and send it if I am still hot. This is prob­a­bly going to end bad­ly for me but I’m not going down with­out a fight. I hope I get enough space and time to send out my mes­sage before com­mit­ting. This is going to be my last log because there’s too much to prep.
...

“I hope I get enough space and time to send out my mes­sage before com­mit­ting.” That’s the last indi­ca­tion of what Livels­berg­er was think­ing before he decid­ed to blew him­self up at the Trump Hotel with no mes­sage sent out to the world. Some­thing turned plans to make a pub­lic last stand at the Grand Canyon that would deliv­er a mes­sage to the coun­try into a bizarre and unex­plained sui­cide at the Trump Hotel. Some­thing at the very last minute. Right when MAGA world was expe­ri­enc­ing what had to be an enor­mous Trump-Musk betray­al. Maybe that’s a coin­ci­dence. But maybe not.