How far-right Christian media brainwash evangelicals

Flux Podcasts (Formerly Theory of Change)

Episode Summary

As everyone probably knows, White Christians with theologically conservative views are the backbone of the Republican Party, and they are Donald Trump's most loyal voters and followers and donors. But far-right Christians were not always the backbone of the Republican Party. They became that way through the work of reactionary Christian media who brainwashed them over decades to believe that Democrats are literally controlled by demons.

The days of Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson are obviously behind us, but the people who have inherited the world of reactionary Christian media have drastically expanded their reach and power within the Republican party. Unlike Republican leaders of yore like Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, Donald Trump, his children, and the party’s vice presidential nominee JD Vance regularly interact with and support today’s Christian right.

Although they have enormous audiences, are awash in hundreds of millions of dollars, and hob-nob with presidential candidates, for the most part the stars of Christian right television are rarely covered by the mainstream media.  And so in today's episode, I wanted to shine a spotlight on some of these figures, including Lance Wallnau (who is hosting a town hall today with Vance), scammy televangelist Kenneth Copeland, and radical anti-abortion activist Janet Folger Porter.

Our guide in this episode is Peter Montgomery. He is a senior fellow with the People for American Way, and he's also one of the writers over at Right Wing Watch, which is an essential website to keep tabs on the beliefs and opinions of the radical Christian right.

The video of this discussion is available. The transcript of audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.

Flux is a community-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please stay in touch.

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Audio Chapters

00:00 — Introduction

02:59 — Kenneth Copeland and the Victory Channel

07:47 — Lance Wallnau, Seven Mountains Dominionism, and Pentecostalism

16:16 — The Christian right's new message: Democrats are controlled by demons

22:12 — The theology behind Donald Trump's Big Lie

25:09 — Millions of people are attending Christian right political rallies

30:19 — National Conservatism, JD Vance, and Catholic "integralism"

40:39 — How Donald Trump's rhetoric has become much more religious

43:18 — Janet Folger Porter and Republican abortion bans

46:18 — New poll shows how far removed Trump base is from reality

50:23 — A new far-right Christian sitcom speaks to cultural fears

56:25 — Laura Loomer and reactionary figures from unexpected identity groups

Audio Transcript

The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.

MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So, this episode we're going to talk about some figures that I think it's going to be a mix of people that political junkies have heard of, I think, and then ones that they have not heard of. And I, that is kind of the overall sort of. way that the religious right works in general, right?

That there's this mix of figureheads and then, the money people and all these other ones. Is that, would you agree with that

PETER MONTGOMERY: Sure. Yeah, there are people who, a few people maybe, who are more sort of household names among the general public, and then there is just a vast number of people who are celebrities in their subcultures or in their pieces of the religious right movement.

Kenneth Copeland and the Victory Channel

SHEFFIELD: Yeah [00:03:00] and one Of the recent media properties that has emerged in the religious right has been this network of channels and shows that is called the Victory Channel, and their most successful show is called Flashpoint. So for people who haven't heard of this organization, why don't you give us an overview.

MONTGOMERY: and it actually operates as a project of. Televangelist Kenneth Copeland's church and ministry. So it is set up as a nonprofit. They give their broadcast to free. So any cable channel or satellite provider can get this content totally for free. And then it's ever, they're not allowed to put advertising on it.

So the ministry really subsidizes it in a, in a way. That helps them reach a big audience because people are looking for for content, [00:04:00] especially free content so that's so so the victory

SHEFFIELD: well, who?

MONTGOMERY: launched in 2019

SHEFFIELD: Oh, and I'm sorry. Can you just describe who Kenneth Copeland is for people who don't know who

MONTGOMERY: is a televangelist a long time promoter of the prosperity gospel the idea that If you have wealth it is a sign of god's blessing And so kenneth copeland is sort of notorious for amassing great personal wealth and sort of being unashamed about it. But he continues to, to operate this ministry around the country and around the globe.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and he also became infamous during the COVID pandemic. He became a bit of a meme, actually, for saying that he was going to cast out the devil of the coronavirus and he would blow, blow it away with the breath of

Kenneth Copeland Video: COVID-19 COVID-19.[00:05:00]

I'm Glow the wind of God. The wind of God. On you. On you. You are destroyed forever. You are. You are destroyed forever. And you'll never be back. And you'll, and you'll never be back. Thank you, our God. Thank you Our.

SHEFFIELD: breath of

Kenneth Copeland Video: God

MONTGOMERY: Yeah. I said, and so, he doesn't ever put himself in a situation where someone to ask him, what happened to that? Did, did God not hear your prayer? Did God, because he clearly did not blow the virus away. You know, He's also, you know, infamous for, taking a image of himself reaching out toward his TV set and telling people that he can heal their COVID if, if they reach toward him and they pray

SHEFFIELD: the television. Yep.

Kenneth Copeland Video: Put your hand on that television set. Yes. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Lord Jesus. He received your [00:06:00] healing. Yes. Now say it. I take it. I take it. I have it. I have it. It's mine. It's mine.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and he claims actually to be a billionaire. Now, nobody has verified whether that's true or not, but obviously he's got a lot of, he has his own private jumbo jet. So clearly he does have. A huge amount of cash. And and I think, to some degree, he seems to have realized that whether it's a combination of the fact that he's, quite old now and has become a bit infamous or notorious that, that may be part of why the Flashpoint and Victory Channel brand was launched to be kind of independent of him.

He's not the star of it. He does appear on there sometimes. But he's certainly not a regular panelist and certainly not the host. So who else is involved with?

MONTGOMERY: So the Flashpoint show itself launched on the Victory Channel in the [00:07:00] fall of 2020, leading up to the election, not coincidentally. And it immediately. It became a platform for all kinds of conspiracy theories for promoting Trump's claims about the election for spreading disinformation about January 6th attack on Congress.

But it's funny, I just this week they celebrated the fourth anniversary of the launch of Flashpoint. And on the, they showed some clips from their very first show, and one of those, was Lance Wallnau describing Seven Mountains Dominionism to people in, in a brief description of this, political ideology that is, sort of, really rose to prominence during the Trump era.

Lance Wallnau, Seven Mountains Dominionism, and Pentecostalism

SHEFFIELD: And what is the Seven Mountains Dominionism for people who don't know?

MONTGOMERY: Sure. It's, it's a theology in Political ideology was sort of merged. They grew out of a wing of Pentecostal [00:08:00] Christianity that goes by the name of the New Apostolic Reformation. And the central point is that the reason the world is not as it should be is that the wrong kind of people are in charge.

And Seven Mountains Dominionism says that the right kind of Christians, Christians who share their biblical worldview are meant to be in control of all the seven mountains, the seven spheres of influence in society. So that's education, government entertainment, media religion, family. So, so there are these, so they basically want to take over all these institutions.

SHEFFIELD: And that they're entitled to do so,

MONTGOMERY: That it's, that it's God's, that it's God's desire that the right kind of Christian control these. And that when that happens, then you will be able to. transform the society and that by doing that you can help bring about the return of Christ.

SHEFFIELD: [00:09:00] Yeah, and so like they, and this is a different type of rapture theology from what had come before that, that, they literally believe that Jesus will not return to the earth until they take everything over,

MONTGOMERY: Yeah, it's interesting. Some of them really, they view rapture theology with a little bit of contempt because they think that it makes Christians sort of lazy and apathetic because if, Christ is going to come back and rescue the church before things get too bad. So, so their message is The Christ will not come back for a defeated church, but for a triumphant one.

And so the, the enticement they offer to people is that if you join us, if you help us take dominion and occupy which is their language of occupying until Jesus comes back, then you can actually help change the course of history by, by making that happen.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and it is an extremely powerful message because, it's, it's, [00:10:00] it's important to note that, the, the white evangelical demographic as a share of the population has declined. Decade over decade, but the share of the electorate of people voting in presidential elections who are white evangelical Protestants has remained the same. So basically they're wringing more and more blood from the stone,

MONTGOMERY: Yeah. Yeah. And it's true. And it's one of the interesting things that's happened is that sort of the traditional fundamentalist religious right that does not necessarily buy this end times theology about from the Pentecostal wing, but they have adopted seven mountains rhetoric as a kind of lingua franca just because it is so, it's such an easy way to encourage conservative Christians to become more politically engaged.

So you don't have to really get into the end times thing. You can just talk about, it's God's will that Christians be in charge. Christians be the head and not the tail, as Tony [00:11:00] Perkins says. And so that, that motivates people to get involved without having to, to dig into or necessarily agree with the theological underpinnings.

SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. Yeah, and it's definitely succeeding monetarily for them. And and in a lot of ways they are kind of subsuming the the older religious right, the older Christian right, because not only are they more politically active and willing to be explicitly engaging in partisan politics.

It's also that their, their doctrines are a lot simpler. They're, they don't really have doctrines per se. And that they, it's kind of a choose your own adventure type of religion that, they're always saying, well, I had a revelation of this and Jesus told me that. And like, if that's, if you can get away with that as a religion, you don't really have any sort of core message or beliefs.

It's whatever the leader tells you to do.

MONTGOMERY: Well, and you can see why that fits so well [00:12:00] with the MAGA movement under Donald Trump,

right? That in some ways he sort of functions. like one of these televangelists. He doesn't really have anybody holding him accountable. He creates his own media. He says things that may not be true, that he might have just pulled out of his butt.

But, he, he gets away with it. And it's the, this movement really came into political influence in a big way for the first time during his administration because they had really backed his. election in 2016. Paula White, who has been Trump's, friend and so called spiritual advisor for long before that, made sure that when Trump gave her job in the White House, she used that to keep a flow of, um, these folks coming through the Oval Office, telling Trump he was doing God's work, getting their picture taken in the White House, showing their followers that they had influence now.

It was a real mutual benefit.

SHEFFIELD: [00:13:00] It was. Yeah. And you mentioned Lance Wall now. I think he's another one of these people who is huge in this world that we're talking about, but general political audiences have never heard of him. So who, who is he?

MONTGOMERY: Lance Wallow is a self promoter, a sort of motivational speaker coach, sort of all these different things who really came into

prominence in this wing of Christianity in 2013 when he

co wrote a book on Seven Mountains Dominionism. With Bill Johnson, a pastor out of California, who's a major figure

in Pentecostal Christianity.

SHEFFIELD: can look

MONTGOMERY: And then well now really hit it big in 2015 when

he decided and announced

that Trump had been anointed by God

to be president.

And he said that to anybody who would listen to him and, um, Charisma, which is a [00:14:00] major media platform, with a primarily Pentecostal audience gave him a platform to, to spread that message.

He published a book shortly before the election called God's Chaos Candidate,

explaining why he thought that Trump had been anointed by God.

and,

of course, after Trump won, he now had all this cred as a prophet, because he had prophesied Trump's victory, and he has parlayed that into

More attention, more money.

He got,

has been treated by an insider by the

Trump world. He was invited to the white house to get a preview briefing of the Jared Kushner Middle East peace initiative. He gets invited to Mar a Lago. So, his really vocal support for Trump made him, made him a MAGA insider.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, so he's a regular panelist on Flashpoint now, but who's the host of Flashpoint?

MONTGOMERY: The host is a guy named Gene Bailey. [00:15:00] Who frankly don't know that much about what he was doing before he came to host that.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, me neither. He just kind of came out of nowhere for that show, but I'm sure he was doing stuff.

MONTGOMERY: yeah, it's funny. I think he was probably a Victory Channel guy, but, um, I just know him in that, in that role. And, he also has made the most of the fact that since Flashpoint has been such a promoter of

Trump and Trump conspiracy theories and this idea that Trump has a, is on a mission from God,

that Trump has, has, rewarded him too.

Bailey got invited to Mar a Lago last year

for a one on one interview with Trump.

At the RNC this year in Milwaukee

Donald Jr. stopped by to be interviewed by Bailey.

So it's they're, they're very close to the truth. Trump team. And the other figures who are routinely on the broadcast include a lot of other, people who are [00:16:00] considered prophets in this world who consider themselves to be prophets, Hank Kuhneman and others who,

who continue to spread Trump's claims about the election in 2020, haven't been stolen from him, continue to say that Trump has been anointed by God.

The Christian right's new message: Democrats are controlled by demons

MONTGOMERY: And they are they really promote the use of spiritual warfare rhetoric in political discourse, which is a characteristic of the New Apostolic Reformation and quite a few folks on the religious right, that this is, that, American politics is not about Republicans and Democrats or the left or right, but it's about the battle between good and evil, and that Democrats are actually evil. They're not just wrong. That they're actually demonic. They're controlled By demons and they are agents of

SHEFFIELD: Literal demons. Yeah, literal

MONTGOMERY: literal demons and and You know when you if you really believe that I mean if you really believe that, how do you work together? [00:17:00] How do you find compromise? How do you function together in a democracy?

I think that's why that literal demonization is so Dangerous, but it's a staple of, of this movement.

SHEFFIELD: It is, yeah, and and you guys recently at Right Wing Watch uh, clipped, I've clipped a few videos on from Flashpoint of, of them talking about how Kamala Harris is sort of the agent of what they call a Jezebel spirit.

Lance Wallnau: And what you're seeing now is a real Jezebel. You're going to see a lot of people saying that it doesn't, you know, it's like, does it's like Pentecostal one on one when you've got somebody operating in manipulation, intimidation, and domination, especially when it's in a female role, trying to emasculate a man who is standing up for truth.

You're dealing with the Jezebel spirit. What was accomplished was she can look presidential and that's, we'll go to this later. That's the seduction of what I would say is [00:18:00] witchcraft.

SHEFFIELD: a Jezebel spirit? Because, like, the thing about a lot of these people, I think, is that they use terms that are so out there or so obscure to most people that they can't understand how crazy. What they're saying is and so like if they say somebody's a Jezebel, like maybe somebody might think of that as, oh, well, that's just you being sexist toward a woman uh, but it's actually even worse than that. Can you talk about that, please?

MONTGOMERY: So Jezebel is a character in the Bible. She was a wicked queen who, in the story in the Bible God wanted to, to take her out basically because she was so bad. And so

SHEFFIELD: And she was manipulating her

MONTGOMERY: she was manipulating her husband

Ahab.

She was manipulating him to, to persecute God's prophets. And So, God sent this person, Jehu, to kill her.

Jehu did that, crumpled her body under his feet, and then oversaw the execution of her entire [00:19:00] family. And she has Jezebel and the Jezebel spirit as a sort of as a force in the, darkness in the spiritual realm. It's now deployed often to apply to women who, don't know their place or women who are supposedly operating out of alignment with the wishes of God as these people interpret them.

And so Jezebel, Hillary Clinton was the Jezebel when she was running and now it's Kamala Harris who is a, manifestation of the Jezebel spirit.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, and the, and the spiritual warfare idea is that, angels and demons have literally divided up the world and have, control over specific regions. And, in the case of this, Jezebel Spirit, as they're calling it they believe that there is some super powerful demon who is controlling Kamala Harris and aiding [00:20:00] her and, using her powers, giving her a portion of her powers to psychically manipulate and control humans.

Like this is what they really believe.

MONTGOMERY: Yeah, and Walnau has talked about how she's an even more powerful and more dangerous manifestation than Hillary Clinton because she can bring race into it. He's, I mean, Walnau has always been out there. He's been, he launched his he was involved in his political tour this year before Biden left the race, but he seems to have gone even more off the rails since Harris became the nominee and sort of, implying that she's the, the devil's choice and to

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it's like subconsciously, it seems like he is worried that Trump could lose now. That's what it seems to me, in the way that he talks about Harris.

MONTGOMERY: Well, I think, I think that's true. And it's, it's it's why all these a lot of these prophets on one hand will insist that Trump is anointed. He's been anointed by [00:21:00] God. So you would think that that would make him a shoe in, but because the world is always involved in this spiritual warfare where the battle taking place in the heavenlies between the forces of darkness and light is reflected in our world and our politics, the people that are working for Satan can still do harm.

And so, uh, there's a, so that's, it's one of the reasons that, Um,

Walnau is on a courage, what he calls a courage tour around the country. And that's an interesting fusion of spiritual revival, tent revival with healings and speaking in tongues and all that going on for part of the day in the evening.

But then during the other part of the day, it's like serious politics. Why you've got to vote for Trump, why you've got to turn out, recruiting to people to be election judges so he's, he's on the tour of 19 swing counties to [00:22:00] do what he can to maximize conservative Christian turnout by explicitly portraying it in this spiritual warfare frame of this is the battle between good and evil.

The theology behind Donald Trump's Big Lie

SHEFFIELD: So, um, now you, you, you mentioned the 2020 election lives of Donald Trump, like obviously those have been for him, a very big part of preserving his brand is his, his legitimacy among Republicans, because he is the first Republican who lost. for president to, to be the nominee and actually come back and, and run again after, after failing. That's never happened before. And so his lies about the election were pivotal to that, preservation of viability. But these, these self proclaimed prophets that we're talking about here, for them, it is, they're not doing that to preserve Trump's viability, it's, they're also doing it for their own, because they said that God, had revealed to [00:23:00] them that Trump would win in 2020, and then when he lost, Well, then it kind of makes you a false prophet.

And that's, that is something that you guys have tracked with a lot of these figures over the years. Like King Cunahan, I think, is probably the most prominent with that. But, but, but other ones as well. Like they, they really are sensitive to being called false prophets for their, well, false prophecy.

MONTGOMERY: Yeah, because if you, if you take the Bible as seriously as they say they do the Bible has

SHEFFIELD: They need to be

MONTGOMERY: say about how you should treat false prophets. Yes, it does. So yeah, people like, there's

There are very few people who came out after the election and apologized, saying, I clearly had it wrong.

I thought God was telling me this, but I had it wrong. Most of them, however, are more like Hank Kuniman and have doubled down and say, He did win. The elect, the voters chose him. It was just stolen by this demonic plot. And so you're right. They [00:24:00] are maintaining their own credibility as prophets to do that.

And basically using it to sort of just ramp up the urgency,

the urgent need for this spiritual warfare to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

Hank Kunneman: to a lot more different things when a prophetic word comes forth about a candidate, about It's, it's subject to a lot of things. People who say, for example, that the 2020 election, they say, well, anybody who prophesied that Trump won, whether it be a prophet, an intercessor, a Christian, or just a guy on the street, if you said that you're wrong, well, wait a minute.

If you believe that the media has been telling us the truth all of this time. And you believe that a guy that was hiding out in his basement can't gather a crowd. He wasn't even around the crowds could gather more than 80 million votes. Well, you might want to re examine your theology.

MONTGOMERY: But they're [00:25:00] also

they're not depending just on prayer and spiritual warfare. They're doing really the hard work of political organizing and as well as the, voter suppression and everything else.

Millions of people are attending Christian right political rallies

SHEFFIELD: They are, yeah. And in this tour that Walnau is doing, like, he's one of several people who are doing these sort of performance political tours as well there's some other people that are doing this. I'm going to talk about them.

MONTGOMERY: Yeah, there's a number of folks doing tours Paula White's National Faith Advisory Board. is doing tours. I think they're calling faith vote matters or my faith matters. But they're again, going to, they're trying to mobilize, particularly among conservative pastors to get those pastors to turn their churches into voter turnout operations.

There's a few of those going on. There's the Reawaken America tour, which has been going on for several years. Which sort of merges the Christian nationalism with, wild MAGA, [00:26:00] QAnon type conspiracy theories, and and other features, people like Mike Flynn and, and then there's a whole

SHEFFIELD: Eric Trump is a speaker on that

MONTGOMERY: yeah, well, and, and, yeah, and multiple Trump family people have Reawaken America, Trump himself called into one of those, at least on, on Mike Flynn's cell phone, and spoke to the crowd that way.

Okay. So yeah, there's a number of those going on. There's a number of,

prayer,

SHEFFIELD: Voigt.

MONTGOMERY: capital tour that he's been doing for the last couple of years.

SHEFFIELD: for people who don't know who he is? Who is that?

MONTGOMERY: Sean Foyt is a musician turned politician and political activist. He is from Northern California where he was involved in a mega church that is central to the sort of prophets and apostles wing of Pentecostal Christianity.

And he decided to run for Congress

a few years ago

and was [00:27:00] not elected, but then COVID hit and he decided to make a name for himself

by holding worship rallies in defiance of public health restrictions.

And he really built a huge audience that way. And he's, he's turned it into a,

Political operation. He's held a couple of big rallies on the National Mall. He holds worship services in the Capitol Rotunda that get attended by members of Congress. He's close with Senator Josh Hawley. And on this Kingdom to the Capitol tour, he's been going to all 50 state capitals, where he often gets met by Republican officials.

In Alabama, he was greeted by Chief Justice Tom Parker. Anyway, he's finishing up that tour in the next few weeks in Pennsylvania and a couple other places that are left on his list. And then it'll end in Washington with a big rally on the National Mall in October, just a couple weeks before the election.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, so like this is I mean, they've just got tons and tons of these events [00:28:00] and they're making so much money off of them. And, it's just, it's just like, this is, An entire, gigantic networking realm that exists that enables right wing political activists to make a living doing what they're passionate about, and there's nothing like this on the left, and this is only just one little sliver of what, like, you've got separate ones that Charlie Kirk's got his own conference series, and you've got the CPAC series, and, like, there's tons of these, these conference conferences. organizations out there and, they're both radicalizing the audiences that go there, but then the audiences are chipping in and funding, the, the, the, organizing and allowing people to become quite wealthy. I mean, Charlie Kirk just bought a gigantic mansion in Arizona. His organization now is making over a hundred between all his different groups has earning over a hundred million dollars a year. And Democrats or in the left [00:29:00] generally have no response to this. I, they don't even know what's happening. It seems like.

MONTGOMERY: Yeah, it is pretty astonishing just how many of these events, like you said, are going on, Charlie Kirk's rallies. And yeah, I mean, he does have a vast amount of money, he started an explicitly Christian nationalist wing of Turning Point USA, TPUSA Faith, and in a remarkable short amount of time, he had tens of millions of dollars at his disposal to use to organize churches, to organize conservative Christians and pastors, and he's a co sponsor of the Lance Wallnau Mario Merlo Courage Tour.

So it's all it's all working in the same direction.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and that's why I did want to talk about these guys because, I think people who haven't heard of them, it's easy to say, well, all these people are irrelevant. They just are not influential because I don't know who they are. So, but that's [00:30:00] that's not the right attitude to have. And there's a lot that, obviously their ideas are poisonous and terrible, but you know, as far as doing business and organizing, these guys are very good at it. And there's a lot that people can learn from them that's not manipulative and, terrible. So, yeah, I would definitely commend people to do that.

National Conservatism, JD Vance, and Catholic "integralism"

SHEFFIELD: But this is as, there's just one little wing of the larger Christian right. There's another one that's kind of becoming more prominent. Recently, especially with the, with the rise of J. D. Vance's, Donald Trump's nominee, there's been this new movement that has emerged that calls itself national conservatism. And you mentioned Josh Hawley. Josh Hawley is another it's probably the Before Vance came along as the vice president nominee, Josh Hawley was their, was their main guy. And, this is, it's a lot more we'll say high church nominated or Catholic nominated than the religious right that [00:31:00] we have been used to in the past several decades. You want to talk about this movement here, if you could.

MONTGOMERY: Yeah. And you're right. This is much more of a movement that is intellectually based. This sort of comes out of these right wing think tanks and intellectuals around for about five years, I think at least in a formal sense. And they spent multiple years putting together their statement of principles, which they came out with in 2022.

And even with that, it's kind of hard to define because it's a real mix and I'm, I'm not a scholar or political philosopher, so I'm not going to be able to like delve into the debates between the Straussians and the Burkeans and whatever that go on at their, at their conferences, but they they align on this sort of rejection of where liberal democracy has brought us and that the solution forward is a more autocratic, [00:32:00] authoritarian form of leadership. And so that obviously aligns pretty well with what Trump would like to do with what project 2025 lays out for what, how they would like the next president, the next conservative president to act. And yes, as you said, they've got, a lot of high profile people within the Republican party and with the conservative establishment on board.

their conference this year Holly was a keynoter. They also had, Kevin Roberts from the Heritage Foundation. A lot of big names. And so it's,

SHEFFIELD: And Vance was there as well,

MONTGOMERY: yeah, and it's, it's, it's, it's kind of similar in some ways to the, to the Pentecostal movement we were talking about in that most Americans probably have never heard of it.

And but that doesn't mean that it's not

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and it's and I think that the other thing also, when the media talks about, to the extent that the media does talk about these people, and [00:33:00] they almost never talk about the Pentecostal ones, but they have talked a little bit about the national conservatism. people they don't talk enough about their ideas and their theology and why they're doing what they're doing.

And, when you look at the National Conservatism people in a lot of ways they are hearkening back to the pre democratic traditions of the Catholic Church and, which, there was a long history of the Catholic Church, it took them up until Vatican II, really, to kind of reconcile with, well, maybe people do have the right to determine their, their own lives and that maybe that's in the Bible also. But that wasn't, that wasn't the, the viewpoint for a long time, especially outside of the United States among, among elite Catholics, and, but they're trying to go back to that. They're trying to go back, these guys are trying to go back.

[00:34:00] Okay.

MONTGOMERY: where you had the Catholic prince and everybody else had their assigned roles and people were happier because they knew their place.

And that's, there's a, there's a way in that kind of describes what some of the NatCon guys think, is that there is, yeah, there's these national hierarchies we've got to get, stop focusing on equality and equity and, and and all these, what they consider these toxic paths that liberal democracy and its, and its ideals have taken us down.

And if, if they need to sacrifice democracy, to give the right kind of person enough [00:35:00] power to turn the ship and bring us back to this, what they see as a more healthy virtuous society, they're willing to sacrifice democracy to do that.

SHEFFIELD: They are, yeah. And you see that, most infamously with J. D. Vance and his repeated complaints about childless cat ladies. And he does occasionally include men in there as well, not men without children. But, this idea that it's disordered for people to not have a patriarchal family with the mother staying at home with the children that that's the only way that things should be.

And if it's not that way, then, then it's wrong.

And it's interesting also, because like when you see Like there, there is also the NatCon movement is very extremely anti immigration which is a little bit different from the Pentecostals because they have correctly understood that that's a huge source of, of converts for them.

So they're not quite as anti immigrant but the NatCon people are. [00:36:00] And which is fascinating because a lot, most of the immigration that we have in the United States is coming from Catholic countries where 90 percent of the immigrants are Catholic. So these, they're rejecting their own religionists because they want to punish them. The Americans who are here in addition to having their own, racist overtones. It's like this dual combination that the American people are not worthy enough, are not righteous enough to be having, gigantic families that they should be. And then also, these other people who are coming in, they're not of Christian, even though they're the same denomination.

MONTGOMERY: Yeah. Yeah. And it's. You're right, that the anti immigrant thing is very caught up in this, like, the hardcore nationalist part of the National Conservatism, right? This idea that, a nation is, is not an idea, it's a certain amount of people, and it's a certain culture, and that can pretty quickly devolve into, an ethnic [00:37:00] identity, or an ethno nationalism.

What do you mean, who's a real American, and who deserves, the full rights of citizenship? But it also, I think one of the, one of these guys one of the institutions where this comes out of is the Claremont Institute. And Michael Anton from there, I think, is the guy who wrote the book about calling 2016, or an article calling 2016 the Flight 93 election.

You know, the flight which you had the the people on board, the hijacked plane, a 9 11 stormed the cockpit. Because they had no choice and so that's sort of an argument for an ends justifies the means anything goes Liberal society has become so corrupt American, Leftism has become so tyrannical that we just have to you know Do anything we can and so that was a justification for getting Trump in power and you heard Basically the identical argument that Claremont's John Eastman made For [00:38:00] why he was willing to do everything he could to keep Trump in power after Trump lost basically justified it with that same suggestion that if Trump lost Liberty was going to, be brought to an end.

And so if he had to bend or break the law, that was okay. And that's,

that's the attitude that we see from people who are talking about, having Trump as a red Caesar. This, Caesarism, or some people talk about a Protestant Franco. that it's either inevitable because the left is making people so miserable that there will be a right wing some kind of right wing coup, or that it's desirable and that, we can get there by getting Trump in office and then giving him the power to act like Victor Orban does,

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly. And it is, and it is, especially for from a Catholic perspective, it's, this is a very strange bastardized form of Catholicism because, in the United States, the historic [00:39:00] people. are Protestants.

So if we're going to go back to the way things were, well then the Catholics should are going to all be kicked out and expelled from the country. If that's what you really believe. But and then, and then of course the church, especially the American church is, has actually always been very pro democratic. And this is, it's, it is a rebellion against their own church as well, which is especially under the current Pope has begun to acknowledge that, there are certain things that are social realities and that whether it's, people having the right to, can, can have, have a same sex marriage and things they're very angry about that.

MONTGOMERY: about, um, the availability of legal abortion, of marriage for gay couples but they, They some of them really try to portray themselves as being firmly in line with Catholic social justice teaching [00:40:00] because they say that they're against the ways that late capitalism has exploited workers.

And so they try to give themselves a little sheen of being pro justice by claiming to be pro worker and supporting unions, even though politically that's not what the Republican Party has done when it has power.

SHEFFIELD: No. Yeah, it's like being a feudalist doesn't make you a socialist. And, some maybe more naive people on the left have kind of looked at that and have been fooled by that. I mean, I've done a couple of episodes on that topic. We'll have them in the show notes for people to check those out.

How Donald Trump's rhetoric has become much more religious

SHEFFIELD: Going back to the idea of, you know, God sort of ordaining these people to have to be his prophets and Trump is the servant. Trump has also kind of modified his rhetoric. Pretty significantly as well. I think it's fair to say that, when he was first running in 2016 He was kind of just more flagrantly running [00:41:00] on well Christians You might not like me very much But if I don't if I if I win you'll have power and you need power and I'll give it to you But since he you know had his victory in 2016, he now sort of speaks in much more Religious language and talks about how Christianity will be illegal and the Bible, is going to go down and no one will say Merry Christmas anymore.

And I mean, just this there's just endless litany of things he promises is going to happen when, if Joe Biden won in 2020. And of course, none of it came true but it doesn't matter.

MONTGOMERY: But they, they will claim and they will tell their supporters that Biden and Harris have unleashed a historic wave of anti religious persecution. I mean, it's, it seems patently ridiculous to hear that and to look at our country and to look at how free all these people are to run these ministries that we've been talking about.

But this this religious [00:42:00] persecution rhetoric, I mean, it's been a political organizing tactic of the religious right since it started and it hasn't gone away. And Trump, Trump, relies on it constantly to, to, to say That, he's, he's their defender. He sends out he uses biblical language in his text messages fear not, I am Donald Trump.

I mean, literally putting himself kind of in that God like position. And, and, it seems to be working, his, his, the, polling, I think among white evangelical Christians is who voted for him about 82 percent last time. I think it's about at the same level now. And as we talked about, there's a huge investment right now, just a huge sum of money going to make sure that turnout is high among conservative evangelical Christians.

And there are several multi million dollar turnout operations that are designed to help conservative [00:43:00] churches. Get everybody registered mobilize them to vote send everybody messages about the right way to vote. So that's, they are very intensely focused on continuing to have a bigger, uh, impact on the election than their size in the electorate would otherwise give them.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, they have.

Janet Folger Porter and Republican abortion bans

SHEFFIELD: And another person who's in this world that is, again, not very well known to most political reporters or, or political observers is somebody named Janet. And Janet Porter, people haven't heard of her, but she basically was setting the abortion policies for Republicans in almost, in all the states that they control.

So who, who is Janet Porter for people who don't know?

MONTGOMERY: Janet Porter is a long time Christian right activist whose main passion is criminalizing abortion. She is the originator of the phrase, the heartbeat bill. And some years ago, when

SHEFFIELD: [00:44:00] week abortion

MONTGOMERY: a six week abortion ban, that is, You know becomes the functional of a complete abortion ban because often people don't even know they're pregnant by six weeks.

So um And and for some years she was a little bit of a lone voice in the wilderness because the anti abortion movement Thought that her plans, were too extreme And so she would fight with groups like national right to life who were being more incrementalist who were just trying to say Let's pass a law banning late term abortions and then let's move on from there and she, she has been embraced by the right in the in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe in the sense that we've now had multiple states passing the kind of legislation she's been fighting for for years.

And she's also, she's also been part of the just broader religious right political rhetoric. She published a book called the criminalization of Christianity

again, claiming that Democrats and liberals want to outlaw [00:45:00] Christians and drag preachers out of the pulpit and throw them in jail kind of stuff you've seen.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and and these are, and I want to stress to the audience, like when you hear people, when you hear statements like what you just said there reported out, it's easy to just dismiss them as, oh, that's ludicrous. That's insane. But when people poll. evangelicals and ask them, do you believe these things are real? They do believe these things. Like these are actual beliefs that, the, the base, the core of the Republican party absolutely believe. So this is not just her, talking to no one.

MONTGOMERY: they have been told that over and over and over again for years now, for decades by the people they

SHEFFIELD: by authority figures.

MONTGOMERY: the people they trust. And that's, it's kind of a parallel to why so many [00:46:00] Republicans believe Trump's lies about election fraud.

Because he is, he and Fox News and other far right outlets, who they trust for news, have told them that over and over and over again.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and so it's true.

New poll shows how far removed Trump base is from reality

SHEFFIELD: And just to give people an idea, how completely at odds with reality is the Republican base has grown. It's not just about, you know, his election lies. It's that the things he says, they, they believe that they are true. So like he has said in the debate he had with Kamala Harris, he said that in some states it's legal to kill a baby after it has emerged from the mother.

And, 23 percent of Republicans in a YouGov survey said that that was definitely true. 18 percent said that it was probably true. Only 23 percent said that it was definitely false. So, this is [00:47:00] a huge percentage, like this, this, that particular belief is so completely insane. Like, if, if it were illegal to murder babies after they were born, You would know that because it would be happening.

But you know, it's not. And so, but you know, but you just go down the line, like there are so many things that they believe, like there's another one they asked them, are Haitian immigrants abducting and eating pet dogs and cats? And 18 percent of Republicans, actually I'll do it with Trump voters to show it even, even further.

So 22 percent of people who said they would vote for Trump said that's definitely true. 30 percent said that it's probably true. So more than half of Trump voters say that this is true. And another 24 percent said they were not sure. So functionally, They will go along with it, is what that means, and I mean, even, even something, here's another one that's even [00:48:00] more, and this is the thing that Trump said in the debate, that schools, that parents are sending their children to school and that they are coming back home after having a gender affirming care.

Surgery. They're

having gender affirming surgery, and Trump said that, and according to this poll here, 28 percent of his voters said that it's probably or definitely true. Something that is so blatant. Like, again, if this was happening, everyone would know it.

MONTGOMERY: Absolutely.

SHEFFIELD: Because you would see it. You would see that this was happening. But yeah, they, they, they, they think that it's they think it's true, or like a huge percent of them think it's

MONTGOMERY: And it's

But they just feel like out of loyalty to Trump, they have to say they do, I mean, he's got such a hold on people and people's identities are so caught up with him,

And I, and I think that um, knowing that there's so many part of [00:49:00] people in the movement are so caught up with him, just feeds this like ugly and intense cynicism among people like Trump and Vance and their political strategists who defend telling these lies in the purpose of some, what they consider some broader truth, Vance is, justifies lying about Haitians eating pets because maybe then it makes people pay attention to problems that communities are having with immigration and they justify, lying about things like, schools conducting surgery on kids.

Because then it, that gives them an opening to talk about why they oppose, policies that affirm trans kids. I mean, it's really cynical, it's really ugly, and it's really harmful.

SHEFFIELD: It is. It is. Yeah. And actually, I saw a right wing writer who, he said that Trump says things that are not, explicitly true, but they're directionally [00:50:00] true. And that,

I thought that that was such a deceitful formulation. But this is somebody who is highly educated. I think he has At least a master's degree, may have a PhD. And, and this, and this is what he believes. He's a writer on the website HotAir. com.

MONTGOMERY: yeah, I think people tell themselves a lot of things to justify the outcomes they want.

SHEFFIELD: They do. uh,

A new far-right Christian sitcom speaks to cultural fears

SHEFFIELD: now uh, There is one little side note with Janet Porter, though. Besides having these very terrible policies she's forcing on America. Janet Porter also has a, sort of side career as a evangelical cultural figure, and you guys had chronicled her attempt to produce a sitcom, an evangelical Christian sitcom based on a book that she had published earlier called What's a Girl to Do?

Video Clip: Look, I stay out of politics, alright? I don't even think I'm registered to vote.

To stay out of [00:51:00] politics is to let the Marxists control your life, your health, our country. How can you date a guy that doesn't even vote? Look, look, look. Trump is for liberty. He's for Israel. He's for the Second Amendment. Thanks. Thanks. They want to take your guns. I don't have any guns. How can you date a guy that doesn't even own a gun? Well, as much as I'm enjoying this lovely little conversation, I'm gonna go. How can you date a

MONTGOMERY: Well, my advice to Janet is, don't quit your day job. Because she's a lot better political advocate than she is a writer and actor. I mean, this I think the idea behind the sitcom is a smart one in that art influences politics. People for the American Waste founder Norman Lear made a big impact with his sitcoms and you know, generated all kinds of interesting cultural conversations.

So I [00:52:00] think maybe that was her model, but it's horrible. The writing is terrible. It's not funny. It's basically her sitting around making speeches about Trump and abortion. I mean, it's I think she misses the idea of what a sitcom is supposed to be.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, she's also like what I believe, like 62 years old and is portrayed as dating men in their 30s uh, as well. But I, I, I, I think that there is, To what you were saying that there's, it speaks to this very real Feeling that a lot of, far right Christians have that they finally realized that their viewpoints they're regarded as kind of absurd or extreme.

They finally realized that. And That this is really what powers what they're doing just as much about, the, the doctrines or whatever. There's this psychological, kind of feeling of loss. And like Trump, he [00:53:00] talked about that all the time that, you know that we're going to have so much winning when I'm the president, you guys have just lost all the time until I came along.

Well, you're going to win under me. That really speaks to them. I think.

MONTGOMERY: Yeah. And I think, that's part of the whole phenomenon that we saw of Trump's, just from the very launch of his campaign in 2016, it was like, ah, he's giving us permission to say the things that we've been told we shouldn't say in public. He sort of

energized, white nationalists and he gave permission for people to be open about their bigotry.

And because he did it and they're tired of, political correctness and wokeness and whatever. They're tired of liberal Hollywood. I mean, for in recent years, every religious right conference, political conference you go to, he's got some panel about conservatives in Hollywood, rising conservatives in Hollywood, making more family friendly films, making more programming because they get that they.[00:54:00]

They their, their ideas have not been popular in pop culture and they're trying to, find ways to, to bring them back.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and if they can't do it through culture, then they will mandate it through the government. And that's, I mean, that's really what this comes down to, like, a lot of there, there were, with this, the Springfield rumors about Haitians that were launched the, there were a couple of publications that went and found the, the women who had kind of originated these rumors on the internet. And, one of the women, I believe it was the one who posted it she had said that, I, well, it, it's true, the neighbors didn't eat my cat, and it's still in my house, actually, but I just felt, I just feel so trapped, I just feel so alone because when I went to the DMV, I heard a lot of people speaking on Otherlink, and that's what was, she [00:55:00] inadvertently told on herself there that she couldn't stand not being the dominant group because she's never, she said, I, I felt like a minority

and it's like, well, maybe you should talk to some black people once in a while.

MONTGOMERY: that and that is so telling and that is so telling about the whole make America great again, take your country back. It's this idea that, a certain kind of white Christian is the real American and everybody else doesn't. And that really flies in the face of American ideals, ideals in the best way, but it's certainly the kind of, stoking that kind of fear and grievance.

It's something that Donald Trump and his, his political operatives are very good at. And that's, that's, no, and I, I think that, just the ugly turn that he's taken, I think is in part his way to get back to his greatest hits, that power to him [00:56:00] in 2016, I think, after Kamala Harris had this big surge of energy and enthusiasm we see Trump hoisting this horrific immigrant bashing rhetoric on people leading into all these problems in Springfield, Ohio. And you see him palling around with Laura Loomer, who's now like whispering in his ear and, and, she embodies all the worst things about the MAGA movement.

Laura Loomer and reactionary figures from unexpected identity groups

SHEFFIELD: And actually that was who wanted to end, end our discussion here today talking about, because, you just recently um, this week um, as we're recording on the 20th of September here Donald Trump, he spoke to an event that was convened by a Jewish Republican organization. Uh, And he basically said, if, I don't win. Jews will have to face a large part of the blame for that. And, this election, especially 2024, he's really drastically ramped up this sort of attempt to radicalize uh, Jewish [00:57:00] Americans against against Democrats. And, and It's been very frustrating for him, I think, because it isn't working, and he's, it's been a real frustration for him because, these are messages that have worked so well on white evangelicals, but they're not working on Jewish Americans, and he's, really kind of becoming anti Semitic, and but also hanging out with Laura Loomer, I mean, for, let's delve into her a little bit, though if you want to get into that.

Yeah. Yeah.

MONTGOMERY: Yeah, let me, let me first say, I think that, Trump clearly does not understand The majority of the American Jewish community and what they value and what's important to them and why? They have voted for Democrats so consistently in recent years in, in large majorities. And, the fact that he was at an event supposedly opposing antisemitism and he's basically warned Jews, if I lose, I'm gonna blame the Jews.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

MONTGOMERY: I can’t think of anything that's, I [00:58:00] can't think of anything that is more likely to fuel the already raging antisemitism on the right wing of the MAGA movement than a statement like that. So I think it's pretty stunning. And, and that's Laura Loomer is a person who's been traveling with him recently.

She is an online influencer who got her start with project Veritas moved on to the Alex Jones show, built an audience on Twitter before she got kicked off. And She just she's part of this kind of online strategy of saying, of getting attention by saying the ugliest thing you can think of, the most outrageous thing you can think of.

She's just got a long, long history of racism anti Muslim bigotry, anti Semitic stuff, even though she's Jewish and palling around with white nationalists. Like Nick Fuentes. So again, I've got to think that, and Trump has [00:59:00] always loved her because she loves him, he's like, if someone is loyal, loves me, how bad can she be?

So, Trump reportedly wanted to hire her under his campaign last year. And there was enough, people in his orbit. He said, you can't do that. So he didn't hire her, but now she's traveling with him. And I suspect she's, helping spur. His return to the kind of worst, most demagogic republic he can think of that he thinks might help him.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, Loomer is though, she is an example though, of that. This. These right wing radicalization attempts, they have worked on some, on some Jewish Americans, and, and obviously the fact that Netanyahu, his his policies obviously are very far right and have been, very arguably, credibly, I think, called fascistic in many ways, and, he allies himself with anti Semitic People like Victor Orban and other people like that.

So, and, and, I mean, Jewish fascism is a real thing [01:00:00] and it does exist. And, you might think people might think that's an oxymoron, but it's a real thing. Just in the same way that Mark Johnson, the Republican gubernatorial nominee in North Carolina called, apparently called himself a black Nazi. But, Kanye West is out there too.

So. These things exist even if they may seem absurd on their face,

MONTGOMERY: Yeah. And it's, yes, we've got all kinds of examples that are sometimes hard to understand. I personally, as a gay man, I have a hard time with gay Republicans or even worse gay MAGA Republicans, but they're out there.

SHEFFIELD: they are. Yeah. And actually a friend of mine just wrote a book about the history of gay Republicans. So I'll send you the link on the episode

MONTGOMERY: I will look forward to reading that.

SHEFFIELD: quite a, quite a history as it turns out. And a lot of, a lot of, there's a lot of gay Republicans out there. But yeah, but it does, it does call to mind though what that, that saying of Voltaire is that. People who can make you believe [01:01:00] absurdities can make you commit atrocities. And I think that that's really the take home point when you look at the MAGA movement generally, and Trump certainly himself. Like, that's, that is what, you see that true every day.

MONTGOMERY: And I think, even when Trump is not using religious terminology, the apocalyptic rhetoric he uses, that this will be the last election we have, that if if he loses, it's the end of liberty, it's the end of democracy in America that, that is very much aligned with the apocalyptic rhetoric that people hear from Lance Wallow, another religious right figure, saying, this is the final battle between good and evil.

There's a figure named Lou Engel who comes out of the same Pentecostal prophetic networks who's calling a million women to the National Mall in October for a last stand for America. So, that rhetoric is very similar to what [01:02:00] people are, are hearing both from Trump and from religious right leaders that this is it.

This is the last stand for freedom against leftist tyranny. And so People hear that enough and they really believe it. And then, we have seen where that can lead. It makes people desperate. It makes people fearful. And if they're desperate and fearful already, and then they believe that Trump won the coming election, but it was stolen from him by the forces of evil.

Then we're, I think, really in dangerous territory.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it is. Yeah, and it's yeah, these are really serious things and it's, it's something to keep an eye on. I think it's, it's too easy to think of January 6th as some kind of aberration and that even Trump himself is just this heat that he did this. He made all this happen. And none of that's true. Like, this is a struggle that has to be fought for decades to come. Until [01:03:00] this radical religious movement, it has to lose in order for American democracy to survive. And it's, it's not a one election vote.

MONTGOMERY: No, and it's very clear, and I think that the whole project project really makes that clear. Now, here's a vast collaboration among religious and secular right wing institutions to lay out this, governing agenda that includes this idea of a very autocratic leader and that includes, people don't think of the Heritage Foundation as being part of the religious right, but it has often functioned that way.

And in Kevin Roberts introduction to Project 2025, He gives a definition of freedom that is pretty stark. And he says freedom is not the freedom to live like you want, it's the freedom how you, to live like you ought. And so, their definition of freedom is, says, we'll give you the freedom to live according, as long as you're living [01:04:00] according to our interpretation of the Bible and the Constitution.

So, that's where they're coming from, and that's what we're facing. And you're right, it's not going to go away if Trump loses this election.

SHEFFIELD: No, it won't. Well, but we could continue on this a lot, a lot further, I'm sure, but I don't want to take up too much of everybody's time here. So, for people who want to keep up with what you're doing, Peter, what's your recommendation for that?

MONTGOMERY: Yeah, you can follow us on at rightwingwatch. org or at rightwingwatch on social media channels. That's where we publish sort of both just daily crickets and more in depth analysis of the religious right and its political allies.

SHEFFIELD: Okay. You might as well plug your own Twitter. You're on there

MONTGOMERY: Yeah, I'm at at Pete Montt, P E T E M O N T.

SHEFFIELD: Okay. Yeah. I encourage everybody to follow you over there as well. So, all right. Well, thanks for being here.

MONTGOMERY: Thanks.

SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the [01:05:00] program for today. I appreciate you joining us for the conversation and you can get more if you go to theoryofchange. show. That will take you to the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And I do want to mention that Theory of Change is part of the Flux Media Network, so go to flux.

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