Right-wing Christian media kicked into high gear in the days following the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, coalescing around a defense of former President Donald Trump based on a smorgasbord of persecution complexes, whataboutism, conspiracy theories, lies, and misinformation about law enforcement and the judicial process. The Christian right and its GOP allies are counting on their base consuming a steady diet of these radio shows, podcasts, social media posts, and email blasts, tuning out any coverage that conflicts with their image of Trump as both a virile hero and a victim besieged by radical leftists at the FBI.
TPM
They are always happily ignorant of their own contradictions.
On the night of the raid, Tony Perkins, president of the leading Christian right political organization the Family Research Council, tweeted, “Who trusts the FBI to pursue justice? The agency has become so politicized that even if their actions were justified half the nation still would not trust them.”
That same half was perfectly happy with the FBI when they were investigating Hillary Clinton's emails.
“I don’t even think many conservatives would want political leaders, even of the other side, mistreated, or treated in such a fashion that shakes our very concept of justice and dignity in this country.”
"Lock her up." At every fucking Trump rally for years on end.
A central theme of the Christian right’s coverage is that the raid was politically motivated to stop Trump from running for president again in 2024, and to dampen his influence in the 2022 midterms.
[...]
Eric Metaxas, a popular evangelical author, Trump promoter, and radio host, called the FBI “thugs.” He interviewed Charlie Kirk, the founder of the right-wing campus group Turning Point USA and also a rising star in the evangelical world, who declared the raid a “rubicon” moment for the left. “It wasn’t a raid, it was a military occupation,” Kirk told Metaxas, adding “I looked at it as a political invasion. I looked at it as they invaded us.”
[...]
Kirk, in particular, effectively sanctified Mar-a-Lago as an untouchable holy place, one that the base would fight to defend. “You want a rallying cry?” he asked Metaxas. “They occupied Mar-a-Lago!” The resort, Kirk went on, is “not just the president’s home. It’s a piece of presidential history. It’s the place where treaties were signed and important meetings happened. They desecrated a core point of American history."
Unlike the Capitol building, eh?
Christian right figures are repeating Trump’s claim that FBI agents searched his wife Melania’s closet, feeding right-wing paranoias that the “deep state” is filled with sexual deviants. On one side is Trump, whom God anointed. On the other are creepy thugs who rummage through his wife’s intimate belongings.
[...]
In this upside-down world, Trump is sanctified and besieged, and everyone else is getting away with unspeakable crimes. If the past week’s worth of Christian right media coverage of the Mar-a-Lago raid is any indication, we should expect ongoing, escalating attacks on anyone perceived to be an enemy of God’s anointed, persecuted president.
It seems like for the past several decades, the religious right has decried every Democratic president as the Antichrist. If ever there was a man who fit that bill, it's Trump, and they can't see it staring them in the face.
Kirk, though, thinks he has a solution: lawless revenge. “State attorneys general that are Republican have to authorize raids against Soros groups, BLM, Planned Parenthood, the alphabet mafia, groomers, chemical castration of children, now,” he said. (“Alphabet mafia” is a right-wing slur for the LGBTQ movement, and “chemical castration” maligns gender-affirming care for trans kids.) He told Metaxas he has texted state attorneys general that he knows, including Texas’ Ken Paxton and Lousiana’s Jeff Landry, to encourage them to execute their own raids on such organizations as retaliation.
Jesus wept.
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