Last week, a group of Christian nationalists gathered at Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma, alongside several elected Republican politicians, to promote the Big Lie that Donald Trump didn’t lose the 2020 election. It aired on the show “Flashpoint.”
These were not fringe figures, just as the politicians weren’t no-name dogcatchers. As Right Wing Watch’s Kyle Mantyla points out, the politicians included Congressman Kevin Hern, the state’s Attorney General John O’Connor, and several other state-level officials. The event itself was hosted by Gene Bailey, who works with Kenneth Copeland’s ministries, one of the largest in the world.
And Bailey wasted no time in spreading lies to a very gullible conservative Christian audience.
Bailey then began the program by declaring that “there’s one thing that I know for sure, and this is the raw truth: The raw truth was on Nov. 3, 2020, President Donald J. Trump won the election.”
“We’re still waiting on the election to be corrected, and we’re not going anywhere,” Bailey added. “That election was rigged. It was stolen. But I got news for you, and I got news for you watching on television: There’s thousands of people in this room that say, ‘We’re taking our nation back!’”
Later in the program, preacher Hank Kunneman added that Joe Biden deserved to be imprisoned for treason, while offering no evidence to support that lie… because there is no evidence.
“There is a payback coming,” he bellowed. “They’re talking about Biden’s poll numbers, what they really need to be talking about is cell numbers—not phone, prison cell numbers. These guys have committed a crime! They have committed treason against the United States of America and its Constitution. They did not care about you, your pocketbook, or your children, and they want everything inside of their demonic agenda to bring you down and this nation. But I’m here to tell you that they are standing against something greater than all of us: It is Almighty God who loves the United States of America, and he loves his church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.”
To be clear, the biggest concern here is not that right-wing Christians are spreading lies through their massive media platforms. It’s that they’re convincing countless Christians to believe the bullshit. Meanwhile, the Republican Party just nods along without pushing back because they have no problem destroying the foundation of our democracy by spewing lies if it means they get to continue staying in power.
It doesn’t bother any of these people that they’re spreading lies. It doesn’t bother those politicians that they have no formal policy positions, and the ones they take are widely unpopular. It doesn’t bother these people that they’re complete hypocrites. Because they’re not trying to win over people who care about truth, decency, and critical thinking.
They’re trying to win over conservative Christians. It turns out that you can spread as much bullshit as your heart desires, and as long as you pepper those lies with “Jesus,” a giant swath of our country will believe it without question. It’s what they’ve been trained to do since they were children.